Activities with a 3 yr old!

Being that Kydan is an only child he doesn't have any siblings to keep him occupied during the day...and I am not the most social person in the world so some days Kydan ends up watching TV way more than he should be. Thankfully, we were able to afford to send him to PK3 this year two days a week! So happy that he will be around children his own age and I hope he makes a connection with one or two :)
Kydan LOVES to help with everything from mowing the grass (I let him help me push the mower), to helping me bake. To help keep my VERY active boy from being bored these are just a couple of things we have done recently.

this is Gary and Kydan making a bird feeder out of a pine cone, peanut butter, and seeds.

Ok so I still don't know how to flip pictures on here so if anyone knows how, please let me know how you do it!

Here is Kydan eating a banana we covered in peanut butter and dipped in sprinkles. We used a cake pop stick for him to hold it so he wouldn't get too messy.

Here he was learning how to cut. The shapes he cut out he would then glue onto a piece of paper. Thought this was a nice activity in helping him learn how to cut and paste.

Learning the color red! They are learning the color red at school this month so I thought I would continue the learning at home on the days he doesn't have school. My son LOVES to pile things. He never really plays with toys, he just piles them in random places around the house. He has been doing this from the time he started walking. So added that to his learning process. I had him find objects that were red and then run to place it in the pile. Another incentive...at the end we would count how many items he found and he would get an M&M for each object he found. He found 8 red items!

Hunger Games Movie Night with Hunger Games Themed DInner and Dessert!

So Gary and I are a bit nerdy and I am not ashamed to admit it! Sometimes it is nice to be a kid at heart and not act "mature" all the time. One should try to make life fun when one can because life itself brings many troubles and problems on its own!

Last night we decided to watch Hunger Games again and this time eat a themed meal with it! On Pinterest I found a recipe for Peeta's cheese stuffed rolls, and a recipe for an apple tart. The main meal was harder to find since in the book they speak of eating squirrle, rabbit, lamb, or a huge pig roast. We decided to go with sausage since it was the easiest and quickest thing to make that was part of a pig. :) 

There is a funny story that goes along with those cheese stuffed rolls. Gary was measuring out the ingredients while I was mixing them together. When we added the flour we couldn't understand why the mixture wasn't thickening and becoming dough like. The recipe said we should start Kneading after the flour was added, but ours was still in liquid form. After much mixing and still nothing, Gary finally mentions "this is flour, right?" and points to the clear container that I have powdered sugar in. So yes, we tried making our bread with powdered sugar the first time around :)

Thin French Apple Tart

For those of you who don't know we named our two cats after Hunger Games characters. We have a Katniss and her sister Prim Rose...Here is a picture of Primrose checking out Peeta's cheese stuffed rolls. Katniss came over later to check out Peeta's rolls but I didn't get a picture.

Here is the recipe for the Thin French Apple Tart:

• 1/2 (15-ounce) package refrigerated pie dough (I made a homemade pie crust but this is what the original called for)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 pounds Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced ( I only used two)
• 2 1/2 tablespoons honey
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 425°.
2. Place dough on a lightly floured surface; roll into a 12-inch circle. Place on a 12-inch pizza pan. Combine sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon sugar mixture over dough. Arrange apple slices spokelike on top of dough, working from outside edge of dough to the center. Sprinkle apple slices with remaining sugar mixture. Bake at 425° for 30 minutes. (I only needed mine in 25 min)
3. Combine honey and vanilla in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave at high 40 seconds. Brush honey mixture over warm tart. Serve warm.

If you want to make the Homemade pie crust that my mom taught me how to make, Here is the recipe for that:

1 cup all purpose flour

1/3 cup crisco

pinch of salt

cold water

combine flour, crisco, and salt until crumbly. I just used my hands. Make a well in the middle of the crumbly mixture and pour a little cold water into the center. Mix together until the dough is all wet. If there are any dry parts, take out the wet dough and repeat the process with the water with the dry dough. Try not to Knead too much. Place on floured surface and roll out with a floured rolling pin.

