Fairy Favors!

I made this Fairy Play Dough for Amelia’s Fairy birthday party. It turned out so well! It’s hard to tell by the picture, but the play dough is completely sparkly! I found the recipe from Homemade by Jill via Skip to my Lou. (Pop over for a great tutorial!) This is such a great recipe, the play dough stays nice for weeks! The batch I made three weeks ago is still soft and supple!

 

Fairy Play Dough

Adapted from Homemade by Jill

1 cup flour

1 cup water

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 teaspoon oil

1/4 CUP of salt

food coloring

3/4 cup of glitter

Combine flour, water, cream of tartar, oil and salt. in a medium pan over medium heat.

Stir continuously until the mixture forms a ball around the spoon.

Remove from heat and dump dough onto a clean surface.

When it’s cool enough to handle, shape into a ball and cut the ball into quarters.

Use the food coloring to color the dough. Tip: if you rub a bit of shortening into your hands before you start kneading the coloring into the dough, it will decrease the likeliness of you staining your hands! Cool, huh!

Once it’s colored roll the dough flat and sprinkle the glitter over it.

Fold the dough over itself, sealing the glitter inside.

Continue kneading until all the glitter is incorporated.

Store in airtight containers.

 

I rounded out the rest of the favor bag with glittery fun foam stickers, a ring pop, and a few items scored from the Dollar Spot at Tarjay: candy buttons and stickers, Tinkerbell socks, and a glittery pencil.

For our Fairy fun headquarters, click here!

Easter Treat with FIBER!

No, seriously! Fiber! And chocolate! Does it get any better than that? I submit that it does not. You could even have these for breakfast. Am I right? Shredded wheat and eggs. Sounds like breakfast to me. Never mind that the shredded wheat is drenched in chocolate and the eggs are made of the same! Let me do my own justifying, mmmmmkay?

I made these chocolate nests with the kids last year after seeing them on Angry Chicken. They were fun and easy and the kids had a glorious time making a mess in the kitchen. We made them again this year. Man! What a difference a year makes! The kids were PROS at making these, and they turned out looking like actual nests! lol!

Anyway, these are SO quick you could definitely pop some out before Easter. If I was having Easter dinner at my house I’d like to use them for place markers! Wouldn’t that be cute? Just type or write the person’s name, cut it out and tape it to a toothpick or skewer before you get started and then just jam that in there with the eggs and let the chocolate harden! So fun!

Here’s all you need. Shredded wheat, 6 of the big squares, a bag of good milk chocolate, and most importantly, Cadbury mini-eggs. (I think those little babies have finally replaced the Cadbury Creme Egg as my favorite Easter candy. So yummy! And with a crunchy candy shell! Love them!)

Oh, and two little kids to do all the work for you. . . .

Here they are, busy at work shredding the Shredded Wheat. Huh. In the meantime, microwave the chocolate in 30 second bursts, stirring between zaps. Should take you about 2-2 1/2 minutes.

Pour the chocolate into the shredded wheat and stir until all the chocolate looks absorbed. This is best accomplished in hand-me-down Christmas jammies and with a ragamuffin hair-do.

P.S. This picture was taken at about 2pm and after the child had gone through about 37 wardrobe changes. Aaaaah, we’re at that stage. Yay for Laundry Fairies, right? *sigh*

This is a optional step. I do recommend parchment or wax paper, it makes getting the nests off the pan a billion times easier. But most of my nests were destined for little paper boxes (more on that in a minute). So I traced the bottom of the box onto the BACKSIDE of the parchment paper so that we would have a guide when we formed the nests.

Scoop the chocolate mixture onto the paper, form into a circle and press down in the center with a spoon to make a little crater for the eggs. Size doesn’t really matter here, you could go really tiny or make one giant one if you wanted!

Place eggs in the crater.

        

Let the nests harden, about 1 1/2 hours. Done! How easy was that???

I went a step further, because I can. Hehehe :) Have you been to The Toymaker? Gorgeous things on there, gorgeous! I printed out some of the paper dolls and my kids loved them to death! I just love the artwork, with it’s sort of vintagey feel. And Marilyn comes out with new stuff all the time! This little box is new for Easter. . . .

 http://www.thetoymaker.com/Holidays/Easter/Butterflybasket.pdf

I printed it out on cardstock, cut it out and taped it together, filled it with Easter grass, and popped a nest in. Cute! And easy!

