Busy...just like everyone else!

Hello again!  Spring is here and like everyone else, I've been busy!  Although, I don't consider myself as busy as some.  Being married to a farmer who is busy with field work this time of year, I find myself  busy with year end school activities, field trips and the like.  I so enjoy this time of year when I can tag along on those class field trips.  And the photographer in me loves taking pictures of all these trips and events!

Zechariah's kindergarten class visited our farm for a farm field trip on May18.  I had been planning for this trip for a long time and wanted it to be a fun experience for all the kids.  I decided to have 3 stations of activity so we wouldn't have a large number of kids at each activity.  That worked wonderful!  Station 1 went with Jeff to the cows, sows, farrowing house and finisher and then he showed them the different feed ingredients it takes to feed the pigs.  Station 2 was free time where the children could play on the bales, tractors, corn box, swing set, etc.  Station 3 was with me and I fed them a snack (see pictures below) and juice box.  While having their snack I had a wagon full of by-products that are made from pigs and/or cows.  That was very interesting for me when I was doing some research on this and for them to see what part of the pigs/cows certain items were made from.  I must have grossed one little girl out because her mom told me that when they went to the store to buy some marshmallows for an upcoming camping trip this little girl said she wasn't going to eat any of those marshmallows and the mom asked her why and the little girl told her that they were made from pigs.  Oops!  I didn't even think of that.  After the by-products show and tell, I read them the book "The Great Pig Escape".  Then I had them assemble piggy masks.

We ended the trip with a ride in the hog cart.  Kids love this!

Aren't these cupcakes just adorable?  I thought so, too!  So I decided to try making these.  They shouldn't be hard should they, after all, they are just cupcakes with that homemade fondant made from none other than marshmallows, powdered sugar and water?  So, I got the fondant recipe and made 2 batches.  I think I followed the recipe.  It said to wrap the fondant in plastic wrap and then put it in a ziplock baggie and set it on the counter.  So I did that.  The next day, I checked on the fondant and when I poked it, well, it didn't poke back.  Like a rock, when you poke it, it doesn't poke back.  When I went to roll it out, it wouldn't roll.  So, I divided it in two and tried rolling that out.  Still wouldn't roll.  I wasn't going to easily give up so I divided it again and tried rolling it again.  No such luck.  I took the fondant, put it back in the plastic wrap and put it in a reusable plastic bag and set it by the back door for the kids to take to the hogs. :)

I was so disappointed that my cupcakes weren't going to look like this.

Now I was back to the drawing board and this is what I came up with.