happy new year!

Happy new year! Do you have any new year's eve traditions? We don't really. . . but we're usually hanging out, playing newly received games and writing thank you notes. There's always some kind of tasty treat involved in the evening—an antipasto tray and baguette or a celebratory steak.

This morning we had a Lego Heroica Fortaan tournament. Three rounds and I won them all! Beginner's luck.

My Hero Pack at the beginning was pretty slim. It filled up quickly with monsters, a staff, potions, extra health, and gold. Mwahaha.

Me, the barbarian, victoriously standing atop the Goblin King.

This is in focus—it's just a cheap plastic ball instead of a fragile, truly mirrored one. Note Sweetpea waving in the back.

In the afternoon, Sweetpea and I played Bananagrams. It was a long, drawn out game because she's nine and has trouble thinking of words sometimes. I'm hoping she'll get faster with more practice, since she's my best bet for a regular opponent around here!

May your new year be grapey and wonderful!

homemade butterfingers

Recipes for turning candy corn into homemade Butterfingers have been around for years. After staring at a jar of candy corn for two weeks, I finally tried transforming them from something I would never eat (I have never liked candy corn), into something that I would probably eat.

Imagine my surprise after I made them and had the urge to eat them all in one sitting.

There are a million recipes out there; I used this one from Tasty Kitchen, because it suckered me in with “3 Ingredients” in the title. I'm lazy, but I can handle three ingredients.

Ingredient number one: candy corn. Now, I told you I don't like this stuff. Honestly, I avoid it like Frankenstein's monster avoids fire. Candy corn, bad! Corn syrup, bad! Yellow #5, bad! Watching it melt was a little nauseating. But I sucked it up and kept on because I really wanted to see if the end result tasted like Butterfingers.

Once the candy corn was melted, I mixed in peanut butter. I spread that disgusting mixture that looked like puke into a parchment lined pan and let it cool and harden in the fridge. After an hour, I pulled it out, cut it into mini bars, and covered each one with chocolate.

Ok, you got me. I “covered” two with chocolate, for pictures. I'm lazy and I didn't want to waste two cups of chocolate chips on something that might not taste good, so I skimped and only half covered the rest.

Silly, silly me. They're delicious! They taste very close to Butterfingers and even have that crispy crunch if you eat them right out of the freezer. I thought keeping them in the freezer would help limit the amount I ate, but no such luck. I do have my husband to keep me accountable, though. He comes home from work and asks how many I ate, so he can be sure to eat the same amount. Gotta be fairsies, you know. We did not, however, tell the children about these new treats. They have buckets full of trick or treat candy and certainly don't need any more.

If you've still got candy corn sitting on your counter, you should definitely try them. They were easy and pretty quick to make. The chocolate dipping took a while, but I've seen some floating around online that were just covered on the top and bottom like layered bars. I would totally do that next time.

If I make them again, that is. I still look at that impossibly orange filling when I'm eating one and remind myself that I'm eating little bits of candy corn. I'm pretty amazed that those yucky little things can be turned into something I actually like.

owl cupcakes

My baby brother and his wife are having a baby! I guess I should stop calling him my baby brother. My SIL's baby shower had an owl/floral/woodland theme, and I was asked to make cupcakes. These are what I came up with. I love how they turned out!

The shower was a gluten-free affair, and I used Betty Crocker gluten-free mixes for the cupcakes. GF cooking from scratch is an obstacle I have not yet conquered. To make things a little more interesting, I made three different frostings. We had

• chocolate cake with cinnamon frosting,
• yellow cake with lemon frosting, and
• chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting

I made marshmallow fondant owls for half the cupcakes, accenting them differently for the different cupcake flavors. One type had a pearl (sprinkle) flower, one type had (edible) glittery wings, and the last had glittery bellies. The pupils are mini chocolate chips.

