Vapiano Pizza-Makin' for Kids

A few weeks ago a friend of mine happened to be walking by Vapiano (pizza and pasta restaurant) on a Saturday morning and noticed that they had a little pizza class going on for kids. She stopped in, there was room in the class for her son, and so they spent the next hour or so making mini pizzas. It turns out that Vapiano at Reston Town Center does these free pizza-making classes every other Saturday morning! I signed the boys up and last weekend we had a wonderful time with the manager in charge of the class, the other employees who helped, the kids, and the boys' little friend Sonja.

Rene is the manager and he has this whole experience down. From the moment you walk in the door, you are welcomed, the kids are given (real, cloth) aprons, a paper chef hat, crayons, drinks, and parents are also given complementary drinks. The tour starts with a well-advised trip to the restrooms for the kids to wash their hands before they get to squish down the pizza dough. After the pizzas are all put together and baking, Renee brought out dough for the kids to practice tossing into the air. That was probably Cal's favorite part.

Without further text, here are the pictures. I highly recommend this fun morning (allow a good hour and a half or two hours) for anyone in the area. I'd say ideal ages are probably 3-6. Call ahead to reserve a space in the class, but it's all free! (Reston Town Center location: 571-281-2893)

The marketing worked on us...I'm sure we'll go eat dinner there at some point soon because they were so great to deal with- and the pizza was delicious!

Sonja and the boys get set for baking!

Everyone meets the manager and introduces themselves.

Clean hands are ready to press the dough!

How does my hat look?

Smashing the dough down

Decorating...

While the pizzas are baking...let's throw dough!

Chef Cal catches good air!

And the dough catches the floor a few times...

Everyone gets turns.

Cal does it again...

Yum, Batman: A bunny pizza and a normal little pizza for each kid

Thank you, Rene! 

Losing Our Bookstore

Today I wrote about losing our local bookstore on Reston Patch. Here it is.

The Tale of Lumpy Tree: A Love Story

We threw away my old fake tree after last Christmas. It had seen many better days and we thought that by this Christmas the boys would enjoy going out to an actual tree farm and picking out a tree. So we went. We went to Joe's Trees in Loudon County. The boys loved running around, squealing about all the trees, pointing out all the "sad Christmas stumps" from the trees that had already been cut down. Brian was completely ambivalent about tree choice. He told me, "Pick whatever you want because I don't care at all." Well, he didn't care at all until he saw Lumpy Tree. He was then convinced that this was the tree we needed more than anything.
 
Lumpy Tree can be described in a number of ways, but even pictures and words don't do it justice. To give you a rough idea, it looks like:
 

·         A hairball that a large pine tree puked out, that then grew a stump and stuck around

·         Two trees that fell in love, started growing together as one and then got in a giant fight but couldn't quite separate again

·         Twin trees, where one was always bigger and stronger and eventually ate the smaller one

·         A tree that grew close to a nuclear facility

 

I mean, this thing is a pile. But Brian fell in love and soon the boys were also boisterously declaring their love of Lumpy Tree. It was the only tree they ever wanted to bring home. It was so beautiful and lumpy! It was a great as a cow! (This was Cal's phrase, and I'm not quite sure I follow it...) Lumpy Tree was so excited to see our house! They couldn't believe how cute Lumpy Tree was!
 
I could not believe that I was being pressured to put this coniferous pile of green in my living room. But what was I supposed to do? Be a bratty suburban wife with a perfect triangle tree when my boys all want a less-than-desirable one?
 
So I gave the go-ahead and Brian sawed it down. The guys who run the farm laughed hysterically and asked if we were kidding when we came dragging the tree over toward our car. They said they knew no one would want that one and they weren't sure what they were going to do with it. "This is one happy tree tonight!" one of the guys said. Cute.
 
All the way home the boys were talking about how much they love their new friend Lumpy Tree, and what would Lumpy Tree say about our house? Would he like it? It did feel kind of cool and generous to be taking a tree that no one else wanted and decorating it in our house. I’ll admit that.
 
The boys woke up super-stoked to decorate the tree. And I mean, bouncing-off-the-walls stoked. We did it and they were exuberant about it the entire time. This was a huge switch from the past seven or eight years, where I usually quietly and sentimentally do it by myself while listening to soft Christmas music late at night. Every ornament had its place. Big difference this morning. A couple ornaments were broken, and they were way unequally distributed. The boys are even more deeply in love with our beautiful Lumpy Tree now that it is covered in lights and ornaments. When we walk in the door, they immediately remind us we need to turn Lumpy Tree’s lights on. It now looks like Christmas threw up in our living room.
 
However, I’ll admit that even though he’s only been here for 24 hours, I’ve become kind of fond of our Lumpy Tree. And if we got a respectable, triangle tree, there would be no reason to write a blog entry about it.

Click here to find out about the other surprise we got from Lumpy Tree.
 


So many trees to run in between!

