Back to School

Both of the children are now back in school full time (Grace started a day before Harris but it was a half-day) and I sort of can't believe that just like that, the summer is over.  I now have a 7th grader and a 4th grader!  Boy, that makes me feel old considering that when I started this blog Grace was going into 1st grade!  What a difference from then and now in how big they look and how they handle getting their stuff together and bags packed by themselves instead of me doing it all for them!

We had our traditional "back to school dinner" of alphabet soup and alphabet breadsticks.  I asked the children if they would like to mix it up and have different food since they are well past the alphabet stage but they chose to stay with our old tradition!

This year I made a pencil cake which I thought turned out very cute.  It's clearly not even close to perfect but no one seemed to care.  I literally decorated the cake while the soup was simmering and while making breadsticks- it was that easy (my Mom place the points on each pencil!).

Grace started off dinner by making a very cute and funny speech that she had prepared and typed up.

And this happened.  Bryce took matters into his own hands and cut Harris' fro hair.  I waited till the last minute to schedule a haircut and there were no appointments before school started.  Harris really wanted a trim so Bryce went for it.  I must say, he did a great job!

P.S.  Please note that Grace wore a dress to school!

Party Popcorn

For Grace's birthday treat at school we sent in Party Popcorn!  It fit several requirements of ours- it wasn't loaded with sugar, was gluten free*, and was fun and festive to serve to friends!

I found the recipe here but sort of played it by ear since I popped our own popcorn.  It was so easy and literally only took 10 minutes to make!  I eyeballed how much popcorn would feed the whole class and then melted about 8 ounces of white chocolate chips (if you add a teaspoon of canola/vegetable oil to the white chocolate chips they will melt smoothly and not get weird and goopy) and poured it right over the popcorn in the bowl.  After we mixed up the chocolate and popcorn, Grace went to town pouring sprinkles over the popcorn!

To make serving the popcorn a little easier for the classroom teacher, we packed individual amounts in  wax bags and sealed them with a fun sticker I made on the computer and printed out.  Grace reported that the Party Popcorn was a big hit with the class!

*A classmate cannot have gluten and we wanted to make something the whole class could enjoy the treat

A Mustache Cake

Grace had a lovely birthday spent with her family!  In two weeks time, she is having two of her best friends over for a sleepover to celebrate, but we celebrated her actual birthday with family joining us for dinner and a mustache cake!  As you may remember, Grace loves mustaches so it was a natural choice to make her cake in the shape of one.  This was the first year that Bryce and I didn't stay up late into the night making Grace's cake!  Instead, I made it during the day and Grace was around to watch it get iced.  However, it didn't get finished until after the sun went down so I'm pretty unhappy with the pictures.  Natural light just can't be beat.

It was an easy cake to put together since it only required one cut down the middle of a round cake.  We chose to pipe on the dark chocolate buttercream, but it could easily be "combed" with a fork.  I had every intention of mixing in sprinkles to make a "funfetti" type of cake, but I completely forgot to add them to the batter!

To help liven up the cake, we used cute Happy Birthday candles that I found at Target.  I word of warning though- they melt really quickly and there is a good chance that by the time you finish lighting them all, the first few letters will have already disappeared!

Heart Thumbprint Cookies

The children always enjoy giving their Grandparents Valentines, but this year we got to it a little late which means that the Grandparents who live in Colorado will be receiving belated Valentines (sorry Al and Marilyn!).  We kept it simple and 100% kid doable by making Thumbprint Cookies.  We added our own twist by using thumbprints on each cookie to form a heart.

I think this is such a sweet Valentine since it doesn't have to be perfect and literally has the children's prints on it!

Thumbprint Heart Cookies

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

2/3 cup sugar

2 egg yolks 

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

strawberry jam (we used maybe 1/2 a cup- if even that)

1.  Cream together the butter and sugar for several minutes, until they look light and fluffy.  Add the egg yolks and beat until combined.

2.  Mix together flour and salt in a separate bowl.  Gradually add the dry ingredients into the wet and beat until smooth.

3.  Form balls from the dough, place onto a parchment lined baking sheet, then use your thumb to make two indentations to form a heart.  These will be very irregular and imprecise but that's part of the charm!

4.  Put strawberry jam into indentations on your cookies.  We popped our jam into the microwave for about 10 seconds before we put it into the heart indentations to make it a little easier to work with. 

5.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes but don't let them brown.  Let cool completely.

This is a recipe from Grace's cookie book, The Cookiepedia by Stacy Adimando (we have not tried a cookie recipe from this book that we don't think is delicious, highly recommend the book).  I love how Grace is writing in her cookbooks too.

An Olympic Gathering

It's been well documented our love for the Olympics.  So when we had a school event to go to on Friday evening, during the opening ceremonies, we were a tad disappointed.  Instead of missing out we just recorded and watched Saturday evening.  Our friends joined us since it wouldn't be a Winter Olympics without them!