The perfectionist in me sees all the flaws, but the cupcakes really were a big hit at the shower. The mama-to-be liked them, so that's a success in my book!

star wars party

Little Dude had a Star Wars party last week. Thanks to people sharing ideas all over the Internet, I planned the party in about an hour. 

I'm not ashamed of using other people's ideas. Other people are smart and have more mental energy than I do! I did make a point to take only the basic ideas and really make them our own. That helps me feel less like I'm stealing. :)

Little Dude helping me prep the pool noodles for lightsabers

Little Dude loved our fun food labels, even though they were mostly ignored by the six year old guests. :)

The Jar Jar Drinks were my favorite. I actually came up with that one!

We played Pin (tape) The Lightsaber On Yoda and decorated pool noodle lightsabers with duct and electrical tape. Most of the time, the kids just played. I learned years ago not to plan too many activities for young kids. They just want to play with each other and toys they don't have at their houses.

The party was a great success. Little Dude had a blast. I had fun orchestrating something other than a vehicle-themed party, like his third, fourth, and fifth birthdays. He's already talking about a Lego party next year. I'm so excited!

orange chai

We're not big tea drinkers. We love the idea of tea, but rarely get around to actually drinking it. As a result, we have a few boxes of old tea bags in the pantry collecting dust. (The boxes, not the bags.) I have since discovered that I prefer loose tea, and I thought about chucking the old boxes of tea bags, but I have a hard time wasting food of any sort. 

So when the weather was warm here (we're in a cold and rainy spell, but the heat is coming back tomorrow), I started brewing up big batches using the tea bags and sticking it in the refrigerator for summer afternoon iced tea. I'm on our fifth batch now, and I'm having more fun that I imagined. (And probably more fun than one should have simply brewing old tea bags.) I'm even combining teas that don't belong together, like green tea and Lady Grey. Scandalous!

Today I had some leftover orange zest (because I made this gingery rhubarb crisp) and a quick internet search led me to believe it would be good with chai tea. I have a whole box of chai! Of course, I made a batch right then. Can you tell I'm relishing all this free time that comes with summer break?

I just had my first glass. The orange scent with the chai spices is quite lovely. I did strain out the orange bits, and I held myself back from squeezing that whole orange into the brew because Chef Google suggested it would curdle milk. I don't always add milk to my tea, but on the off chance that I do, I certainly don't want it to curdle. Nothing that comes out of my kitchen could be worse than curdled milk.

I figure I'll run through my old dusty tea bags in the next two weeks. Anything crazy I should try before I'm finished?

classroom treats

My little dude had a birthday celebration at school this week. It's not actually his birthday, but he's a summer baby and no one in his class has a February birthday, so we opted to celebrate now instead of in June with the rest of the summer babies.

He did not want the traditional cupcakes, though. His first request was caramel apples. I knew that would never fly in a kindergarten class, so we talked over a few options and finally came up with this—individual cups of caramel dip and apple slices on sticks. It worked really well! Everyone was finished quickly, almost everyone loved it, and aside from a few sticky fingers, cleanup was a breeze. His teacher was pleasantly surprised!

I dipped the apple slices in pineapple juice to keep them from browning. It worked well.

And since I didn't get any good closeups at school, Sweetpea generously volunteered to pose for me after school with an extra caramel cup. It helped that she got to eat her prop. :)

class valentines

Sweetpea decided to start reading the Harry Potter series last December. She's eight, and was a bit concerned that they would be too scary for her (as was I, because she's a delicate little flower), so I've been reading each one first before handing them over to her. It's been great to be able to talk with her about them as she reads.

On a hunch, I looked on Amazon to see if the Jelly Belly version of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans were still around. (They're probably the same batch from ten years ago, right? Ew.) I thought they'd be fun for Sweetpea's class valentines, and perfect this year because she's reading the series. We ordered them, printed up some quick wrap-around labels, taped them on, and were done. I think it took us thirty minutes. Quickest valentines ever!

