Seder at last, aka passover #7

Hi Everybody,
Today we finally did our seder, it was very small and very simple, just our mum and her mum and dad.  First of all, I want to explain that we started with passover food #1 on the first NIGHT of passover so we might end up doing 9, passover lasts for 8 days but it starts at sundown the day before the first day as do all Jewish holidays.

This is a homemade haggadah which is basically a prayer book for passover, it tells the story and talks about the foods, has prayers and songs etc.

This is the seder plate.  The seder is the special meal that happens during passover.  Because we are vegetarian, we use a roasted beet instead of a bone.  Also, since wasabi is horseradish and we didn't have any other horseradish we used some wasabi:)  Here is a link for explanations of the seder and the hagadah etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover_Seder

Our candles.  We light candles and bless them as part of the seder.

There are 10 plagues as part of the story.  We drip wine (or grape juice in our case because none of us are old enough to drink alcohol) onto the plate, 1 drop for each plague.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_of_Egypt

As part of our supper tonight we matzoh kugel, which is today's passover food:)

That's it for now.  We'll be back tomorrow.

Sophia and Emma :) :)

Happy Easter

Hi Everybody,
There will be a passover blog post later, this one is all about easter:)  In our family,  even though we are Jewish,  we celebrate the non religious parts of easter that people celebrated from long ago.  Who doesn't like to eat candy and chocolate:):)

We had an easter egg hunt in the house.  Here's Marisol finding an egg in her room.

Jadyn found one too.

So did we.

There is an egg in the cup that holds Amaya's paint brushes.

Mckenna can't quite reach this one.

And finally a family portrait:  from left in the back: Marisol, Emma, Sophia, Amaya.  In the front from the left:  Rebecca, McKenna and Jadyn.  That's all 7 of us who live here.
We hope you are having a great easter.
We'll be back later to talk about passover.

Sophia and Emma (and friends) :)

Easter egg decorating and passover #6

Hi Everybody,
Today we decorated a few easter eggs as well, so we are posting twice in one day and of course adding one more thing you can eat during passover :)

Here we are (us twins and Amaya and McKenna) with the 4 eggs we decorated.  We each did one, 2 of them are dyed and 2 of them are a little more artistic.

Here's a close up of the eggs.  The one on the upper left is Amaya's and the one next to it is McKenna's.  The front left one is Sophia's and of course that means the blue one is Emma's.

Today we ate butter and cinnamon sugar on some matzoh, it was very tasty although messy. 

And finally, for a while now McKenna has been asking us a lot to show a photo of her brand new pierced ears.  This was a home piercing done with a thumb tack (completely free:):))  It was a lot easier than mum thought it would be.  McKenna is wearing some of mum's old stud earrings.  Mum almost never wears studs anymore, she prefers dangles or hoops.

Don't that look nice?  The earrings are blue studs with star dangles.

That's it for now.  We'll be back tomorrow with easter candy and seder foods.

Sophia and Emma :) :)

Award nomination!!!

Hi Everybody,
We'll talk passover later but this post is because Sophie from http://sophie-amelie.blogspot.ca/ nominated us for the best blogger award

 Part of the process involves answering these 5 questions:
#1: What is your favorite post you ever created?
This is our favorite one.  It's from Rebecca's birthday party, we had a lot of fun making the cupcakes.
http://hfxtwins.blogspot.ca/2012/07/today-was-rebeccas-birthday-so-we.html#comment-form
Our runner up is our birthday post:
http://hfxtwins.blogspot.ca/2013/01/our-birthday.html
and finally our friend amaya guest posts a lot and this is her favorite from our blog:
http://hfxtwins.blogspot.ca/2013/03/hinamatsuri-doll-festival-or-peach.html
#2: What is your favorite photo story you have ever taken part in:  This one is easy because because we haven't done this but we have done lots of stop motions that are up on our youtube channel (Ms.dancergirl96)
#3: Why do you blog?  Because we enjoy it a lot and sometimes it is easier than doing doing a photo shoot or video for youtube.
#4: How many followers do you have?  Three we think.
#5:  Do you like being nominated for awards?  To quote Sophie: "who doesn't?"  This is our first time and we are very thrilled.