Happy Easter!

Happy Windsday, Rabbit!

I was trolling Facebook the other day when I read a friend’s status update that literally made me drool. She posted: Janice LOVES Starbuck’s lemon pound cake. (For the record, so does Jennie.)  Since there isn’t a Starbucks for at least an hour in any direction, I ran for my kitchen. Within a few minutes I had Julia’s Lemon Loaf Cake in the oven. I decided to skip making an icing for it in favor of a strawberry sauce. I had a couple of 2 liters of ginger ale left over from Jilly-Bean’s birthday party, so I made some of my favorite party punch too. I set the table, lit a few candles and turned on some music. (Okay, it was kid music. But it was still nice!)
And that is the story of how Jay came home to a little impromptu party. Happy Wednesday, Jay!
(Just to avoid confusion: This is the same punch I made, but these pictures were taken at my mom’s house.)

You’ll need a can of frozen juice concentrate, (Any kind will do, but we prefer the berry mixes.) ginger ale, and frozen berries. (Any kind.) Reeeeeeal specific recipe, right?


Pour the juice concentrate into a pitcher. Microwave the berries for a minute, just to get them to defrost a bit, so they’re mush-able. Pour about a cup or so of berries into the juice concentrate and muddle them together with a wooden spoon. (If you go with frozen strawberries, you’ll need to muddle them a bit longer, you don’t want any giant chunks in there.)

Muddle, baby, muddle! It’s so easy, a child could do it!
 
Although she may need a cookie to get her through it. Cookies build stamina, didn’t you know?

Pour in the ginger ale, in place of the water, as per the directions on the can. Usually 3 cans worth. Yum, yum, YUM! Serve this at your next party, everyone will want the recipe and then they won’t believe you when you tell them how easy it is!

A is for Acorn

I was excited to find these acorns on the Family Fun site the other day, since we have a profusion of ‘acorn hats’ in the yard. The kids were thrilled when they first found some and loved going out and finding more for this project!

So, first you need to find yourself some small children to go out and hunt for ‘acorn hats’.

Good job, kids!

Then you need to gather a tray covered with a piece of wax paper (not pictured), another piece of wax paper (to catch the mess), scissors, a paper bowl or cup to hold glue, some Elmer’s glue, and tissue paper in your choice of colors. (Preferably fall hues!)

Cut the paper into one 5 inch square and one 2 inch square (per acorn). Ball up the 5” paper. By the way, I wasn’t super precise when cutting up the papers. You just want a biggish piece to crumple and a smaller piece to smooth over the outside. I actually preferred the acorns made out of slightly larger pieces of paper. I was able to compress them into a much smoother looking acorn. So try a 5” square first and then go for a bigger one, like maybe 8” square. Let me know which one you like better!

Paint the 2” paper with some glue.

Okay, here is where you get to benefit from my mistakes. I found it was MUCH easier to skip the paintbrush all together and just glue up your fingers and slather it on that way. The tissue sort of tries to come apart when you’re trying to squish it into the cap (when you are using the brush), but if you use generously glued up fingers you can mold it without tearing the tissue. Plus you can really mash it into the cap, you can’t really do it that well with the paintbrush without leaving a big, unattractive dent. The molded ones look so much better!

So, just push up your sleeves and prepare to get messy! Your kids will love you for it. Plus, when you’re all done, you can gross them out by peeling off your skin. (dried glue! Remember doing that when you were little?!)

Place the ball in the center of the gluey paper.

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Roll up the paper around the ball.

Paint some glue into the ‘acorn hat’.

Insert the ball, kinda push it in with the paintbrush your fingers.

Then paint a good ‘topcoat’ of glue all over the tissue and set it on the tray to dry. (Don’t worry if you get any on the cap. Makes no difference later.)

Lather, rinse, repeat until you have your desired amount of acorns! Family Fun claims this craft takes an hour. Which I guess it does (if that), but the acorns take alllllll day to dry.  I know this because I had two little kids asking me every 5 minutes if they were done. I suggest you do this craft right before bedtime to avoid that same scenario.

Next up. . . . edible acorns!!!

 

While I was cruising the Family Fun website I also found these. How cute are they???

