Sunday, March 27, 2011

Farm Days!

Every year NC State hosts "farm animal days" where kids can visit the farm, check out and pet the animals, ride tractors, learn to rope cattle and get a tasty treat of ice cream made from the dairy cows that reside on the farm. This year, Stella and I had some one on one time while we explored the farm together.

On our way there...she was excited!

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I love how this baby chick is pecking at the baby's head next to Stella - whoops!

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Monday, March 21, 2011

St. Patrick's Day

We love St. Patrick's Day at our house. It's the one time of year that I pretend that food coloring isn't horrible for you and it's the perfect excuse to use glitter for almost everything.

This year, Grandma O. helped me make a green table cloth for the table. I think it turned out fabulously! Thanks, Mom!

St. Patrick's Day Table

Who knew there was such thing as rainbow Twizzlers? The other monstrosity is Jello. I had this idea to make rainbow Jello thinking it would be fun and pretty. I didn't give it much thought as to how huge it would be if I made it in a trifle bowl! The girls LOVED it! So did the neighbors ;)

Edible Rainbows
Rainbow Jello

I completely pretend to forget how bad food coloring is on St. Patrick's Day. I have made natural rainbow treats in the past, but I couldn't pass up making rainbow pancakes at least once! Besides, I knew it'd be much easier to convince the kids to eat rainbow pancakes vs the corned beef and fontina paninis I wanted.

Rainbow Pancakes
Rainbow Pancakes

Since I had to have the rainbow Twizzlers, I figured I better do something fun with them. Beth Proudfoot of "It is what it is" blog had a wonderful idea along with a free printable!

St. Patrick's Day Treats

The Jello, again, just so you could see how gigantic it really was!

Rainbow Jello

The table, equipped with beautiful green tablecloth!

St. Patrick's Day Table

Green food is critical on St. Patrick's Day, of course. Aside from the rainbow pancakes, we had peas, green apples, green grapes, and leek soup.

Green Food

I volunteered to make treats for Stella's class and also to run the party for Eva's class. I sent Stella to school with green shamrock rice crispy treats. I brought organic chocolate gluten-free cupcakes with green butter cream frosting and gold sprinkles.

Rice Crispy Shamrocks

The girls and I sat outside working on our leprechaun trap before Eva had to leave for swim practice. When Eva left for practice, Stella and I went inside to find leprechaun shenanigans. They turned over our furniture and made a mess in the house. As you can see from the photo, Stella wasn't quite sure what to make of it all!

Leprechaun Shenanigans

The leprechaun trap...this is always our favorite part. We gathered pretty much everything that we could find that was green, gold and glittery. It was a fairly simple design this year. We took a tissue box, covered it in tacky gold and green paper (cut to fit the sides of the box) and placed it on a glittery paper. We glued green feathers to the top of the box, careful not to cover the hole with feathers. We then put up the sign for "gold" to attract the leprechaun. Everyone knows how greedy those little buggers are. Then we twisted pipe cleaners to create a ladder. The last step was to cover the hole in the top of the box with loose feathers. We are pretty sure that the leprechaun climbed up the ladder and stuck his foot on the top edge of the box to test for stability. Once he determined it was stable, he climbed on top and well, we caught him. He turned into a pot of gold which made for some happy leprechaun hunters.

Leprechaun Trap
Leprechaun Trap - Arial View
Leprechaun Trap
Leprechaun Trap

All the leprechaun hunting wore this little lady out. She passed out for a nice late afternoon nap!

Tired

Grilled Corned Beef and Fontina Sandwiches
Bon Apetit Magazine
Recipe by Bruce Aidells
Adapted by me!

Makes 4 sandwiches
Ingredients
8 slices Jewish-style rye bread, divided
Dijon mustard
1 pound thinly sliced corned beef (cheated and picked it up from Whole Foods deli)
8 ounces Fontina cheese (I shredded it)
1/2 sweet onion (such as Maui or Vidalia), thinly sliced

Preparation
Place 4 bread slices on work surface. Spread mustard on 1 side of each. Divide corned beef among bread slices. Top with cheese and onion. Cover with remaining 4 bread slices, pressing slightly to adhere.

Spray both sides with olive oil, place on George Foreman Grill for 3-4 minutes. Transfer sandwiches to plates, cut in half, and serve.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Fat Tuesday!

