Wednesday, June 22, 2011

What I Love This Week - Snack Edition



These little containers are meant to be used for freezing jams, but are the perfect size for snacks on the go. They are easy to open and stay securely closed. They also stack and snap together, which is convenient for storing but also when mom is trying to carry snacks and water bottles for three out the door. Like!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Random Baking

Pics of baking projects over the last month or so ...



First Communion cookies - I loved this color combo.



Cookies for school Ice Cream Social - still having bleeding issues, hoping to solve them with ...



... new icing colors! Had to give the new Americolor gels a spin. I challenged them with my two toughest color combos: blue/gold and green/gold. Good news: no bleeding! Still having spotting problems, though. Will keep trying. I also Disco Dusted a few cookies to try it out ... this will take some time to perfect! My family was very happy to eat the test batch.



LOVE these silver sprinkles. We don't have a good baking supply store here, but do have a wonderful farm store that has jimmies and sanding sugar in every color of the rainbow for super cheap.



Vanilla cupcakes with dark chocolate frosting and ...



... chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter icing. These were for our friend's bridal shower last week. I accidentally filled the first tray of liners too full and they all baked over the edge. Again, family was very happy to eat the mistakes.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Baking Monday - Caramel Pretzel Bars



I made this recipe for pool practice on Friday night - pretzel crust with a caramel Kisses and topping. I think they would be just as good with regular kisses or chocolate chips in the middle, but the caramel kisses made them extra gooey. They are reallllly good. A bit crumbly, but then everyone who had one also found themselves picking the crumbs off the plate, too.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

In the Kitchen Today



Decorating supplies.



Go Vestal!



The case for emergency cookie dough: the bit that was stashed away would have made too many cookies last time, but was just enough for five jumbo-sized treats for today's playdate. Will make Theo and his friends very happy.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Family Movie Night

We don't have a lot of rituals and traditions over here, but the few that we do have are precious. Giant cookie on the first day of school. Wrapped books left on everyone's bed on Little Christmas morning. Grilling hot dogs and hamburgers for Dora's January birthday.

One that we really enjoy - Family Movie Night. Jeff and I have always had a bad case of the Sunday blues, and all sitting down to watch a movie is the perfect way to chill out at the end of the weekend and before the start of another busy week. We keep a little dish with everyone's name on little slips of paper and take turns selecting who will make the movie choice. Dora rarely chooses movies - she finds most of them to be too scary - and will usually opt for Looney Tunes, The Flintstones, or Schoolhouse Rock. Clark is a big Pixar fan and Theo's favorites are Megamind and Monsters vs. Aliens. Jeff and I usually pick something that we haven't already seen a zillion times.

So, I'm going to start adding reviews of our Sunday night movie pics - here are some recent titles that have been big hits!



Dora had a party this week for the last day of her Independent Study program (the last day ever, because the program has been cut, but that's a rant for another day) and they watched this movie. She LOVED it. She was entranced. She could not stop talking about it. Happily, it was one of the DVDs included in Clark's big prize basket that he won last year, so we owned it but hadn't watched it yet. I can't say that I really enjoyed it, though it seems like the kind of magical, sappy story that is usually right up my alley (maybe I couldn't get past Dustin Hoffman's weird lisp?) but love that Dora loved it. Good news: NO scary parts at all. There's one scene where the store has a "temper tantrum", but Dora found that more funny than scary.



We watched this a couple months ago and all loved it - Clark was shouting "ham!" at random moments for days afterward. Dora was a little tense during the flood scenes, but overall a sweet movie.



This was more enjoyable than I thought it would be. I love, love, love, love this book and expected to be fairly disappointed by the movie. Happily, the alterations to the original story made sense and I appreciated how many scenes from the book had been recreated. Dora (and I) didn't like the end when they had to battle the machine - that weird tentacle thing that grew out of it was creepy - but Clark and Theo loved it. 



Yay, yay, YAY, I love this movie. We checked it out of the library last week. I realized as we were watching it that I had only ever seen the edited for tv version and there are two songs in the original cut that I had never seen before. We had to do a bit of fast forwarding - it's 2.5 hours long! But was so happy that the kids really enjoyed it. They told me the next morning how much they liked it and Clark's teacher said that he was even talking about it at school ... BIG thumbs-up from everyone! I love Angela Lansbury. I used to wish that she could be my third grandma.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Scene from the Dinner Table

Theo: Dad has Diet Coke with dinner, why can't we have soda, too?
Dad: I'm 39. When you're 39 and a dad, you can have soda with dinner.
Theo: And buy it for my kids?
Dad: If you want. And if your wife says it's okay.
Mom: Or life partner!
Theo: What's a life partner?
Mom: Someone you might live with but not be married to.
Theo: Could I do it with Omar?
Mom: Sure.
Theo: YAY!