And finally, we are asked to nominate at least 5 other blogs:
We nominate the following blogs:
Sabine from:  http://sabinethegreat.blogspot.ca/
Dani from: http://dabblingdani.blogspot.ca/
Charlotte and Zoe from: http://charlotteandzoesworld.blogspot.ca/
Saoirse from:  http://saoirsesspace-ag.blogspot.ca/
and finally Olive and Aimee from:  http://www.aimeeandolive.blogspot.ca/

If you are nominated, please answer the same questions we did and nominate 5 other blogs.  Try not to nominate ones that have already been nominated.  The creator of the blog award also asks that you include the image of the award like we did.

Sophia and Emma

passover #5

Hello again:)

Today our mum and her mum made more passover buns and mock chopped liver from mushrooms, onions, celery and cashews.  It is really delicious as long as you can eat cashews.  Our mum's mum wasn't a vegetarian when she was a kid and she says this tastes a lot like "real" chopped liver, we just think it is plain delicious.

Our mum's grandma also had some of this at her house and Amaya tried it on matzoh when she was there this afternoon.

Ours was smoother and creamier too, here is a picture of it just after it was made, yum.

Ok, that's all for now.  We'll be back tomorrow.  Our mum and her family are going out to eat at somebody else's house tomorrow so our passover food idea will probably be more of a snack one:) 

Sophia and Emma :) :)

Passover #4

Hi Everybody,
Tonight's passover food is matzoh buns made with matzoh meal.  They can be called passover buns too.  Our mum likes to eat egg salad on them but you can put anything you would put on bread.

Here are 3 of them in a glass container.  Split them open and then eat them with whatever topping or filling you want.

On a completely different topic, we entered the doll wardrobe's photo contest and would love it if you would vote for our photos.  You can vote for as many people as you like but only one vote per photo.  Here are the links. photos first and then how to vote info:

http://dw2013grandphotocontest.blogspot.ca/2013/03/entry-140-first-photo-is-of-my-doll.html

http://dw2013grandphotocontest.blogspot.ca/2013/03/entry-141-first-photo-is-of-my-doll.html

http://dw2013grandphotocontest.blogspot.ca/2013/03/entry-142-third-photo-is-of-my-twins.html

http://thedollwardrobe.blogspot.ca/2013/03/reminder-2013-grand-photo-contest.html

Thank you for voting for our photos.

That's it for today, we'll be back tomorrow!!!

Sophia and Emma :) :)

Passover #3

Hi Everybody,
Tonight's passover menu item is matzoh lasagna.  You just use matzoh instead of noodles in your regular old lasagna recipe.  It works really well and tastes really good:)  Here's a photo of the one we made, it's vegetarian because we are a vegetarian household

Doesn't it look tasty?

On a totally different topic, we were exploring the house and we came across all these pillows that our mom had made.  I wonder who they are for?  They match Amaya and McKenna's ones.

Don't they look nice???

that's it for now.  We'll be back tomorrow with more passover ideas.

Sophia and Emma :) :)

Passover #2

Hi Everybody,
It's Sophia and Emma.  Today's way to eat matzoh, is fried matzoh also called Matzoh brei (yiddish).  In our house, we make it more like french toast. The matzoh is wetted with warm water and then dipped in milk and egg and then fried.  We add cinnamon and vanilla extract to the milk and egg mixture.  Add syrup or cinnamon sugar and EAT, it's a great breakfast (or brunch or lunch or anytime) food.  We didn't take pictures of ours this morning but here is a link from wiki and a couple of internet pictures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzah_brei
http://www.ingredientsinc.net/2013/03/kale-matzo-brei-recipe/#.UVIkDlctYU4
(this one is savory but our mom LOVES kale so we included it :))
http://foodiereflections.com/?p=887

That's it for today.  We'll be back tomorrow!!!!

Sophia and Emma :) :)

Passover

Hi Everybody,
It's Emma and it's my turn to do a separate post. Passover started at sundown today.
 We're going to post each day with a different way to eat matzoh or other passover related foods.  This is the first of those posts.  Way #1 to eat Matzoh:  with butter and honey.  The matzoh balls in one of the photos is another way to eat matzoh (ground up) too.