 

Here is the link to the Original recipe:

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/thin-french-apple-tart-10000000592298/

Link to Peeta's Cheese Stuffed Rolls:

http://www.yammiesnoshery.com/2012/08/peetas-stuffed-cheese-buns.html

Dinner and a Project

With the wonderful help of Pinterest, Kydan and I have been a lot more crafts/projects. Here is one of them that I thought I would share since I thought it was really neat and they came out pretty nice!
It was quite simple to make and cheap since most of the supplies can be bought at the Dollar Tree!
What is needed:
Frames-dollar tree
clear see through stones- dollar tree (can also use beads or buttons)
Hot glue- walmart, I know you can buy the glue sticks at the dollar tree, or any craft store
Elmer's clear glue- I got this at walmart

1.you take out the back of the frame and glass. Put hot glue around the edge of the frame and place glass back into the frame and wait till the glass dries in place.
2. Take the clear elmers glue and place a big blob onto the glass and spread around with a sponge brush.
3. place the rocks, beads, buttons, or whatever onto the glue.
4. I put more clear glue on in between all the rocks because I wanted to make sure they would stick!
That is all! It took almost 24 hrs to completely dry.
The website I got the idea from they also out a leaf in one of their frames....Kydan and I might do this some other time. Here are close ups of the pictures...sorry I didn't feel like taking the time to find out how to flip the pictures :)
This one kydan did:

this is the other one Kydan did:

this is the one I did:

Here is the website I got the idea from:
http://playathomemom3.blogspot.com/search/label/Clay%20and%20Crafts?updated-max=2011-12-18T15:12:00-08:00&max-results=20&start=12&by-date=false

Also this past week at Gary's work they through a back to school party and this is the dish I decided to make....Wolf Pack Sliders! It was very yummy!

2 lb ground beef 

2 lb sausage (the original recipe called for spicy sausage but I am not a fan of spicy so I just found something without a lot of spice. I literally stood there looking for sausage for about 5 min. because they have like a dozen different kinds of sausage!

1 lb velvetta cheese

1 onion (optional) I added it

1 green pepper (optional) I didn't add this but I might next time.

steak sauce

sliced cheese (optional)

Brown the beef and sausage with onion and green pepper....drain.

add in the velveeta until melted. Place onto buns or wraps.

I liked these better the day after. I think because it gave the velveeta time to sink in to the meat.

The original recipe didn't call for steak sauce but I thought it was a little bland so after I placed the meat onto the bun I put a few drops of steak sauce on and added a slice of provolone cheese. It was delicious!!!! this will be my go to recipe for big gatherings where you need to bring a dish. So simple, makes a lot, and tastes great!

here is the website I got the recipe from:

http://www.ncagr.gov/markets/gottoberecipes/jan12.html

and the picture from the website (much better looking than my picture!):

Cake Mix Cool Whip Cookies and Weight Loss

Cake Mix Cool Whip Cookies!

These are sooo simple to make! I wouldn't say there is anything special or WOW about the taste but they were simple to make and don't need a lot of ingredients! That makes these cookies a great cookie to make with a young child like my son :)

The recipe calls for one cake mix of any flavor. I gave Kydan the choice between white, yellow, or chocolate and surprisingly he chose white!
1 egg
and one 8 oz tub of cool whip (we used the lite version)
Just mix the ingredients together, preheat oven to 350, form dough into balls (optional you can roll in powdered sugar, but we didn't have any on hand so we skipped that part) and bake 10-12 min.

With a child you need to make things more interesting than that so I let him choose sprinkles to put in the batter...He chose brown and blue sprinkles. The picture of the cookie at the bottom left is the cookie following the recipe...pretty plain if you ask me. So the next batch we added M&M's to one (top right if you couldn't tell :) some caramel topping with a Hershey kiss on top (bottom right) and some biscoff aka cookie butter (top left). I personally enjoyed the M&M one because I just love M&M's in cookies, you can ask anyone whom I used to work with at Subway. But I also loved the Biscoff one because Biscoff is just awesome with just about everything! It even deserves to be capitalized :)

So after Kydan was born I was fortunate enough to have lost all 40 lb of weight that I gained within about 2 months. Mainly because I was just too tired and in too much pain to get up the desire to go and make food. However, when Kydan turned a year old that year I slowly began to gain weight. At this time I was going to the Dr every month due to health problems, and every month the scale would go up a pound or two. Before I knew Kydan turned two and I gained 15 pounds! Yikes!
Pregnancy can do weird things to a women's body. Since having a baby I enjoy foods I have never enjoyed before. I am constantly mentioning to my husband how something taste good, that I used to not like before pregnancy. Also having a picky toddler around, you just can't let that food go to waster, so you eat it. Being a stay at home mom, boredom can set in, not to mention stress when the terrible twos and three's hit!
But back in May I decided I was tired of the extra weight. So I started exercising. Considering before I was pretty much a sloth, any amount of exercise would help in the weight loss department. Sure enough the first couple pounds came off somewhat easily!
Then I cut back on the sweets. I am trying to make "healthier" sweets with only the occasional really bad sweets. Also at dinner instead of eating seconds right away, I wait two hours and eat seconds this way I am not eating extra sweets in the evening. During the day I try to eat healthy snacks in between meals like apples, gold fish, or stick pretzels.
As of right now I have lost 8 pounds! only four more to go to reach my goal weight! So those of you who follow me on pinterest...no I don't make all those yummy looking desserts although I wish I could! But when I am cutting back I get my sweet "fix" by looking at yummy things :) You can always tell when I am cutting back because I pin like 10 desserts in one day!
Anyway, I am not a bug health fanatic, but thought I would share because those who know me best know that I have very little self discipline and I am sooo happy that for once in my life I have been able to discipline myself in something long enough to actually see results! Now I just need to start the self discipline in reading the bible more and praying...

