Strawberry Unicones

California Strawberries is hosting a contest right now called "The Get Snacking Challenge" where they're looking for the best strawberry snack using 6 ingredients or less and y'all I think I made a winner. I mean, how cute are these?!?!

Super easy, absolutely adorable and only a handful of ingredients.... what more can you ask for in a summer snack?!

If you love these as much as I do, would you please hop over to my Instagram HERE and give it a like or comment? I'd so appreciate it!!

1. Using a food safe black pen (you can find them on amazon or a craft store) draw eyes on the sugar cones

2. Using a very sharp serrated knife, slice the pointy end of the cones off and save them for later (this will be your unicorn's horn)

3. Shove the pointy end of a strawberry into the bottom of the cone 

4. Fill the cone with strawberry yogurt. 

5. Pipe a small swirl of whipped topping on the top of the yogurt. 

6. Place 2 strawberry slices across the back of the yogurt for the ears and the reserved ice cream cone tip at the front for the horn.

#GetSnackingChallenge @castrawberries

Shark Attack Birthday Party

My son and his best friend both turned 12 in July an they had a joint Shark themed birthday swimming party to celebrate! Since the party was at his friend's house I was able to spend my time having fun creating the food and snacks for the boys! The big cake was pretty simple: chocolate cake with vanilla icing and a fondant shark cutout. The cupcakes were coconut cake, filled with berry jam and coconut cream cheese frosting. I used the extra fondant from the big shark and made mini shark fins for the cupcakes. For the favors I took rice krispie treats, dipped them in blue candy melts and decorated them with goldfish crackers and sprinkles.

For the snack table there was a drink dispenser with blue gatorade and mini Swedish fish frozen in ice cubes so they would float. Veggie Straws were pool noodles and Goldfish crackers and potato chips were called "Fish & Chips"

I had fun carving the watermelon and cucumber into sharks for the fruit and veggie platters and at the end of the day even the shark cucumber was eaten!

I think the best part of the whole party was the severed hands and feet floating in the pool! The kids got such a kick out of that and never stopped laughing at the "slow swimmers"

It was a great party and the kids had a ton of fun swimming!

Chopped Jr Birthday Bash

Last weekend we threw my daughter a birthday party at the house. I tried to offer numerous other options and even attempted bribing her, but she wouldn't budge. She wanted a Chopped Birthday Party. I wondered about the state of my sanity while pulling it together and was really nervous at the thought of having 9 little girls over to my house for a Chopped competition, but to my surprise it went way better than I could have ever expected! The girls had an absolute blast and seeing them so excited made it all worth it!

I ordered the Invites, score sheets, banner and all of the cute printables here from Etsy

I also ordered kids plain aprons and some fabric markers so as the girls were arriving they could each decorate an apron to use while cooking. I was thinking instead of the usual bag of annoying noisemakers/stickers/candy that dyes their mouth green and gets left on the floor of your car after a party this was at least something they could keep and use at home too!

 We had the girls pick a number and then divided them into 3 teams of 3. I set up 3 small stations that they could cook and prep at and had a "pantry" table of extra ingredients they could use as well

The Pantry Table before it was raided is below

Afterwards it looked like a swarm of locusts had cleaned it out

For the entree round the secret ingredients were tomatoes, pizza dough and cheese (I had 5 types of cheese and they could pick the one they wanted)

I pre-cooked bacon and Italian sausage to give them some proteins to choose that didn't need to go on the stove and made sure I had a ton of veggies to choose from too.

For the most part I was really impressed with the final dishes. A few of the girls were worried and told me before we even started that they had never cooked anything before so my expectations weren't very high to begin with. 

Just in case you're wondering, yes that is a pizza surrounded by cool whip in the bottom shot. 

Yeah, it was rough...

They were so excited for the reveals! 

There was a lot of squealing...it was LOUD y'all

Team 1 hard at work

 So stinking cute!

 I loved seeing how intense they were as the clock was running and had a great time teaching them a little bit of knife skills for those that were interested

Hands Up! Round 1 is over!

 For the dessert round, I had a whole dessert bar in the middle of the table so that served as decoration and their stash to work with plus the pantry table for them to pick from. For their secret ingredients they had to use any flavor cupcake, sprinkles and their choice of icing.

There were sprinkles EVERYWHERE

Overall, it was a blast and I hope the kids had as much fun as Brianna did!

The Sweet Taste of Summer

 Today is Pre-K graduation for Marshall,

the beginning of summer and pushing us even closer to Kindergarten next year!

I wanted to make a sweet treat as a goodbye for the friends in class and to thank his teachers for the great job that they have done throughout the year. I've seen these flip flop cookies all over pintrest and on multiple blogs and I thought I could doctor them up to hand out today. I hope they are enjoyed!