They did cost a little more than we usually spend—about $1.50 per valentine—but it was worth it for the novelty. And Little Mister's valentines cost nothing more than some paper and a box of Goldfish, so it evened out.

I got the idea for Little Mister's fishbowl valentines from the Backless Shirt blog. I had the cellophane bags leftover from a baby shower (or actually from the leftover cocoa from the baby shower favors), and I bought a big box of Goldfish crackers. For the fishbowl, I set out to make my own. 

I'm teaching myself to use Adobe Illustrator, one little project at a time. This was a great lesson for me. It was the first time I added and subtracted shapes to create something new.

We printed the fishbowls on card stock, and Little Mister wrote the names of his kindergarten classmates on them, four at a time over several days. (He has very little patience for writing.) Then we gently rolled them to fit them in the bags, added a big spoonful of Goldfish to each, and closed with a twist tie. It was pretty fun, and he got to help every step of the way.

 Did you make your own class valentines this year? Leave me a link—I'd love to see them!

235/366 party's over

With all the planning and preparation that goes into birthday parties for my kids (or a large dinner party, for that matter), I'm so exhausted afterward it can take me weeks to clean everything up. It's been three days, and we still have balloons and banners up, packaging to recycle, and random party debris to clear. I'm just extending the celebration, right?

190/366 marinated tomatoes

I made Missy's Marinated Tomatoes from the Pioneer Woman's blog. We ate them with homemade focaccia bread for lunch. (My focaccia is just herby pizza crust with no toppings, or sometimes topped with cheese. Or sometimes garlic.)

I changed it up a little bit. Missy's recipe calls for a whole cup of canola oil. I'm not a fan of the taste of plain canola oil, and I couldn't bear to use a whole cup. So I substituted with 1/3 cup of good, flavorful olive oil. 

I also used good, thick, syrupy balsamic vinegar. (I love the syrupy balsamic. So different than the grocery store stuff. We get our balsamic and olive oil locally from OVINO in Hood River, OR.)

I omitted the parsley, because we didn't have any.

I added chopped cucumber, because we had some that needed to be used.

It was delicious! Even with store-bought tomatoes. It was a little on the sweet side for me, so next time I'd use less sugar. The sweetness in mine could have been amplified by the extra-sweet balsamic.

There was just a little bit leftover—I'd say the complete recipe made about five cups. I strained the balsamic olive oil infused with tomato, green onion and herbs into a jar to be used as salad dressing. I'm dreaming of that salad now. . .

rio party

 Remember these tissue paper flowers?

Strung up with crepe paper vines?

They were for a Rio themed party!

Sweetpea's choice.

She decided months ago that she wanted to decorate masks at her birthday party. So we came up with a tropical, Carnival-like Rio theme (the country, not necessarily the movie, though there were brightly colored birds involved) to fit her chosen activity. It was a lot of fun. And the dollar store just so happened to have an aisle full of “luau” decorations that fit our theme pretty well.

She designed her invitations on the computer again, just like last year.

She requested fruit pizza—sugar cookie crust, whipped cream “frosting” and fruit on top.

The mask decorating went very well. Turns out that 8 year old girls are very good at sharing art supplies, taking turns, and encouraging each other. This was our calmest birthday party yet! We also assembled our own tacos, played Limbo, danced, and drew with sidewalk chalk outside. I could get used to this Having Older Kids thing.

124/366 decorate

Phase 2: decorate.

Crepe paper jungle completed!

123/366 tissue paper flora

Sweetpea chose a Rio theme for her birthday party this year. We spent today making a table full of tissue paper flowers and leaves in bright, saturated colors. I use the word “we” loosely—she helped for approximately four flowers before leaving to play cars with the little guy. We were working on these stacked tissue hibiscus-type flowers, and I showed her how to separate the layers to make them fluffy.

“You're hired!” she said.

Seriously? Where does an almost 8 year old get a line like that?