Spring Break Recap

March 19, 2018 No Comments

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Spring Break Fun

I started teaching straight out of college, and haven’t stopped since. My husband has been a teacher for the better part of the last decade. We are lucky to be able to enjoy Spring Break each year as part of our scheduled time off. This year was slightly different, though, because we now officially have a boy in school. This was his first true Spring Break experience, and he was so excited for a vacation and extended time at home.

We had an ambitious Spring Break to-do list, and I think we did pretty well in whittling things off of it. We had a fair amount of in-home and out & busy days. I tend to get overwhelmed at holidays because we are on the go constantly for most of the time. This break felt like we had some good time to relax, with some out-of-the-norm activities sprinkled in.

Yardwork

We started out by tackling some yard projects. The weather here has been incredibly nice (and at times downright hot – but I keep trying to tell myself to cherish this “hot” because come August I’ll be wishing for 85!) So we took advantage of the opportunity to get outside and get started on our mile-long to do list.

Lava Rock Bed Be Gone!

The first for Kyle was a big bed of lava rock outside of our back door that’s been here since we moved in. We still aren’t sure what exactly is going to happen with this space, but we were in agreement that “bed-of-rock with weeds” wasn’t it. The boys helped him remove the lava rock, and he made several trips to our city dump for free mulch. Some people frown upon the free mulch – “You just don’t know what’s in that!” … but, for me, free = getting it.

For now it’s been transformed into a mulch bed with our cinder block bench (fresh with new cushions).

Butterfly Garden

Last summer we were gifted a new swing set. We loved our old one, but it did not hold up very well after moving from house to house. There’s a butterfly garden at one of the parks in town, and the kids love it. The boys and I decided we would transform our old swing set into a hub for a butterfly garden of our own. We did not do so well last year with this. I think we got started a little bit late, and by the time we got going, plants were out of stock and it was too hot for anything to be happy out there.

This year I decided we’d get a jump on things, so we went right after school on Friday to speak with our local nurseryman. (We actually worked with his wife this time!) She helped us take a look at our space and our list of plants that the Internet says are good for butterfly gardens to come up with a plan.

We were able to get a few things going, and our plant stand for pots got a fresh coat of paint. There are a few more plants in the plan that will really change the look of things. But I’ll go ahead and share what we’ve got going on so far! I plan to write a post detailing the make-up of our garden once we get it all established!

Update: We’ve had some visitors! Come read about what kinds of butterflies we’ve been attracting to the butterfly garden.

Craft Projects

What break would be complete without craft projects?! Not one of mine, that’s for sure. I was so happy to get a fresh coat of paint on that plant stand – but that wasn’t even one of my planned projects. There were only a few things on my list for Spring Break crafting, and I was happy to be able to fit them in.

Doormat DIY

I have been seeing cute DIY doormats all over social media lately, and I was itching to get us a fresh one. Our old one was a gift from our sweet realtors when we bought this house, which means it was almost two years old. The lifespan of a doormat is not that long. I was excited and nervous to try painting my own mat. Usually stenciling is a task I tackle with confidence and end up disappointed with in the end. However, stenciling on these coir doormats is a dream. No bleeding! What!?

I went back and forth on whether to do a silly saying or something more traditional like a monogram or “welcome.” But I’ve already got a little sign for my house number with our last initial and the word welcome, so silly saying it is. If you can’t have fun on a doormat, what can you have fun with, right?

Now I want to stencil/paint my porch too. Kyle thinks I’m crazy. *Update: If you want to see how I made this, I wrote a quick tutorial for stenciling a doormat.

T-shirt Mania

I recently bought a new Cricut (an electronic die-cutting machine). I already had a Cricut, but just like anything else, it became outdated. The old ones only cut images from cartridges that you had to purchase, so the things I could cut were very limited. New Cricuts cut any image or font you have on your computer. So the cutting world is your oyster. So far I’ve made some vinyl names for steel cups, a few t-shirts, stencils for signs (and my doormat!), and a few other random gifts. If you’ve been on the fence about buying one, or are just now climbing up on the hypothetical fence, do it!!

