DIY: Cardboard Gingerbread House

We do a Gingerbread House party every year and my talented husband whipped this cardboard house up for the kids in 20min! He used a refrigerator box, cut a triangle on the front and back and folded down the sides to form a peak. (Make sense?) I used paper and leftover felt for quick decorations. It was a big hit - and Asa's still playing with it.

Of course - you could paint it brown and add on a lot more "candy" too!

DIY: Thanksgiving Turkey Cookies

Sorry for the lack of posts- the holidays just get crazy! Asa and I made these little turkey cookies to go at each placle setting. Royal Icing is great for the smooth, hard finish but it just doesn't have that buttery taste. So I experimented and used the royal icing technique with a "buttercream" frosting. I simply melted 1/2c. butter and mixed in nearly a bag of pwd sugar, 1tsp vanilla, and then enough milk to pipe. Then thinned it out for flooding. We let them dry out overnight. It worked pretty well, and tasted great - but we have some perfecting to do before I'm 100% sure! I'll post more if it works out.

Here's our favorite sugar cookie recipe.

Winter Bouquet Shoot

Halloween Costumes

Here's our kiddos all set for the party! Thanks to pinterest for inspiration! Ida was a candy corn and our little boy was Johnny Cash.

I sewed a really basic pillowcase dress for the candy corn.  I just googled some pillowcase dresses for reference and here's what it ended up being. It measures about 14in long (all said and done with 5/8in seams) and 16in wide.  I left 5/8in casing up top for the ribbon and cut triangles off the top two corners (for her arms).  I lined it for extra warmth and as an easy way to get the arm holes done.

Johnny Cash was pretty easy.  Asa had the guitar, my husband had the belt buckle and those were his boots when he was little.  A little black hair dye and a trip to Ross for pants and a shirt and there you have it!

Real Parties: Kids Carving Party

Sorry for the blogging silence!  I really don't have any specific excuse other than the normal busy with kids and playing catch up!
My family grew up carving pumpkins together every year and we still regularly get together to carve.    This past weekend we had a casual carving party at our place.  Super easy and fun! The night before I ran out to the dollar tree, grabbed a few things for some decor, and that was that. The best thing about this party was that from the set-up to the clean up it was kid friendly. Asa (he's two in a half by the way) was able to help me decorate everything.  He helped me make the cookies, cut them out, and patiently sat spreading the icing with a toothpick.  I was impressed at how careful he was! He even held off eating them until his friends and cousin came over. (My mom's sugar cookie recipe is really the best. I did a faux royal icing which tastes better than actual royal icing, but nothing beats a buttercream so I added on some canned last minute.)

I got a bunch of googly eyes at the dollar store and Asa and I taped them on the cups and plates.  He saw Monster's Inc recently so this made him extremely excited.

Yup.  Here's my crazy helper.

I despise mice.  I have a phobia of them.  My sister-in-law picked these up for one of our parties a couple years back and I held on to them.  But it really took a lot for me to handle these things.

Plastic tablecloth from the dollar tree works great for cleaning up all the pumpkin goop. 

Mummy dogs have been popping up all over pinterest so we got some crescent dough, cut it into strips, and wrapped them up.  Asa helped wrap them up too!  Great kid activities.

When it came to the actual carving part, well the kids headed downstairs and we carved.  My brother does extremely detailed pumpkins.  He created cinderella's pumpkin coach a week ago for his daughter!   (The garland in the background there is just a package of foam pumpkins from the dollar tree stapled to black ribbon.)

They spent the evening doing a bunch of this.

The finished product.

Shamrock Cupcakes

We had a St. Patty's Day dinner to go to and I didn't want to or have the time to spend hours on dessert, so I went with a basic vanilla cupcake from Hello Cupcake and just tweaked it a bit.  I added a mint "buttercream" to mimic the mint oreos and that was that!  (Asa LOVED helping out by adding/eating the oreos.)

Ingredients:

2 3/4 c + 1 T cake flour (I switched to cake flour they called for 2 1/2 c all purpose)

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 c milk (I used 1/4 milk 1/4 half/half since I had some that needed to be used up)

1/2 c vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

1 c sugar

3 large eggs

1 c chopped mint oreos

Preheat oven to 350.  Line 24 muffin cups

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Combine the milk, oil, and vanilla in a separate bowl.

With an electric mixer on medium, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy - about 3min.