Perfectly respectable tree

 

Clark found the perfect tree for our Baby Peapod!

 

Yep. Meet Lumpy Tree.

Lumpy Tree, meet our house.

This. Just. Happened.

Weird, protruding branch in prominant location

Unbridled decorating enthusiasm-- doesn't even need
pants on for it.

What a pile of beauty

Oh, Lumpy Tree.

Weird exposure shot

 

Serve It Up: A Book Giveaway!

Most parents of toddlers have a hard time getting their kids to eat enough of the right foods. Getting my boys to eat vegetables is actually finally getting a little easier, but it has been a battle. I've spent plenty of time hiding veggies in their food in the form of purees, using pasta made with veggies, and mixing fruit and veggies in juices and smoothies. The best book I found while teaching myself how to cook for picky fingers was The Sneaky Chef to the Rescue by Missy Chase Lapine. She's got a helpful website with her books and other tools. 

I thought I'd share three of the things I've used the most in my veggie-quest: I water down V8 Fusion or an off-brand of the same, for the boys to drink. When I serve the boys pasta, which they love more than life, of course, I try to use pasta made with veggies. I know Barilla makes it, I'm not sure anyone else does. And the Sneaky Chef to the Rescue is full of great ideas for purees to have on hand and recipes to use them in.

V8 Fusion with veggies and fruit

   

Pasta made with veggies

Purees and sneaky recipes

Recently, Laura De Simone, a local physical trainer and author of the book Serve It Up contacted me about the possibility of doing a book giveaway for my readers. So I took a look at her book. Serve It Up isn't like anything I've seen before. Its focus is on portion control. Maybe you know what nutritious foods and kid-friendly foods look like but you're not sure how much is enough and how much is too much for your kids. Her book breaks portions down by age but also by how active your kids are and then suggests exactly what is a healthy amount of each food for each meal. You can take a look at the description of her book and then just leave a comment below to be entered in the giveaway. If you have a Facebook profile, also go like Whispers & Shouts. I'll have one of the boys draw a winner on Friday.

* I should mention, I am in no way being reimbursed by anyone here, other than the free book to a reader. I'm simply sharing what has worked for me and helping a local author with some exposure.




How to Make Space Shuttle and Astronaut Costumes

My grandma used to make Halloween costumes for me and all my cousins when I was little. I’m talking homemade, beautifully sewn, clever costumes that most of us probably still own. When she and my grandpa were out here this spring we took them to the Air and Space Museum where she bought Cal and Clark little astronaut flight suits. They were in heaven.

I thought it would be special to use those costumes that Grandma Bev bought for the boys this year. I used some balloons to make paper mache helmets and wrapped their rain boots in gauze. They also used the cereal box astronaut backpacks from their birthday party to complete the ensemble. Aunt Bean then went all out and made herself into a space shuttle! That’s right. So I responded in a less dramatic and simpler costume as space. She and I decorated a wagon as a moon rover for when we took them trick or treating yesterday at a super cool event that Reston Town Center does. It was safe, it was fun, and it didn't involve big kids in scary costumes competing for candy.

Here’s what we did for the costumes.

The boys ripped newspaper into strips for paper mache helmets.

 

We stirred water into a pile of flour until it was a good, gloppy consistency.

I wrapped the gloppy strips around the balloons and tried to
fight them out of the goop.

They hardened for a few days, and then we popped the balloons.

 

I cut them to fit their heads and painted them with white latex interior paint.

I poked holes for faces with a Dremmel tool and then stuck scissors
in to cut them out. (You could use anything sharp to start the holes.)

The edges were kind of jagged so I put athletic tape around them.

 

I wrapped rain boots in gauze and packing tape. This picture was
taken after their travels...the boots looked better before.

 

Printed two NASA symbols and a flag from the internet for the sides and back.
Hot glued them on.

Ready for blastoff!

Our first costumed experience was Gammy's office party. 

Aunt Bean used styrofoam cups with streamers taped inside for the
bottoms of the rocket boosters on her space shuttle.

 

Styrofoam cones for the tops of the rolled-up posterboard rockets.

The fuel tank is also rolled up posterboard, with a balloon on top.
The body of the shuttle is posterboard outlined in electrical tape.

She also printed out symbols and put sticky velcro to attach it to her white shirt.

 

I glued yellow construction paper on a black shirt in the shape of the
Big Dipper, Little Dipper, and Orion to complete the scene.

The satellite on the wagon is folded posterboard covered in foil with pipe cleaners.
The solar panel (on the far side) is folded foam board.
I put squares of foil on the wheels and on the side.

Ready to find some candy!

The crew

We had to pose by the constellation sculpture.

Trick or treating in a wine shop? I think yes!



Met up with twin friends Christian and Luke, aka. Dinosaur and Shark



Jackpot vendor of the day: Red Velvet Cupcakery with warm chocolate cupcakes.
Best. Idea. Ever.