Artist Trading Cards and Pickled Vegetables

I saw a fun idea in a magazine awhile ago and thought I would give it a try with the kids.  Artist Trading Cards.  The idea is to make small cards on plain white cardstock.  They suggested baseball card size, but I happened to have sleeves for business card size, so that's what we went with.  Once you get that, get busy decorating!  You can design cards however you want using whatever medium you want.  Once you get a base of cards, you can start trading them with each other so you have a large variety of cards - just sign your name on the back so you can keep track of your various cards and who designed them. 

I have to say that this idea was a HIT!  The kids absolutely loved it and spent many, many hours creating various cards.  They sent out cards to distant relatives in hopes that they'll get some back from them.  We haven't gotten any yet (if you are a relative reading this who received your cards, ahem, the kids are waiting...).  They are getting some of their friends interested in doing this with them and it's fun to see the different ideas that are coming from this.  The first day we got them out, I made some for the kids too and we all had a grand time creating our works of art.  A business card size is not overwhelming to fill up at all!

And finally a random picture of pickled vegetables.  I saw a recipe and thought I would try out a small batch to see how it was.  The girls think they are great.  You just throw in a number of random veggies with some brine and let it sit.  We tried our first jar the other day and it basically tastes like regular pickles.  I'll have to keep it in mind if I have lots of things to can that I don't know what to do with - zucchini, summer squash, carrots, green beans, onions - all work well!