Banana Instant Oatmeal

My big guy has decided that he LOOOVEs  "Oitmeal" Kinda like Ointment but with 'meal' at the end....

BUT he only loves the Banana Cream version which comes 2 in a box of 12 others. I WILL not buy hundreds of boxes of variety and have him eat 2.

SO I searched for a recipe...none. Lots of brown sugar, lots of cinnamon but no banana....

My take on the Banana Oatmeal...

Recipe:
5 cups Quaker Minute Oats
1/3 cup of Dry Milk
2/3 cups of Brown Sugar
2 T of Banana Instant pudding mix (DRY)
1 cup of freeze dried bananas

First pulse 4 cups of the Oats to a finer consistency.
Add 4 pulsed cups of Oats to a container and add in the final cup of Oats as is.
Add the Milk, Brown Sugar and pudding mix.
Pulse the Bananas to smaller pieces. Size depends on the kid.

Add all together and mix.

When it is time to cook add 1/2 cup of mix to a bowl and add water. My kids like it chunky so I added about a 1/3 cup of water.

Stir.

Eat and enjoy banana oatmeal without having to waste 10 packets!

Yay!

Farm Birthday Party

For my littlest Troublemakers birthday we had a Farm theme party. This guy loves animals. He sleeps with 2 plastic ones (a giraffe and zebra) so it seemed fitting. His favorite song was Old MacDonald. So Old McJoseph had a farm!

Dog and Pig Nose chocolate

Chicken Cake Pops

Pudding and Oreo dirt with a gummy worm

Rabbit food

Haystacks

We had lots of goodies!

Birthday Shirt

My Munchkin (or littlest Troublemaker) turned 2 this year and we did a Farm themed party. I try to have a special T shirt for them ON their birthday so to go with the theme I used my Silhouette and Heat Transfer Vinyl to make a sheep :)

 It quite a few chuckles at school. He just loved picking at the eyeballs!

Guest Bathroom

I have been slowly personalizing my house (we moved in almost 2 years ago).  The whole house was the same exact beige flat paint.  The color was nice and neutral but it was ALL flat. Bathrooms are flat paint. Kitchen is flat paint. Pantry is flat paint. Hallways are flat paint. Bedrooms...yup you guessed it...flat paint.  So my first task was the tackle the places with the most traffic and the most dirt.  The boys bathroom was first. Next was the guest bathroom. It was the boring beige and in a room with no windows or natural light it was just dingy! I saw an idea for stripes and thought it looked divine! My idea was to make it into a beachy paradise. Brighten it up a bit. 

My beige bathroom

So as with all projects I started with paint.   I painted the entire bathroom a bright white. That alone made SUCH a difference.  Next up stipes. 

See, much better....

I fell in love with a bright aqua. With the help of my very patient geek we marked lines and taped using a laser level. Three stripes later and I LOVED it. 

I know I know, you are thinking, "Hey, I thought she said this room had no windows?!?"  And you'd be correct! BUT, I said to myself, "Self, that is no excuse!" A quick Amazon search and I found this great window to the beach.  A lil glue and some patience (again with my Geek's help) we had our very own beach view. My plan is to put up a valance and curtains to frame the window and give it a bit more Oomph. 

Just a lil taste of the room....

Candy Molds How I love thee

So as I mentioned in the earlier post I bought a blank candy mold for my sister's party.

She is a Red Hot Chilli Pepper fan and her recent 30th party was RHCP themed. I knew I could make something...and it turns out we made a few things...I will post them here....

First I printed out a basic RHCP symbol on computer paper.

I put a piece of wax paper on top and then using red melts in a squeeze bottle I drew the symbols.  I just made a billion of them.

I let them dry and then they just peeled off the wax paper.

Next step, I got my blank candy mold. I tried this a few ways and found that filling the candy mold with the white chocolate and then carefully placing the shape on the Back worked the best. The red chocolate would melt a bit and blend in with the white and it left a perfect shape.  Let that dry and then we had perfect RHCP candy.

Wreaths

My bestest friend is a 4th grade teacher and I made it my mission this year to make her the COOLEST teacher in the school. I have created wreaths for her door for a handful of the big holidays.....

The Back to School Wreath (contents: crayons, sharpener, rulers, erasers, fake flowers)

The Halloween Wreath (contents: lots and lots of google eyes, and a sign)
(Ack, tracking missing picture.....)

The Thanksgiving Wreath (contents: lots and lots of tulle, and a sign)

The Valentine Wreath (contents: old red T Shirt, Felt hearts, heart ribbon)

The Spring Wreath (contents: old jeans, felt flowers, felt banner, twine, ladybug ribbon)

Next year I plan to create:
* a Winter one (ran out of time this year but I had the stuff to make a white yarn pom pom snowman on a cute snowflake fabric)
* a USA one
* St Patty's Day one

Ewoks

So, I had my very first order for Cake Pops. A friend asked if I could make Ewoks for her 5 yo son's birthday party. I was up to the challenge...I looked for images and found one that looked doable. But it has no instructions. I used it as a starting point and went from there...

I used a basic Chocolate cake mix and a Funfetti cake mix and used my handy dandy Cake Pop maker. I LOVE this thing. 

Once they were made - I froze them. After a day in the freezer I stuck them with a lollipop stick and put them back in the freezer for an hour or so. 

Next comes the fun part!

I got some Candy Corns and cut the tips off. Using a lil melted chcolate and attached them to the top of the head and let those dry. 

Next dip the whole thing in chocolate...

These could be great base shapes for anything with ears (cats, bears..the list is endless)

By this time it was approaching 10pm so the pictures get a lil sparse...

I dipped the back of the head in a darker chocolate and then using a toothpick drew it around the head in the shape of a hoodie. Then with the dark brown I put a dot for eyes and a slash for a nose.

The final touch was fur. To do that I put lil lines of chocolate (two different colors) around the hoodie line and when the were a lil dry I used a toothpick to make them messy.  With a dry toothpick I just went through the line of chocolate . make sense?

And a closeup....

The final box was a painted Amazon box with a styrofoam block painted and covered with grass.  The background picture is an actual print of the Ewok forest, tree huts and all.

I hear the lil guy loved it!