Sochi 2014

The winter Olympics have finally arrived! I LOVE the Olympics. Patriotism, plus competition, yeah that sounds fun. :) We've been getting excited for weeks. Every Olympics we have an opening ceremonies party where we decorate and make food from the host country.

I set up a scene on our mantle with some felt, and athletes. Some of the figures are cake toppers I've collected from the grocery store, and others we made out of model magic. 

I like to use the Olympics as a big unit on geography for the boys. They made flags out of construction paper, and colored others. Find coloring pages here. We've been talking about all the countries as we watch athletes compete and finding countries on the globe. 

I did an image search for the Sochi Olympic cauldron. Luckily it's super simple so I made a little replica out of foam paper, a paper towel tube, and a battery tea light.

Thing One had a plain grey sweatshirt, so I turned it into team wear, using the silhouette and freezer paper stencil method. USA is pretty easy to cut out so you could easily make this without a silhouette. All you need is freezer paper and fabric paint (see this post for more info on how).

For food we made borscht (I used this recipe from Tyler Florence), complete with dill-sprinkled apple slivers and, my mom made a cold beef salad which included pickles and peas. We also had beef stroganoff and some Kazakh tea (chai). Several of the foods we tried seemed like odd combinations, but were really good! I love doing stuff like this because it makes us be a little more adventurous, it's good to try new things!

We will be eating up all the sports for the next 15 days. Go USA!!

Thanks for reading!