Showing posts with label cupcakes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cupcakes. Show all posts

Cooking and Crafting

Between summer camps and family camping, we've not been home much, but did fit in a few crafts!

On the ice cream cone box, Grace saw the cooking suggestion to fill the cones with cake mix.  Everyone who tried one enjoyed it!


I was spray-painting some rocks using a metallic paint that I found at the table goodwill in Charlotte.  It started to sprinkle a few hours after I'd painted, but the balls of water looked so pretty!


William and I are reading Tom Sawyer in anticipation of our St. Louis trip.  The white-washing scene was enough to encourage me to repaint the upstairs bathroom wicker cabinet.  William wanted to help, but he didn't even give me a broken trinket for the pleasure! lol.


The finished cabinet looks way better now!  I don't think I'd painted it since I went off to college in 2001!  The replacement backsplash in the same bathroom doesn't look nearly as nice, but it looks better than the wrinkled pieces, so a slight win.

Now we have time for the next project!

later days

Cooking and Crafting, Crafting and Cooking

The crossbody bag I gave to Emily was no longer working for her, so I had my mom pull one that I'd purchased for later from Sarah's basement.  Once Grace saw it, she wanted one too.  So, when I found one in the clearance room of one of my favorite thrift stores, it was an easy dollar to spend.  

However, when I got home, I saw why it was in the clearance area, as it was fraying along the connection between the strap and purse.  With my sewing machine, it took me less than a minute to reinforce, and she didn't even notice until I pointed it out to her!


I broke out my vinyl cutter to add a personalized decal to my mom's free find for my cousin Acea.

I had to repair another rip on my favorite jeans.  And sadly, it's currently back in my repair pile, but I'm going to need a large donation piece from some ripped jeans to repair along the side that my purse rubs up against, as there are many small holes as well as thin spots.  Luckily, rummage sales are starting to surface!

This year, so far, the rule has been, that if you have a snow day, you get to plan a meal to cook!  Emily chose a thai dish to make, and it was liked enough by everyone that I made it again a few weeks later!



But, we don't eat fancy every night, lest you be deceived, spaghettio night gets 'dressed up' with a basil leaf, but they are still spaghettios.

Alice and Emily's eye appointment was pushed back from December, thanks to our changing insurance, to January.  While we were there, I was telling them about an impactful meme that I'd seen.  Pretty much that the internet was a 'place' we would go, while on a pc or laptop, but then we would turn it off and go do something else.  It wasn't always avialable in our hands.  

Anyhow, the same article mentioned the quizzes we'd take then, and so I was telling them about how we would take and make all sorts of dumb quizzes.  The example I gave was "what kind of toast are you?"  So, we spent the rest of our visit taking quizzes for each other to figure out what type of toast we are.  Turns out I'm condensed milk toast.  

Well, I'd never heard of such a thing, so at home, I looked up a recipe for said toast, and made some.  I can now say that it's not bad.  It's not my new favorite, and I'd rather just eat the straight milk, but not inedible.

A second repair on William's pants.  Sadly, this embroidery floss was cut into tiny strips, big enough for only a single stitch per needle threading, so it was slow going!  But, I've started bringing my mending to my weekly mom's meetings, and so it's really pleasant to chat and repair simultaneously!  = )

Grace checked out a cookbook, and really, desperately wanted to make the cupcake recipe.  I was in and out of the kitchen, but she did it almost entirely by herself!


Her biggest issue was that she didn't know that there was a difference between sugar and powdered sugar, so her icing was kind of crunchy.  Aside from that, they came out really tasty. = )

William's snow day recipe called for a rotisserie chicken.  Sadly, my Kroger delivery did not contain said chicken, so I ran by Carl's on my way to collect the twins after school, and they had one single one left!!!

So, William was able to make the pizza for dinner afterall!

I still have two, very productive, Basil plants producing copious amounts of basil on my counter, so I've been drying it and bottling it up.  Well, we didn't use much of the fresh cilantro that we bought for last week's snow day meal, so I looked up to see if I could dry it in the microwave, the same way as the basil, and I can!!!

I didn't get through it all, because cilantro leaves are much smaller than Basil, so it's far more tedious, but I'll try to dry a few platefuls a day, so as not to waste it!


If luck holds, we'll have another snow day Thursday, with a new child made meal! ; )

later days 

October, So Far

Once we set up the Halloween village, all of us started feeling the Halloween 'spirit!'

At first chance I bought lime Jello to make some festive jigglers.  The came out of the mold okay, but it turns out that none of us like the thicker jello mixture.  Who knew?  So, with the second box, I made just regular jello cups, which were gone in one evening.

