Dev's 4-H Projects

This was D's first year in 4-H, but not his first year to enter in the fair. Last year he took the chair that he built (with help) and got the reserve champion in open class!  This year he was excited to get to do his very own projects.  He chose woodworking, archery, cooking, and geology.

Our friend Danny works in a woodworking shop, and had a few extra scraps of wood.  We had intended to use one piece to make a clock--but as we searched for clock parts, we also found a cool weather station kit.  He was putting penofin on the weather station, so that we can hang it out on the deck if we want.  It has a thermometer, a barometer, and a humidity gauge (whatever "meter" that is called!!) He got a blue ribbon for that work.

The replacement clock hands arrived just in time!! His dad cut the octagon shape for him, at D's command. But D helped hold the router, and did the sanding and staining himself.  I convinced him to stain the oak the same color as my kitchen cabinets, since we had extra stain. . but I'm not sure that I can convince him that his clock would look perfect hanging above the doorway to the laundry room in my kitchen.  He is sure that it will look better in his room upstairs!! The judge didn't even notice that the clock movement was in upside down (since they actually put the numbers on upside down, according to the hanger on the back)!! He got a blue on it--but Grant thought it may have even gotten a purple (I was helping with the cooking at that point, so I missed their wood projects being judged--and took D's word that it was a blue!)

He was pretty proud of his work though!!

The geology project wasn't his first rodeo in that department either!! He has attended with our family the state trip for the last few years!  He enjoyed picking up his own rocks, and especially enjoyed using the chisel to chop up his specimens!  He worked very well at glueing his specimens to the card and getting them arranged in his box.  And also helped to pin them all in!  His box took Reserve Champion out of 6 displays!! I was proud of him for that!!

All of the boys enjoy shooting sports, and D had gotten his own compound bow for Christmas a couple years ago, so archery as a project was a no-brainer.  He enjoyed shooting his bow at the bow shoots that we attended, and enjoys shooting the bow targets we have at home.  To enter in the fair in this project, he had to make a poster.  We decided to use the info that Tristan used in his first 4-H talk on archery--Nine steps to the 10 ring (the middle bullseye, for those of you that didn't know what a ten ring is!)  He bugged me for 2 days to work on that poster before we could get the time to start.  He was disgusted with his terrible handwriting ("my handwriting just SUCKS" were his exact words!).  That was my favorite part of the whole poster!!  We did the printing on cardstock, so if he made a mistake (or should I say WHEN he made a mistake) we could just start a different piece.  As he wrote out the second bullet, he started making rings inside the O before I could stop him.  Trying to keep quiet, I quickly saw that he was making his own version of a target.  I let him leave it there, and then we decided to add bullseyes to one letter in each bullet.  It looks very "2nd grade!"  We went out Saturday morning and took pictures of him demonstrating his bullets!  I think the poster is too cute, but then I AM biased!!  The judges comments included "Try to be neater when you grow up a little"  WHAT??? He's 7!!  He did give him a blue ribbon though, and D was thrilled!

D has always enjoyed helping in the kitchen, and since his mom is the cooking leader, he HAD to be in cooking!! (all the boys are like that now---cooking is never a project up for consideration!! They want to do it!)  Grant tried out the brownie recipe earmarked as an easy one for Devin several weeks ago (since it was the only flagged recipe that we had all the ingredients for).  D took one bite of that brownie and got this priceless expression on his face.  Excitedly, he proclaimed "These brownies are AWESOME!! They are SOOOO going to give ME 1st slot for them!!"  I nearly choked on my brownie.  They are awfully yummy! And easy.  He got a purple ribbon!!  He also decided to make chocolate chip cupcakes using a cake mix, mini chips, pudding mix, and packaged icing, and at the last minute (only because I was going to make it this weekend anyway) a snack mix using Golden Grahams, Cinnamon toast cruch, m and m's, peanuts, and dried cranberries.  He got blue ribbons on both of those!

D was really excited about his ribbons, and kept coming over to update me on how many blue ribbons he had!!  I imagine that he will think he is super cool when he gets that fair check in a few weeks!

Two down, one to go!!