I wanted to make shirts for my smallest guys since I’d only made a shirt for the oldest. My middle child (the Halloween lover!) wanted a pumpkin shirt in another color, and I still get to pick what the baby gets! I fulfilled the pumpkin request, and put some Drake lyrics on a tiny shirt.

Day Trippin’

We took a few day trips for the kids to do some fun things in neighboring towns. They loved all of them, so the travel time was worth it!

Waco

We live about an hour or so from Waco, and I joined my mom and sister for a trip to Magnolia to experience the Chip and JoJo mania. Each time I’ve been it’s crazy busy and crowded, and I haven’t bought anything. But it’s always fun to get out of the house for a bit anyway! We also hit up Spice Village, which is a cute collection of boutiques in one space. Definitely worth the walk a few blocks over from Magnolia.

Mayborn Museum

My husband and his mom ended up taking the kids to Waco on the same day that I was there. But they did not go for shopping, they were headed to Baylor’s campus to the Mayborn Children’s Museum. We were able to meet up with them after lunch and take on the 2nd floor of the museum. There were many interactive exhibits for the kids, and all three boys found things to enjoy. Their collective favorite was the big water table. Of course! Here they are in the old-timey village learning how to crush herbs.

Epic Waters

The city of Grand Prairie recently opened a large indoor water park, and my family made a plan to check it out over Spring Break. The boys had a blast playing in the water. My oldest was a huge fan of the kid-sized water slides, the 3 year old just kind of “swam” (layed horizontally and walked along with his hands!), and the 1 year old got a kick out of the floor fountains. They all thoroughly enjoyed themselves in their own ways and are ready to go back. It was crowded, but not in the way that makes things un-fun. The facility keeps track of how many people they are letting in at a given time, so there is some level of crowd control. Word of advice if you plan on visiting – buy tickets online before you go! Otherwise, plan on a very long wait outside.

Birthday Fun

Our last out of town activity was a trip a couple hours away to celebrate two of our cousins’ birthdays. The guys got to go swimming in March again (twice in one week!?), and the big boys stayed at the Embassy Suites with their grandparents. Kyle and I took advantage of the kid-free dinner to stop on our way back home and eat our favorite – Pei Wei. Turns out Noles likes lettuce wraps! The trip was mostly great, except for little man terrorizing his brothers the whole way. This can’t be comfy!

I also sorted, packed, and delivered the first of many loads of baby boy clothes to my sister-in-law, who is expecting her first boy. While it’s great to clear out some storage space, and kind of fun to think about getting to be done with the “baby phase,” I did shed some tears while preparing to officially close the door on that stage of life. I am super happy that the clothes are going to a family member and I’ll get to see some of them again, though!!

Springbreaksgiving

And of course, we celebrated Springbreaksgiving. If you’re not sure what that word means, go read this post! We had a lot of fun, and though I was insanely worried, we had enough food! I made Kyle run out at the last minute to buy some totally unnecessary chicken strips for the kids, but I was honestly convinced we were going to invite all these people over and run out of meat. A few expected guests were unable to come, but I think we probably would’ve been okay even if they had! The kids had a great time playing, and we enjoyed the time with our family, friends, and neighbors. The weather was great, and the food was delicious. I spent much of the day Wednesday and all morning Thursday cleaning like a madwoman, but my house is already back in post-tornado condition. Oh well, what can ya do?

Almost Summer

The only silver lining to Spring Break ending is the 2nd half of the spring semester generally flies by. I’ll wake up soon and be stressing out about not having enough teaching days left in the semester before my students take their final exam.

Life keeps getting more and more fun as the boys get older, and I’m excited to get into summer and make more memories as a family, both in and out of the house! What did you get accomplished this Spring Break?

Holidays

Springbreaksgiving

February 21, 2018 2 Comments

What Even Is Entertaining?

When my husband and I watch shows like Fixer Upper and House Hunters, we are always struck by the number of times we hear, “Oh! This would be great for entertaining!” I don’t know if it’s just a certain type of super extroverted personality that gets cast for television shows or if we are just seriously out of the norm, but entertaining others is not a regular function of my house. Sure, we have people over every now and again. But “entertaining” is definitely not tops on our list of activities. Maybe that’s actually because my housekeeping skills can be categorized as “disastrous.” But they’d stay that way even if I did have a sweet island in my kitchen perfect for chatting over finger foods while the guys grilled steaks on our stellar deck. (Complete with an outdoor kitchen of course). And that last sentence was a little bit sexist, but also true.