hear is the link to that recipe
http://www.food.com/recipe/e-a-s-y-cake-mix-and-cool-whip-cookies-147496

Delicious Banana Cobbler

I have had this recipe for some time but never got around to making it. I think I found it in a magazine. It calls for self-rising flour so not sure if all purpose flour would work the same. However, I accidently bought self-rising flour so decided to finally make this recipe. Also have been having banana dessert cravings here recently.  :) Gary LOVED it and so did I!

Warm Banana Bread Cobbler

1 cup self rising flour
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup melted butter
1 tsp vanilla
4 medium bananas sliced
Topping:
1 cup rolled oats (I used 1/2 cup quick cooking oats and 1/2 cup old fashion oats because that is what I had)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup self rising flour
1/2 cup butter
walnuts (optional...I didn't use them)

1. grease 3 qt baking pan. Preheat oven to 375.
2. In medium bowl stir together 1 cup flour and granulated sugar. add the milk, melted butter, and vanilla. Stir until smooth. Spread evenly in the baking pan. Top with the sliced bananas.
3. In are large bowl combine oats, brown sugar, and 1/2 cup self rising flour.. Using pastry blender (or two knives like I did) cut in 1/2 cup butter until combined. (might want the butter to be softened a tiny bit because I found it difficult to cut in while cold). Stir in walnuts if using them. sprinkle topping mixture over the  bananas.
4.Bake for 25-30 min

ENJOY! I know I did :)

Peanut butter balls stuffed with oreo truffles, OH MY!

Ok so I had this crazy idea of making peanut butter balls or buckeyes (whatever you know them as) and stuff them with some crazy stuff. :) I stuffed one buckeye with and oreo tuffle, another one I just mixed some crushed up oreo with the buckeye, and another one I put a tiny slice of banana in the middle. Then I decided to make an oreo truffle and stuff it with a buckeye.
Honestly, the buckeye stuffed with the oreo truffle wasn't all that impressive. The peanut butter taste overwhelmed the oreo truffle taste. The Oreo truffle stuffed with the peanut butter was a bit better I thought. But my favorite had to be the plain crushed up oreo mixed in with the peanut butter (no picture shown). I also loved the banana stuffed inside the buckeye. Dipped in chocolate, it was wonderful! Who doesn't like the combo of peanut butter, banana, and chocolate?
Did you all know that Elvis loved the combo of peanut butter and banana? I am thinking of calling my buckeyes stuffed with bananas 'Elvis Balls" ;)
 Sorry I don't have a great camera so this is the best picture I have....

Sorry No picture of the one stuffed with banana :( These ones shown don't have the chocolate coating on them either.

So here is the recipe I used for the Buckeyes:

http://www.sweetannas.com/2011/08/peanut-butter-balls.html

Ingredients:

3/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups powdered sugar

Directions:
In a large bowl, whisk together the peanut butter, butter & vanilla until smooth.  Dump in the powdered sugar and stir until too stiff to stir with a fork...  then comes the fun part. 

Dig in with your (clean!) hands and stir & knead until a smooth stiff dough forms.  Roll into small (teaspoon-full size) balls and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Once you are done rolling all the dough, place the sheet in the fridge to chill and set for a few hours, until very firm.

Here is the recipe for Oreo Truffles:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/easy-oreo-truffles/

Ingredients

• 1 (16 ounce) package OREO Chocolate Sandwich Cookies, divided
• 1 (8 ounce) package PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened
• 2 (8 ounce) packages BAKER'S Semi-Sweet Baking Chocolate, melted

Directions

1. Crush 9 of the cookies to fine crumbs in food processor; reserve for later use. (Cookies can also be finely crushed in a resealable plastic bag using a rolling pin.) Crush remaining 36 cookies to fine crumbs; place in medium bowl. Add cream cheese; mix until well blended. Roll cookie mixture into 42 balls, about 1-inch in diameter.
2. Dip balls in chocolate; place on wax paper-covered baking sheet. (Any leftover chocolate can be stored at room temperature for another use.) Sprinkle with reserved cookie crumbs.
3. Refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour. Store leftover truffles, covered, in refrigerator.