 It is so simple to make these, you just dip nutter butter cookies in candy melts

I used green, blue, purple and pink and let them dry on wax paper

 While the cookies were drying I decided to make some sand out of ground gingersnaps and brown sugar. I also had these chocolate rocks so I added those too. Kids always get a kick out of  eating gross things like bug candy, chocolate dirt or rocks and to tell you the truth, so do I!

Once the cookies were dry and the sand was ready I finished off the flip flops with piped white chocolate and little flower sprinkles

 I am really happy with how they came out!

 I hope Marshall has fun handing them out to all of his sweet classmates!

 We are so proud of the great year he has had!

Marshall's Robot Party

It's official; he's 5

I tried my best to make time slow down but it didn't work

we had a small party at the gym to celebrate and I went with a Robot theme

The cake was chocolate with toasted marshmallow filling and vanilla frosting

I felt a little guilty walking into the gym with a large cake as people on bikes and treadmills were all around me staring and I knew I had no intention of doing any sort of physical activity that day

I think I enjoyed myself a lot more than they did

As I've mentioned before I have a small tradition that I've started with my kids for their birthday cakes
I decorate the cake and make sure they don't see it until it's completely finished
then I get a picture of their face the first time they see it
it's something that's more for me I guess.....the best payback in the world in my opinion
staying up late working on something for them and seeing the excitement and pure joy on their face at their first glance. The first one is a little out of focus but you get the idea ;)

Getting ready to make a wish

I'm realizing that in most pictures my mouth is wide open
not very attractive
I need to work on that

the kids were served pizza and I made wraps and a veggie tray for the adults
whole grain wraps, smoked turkey, provolone and swiss cheese, fresh spinach and a sun dried tomato spread

going with the silver, red and blue color scheme I wrapped an aluminum can with scrapbook paper to hold the utensils

the gym games were so much fun!
scooter races, an obstacle course and basketball
Many of the adults got in on the fun too!

The favors were slinkies, wind up robots, a stamp, a stretchy robot and candy

the bag toppers I printed for free from a cute blog that I found while searching for a little Robot inspiration

here is the link if you'd like to make some for yourself:  Robot Party Favor Bag Printable

Cupcake Bouquet

 

 Today was Marshall's last day of school and I wanted to make something to bring his teachers to say thanks for all the hard work they put into this school year. I've seen cookie bouquets before, and recently I saw a cupcake bouquet in a metal pail. I thought it might be cuter in a flower pot and went with pink icing piped like hydrangeas. Michael's has a ton of cute flower pots to choose from now!

 

 Fill them with Styrofoam, stick toothpicks into it to secure the cupcakes, and place tissue paper around your flower cupcakes to fill in the gaps. 

 

Sickies and Sales

This past week was Spring Break and it was not at all what I expected. No crazy parties on the beach, sleeping in late, fun with friends; oh no! My spring break was full of coughs, runny noses and too short naps. One of the worst things about a whole week of your child being sick is that you are stuck in your own house with no one to play with. We all want our children to share, but cold germs is one thing they can keep to themselves. So what do you do with a 4 year old inquisitive little boy who is not sick at all, out of school for the week and ready to have fun and his two year old runny nosed sister?

You get very creative with things around the house

We made play dough and hand prints out of salt dough.

Both of these activities are easy to make with the kids, are made with things around the house and provide hours of fun for the kids, whether they are sick or not!

Play Dough

1 c flour

1 c water

2 teaspoons cream of tarter

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

1/4 cup salt

food coloring

Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan and cook over medium high heat until the mixture forms a ball. Remove dough from pot and allow to cool. Once it is cool enough to handle kneed it until it is smooth. Store in an airtight container.

Salt Dough Hand-prints

2 cups of flour
1 cup salt
1 cup water

 

Mix all ingredients well, kneading until smooth. Dough should be pretty stiff, not soft or runny or it will fill with air bubbles when baking. Form dough into a ball, of about what you can enclose in your two hands, and form into a round smooth ball. Using a rolling pin with the dough on wax paper, roll out into as round of a circle as you can. Dough will be about 1/2 inch thick. Press your child's hand with fingers splayed into the dough. Depending on child's age, you will have to help and individually press their fingers. Make sure to press deep enough without going completely to the bottom. (When it bakes it tends to raise the hand print up) Put on a cookie sheet.

Bake at 200 degrees for about 3-5 hours. Dough should be fairly hard but watch to see that it doesn't burn.

Here are Brianna's baking:

This was Marshall's back in 2008

 I also have signed up for a fund-raising bake sale put on by Austin bloggers, businesses and foodies to help the relief efforts in Japan

  If you are interested in getting involved or donating, contact Austin Bakes and join with us to bake some sweets for a very worthy cause. stay tuned for more details coming soon!