However, I do get the allure of entertaining. I love the sounds of the whole family filling the house. I love spending time with our families and friends, and it always leaves me with a sense of satisfaction knowing people left my house after a good time. It’s always like 100 degrees in my house after a group of visitors leaves, but I truly do enjoy it. Maybe there’s lots of people who are better homemakers than I, or those who are better than me at actually planning and scheduling things, or are just more social. Maybe they truly do entertain frequently, but I don’t feel like I know any of those people. Are y’all out there hosting get-togethers that you don’t even post on Facebook?!

The truth is, I wish I hosted friends and family more often, but I truly “entertain” only four times per year. I have three kids, so 75% of those gatherings are birthday parties. The one other time I fill my home with people is for Springbreaksgiving. My made-up, totally unnecessary, definitely not mandatory, only actually important to me holiday. (In my head right now I’m legit singing “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” I don’t think that’s what that song’s about!)

The History of Springbreaksgiving

It all started my last year living away at college. My roommate and I decided to host a Thanksgiving meal for our friends before everyone left for actual Thanksgiving break, and I loved it. I loved cooking for everyone, I loved having everyone in our apartment, I loved seeing the empty plates stacked around, and I loved that we were the hostesses of a good day. The only problem (and you may be aware of this if you have friends who celebrate Friendsgiving) is that once you have a Thanksgiving meal, the anticipation of all that delicious food is gone. The food is still awesome even if you eat it back to back to back, but the sheer excitement of tasting those foods we save for the holidays only lasts until the first gathering. And multiple gatherings close together gets exhausting.

I loooooove Thanksgiving food. I wanted to host Thanksgiving. But my husband and I both have family traditions, and those shoes were filled on both sides. So, one year when turkeys were on sale, I bought one and froze it to use later. I ended up hosting a Thanksgiving meal during Spring Break. Springbreaksgiving was born. We have quite a few teachers in the family, so Spring Break is a good time to get everyone together. It’s several months removed from the holidays and not in the middle of summer when travel and activity schedules get crazy. So it’s generally a time where people can make room for an afternoon together. The official celebration occurs on the Thursday of Spring Break week – which has caused issue in the past as different schools try to get cute with what week they are off!

The Big Event

Our Springbreaksgiving menu is basically the same as my family’s Thanksgiving menu, but we try some fun things that are “frowned upon” at the real Thanksgiving. Like instead of pumpkin pie, we can test out a pumpkin pie cheesecake. (I asked once to bring this to Thanksgiving and was shot. down.) Or instead of candied yams we can have the copycat Ruth’s Chris sweet potatoes – if you haven’t tried these, try them! Though now we make BOTH sweet potato dishes as we now have lovers of both types. I can’t bear to disappoint my husband. Candied yams are seriously like the only thing he truly enjoys about Thanksgiving food. I get the joy of having my favorite meal of the year twice, and March really is pretty far from November, so it doesn’t feel like we just ate this stuff.

I never really know who will be at Springbreaksgiving, but I always invite our families first. We have a relatively large family, so if they all come it’s quite a crowd and I don’t think I could accommodate any extra folks. If it looks like several of our family members are busy or out of town, I then invite a few friends or neighbors to join the party! I can’t really describe the looks I get when I invite an outsider to come. It’s kind of a progression from confusion to acceptance to excitement. But I always like it when we get to let somebody else in on our weird little holiday. Part of me hopes they’ll think of it later and want to host their own. A big part of me hopes if anyone reads this that you’ll want to host your own. Or come to mine … maybe I need to have one in the summer for neighbors and friends too!

The Future of Springbreaksgiving

My absolute favorite part about this holiday is that my kids think it is like a real actual thing that people do. My oldest son was born just after the 2nd celebration, so it’s been going on for their whole lives. I will keep hosting this holiday as long as I can forsee, and I hope the tradition sticks with my kids and their families too. How fun is it to think that maybe decades down the road there could be several branches of my family tree getting together for a no longer made-up, totally unnecessary, definitely not mandatory, only actually important to me holiday?