If you stuffing a buckeye with an oreo truffle, just flatten a buckeye until is a nice sized disc shape. Make a small oreo ball and place in the middle of the peanut butter disc. Wrap the sides of the disc around the the oreo. Do this the same way if you want the peanut butter inside the oreo truffle. You can pretty much stuff a buckeye with anything! Next time I might try M&Ms!

Cookie Dough Cupcakes!

I had these delicious Cookie dough cupcakes for my birthday and they were well worth the effort!

These are Brown sugar cupcakes with eggless cookie dough in the center and I used a  brown sugar cookie dough frosting on top (another recipe calls for regular buttercream frosting with some eggless cookie dough mixed in with it, but I thought the brown sugar frosting sounded better). You may add a chocolate chip cookie on top for decoration if desired and of course I desired! :) They are very sweet which I love. 

If desired you can skip the eggless cookie dough and just add chocolate chips to the cupcake batter. I did this with about 6 of the cupcakes because I ran out of the eggless cookie dough. I didn't try them with just the chocolate chips because I already had two cupcakes! 

Eggless Cookie dough recipe:

1/4 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tsp water

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

1. cream the butter and brown sugar in small bowl. Add water and vanilla and mix well. Add flour and salt and stir to combine. Stir in mini chocolate chips.

2. freeze until ready for use.

 this recipe is from How to Eat a Cupcake

Brown Sugar Cupcakes

3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temp (1-1/2 sticks)

3/4 cup light brown sugar

2 large eggs, room temp

1-1/3 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

1. preheat oven to 350

2.beat butter on high until softened, about 30 seconds

3. add sugar. beat on medium high until light and fluffy, about 3 min

4. add eggs one at a time, beat for 30 seconds after each

5. whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl

6. measure our milk and vanilla together.

7. add about a fourth of the flour to the butter/sugar mixture and beat to combine

8. add about one third the milk/vanilla mixture and beat till combined

9. repeat above, alternating between flour and milk and ending with the flour mixture

10.place previously prepared frozen eggless cookie dough ball (mine were fairly big) into cup liners, then fill about half to three-quarters full of cupcake batter. 

11. bake for 15-22 min (depending on your oven) until golden brown. Testing with a toothpick won't work because of the cookie dough center.

this recipe is from Cupcake Bakeshop

Brown Sugar Cookie Dough Frosting (I only made half this recipe and it was sufficient to frosting all the cupcakes)

3 sticks unsalted butter, at room temp

3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed

3-1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 cup all purpose flour

3/4 tsp salt

3 TB milk (more or less for consistency)

2-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

mini chocolate chips for decoration (optional)

1. Cream the butter and brown sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy (about 2 min)

2. add powdered sugar 1 cup at a time and mix on low speed until it's all added.

3. add the flour, salt, milk and vanilla and mix until it is all incorporated. (flour might sound weird for a frosting but remember this frosting is meant to taste like cookie dough)

4.If you have a whisk attachment for your mixer you can use that to whip it up until it is light and fluffy, otherwise just do the best you can with what you have.

5. frost cupcakes and place mini chocolate chips on top.

At this point you can make some chocolate chip cookies to add on top if you desire. I have two favorite recipes for chocolate chip cookies but the one is more complicated than the other as it requires cake flour and bread flour and refrigeration for 24 hours. If you desire to make these just google New York times Chocolate chip cookie and you should be able to find the recipe. It is worth the effort and I highly recommend trying it if you are a cookie lover like myself.

This is my other favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe...I think I like it so much because it calls for a lot more brown sugar than it does white sugar. 

Chocolate Chip Cookie:

2-1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp

1-1/2 cups brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 375

2. put flour, baking soda, and salt into a bowl and stir with a whisk until combined.

3.Using a mixer, beat butter until it is lighter in color. Slowly add in sugars and beat until it is light and fluffy. add the eggs 1 at a time and beat until incorporated. Stir in Vanilla. add the flour mixture using low speed  (do not over mix) Stir in chocolate chips

4. drop by heaping Tablespoons about to inches apart onto prepared baking sheets.

5. Bake until cookies are lightly brown around the edges, about 12-15 min (I do mine about 10 min because my oven is hotter)

6. Let cookies stand for a few minutes before removing to wire rack to cool completely (I never wait till they are completely cooled, they are best warm and gooey!)

This recipe is from foodnetwork.com

Enjoy!