Homemade Jello Orange Smiles!

I am SO EXCITED about this post!!!!! It's SO fun and easy! I saw this really cute idea on my phone and took a picture of it with the link at the bottom! I got inspired! I always loved Jello as a kid but I don't feed it to my kids unless it is from Whole Foods or Trader Joes (which is 3 dollars for 4 containers) because I stay FAR AWAY from artificial food coloring. This is a topic for a blog all by itself, which I will do one day. However, I have to add that some food coloring has ALREADY been banned in the UK due to studies. Example, McDonald's Strawberry Shake in the UK is made with REAL strawberries but over here it's made with RED 40!!!! Oh, i'm getting started! This blog is NOT about this! But there is hope!

I researched and it is SO EASY to make jello out of your child's (or your) favorite juice! It just has to be 100 % Juice. I wanted to get a "pretty" juice just for this blog... but if you come over and have some jello it might just be green.... We just got a juicer and we are using lots of Kale and Spinach in everything!!! YUMMY!

Here is what you need:

One packet of Knox Gelatine (there is four to a box)

2 cups of your juice

And if you are using a very bitter juice like 100% Cranberry you will probably need 1-2 Tablespoons of honey/sweetener. However, most juice is sweet enough!

In a little bowl add your pack of gelatine and 1/2 cup of juice.

Then add the rest (1 1/2 cup) of juice to a small saucepan and bring to a boil.

Remove from heat and add the softened gelatine and juice, stirring until completely dissolved.

If you are going to do the orange smiles, cut an orange in half and remove the insides.

Pour in your juice mix and put in the fridge for about 3 hours!

Cut into smile slices and serve!  I did kind of a bad job this time around at removing all of the orange at the bottom but I didn't want to accidentally cut through the skin! To me it was good to have a little orange with the jello! ENJOY!

Valentine's Breakfast

Just a fun Breakfast idea! Heart shaped egg for your little loved one! I have a mold but you can just cut out the shape with a knife or cookie cutter!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Snow Smoothies

We FINALLY got a day of snow here in Kansas!!! Very little but enough to do an activity with it! I know everyone makes ice cream but I have a son home with Croup and I'm sure none of us need extra sugar added to our diet with all this sickness going around! I came up with a fun HEALTHY snack to make with your fresh snow! SNOW SMOOTHIES! You can make yours however you want with what you have in your kitchen....

Here is what I had and sorry for some of the blurry pictures! My phone camera is going downhill since I use it SOOOO much!!!

We added a little watermelon, a banana, some yogurt, frozen blueberries, frozen spinach, and orange juice!

My son added in the yogurt, which by the way has fruits and veggies in it! It's pretty cool that they are coming out with stuff like this, it's marketed for babies but ANYONE can eat it! The only thing I wish they would leave out is the added sugar!

 My son had fun cutting the banana with a butter knife, while my daughter added the pieces to the blender!

Now for the FUN ingredient! I filled up a bowl with fresh snow! 

Love their faces when they saw the "secret" ingredient!

They took turns putting a scoop each in until the snow was gone! 

   

Love my daughter reaction to the blender! "It's too loud!" Do any of your little ones do this? =)

This was my first time trying this and I LOVED the consistency that the snow gave the smoothie! SO GOOD! Now I'm gunna be sad the rest of the year when we make smoothies because we won't have any of our "secret" ingredient! 

CHEERS!!!!

Photo Valentine and Lego Valentine Box

I thought I would share with you all the cute Valentines we made for Brenden's Kindergarten class this year! I LOVE anything with a picture on it and suckers are my(and my kids) favorite candy! So simple and inexpensive!

First you need to take a picture of your child or children with their fist out. Then go get it printed in one hour photo... I got wallet size, 17 cents for two pictures! Then cut out your picture and with a knife cut two slits, one above and one below your child's hand.

You can give it to friends just like above but because my sons teacher wanted the children to have practice writing numbers and names we hot glued a paper backing onto each picture! He wrote out ALL 23 friends names, a number per child, and his name on the Valentines! It took a while but I'm very proud of his hard work! Good practice for any young child! =)

We were also supposed to bring a shoe box to hold all of his cards and goodies in for his Valentines party! Here is a simple and fun idea for your Lego lover! You can even do this for your child just to have to carry some of their legos in! If your child is like mine, they like to bring a few legos in the car and on short trips.