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Stella insisted on buying masks this year for Fat Tuesday. I was a little surprised because she doesn't really like masks and is actually quite frightened by them. She picked out the perfect, plain white little mask that fit her just right. We brought it home where she decorated it and wore it for the rest of the evening!

All of the kids liked their masks. We followed one of the Fat Tuesday traditions of having no rules while wearing the masks. What a mess.

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Crazy Fat Tuesday Baby
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King cake - what a debacle. We always get our king cake from Whole Foods. They do a great job there and the cakes are wonderful. For some odd reason, they decided to order 600 fewer cakes this year which meant that we missed out. After figuring out that we couldn't bake one in time (I'm determined to bake my own next year), I called every bakery in town looking for one. I finally gave up and decided to go for Paczkis instead. I found a highly rated Polish bakery in Raleigh, but the woman on the other end of the phone furiously told me how the baker messed up the Paczkis on the biggest day of the year! I was just about to give up completely when Fresh Market came to mind. I gave them a call and surprisingly, they had some in the oven almost ready to be packaged. Grandma O., Stella and I rushed over and waited patiently for our fresh, hot king cake!

Grandma O. found the baby in her piece of king cake! Guess she'll be buying the cake next year ;)

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Tried a new recipe this year and absolutely loved it. Most of the traditional Mardi Gras fare consists of peppers and sausage and quite honestly, the combination of those two things never thrills me. Eating Well had a recipe for healthy Shrimp Po Boys and they turned out wonderfully!

Shrimp Po Boys

Shrimp Po' Boys
Eating Well Magazine


INGREDIENTS

* 2 cups finely shredded red cabbage
* 2 tablespoons dill pickle relish
* 2 tablespoons reduced-fat mayonnaise
* 2 tablespoons nonfat plain yogurt
* 1 pound peeled and deveined raw shrimp, (51-60 per pound; see Shopping Tip)
* 4 teaspoons canola oil, divided
* 1 teaspoon chili powder
* 1/2 teaspoon paprika
* 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
* 4 whole-wheat hot dog buns, or small sub rolls, split
* 4 tomato slices, halved
* 1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion

PREPARATION

1. Preheat grill to medium-high.

2. Combine cabbage, relish, mayonnaise and yogurt in a medium bowl.

3. Toss shrimp with 2 teaspoons oil, chili powder, paprika and pepper in a medium bowl. Place the remaining 2 teaspoons oil in a small bowl. Dip a pastry brush in water, then in the oil and lightly brush the inside of each bun (or roll).

4. Place a grill basket (see Kitchen Tip) on the grill. Add the shrimp and spread in a single layer. Grill, stirring occasionally, until the shrimp are pink and just cooked through, about 3 minutes. Open the buns and grill, turning once, until toasted on both sides, about 1 minute total.

5. To assemble the sandwiches, divide tomato and onion among the buns. Spread about 1/3 cup cabbage mixture down the middle of each and top with about 1/2 cup grilled shrimp.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

President's Day

Why not...

Presidential Cupcakes
Presidential Cupcake

idea: family fun magazine

Valentine's Day!

Stella made heart shaped crayons to exchange with her friends at school. They were fun, fairly easy, and best of all, we got to clean out our drawer full of broken crayons! We found the idea and printable at the long thread.

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Eva picked out "heart breakers" as her Valentine's. They were actually a little more time consuming than Stella's, so I am glad that Eva can do a lot of the work on her own! We found the idea at Dana-made-it. So many talented and creative people out there!

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This part was fun. Eva had to bring a box to use to collect her Valentines that were brought by her friends. She is all about glitter and feathers so we turned a ziplock box into a love monster. Lift up the heart on top and it opens like the monster's mouth to store the goodies. She loved it! Love monster was my idea. There aren't a whole lot of Valentine collection box ideas online, so I am glad that this turned out as well as it did!

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Stella told me that she wanted to give Daddy a picture of her as a gift, so she dressed herself up and we tried to get a good one. She was super cooperative, but it was freezing outside!

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Lastly, dinner. It ended up being dark by the time we ate dinner so everything is a little dark and not quite as cheery as the dinner itself was!

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Lastly, my wonderful Aunt Charlene sent 2 sign language "I love you" lollipops. The girls loved them, to say the least!

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