First of all, here I am carrying matzoh and apologizing for pushing sophia the other day.

Sisterly love :)

Yummm Matzoh balls in soup. 


If you don't know much about passover, have a look at this wiki page just for starters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover

That's it for now.  We'll be back tomorrow!!!
Emma :)

A little this and a little that :)

Hi Everybody,
It's Sophia.  First of all, an explanation, we will now be referring to "the human" as our guardian or mum depending on whether or not she has adopted us.  For Emma and me, she is our mom:)

Emma started the day by tossing her belongings all over the place as she looked for her glasses and their case.

Here is she is getting in MY bed?????  I rudely informed her that she needed permission to go in my bed.

She ignored me and started digging through my stuff.

All my stuffies ended up on the floor:(

oops how did those get up there?  tee hee hee.

Emma did not think it was funny.  In fact she was VERY mad at me and said she wished she didn't have a twin.

She shoved me and I lost my balance and fell and hurt my left arm.

We were being pretty loud so mum came in and caught Emma pushing me. She took Emma out of the room to talk to her and I gathered up my stuffies.

Here I am with my laptop in my cozy upper bunk.  I have an ice pack on my sore arm.

On a happier note, here are links to 2 interesting school projects about the Holocaust that you can contribute to, we already did this.  Our mum's mum's side of the family is Jewish.
http://thegazette.com/2013/02/01/dear-danville/

http://www.foxboroughrcs.org/students-families/student-life/frcs-holocaust-stamp-project/



By the way, Emma and I almost never fight and it even more rarely comes to blows.
That's it for now.
Sophia :)

March Break: A trip to the Natural History Museum

Hi Everybody,
It's Amaya.  Today I went to the Natural History Museum to see the March Break Exhibits.

Wow look how big that shell is, it's big enough to be my bed.

Here are some really large frogs.

But this guy is even BIGGER.

Aren't these cute.  I don't think they are chinchillas but I don't remember what they are, sorry.

And now on to the snakes.  There are 2 snakes in this tank, the big coil underneath is the second snake.  The top snake was very active while we were watching.

And some lizards.  These are water dragons, I'm pretty sure.

It took a while to get this photo because lots of people were looking at it but here I am in front of the snakes.

I am looking down at a giant tortoise.

I forgot to mention I went with the human and her other uncle.  He thought this would make a great photo:)

The uncle and me in front of the little furry beasts.

Ahhh a shark is trying to eat me!!!!!

Help, I don't want to lose my hands, I need them to do my art (and other things too!!!).  It's OK, this shark is actually really cute and plushy:)  The uncle was having fun.

Here is a link to the museum's website if you want to have a look.  We saw the desert animals but we explored the rest of the museum as well.  My human has been coming here for her whole life.
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mnhnew/en/home/default.aspx
That's it for now.

Amaya :)

Hinamatsuri (doll festival or peach festival)

Hi Everybody,
It's Amaya.  Today, March 3rd is Girls' Day in Japan.  This post is about that holiday and celebrating it here in Canada where I am right now.

These are the hina dolls that belong to the human.  She has a set of them that she found at the flea market for a very low price, even though she isn't Japanese.  These dolls represent the emperor and the empress or a prince and princess.  Traditionally the male doll is placed on the right.  Here is a wiki article about them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinamatsuri

Here I am with the travel version of hina dolls that my parents sent me.

Here is a close up so that you can get a better look.

Here is the sushi that we of course had for supper tonight (no I didn't eat all of this but the human sure did!!!) If you were wondering, the green pod looking things are edamame (green boiled soybeans).  I didn't get a picture of it because I haven't eaten it yet but there is mochi for dessert.

Since I haven't shown you this yet, here is a picture of my ribbon board.  Except for the one of us as toddlers, all the pictures are of my sister.  I need to add some of me soon:)

And finally here are 2 cool youtube links about girls' day that I found following a link from the Just Bento website
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kIsND0BuEk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=93BRVRCbuy4

That's it for now.  I hope you enjoyed learning about Hinamatsuri or Girls' day.  By the way. yes there is a boys' day, it's  May 5th  :)

Amaya :)