 All you need are a few empty TP/Paper towel rolls. I cut them about every two inches, for this you will need 12 two inch pieces. 8 of the pieces you will cut one opening and the other 4 you will cut completely in half (these will be used to make your circle a little larger).

Insert your extra piece in your circle to make it a little larger and tape or glue together.

Hot glue a piece of cardboard to the tops of each cylinder piece. I used an old cereal box. Then hot glue each cylinder to the top of your shoe box, the way a lego brick would look.

 Then spray paint the color of your choice and have your child decorate it the way they want to!

Lavender Blueberry Cupcakes

This year, for Valentines Day, I wanted to do something different. I thought I would try to make more of a gourmet cupcake. They turned out AWESOME so I wanted to share the recipe! What makes this cupcake so different is the edible Lavender flavor paired with blueberries and creme.To find the lavender I had to call my local Whole Foods and they told me where they buy their spices, so in the Kansas City area you can find lavender at Penzey's Spices (www.penzeys.com) . Also it's not very expensive. A huge plus to making this cupcake right now is fresh blueberries are in season! I ended up getting 24oz of organic blueberries for six dollars at Sams Club! One more thing, I actually used sugar and didn't substitute because I wanted to see how good the cupcakes were going to be. Now that I have made this once, I will experiment to make these healthier and then blog about it! But these are such a good sweet treat for the sweeties in your life!

Ingredients (makes 24 cupcakes)

Blueberry Cupcake:

6 Oz Fresh Bluberries

2 3/4 cups Cake Flour

1 1/2 tablespoon Baking Powder

1 teaspoon Baking Soda

1 teaspoon salt

12 tablespoons Unsalted Butter at room temperature

1 cup Sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract

1 cup milk

Lavender Buttercream icing:

1 cup (2 sticks) Unsalted butter at room temperature

3 cups Confectioners Sugar

3 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

2 teaspoons Dried Lavender Buds

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 

Line two pans with baking cups and set aside.

Place the blueberries in a small microwave-safe bowl and heat for one minute until the blueberries puff up and some begin to pop.

 In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. set aside. *Side note: cake flour might be hard to find. If you don't have it at your local store, just use regular flour...It won't make too much of a difference.

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, and mix till fully incorporated. Mix in the vanilla.

 With the mixer running on low speed, slowly add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the milk. Incerase the speed to medium and beat till smooth.

Add the blueberries and mix until all are broken down and are fully incorporated into the batter. Yummy!

 An ice cream scoop is perfect to divide the batter, filling the liners 2/3 of the way.

Bake the cupcakes until a toothpick inserted into a few comes out clean, about 15-20min. Completely cool on a rack before putting on the icing!

While the cupcakes are cooling, make the lavender buttercream. Mix butter in a bowl until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the confectioners sugar and salt and mix (gradually increasing in speed) until the sugar is fully incorporated, about 5 minutes. 

Add the vanilla and whisk until the buttercream is light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Stir in lavender buds.

To frost the cupcakes, I used a open star tip in a ziplock bag to make it look a little nicer. And top with fresh Blueberries!

 Here is a picture of how blue the cupcake looks after you take a bite! These were SO good! Be weary that the lavender is a taste some kids might not like.... I tested these on many friends/kids almost all approved but there were a few kids that the taste of lavender was "different". Hey, More for Mom right? =)

Great Valentines Idea to do for your kids!

What is Valentine's Day all about? Love, Right! This year I wanted to write Love letters to my kids! I thought it would be great to start February 1st and go all the way to Valentine's Day! They need to know that we LOVE them all the time and why not use this Holiday to deliberately tell them! 

Here is my idea! I found these GREAT mailboxes in the dollar section at Target. You don't have to buy these, you can make your own mailbox out of any small box and have your child decorate it.

I had my babies decorate theirs with puffy paints. They had SO MUCH fun doing this!

They got really creative!

Here is the finished product!