Grace wanted a 'spooky ring' braid.

Alice had band practice, and Emily didn't feel well, so it was just William, Grace, and Juliet who went to the trunk or treat this year.  

Grace was a witch.

William was Batman.

And Juliet was a pirate!

Since we didn't have a car 'home base' this year, I found an as out of the way spot in the cafeteria as I could manage, and sat while they went through the trunk line, hit up the donut stand, and went to dance!

It was a good night, and I think they enjoyed their last year trunk or treating!  I know I said this last year, but this year is really the end! lol.

Once upon a time we had a pirate hook, but must have gotten rid of it at some point, and I'm not paying $6 to get a new one, so Juliet crafted a new one! I thought she did a really good job!

Emily wanted to make zombie cupcakes.  She used a box mix for the cupcakes, but we didn't have any white frosting, so she made her own.  I thought they came out really cute, and the frosting was pretty good!


It's been a busy October, and the start of November is looking busy too!  As of the writing of this post, Alice is done with marching band practice and football games for the year!  Freshmen year: check!

She does have a final concert on Monday, but it is indoors.  And there is a parade near Thanksgiving that they are going to march in, but regular season is over! woohoo!

later days

Crafting and Cooking

We'll kick off the post with the baklava that Emily made!  It was quite tasty!  She's been in the mood to make some more, I just need to get her the supplies. ; )

Kristy gave us (a second round of) huge zucchinis, so I got to work on them!

First off was cutting one of them up for the dehydrator.  I used 4 from her this summer and have maybe 2 cups of flour to show for it?


The second one I shredded and made 2 loaves of zucchini bread.  Neither of which I took an end product for.  If I'm offered a late season one, I'll made on more batch and be sure to take a picture to add to this post!



I saw this cool hack that you can put these freezer pops in a vacuum sealed cup or water bottle and take them to the beach or on a trip for a cool treat! Well, when I packed them up, we ended up spending the ice cream money that Avia gave us at the end of our adventure, and never got to them.

I wasn't quite ready to part with the water bottle, and so I started bringing the twins freezer pops for our afternoon walks home from school!  I bring three, one for each of them, and just over halfway home there is a public trash can.  Once their first one is gone, we cut the third in half, which lasts them the perfect amount until we are home!  So far, I've only forgotten once!


Grace wanted to use food dye to make a rainbow cupcake desert for our most recent game day with the Cornishes.  I feel like we eat plenty of dye without adding more into our diet, so I asked her if she could maybe use fruit, or other food instead.  She did a beautiful job, and it looked so colorful!

I made some coconut cookies.  They touted only being 3 ingredients, but the comments added egg and flour, which made them quite good!  I added chocolate chips to some of them, and it turns out that was also a good move. lol.

I made another round of squash soup with some of our bounty!

Just as good as last year!

Grace showing off our blended, ground, and milled zucchini flour!


Grace found a super cute pea pod stuffie on the internet.  She wanted to save money to buy it, but I was able to convince her to try and make one instead.  It came out so cute!!!


Her inspo: 


Loving this season of the year and of life!

later days

Spring Band Concert

A few days before the band concert, I made some "lemon fluffies" to bring to my mom's meeting.  Sadly, it was cancelled due to the coordinator having an ill baby, so I reassigned them to band concert reception duty.

Since my meeting had been cancelled, I had time to make up the puppy chow that Alice requested as her snack to bring.


There was so little chex cereal left in the bag, and I knew my crew would not eat it quickly, so I made a savory chex mix to use up the remainder.  The secret ingredient was Worchester sauce, my favorite, so I knew it would be good!


I was really glad that I had made all the goodies before Wednesday night, because after dinner Emily took over the kitchen to make two batches of cupcakes with colored frosting!


They came out super cute!


I had signed up, with one other person to help set up the baked goods for the reception.  It was way more food than people signed up to bring, so the tables were covered in sugar!



Alice separated her puppy chow into cups to make for a smooth grab and go experince.


During the concert, Alice was intentionally hiding from me. punk.


They was a big improvement from their Christmas concert.


When she stood up, she couldn't hide from me anymore! ha!



We got another use out of the fake flowers!!!


It was a sweet concert.  I felt kind of mean when trying to keep family and friends of the band from getting treats from the table before the band members could join us.  Since it was a reception for them after all.  Most people listened, but there were still a few people who took snacks before the band even came in. = (

This was Alice's final middle school concert, which makes me a little sad, but I'm looking forward to seeing her play next year as a high schooler!

later days

edit 5-25-24: backdated for continuity.