I had planned on getting a lot done on the kid's Tin Man costume this weekend (for those of you wondering what the lame' is all about, I saw Wicked recently so I decided that the kid would be a super cute tin man…not at all related to the story, just had Wizard of Oz on the brain), but that didn't happen.  But, I did look for ways to express my creativity each day.  Here's the run-down.

Day Three
We started the day at the park where I took some pictures of the kiddo playing on the playground with my phone.  I wish I would have had the big camera with me, but it was just him and I on the playground while his dad hit golf balls (fun was had by all!), so I had to be ready to catch the kid at a moment's notice.

That evening, I made spider soap!  It's my first attempt.  I found the idea here and followed their directions.  After doing this, I discovered that I need to make the color lighter and do it in two phases.  Phase 1, fill the mold halfway and put the spider in, let that harden a bit.  Phase 2, fill the rest of the mold.  I forgot to take pictures of this process, so I'll post my first attempt and second attempt (soon to come) when I finish them.

Day Four
Sunday, the focus was on hosting my class for dinner and a movie.  I teach a class of college freshmen and they have to watch a movie as a part of class.  The last two years I've invited them to my house and I think they really like it.  Anyway, my teaching assistant had suggested that we make pasta, so we did a pasta bar of three different pastas and three different sauces, along with salad and bread. 

The creative challenge came in when she decided that we should make tiramisu.  Well, we turned into me when we realized that it had to be refrigerated for several hours.  I have never even had tiramisu much less made it.  I also did not want to use real rum/liqeur since all of the students are underage and you don't cook the alcohol out of the rum.  Yes, I realize the amount of rum would be insignificant, but I didn't want that to come back to haunt me.  Also, I bought cappuccino instead of espresso, which I was substituting for the coffee liqueur (way to read the labels). So, this made for quite the challenge.  I mostly followed this recipe, but used some instant coffee instead of the coffee liquer and topped it with french vanilla cool whip.  The students said it tasted good, but the true proof that it was okay was that they ate most of it!  I didn't get a picture before dessert, I was too busy getting things ready.  I'm not usually good at creatively substituting things in a recipe, so I was pretty happy that it was edible.

If anyone is still actually reading this rambling post (hey, at least I'm posting again), I am knitting!  Once the students left, I sat down and enjoyed some time watching football and working on the kid's "blue jean" sweater.  It's made from Tess' sock yarn using her pattern for a top down cardigan.