Add the eggs, one at a time.  Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture alternately with the milk - beginning and ending with the flour.  Beat just till blended

Add the oreos.

Spoon the batter into the muffin cups.

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean.  15-20min.  (less on convection)

Cool on a wire rack.

Frosting:

(this is an approximation since I didn't measure)

6 T butter softened

3-4 c pwd sugar

vanilla

milk or half/half

mint extract

green food coloring

Beat butter with an electric mixer until fluffy.  Add pwd sugar on low and slowly incorporate.  Add 1/2 tsp vanilla and a few drops of mint extract.  Add milk 1 T at a time until it reaches the right consistency.  Add food coloring and beat.  Frost and top with an oreo!

 Hello Cupcake is a great and easy book for kid's cupcakes!  (As is the sequel- What's New Cupcake?)

Shamrock Cake

Isn't this Shamrock Cake great??!  This is from i am baker.  It's a similar idea to the rainbow cake I'm sure you've seen around - but really fun!

St. Patrick's Day Coasters

Twig and Thistle has some more great free downloads!!  St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner!

Melting Peppermints

I saw on Cooking Light peppermint topped brownies and I thought it would be a lot of fun to make mini "gingerbread" houses out of brownies with peppermint roofs to put at each place for the kids - but brownies do not work for this.  And since it was last minute anyway I scrapped the idea and just went with their original idea.  But next year I plan to try this again using a chocolate cake.  I'll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime - melting peppermints is a breeze.
Heat oven to 300 F.
Line a pan with parchment paper and mark out 1.5 - 1.75 in squares on the back side (you don't really need to do this and if your peppermints seem bigger go farther apart, smaller go closer together.  Since mine didn't melt perfectly together I swirled them with a toothpick.)
Wait 10-15min.
When them come out score with a pizza cutter along your lines.  Once cool they'll break right apart.

Christmas Cookie Boxes

This year I used little white boxes (from Michaels-they're actually mug boxes) to package our cookies for friends and neighbors.

I bought a huge thing of red and white twine awhile back and have used it for lots of things - but this might be my favorite!  It looks so festive for Christmas! A "ho ho ho" stamp on some labels and ... done! Simple and easy! Asa enjoyed the packaging too - I'd turn around to find a few cookies missing and a small trail of crumbs to wherever he was.

I got the twine from Amazon - should last awhile...!  Other places like Divine Twine sell it in other colors.

Anthropologie Gifts!

I got this butter dish from Anthropologie for a friend of mine - but I'm really tempted to keep it!  (And hopefully she doesn't take a look here before I give it to her...)

Tinsel and Glitter

Some centerpieces for a work party - I used tinsel in the bottom to reflect off the candles and glittered boughs in the vases. (I'm still finding glitter everywhere!)

Gingerbread Houses

Back in highschool my sister and I started doing gingerbread houses.  Nothing extravagant - just classic houses for fun!  Over the years I've gone through a lot of gingerbread recipes, interesting patterns (which resulted in the use of a glue gun on multiple years), and various icing recipes. (Side Note: muffin pans work great for holding all the various kinds of candy.)

Last year I was fed up with trying to get the shape just right so that it would hold together - when it bakes it inevitably spreads! - and purchased this gingerbread house mold.

This works great although a little time consuming.  One side creates a brick house (see below) and the other creates a log one (see bottom).  I bake the dough directly in the pan, lightly greased, to maintain shape.  No question of bad fits and pretty easy.  This is actually my brother and sister-in-laws' house.  (Mine is at the bottom.)  They tend to take a lot of time decorating theirs...

Here's the recipe I used this year.  I added 1 tsp cinnamon, some cloves and nutmeg and used a little less flour.  It wasn't great tasting but I wanted to do a recipe with shortening rather than butter because most people tend to eat the candy, if anything, and not the house.  Why waste the butter!?

This year I tried out a Fluffy Meringue Icing from the Wilton recipe that's included in the can.  This worked great!  It doesn't dry rock hard like royal icing, has a great sheen and is pure white.  Just a tad sticky to work with!  (Make sure to keep plastic wrap over the bowl while you're going along.)

Money Shirt, Tie, and Pants

  Here's the shirt and tie video I used and the shirt and pants.  (These are great for Father's Day money gifts.  Also fun for leaving tips except that I have to follow the instructions step by step right now!)