Start with a box of doughnut holes (plain, glazed, or cinnamon and sugar), some straight pretzels, peanut butter (I used creamy, but I don’t see why chunky wouldn’t work here.) and some chopped peanuts.

Start with a doughnut.

Spread some peanut butter on the top.

Roll it in the peanuts.

Break a pretzel.

Push the pretzel into the top of the acorn.

It’s so easy a four year old could do it!

A three year old too!

Gotta hold your mouth juuuuuuuuust right though.

Pretty cute, huh? (Looks like he only has three fingers, hehehe!)

                      

Voila! Acorns! Enjoy!

Yummy Mummy in the Tummy

It’s become a running joke between Jay and I about all the cemeteries here in New England. But I’m obsessed! I love spotting some of the tiny little family cemeteries just placed randomly around. And the bigger ones all seem to have some gorgeous ironwork. Some of the headstones are just amazing. So I thought I’d post one, just in time for Halloween.

I haven’t been posting much since the cross country journey and moving in with my in-laws. Bad blogger. I apologize. And I do realize it’s the day before Halloween, but you could pick up the stuff for these today and make these with your kids tomorrow!  All you need is a pack of hot dogs and a tube of crescent rolls.

Well, that and a baking sheet, pizza cutter and some mustard.

So, unroll the dough and spread it out. (Do those cans scare the crap out of you when they pop? Gets me EVERY time!)

Press all the seams together.

Use the pizza cutter to cut about 1/4” strips.

All cut up.

Start wrapping around a hot dog. Just press the end onto a bit of the wrapped strip to close it.

Keep wrapping. You don’t want it to look real even.

Use another strip to go the other direction.

Don’t forget to make a head wrapping.

Let your kids at ‘em!

Look at her go! Do you like the post-nap hair? I’m thinking ‘bed-head’ isn’t her look.

Hee hee hee, aren’t they cute? A few years ago I would have straightened up all the wrappings when the kids weren’t looking. But now I love seeing their handiwork and they are so proud when they get to eat their mummies!

Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown and delicious. About 15-20 minutes.

In the meantime, feed the kids some chocolate cake to keep them happy while they’re waiting. Yep. I’m that mom!

Use the mustard to dot some eyes on.

I happened to have some black confetti sprinkles from a Halloween mix, so I put those on top of the mustard. You know how much I love my food to look back at me!

Reese’s mummies!

I want my Mummy! 

 

Okay, I have something I want to share, but certain people can’t see it. So if you live in the same house I do, STOP READING.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I mean it. Don’t go any further. You’ll just ruin it for yourself anyway!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, I think they’re gone now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, the other day I was passing the dollar spot at Target and saw a pack of rubber mice for $1. Somehow they just popped right into my cart. I wanted to put one in the tub of coffee beans my in laws use, but thought I’d run the prank past Jay first, just to make sure I didn’t get myself into trouble. We use whole beans that aren’t flavored, so we have our own stash of coffee beans. I put the mouse in our bag and asked Jay to brew us a pot of coffee. He found the mouse right away and wasn’t fooled at all. He was just confused and wanted to know if Peet’s was putting prizes in their coffee beans like Cracker Jacks. Nice.

He did think it was funny and thought we should put it in the in-laws coffee tub. So we did. And later when my father in law went to make some coffee pretty much the same thing happened. FAIL! Dang it! Stu, my father in law, thought it would be funny to put it in Marie’s, my mother in law, lunchbox. She wasn’t taken in either. Bummer.

This morning I came downstairs to find this. . . . .

It was in a darkened corner of the kitchen and I hadn’t had any coffee yet. So, yeah, it got me. My own mouse made me scream like a little girl. (By the way, I have an extreme, uncontrollable reaction to a live mouse. It’s embarrassing. Thought you’d like to know.)

So, it’s payback now. (even though I started it.)

      

This is some ham salad that my mother in law is fond of.

 

Removed a scoop and inserted mouse. (that I cleaned thoroughly first.)

Replaced the ham salad.

               

And put it in a prominent location in the fridge, so someone will see it and eat it soon. I like my pranks to be discovered fairly quickly, otherwise I tend to make stupid, obvious suggestions and the prank falls flat.

Stay tuned for the reaction, lol!