Do you have any “extra” holidays or excuses for entertaining?

Holidays

The Easiest Halloween Party Food for Kids EVER

September 25, 2017 No Comments

Easy Halloween Party food

*This post contains affiliate links. That means if you purchase an item from a link on this post, I’ll receive a small commission – at no extra cost to you!

Halloween Party Food

When I was prepping for my middle man’s Halloween Birthday bash I searched a lot of Halloween party ideas on Pinterest and Google. If you do the same, you’ll find that there are several different types of Halloween party. One of those is the nasty/gross type. My son loves Halloween, but Halloween to him is about fun ghosts and pumpkins – not gross gory weird stuff! Maybe that’s why I have not really ever been into Halloween.

I haaaaate the gross stuff. Like a lot. But helping him celebrate the holiday 365 has reminded me that it does not have to be disgusting or even scary (though we do like stuff to be a little bit “spooky”). There is a lot about Halloween that is just fun and silly. So these Halloween food ideas are a small sample of the fun and silly side of Halloween, all approved by the 3 year old man of the hour for his Halloween birthday party.

Prep Ahead!

Some of the foods here are special treats that require preparation ahead of time. Others are literally foods you dump out and set a label on. My kids love coming up with silly names for regular foods for their parties – and I’m not complaining because that’s one less thing I have to make. I like to have fun foods for any party, but I hate when I’m in the kitchen after everything has started still trying to get everything ready. We’ll get started with the ones that require a bit of prep ahead of time – and then finish up with the dump and go! I’ll share my food labels too at the end of the post, so if you want to print those off for use at your party feel free!

Before Party Day:

We were able to knock out several of the food items before party day. Which was super helpful because I had to clean my house (ish) on party day and make big boy’s cake the day before, so I did not have time to be making a bunch of stuff.

Eyeball Bites –

AKA Cake mix cookies with eyeball sprinkles. These bad boys were a party hit with the kids. There were one or two left, and my children argued over who would get the last eyeball. (They split it, and I got another sprinkle from the cabinet. Because I had them, and why not.) These were made the afternoon before the party and stored in a plastic container overnight. I had never made cake mix cookies before, but they are like crazy easy. If you are needing colored cookies, I would definitely recommend these over sitting there squeezing in dye to your mix. I used this mix:

And I must admit it was a little weird when the “Vibrant Green” cake mix came out blue. Where is the yellow?! We need green! Anyway the most popular cake mix cookie recipe on the Internet (no stats to back this up, it’s the first one when you search Google) calls for 2 eggs and 1/2 cup oil. So I dumped in 1/2 cup of oil. Then I had the thought… “That was not a lot of cake mix…” Turns out these tiny packages are NOT 18.25 oz standard cake mixes. More like 9. Soooo I now had double the oil in my mix.

We did not have another mix, I’d already poured in 1/2 cup, so I figured it was worth 1 egg to try and salvage this stuff. So I carefully spooned out 1/4 cup of now green oil and just tried my best to not get too many cake mix bits out too. In went the egg, and I mixed ’em up, scooped ’em out, and baked at 350 for about 5-7 minutes. I did some with the “eyeball” before baking, some I stuck it on after – because there’s no info out there about when to add the eyeball to your cookie, and I didn’t know. Turns out I liked the “add the eyeball before” cookies better. The boys loved them.

Monster Spit

AKA Water. My 5 year old was super excited about his “Wartortle Water” at his Pokemon party, and really wanted to name the water for his brother’s party. We came up with Monster Spit (though later my husband said he thought Monster Slobber was better… but it was too late.) I had the labels printed off on cardstock, cut them into strips, then my awesome husband put them on the water bottles with clear packing tape.

We didn’t even bother to remove the original bottle labels beforehand, because it honestly seemed pointless. I want my kids’ parties to be great, but I’m not trying to spend 3 hours replacing labels on water bottles. We have not tried this method with bottles in a cooler, so I don’t know if the ink would bleed from the melting ice or not. They hold up really well in the fridge though! Scroll to the bottom of the post for the printable water label if you like!

