Lego Ninjago Cake and Crochet.

Sorry the blog has been quite lately.  It's been a busy time between work and home.  My son has recently discovered the Lego Ninjago cartoon series.  When he discovers something he goes all in for a while and watches the episodes on Netflix repeatedly.  He had a birthday recently so I attempted to make a ninja cake.  If you check out some of the google images results for a ninjago cake search you will see that the sky is the limit for making a complicated cake design.  I choose to do a more simple version.  I made a double layer, 10 inch round white cake using a box mix.  Some people may be able to make a cake from scratch, however I am not one of them.  The one time I tried to do that, it came out hard as a hockey puck.  Little dude loves the color green so it had to be the green ninja.  I used Wilton food coloring in leaf green to get his green.  I think the yellow was labeled lemon yellow.  I free handed the eyes so they are a bit wonky but overall the end result came out ok. 

Usually when he discovers something new (or in this case new to him since the series has been out for a few years) and doesn't have a toy related to the series and asks me to make him one.  He did this with oogey boogey from The Nightmare Before Christmas made from fleece (with a Velcro pocket to hide glow in the dark bugs), the lorax, a viking hat like Hicupp from How to Train Your Dragon, the little cheese curl guys that chase the veggie tales characters in the veggie tales Jonah movie...I could go on. 

I made up my own pattern to cut out oogey boogey and just crocheted a cylinder to make the cheesy guy from Jonah without following real patterns from someone else.

He hadn't expressly asked for a stuffed ninja but I knew he would like one.  I found a crochet pattern to use to make one. Even though I don't care much for crochet I attempted it anyway.  I have issues with loosing count of stitches and things coming out shaped completely wrong.

I did a Ravelry search and found a pattern for a ninja.  I finished him in about a week and surprised him with it right before bed (right after I finished off the last stitches on his black belt thingey he wears.  My son was very surprised when I presented it to him and asked for a couple modifications: to give him hair and to attach his hood to him so it doesn't fall off.  I will get right on that...

New Chicken Coop or Chicken Mansion...

We finally finished the new chicken coop.  More to the point, my husband and my dad finished it.  I didn't actually help build this one.  All I did was search google for plans to give us an idea for a design.  My husband took those plans and made the footprint for the structure larger so we would be able to use part of it for a storage area for the chicken feed, our wheel barrow, a ladder, etc.  We still need to build nest boxes, cut out a door for the chickens to come in and out of their run through,construct the fenced run for them to be outside in, and paint the exterior.  Lots of chicken wire to buy.  The chicks are fully feathered now and are still being housed separate from our older hens partially because of a lack of space in out main coop and partially because I want to introduce all the chickens into the new coop at once so no one thinks they have a prior territory claim on it since it will smell unfamiliar to all of them.  We still need to take the small pen with the younger chickens off our back porch and set it next to the run with the big hens so they can see each other and get used to each others scents before we fully introduce them all.  Sometimes we can hear the younger ones chirping to the hens and the hens answering them back.  I hope that means they will all get along.  One of the older hens keeps trying to play the broody hen not wanting to get up off the eggs that have been laid during the day.  My husband keeps suggesting we get a couple ducks to go with them.  I'm not sure where we would house them nor that having ducks is something I want to mess with at all.  Anyway, here's a picture of the (almost) finished coop.