(how great is Ron's vintage sweater and Elliot's vintage hat?)

I went with a winter sports theme for the night!  I saw these adorable drink stirrers on Oh, Happy Day and just had to make them.  I went with plastic dowels, that Bryce cut in half, instead of wooden dowels, and I glued the little HO scale figures directly to the top.  They are high on the cute scale!  Everyone enjoyed picking out their sportsperson for the night.

The children drank Sprite with Olympic rings on the bottom (aka: lifesavers).

Gretchen brought an around the world cheese plate with cheese from different countries- complete with appropriate flags!

For dinner, we had Shepherd's Pie because that's all I could think of that had a "snowy" surface.  I think it turned out so cute, my favorite part being that the "snow" is groomed with a fork!   It's the details that make me happy!

We also had a salad with mini mozzarella snowballs.

For dessert, I made a downhill skiing cake that I spotted on You are My Fave.  I followed her instructions to the T and it turned out adorable.

We don't have laurel growing in the back yard but we do have ivy!  Grace made us ivy wreaths for the occasion!

Snow Ice-cream

The children have another snow day today and as I type Harris is setting up the monopoly board for an "epic" game in front of the fire.  Before I join him I wanted to first share our afternoon snack from yesterday because it was a revelation to all of us, and we couldn't figure out why we've never made snow ice cream before.  It was delicious!

I certainly didn't make up this recipe and, in fact, when I googled the recipe it came up dozens of times so I'm not even sure how to trace it back to an original source.  It's very simple and straight forward and takes five minutes or less to make!

Snow Ice-cream

1 cup milk

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 cups fresh, clean snow

I mixed the first three ingredients together and then poured it over the snow in a bowl.  Simply stir it altogether and enjoy.  We found that sprinkles really livened it up!

Sixth and Third Graders

As I type this I find it preposterous that I now have a 6th grader.  6th grade.  As in middle school! Since Grace is continuing on at Waldorf we don't have that big transition to a bigger school so it doesn't feel like it's quite as big of a deal as it would have had she stayed in the public school system but still.  6th grade.  

Harris is in third grade and is thrilled that his best buddies are in his class.  I was thrilled that he still will hold my hand walking to school.

The contents of their school cones this year.

Back to School Dinner

A note: as I was uploading these photos I was a bit discouraged at how bad they were (dark, not very well laid out, etc.) but then I remembered this is our real life and not a styled shoot!  It would be a bit silly of me to make everyone wait for stretches of time while I got shots of the table and who really wants to eat cold alphabet soup?

Last night we had our annual Back to School Dinner!

Menu

Alphabet Soup with Rosemary Meatballs

Lettered Dinner Rolls

Notebook Paper Cake

Milk with pencil straws

A yellow straw + a bit of duck tape + a starburst shaped like an eraser was cute with our milk and went well with the notebook cake.  

As you can tell, I decorated this cake in about 10 minutes flat.  We didn't have straight lines but nobody seemed to care!

We also discussed our goals for the new school year.  Grace is working toward learning how to read sheet music and really working hard at Math.  Harris would like to meet someone new and write more often.  

Popcorn Cupcakes

While Blake and Lana were here we watched a movie on the lawn, which is always so fun.  Of course, due to Harris' EE allergy we cannot have *popcorn, but I thought it would be a treat to have sweet popcorn instead!  These cupcakes were so easy and quick to put together (I made chocolate cupcakes because it's a one bowl recipe) and turned out absolutely adorable.

To make the small marshmallows look like kernels of popcorn, you simply twist the marshmallow and then pile them high on an iced cupcake.  After a google search, I found a free printable for the bottom of the cupcakes which I just cut out and tapped on.

We watched Goonies which is a classic children's film.  I was, however, a little surprised by all the curse words!  Funny, I don't remember those from my childhood viewings at all!

*I choose not to ever serve anything that Harris can't have due to an allergy because I figure that his own home should be the one place that he never feels he's missing out on food.  

A Fireside Picnic + Snowball Cookies

Friday evening we got snow!  We've had several periods of snow, but until now it really hadn't amounted to much and so the children were thrilled to wake up Saturday morning to lots of snow to play in.  They quickly got to work building a snow fort and I got to work making a batch of celebratory snowball cookies.

We had a fireside picnic out on the porch with chicken pot pie hand-pies and hot cocoa.  The hand-pies are a perfect winter picnic food since they warm your hands as you are eating them!

It was also the perfect time to snuggle up together!

I remember that my Mom used to always make these cookies around Christmas time and they are so, so good.  They sort of melt in your mouth.  I decided that they are a perfect snow day cookie and they are so easy and quick!

Snow Ball Cookies*

2 sticks softened butter

5 tablespoons sugar

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons vanilla

powdered sugar

Cream everything together and form into little balls.  Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes.  Let cool just a bit and then roll balls in powdered sugar.  

*(the original recipe also called for 1/2 cup finely chopped pecans.  we leave them out due to Harris' allergies and they are still delicious!)