Spooky Ghosts

AKA String Cheese. My son loves string cheese, so when I came across this idea I knew we had to have it. These were so easy. I used a sharpie, and drew on some circle ghost faces. Hardest part of these was just tearing apart the cheese sticks and praying that the tear wouldn’t go crazy and accidentally open them!

Jack-O-Lanterns

AKA Mandarin Oranges. Do y’all love these as much as we do? I get frustrated when I accidentally pick up a bag that are not the easy peel ones, and even the easy peel ones I have to peel for my kids, but when these are good, they’re good. This one was also a simple draw-on. I used a food writer instead of a sharpie because I wasn’t sure how permeable an orange peel was. These stumped a dad at the party for a minute! He said he had to do a double take to figure out what I was serving!

Worm Food

AKA Pudding with Oreos and Gummy worms. This was just a classic dirt-and-worms dessert scooped into cups! One of my all time favorite desserts. Mix chocolate pudding (according to package) and incorporate with a package of cream cheese that has been beaten with 1/2 cup of sugar. Fold in a container of Cool Whip, and the pudding is done! The ‘dirt’ is just Oreos that have gone through the chopper. I did wait until party day to top the pudding with the dirt and worms.

On Party Day

These are the things I did on the day of the party. Nearly all of them were “dump and go.”

Mummies

AKA Hotdogs wrapped in crescent rolls! I opened a can of crescents, pressed the perforated edges closed, then cut little strips with a pizza cutter. After that I took the strips, wrapped one per hotdog, and baked according to the crescent roll package. These were more of a hit than I could have imagined at the party. The kids loved this one!!

Creepy Carrots

AKA Carrots, Cauliflower, and Broccoli. This one was for the non-junk eaters (yes we have those!) It was super easy to do, and I used olives for the jack-o-lantern features. Done in a flash. We almost always have a veggie tray anyway, so it was crazy easy to just dump them in a pumpkin shape.

Zombie Eyes

AKA Grapes. That’s right. I just poured some grapes on a plate. The sign did the work.

And last but not least,

Pumpkin Skins

AKA Nacho Cheese Doritos. My 5 year old came up with this one and was so proud. I loved it. Another dump and go item with a clever name.

The Cake

My son requested a “pumpkin with sprinkles” for his birthday cake, so I delivered on that. This cake was incredibly easy to do. Read more here about how I put it together!

The food for your party does not have to be 100% homebaked and difficult. Planning a party is hard work, especially if it’s at your house that you’re trying to clean too! Feel free to use my food labels for personal use only! Hopefully they can make your party planning a little bit easier!

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Holidays

Halloween Pumpkin Cake

August 25, 2017 No Comments

Halloween cake

*This post contains affiliate links. That means if you purchase an item after clicking a link in this post, I’ll receive a small commission – at no extra charge to you!

Bake Me a Pumpkin Cake!

We recently threw a Halloween (birthday) party for my three year old. His birthday is in August, but he’s batty for Halloween (see what I did there?) – so we went with it. You can read about the party as a whole here, but I wanted to give a few more details about the good stuff – the food – so we’ll start with the cake!

I decorate cakes sometimes as a side hobby/job. Which may sound at first like it’s a great thing when it comes to planning my kids’ birthday parties. It’s a double edged sword though. On one hand, I don’t have to pick a cake from the book at Wal-Mart. And I’m able to give my kids a custom cake that doesn’t break the bank. Because my budget is definitely going to land my kids a grocery store cake if I’m not doing it myself. (I feel like I should say that I actually love the Wal-Mart whipped icing. Like I sometimes actually crave it. But I don’t want to make my kids pick a sheet cake when they know good and well I can make them something else!)

I also don’t have to worry about a cake surviving a drive. I hate cake driving! And I’m pretty sure everyone else on the road hates cake driving too. (I know my husband especially hates cake driving when he’s the one doing it. Because I can’t control my gasps and need to grip the door handles on every turn.) Next time someone is driving like crazy slow in front of you, take a deep breath. Convince yourself they’re delivering some kid the birthday cake of their dreams. It’ll help calm you down. Maybe. I also don’t have to worry about somebody spelling my child’s name wrong or sending us a cake wreck. Not all of my cakes have turned out perfectly, but I don’t recall any TOTAL disasters. Okay, maybe one.