Now this is what I had in mind! Everyday in February (from the 1-14th) their father or I will write them a special love letter. Something personal about them, not generic! Maybe we will add ONE small piece of candy to sweeten up the letter or a cute trinket. Every morning when they wake up, their mailbox will be hidden. So it's also a fun search at the same time! My kids are so excited about this idea! I am letting you guys know about it early too if you want to join me in writing your kids love letters for 14 days! Or if that's too much, do it the whole week of Valentines day! Even if your child is older, I'm sure they will get a kick out of this!

How To: Spice Up Package Waffle Mix! (EXPERIMENT)

I had an experiment last night! I was happy and sad at the findings! I made waffles for a group of friends... There were two particular people that I was hoping would try them! First let me show you what I did! 

Look at this BEAUTIFUL picture below! It is of my food processor with raw carrots, baby spinach, Bok Choy and eggplant! I blended up these veggies, added a 1/2 cup of water to help the consistency, because we don't want chunks, and it only took a minute!

Before I move on, a friend of mine asked about my food processor. I own the Cuisinart 11-cup Pro. It works wonders for how I cook. I do have to say that there are MANY attachments that I rarely use and it is heavy to move around but it's wonderful! I've already gotten 9 years of use out of mine and the blade is as sharp as ever! Here is a website that will give you some info if you re looking for a good food processor!      

http://best-foodprocessor-reviews.org/ 

Ok, moving on, here is a picture of my raw veggies after I blended them all together.... I was NOT shy with these veggies! I think it made over a cup of puree! I got my trusty box pumpkin waffle mix out and prepared the mix as directed on the box. You will not be able to find this particular waffle mix at Trader Joes right now because it's seasonal... =( However, use any waffle mix you have on hand! Let me point out that I added OVER a cup of pureed vegetables to a DOUBLED box recipe.

Here is my beautiful mix with my veggies added AND you can't even tell they are in there! I just wanted to add one thing.... my box calls for water (remember I added 1/2 cup of water to my veggies?) so I subtracted 1/2 cup of water from my box recipe.

Then it's as easy as pouring your mix in your waffle maker and letting it cook! BUT, don't forget the mini chocolate chips! This is my favorite ingredient, it makes you feel like you are eating a warm chocolate chip cookie! *Another tip on what I do with these, double your batch and freeze your leftovers. These are great to pull out of the freezer and pop into the toaster when you are craving something sweet!

YUMMY! The finished product and no one can tell there are veggies in there RIGHT? Well, lets take it to some picky eaters to find out!

Now I will tell you about my little experiment! I know a 15 year old girl who hates veggies....We asked her one time what her favorite veggie was and she thought VERY hard and said..."corn?". Also, I have  an adult friend who is picky when it comes to veggies and he actually told me that if I put veggies in my waffles he would be able to taste them. So I brought these "Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Waffles" over to a get together and said nothing about the veggies.... Right away the 15 year old took one, ate it and said "these are good" and walked away! Later the adult that I singled out tried them and had no idea! So I was VERY HAPPY that they liked my waffles.... Now here comes the part where I showed them the picture of my food processor.... I'll show you again!

They both were DISGUSTED and said if they knew this was in the waffles they wouldn't have eaten them!!!!! So my husband and I were talking about this, It's not the taste buds that HATE the veggies, it's something in your brain that tells you "THIS IS DISGUSTING BECAUSE VEGETABLES ARE NASTY!" Why is this? I know I singled out two people in this blog but they are like MOST Americans.... We need to start thinking about what we are teaching our children from a young age. How do WE as parents react to vegetables and fruits? Do we provide a wide variety of them in our home? Do we eat them even if our kids protest? Do we still try to feed them to our kids even if we know they have protested in the past? Do we educate them on what these foods really do for our bodies? I am not asking these questions to make anyone upset....it's just something to think about.... Why would our taste buds like the taste of something and then our brain overrides, tell us it's NASTY, so we won't eat it anymore? PLEASE COMMENT!!!! This is a wonderful discussion!!!!

* I just changed my comment setting to allow anyone to comment... Sorry if you tried and couldn't! I have one more question! If you are a person who cringes at the thought of certain veggies, Why do you think that is? What do you think happened to you growing up that gave you this view?