These points are all great reminders of why it’s nice to be able to bake my own cakes. However, I always tell my children to take their expectations down a notch for their cakes. Because I’m not just making their cake, I’m having to do decorations and other food and clean my house too! So it makes for a bit more work on top of regular birthday planning. Therefore, I need the cake to be easy and fast when it’s for us.

Super Easy Halloween Pumpkin Cake

I asked my son what he wanted for his Halloween birthday cake, and his only requests were “sprinkles and pumpkins.” So I went literal, and gave that boy a sprinkle explosion topped with a pumpkin. He loved it. To me it kind of looked more like a sprinkle disaster, but kids do. not. care. I don’t know what it is about sprinkles, but they want them on donuts, cakes, and anywhere else they’ll stick.

Make it Work

I cannot tell you how easy this pumpkin cake was. The pumpkin part alone would be plenty for a small party. I just needed a place for the requested sprinkles so I did two tiers!

The Bottom Tier

The bottom cake tier was assembled from two 9″ round cakes. I leveled my layers with a cake leveler (a serrated knife would work fine too!), placed one on a 12″ cake board, then iced them with buttercream. The iced bottom cake went in the fridge for about 10-15 minutes to let the buttercream get somewhat set so that as I tried to press sprinkles into the cake I didn’t wind up with a palm full of icing. I could not find Halloween sprinkles anywhere (because remember – this was an August party!!) so I went with a bright blue/green/white round sprinkle mixture along with orange and black nonpareils.

In hindsight, I definitely should have just picked one of those color schemes, because I did not love them all mixed together. And not to mention, the different sizes of sprinkles didn’t adhere to the cake uniformly, so keep that in mind too if you’re mixing several types of sprinkles! Again though, the man of the hour was thrilled with the sprinkle situation, so I am happy.

*Note – if you are making a tiered cake as pictured, and are not familiar with how to stack cakes read the tips at the bottom of this post!

The Pumpkin Construction

Once the bottom cake was sprinkled, I began work on the pumpkin. For this element I baked two bundt cakes, leveled them, and built the pumpkin cut-sides together – with a healthy heap of buttercream in between, of course. There was a gaping hole in the middle of my pumpkin, so I filled it with scraps from the leveling. (I did not serve the scraps in the middle! They were just in there so I could have a surface built up to ice as the middle of the pumpkin & to set my stem on!)

The Icing

I dyed my icing orange using gel food coloring. I would highly recommend buying gel coloring if you are coloring buttercream, as liquid coloring will cause your icing texture to change and possibly separate. To get the icing on the pumpkin smooth, I iced the cake first not caring what it looked like – just getting icing for coverage. I then took my small angled spatula, and starting at the bottom of the pumpkin ran it up and over the top smoothing toward the center. I went all the way around the pumpkin doing this, making sure each stroke slightly overlapped the one before. This ended up leaving small vertical ridges of icing where the strokes were. But I actually liked that since pumpkins don’t have a smooth surface anyhow!

The Face & Stem

The facial features were cut from black fondant. You can get it cheap at a craft store with a 40% or 50% off coupon if this is all you need it for! I was stumped on what to do for the stem. I did not want to just put a huge ball of brown fondant in the middle as that seemed wasteful. So I ended up using a little bit more of those cake scraps from the leveling mixed with some extra icing to form a cakeball stem. Then I coated it with chocolate candy melts that I had left over from the time I bought the stuff for (but then forgot) to make a treat to take over to our new neighbors. Oops. Perhaps I should take them a belated welcome treat? Maybe one cakeball stem?

In the end, the birthday boy loved his cake, and it was not so time consuming that I couldn’t get anything else done! That’s my kind of cake.

*For stacking cakes, you’ll want to make sure that the top tier has a cardboard cake circle underneath it approximately the same size as the bottom of the pumpkin. The bottom tier will need some sort of supports added so that the weight of the top tier does not crush the bottom one over time. You can either cut 4-6 wooden dowel rods or straws cut to the height of the bottom cake. Evenly space them so that the top cake will rest on them. The dowel rods will be a stronger choice than straws if the cake will be sitting for a long time.

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