Teacher Gifts

This one is fast and dirty, as I'm trying to get the house cleaned and everything packed up for our holiday trip to the Midwest, but I wanted to share what I got my kids' 10 (!!) teachers this year for Christmas:

Yep, it's a cookie recipe in a Mason Jar, just add butter, eggs, and a bit of vanilla. 

The recipe is from Spoonful.com, which is owned by Disney.  Luckily, I made a test batch a couple of weeks ago, because 1 stick of butter and 1 egg is NOT ENOUGH to make good dough.  At all.  I had to play around and double it and they came out much better.

Just for fun, I ordered pictures of the kids (5 of Avery, 5 of Cassidy - they each have 5 teachers), cut them out, and modge podged them onto the top. 

Putting it all together with a bit of yarn, some Christmas stickers, and careful pouring, and we get cute holiday cookies in a jar!

Promotion, Part Two: The Reception!

I know this post is a bit delayed, but I definitely want to talk about this!  Along with the great promotion ceremony I had, I also planned (with lots of help) a great party afterwards!

Thanks to my friend, Gabi, an amazing chef and party planner herself, I decided to make quiches for the event.  It was my first try, and after a week-before dry run that had rave reviews, I bit the bullet and made 7 different quiches for the big day, using this amazing recipe.  Easy, delicious, do it.

The spread

 I went with a fall theme since my promotion was at the end of September and did brown tablecloths, gold plates, lovely metal touches here and there, and orange serving platters.

My friend Kathleen volunteered to help and made this AMAZING cake.  Seriously, what a feat, and delicious.  Other pals chipped in with baked goods, and I even got to use my little major's leaf cookie cutter to make some imprints in some sugar cookies!

Seriously, wow.  A cake shaped like an oak leave on another cake!  Mind blown.

As you might have noticed, I used Scrabble tiles to label all the food

But the best part was seeing people from my past and present in a great celebration!!

Look What My Friends Can Do!

Here's the first edition of "Look What My Friends Can Do!" which is a new section of the blog where I feature something awesome that my friends are doing.  First up is Bev, who live in Hawaii (hate you) with her husband, who was one of my Soldiers in the Army!  She took a cue from Crafty Mama Bakes and made these sweet Camo Cupcakes!  Delicious, and I want some for my promotion!

First, make two cakes, one white and one dark chocolate (not regular chocolate)

 

 

Cake mixes will be divided into 4 containers. 1 white, 1 chocolate, 1 white with a dab of chocolate and some green food coloring paste and one white and chocolate in equal amounts.

 

 

It'll look like this when you mix it up:  Light brown, camo green, white, and dark brown

 

 



Use an easy method for making pastry bags:

And fill 'em up!

Put random blobs of different batters in to cupcake liners (note, this is NOT the final product.  Jon thought it was and was freaked out):

Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes and they come out like this:

Tint up some icing like so:  Buttercream frosting tinted. One white, one tinted with a little green food coloring paste and a little dark chocolate cocoa powder and one with a lot of dark chocolate cocoa powder. Note to self, next time add a few extra drops of milk to the chocolate buttercream, it got a little too stiff with the added cocoa powder and was difficult to pipe. (I made 11/2 batches of buttercream and it was the perfect amount).

Put the icing in three bags to be put into one large bag:

And ice away!

Super cute and military themed - great idea for a military function or a little boy's birthday party.

Thanks for letting me share, Bev!!!

Herb "Garden"

Well, not so much as a garden, which seems to require digging, squatting, and all sorts of labor-intensive things I just don't want to do in my third trimester.  BUT, taking advice from My Frugal Adventures I mosied on through Target's outdoor section (which usually I avoid because we don't do much with our outdoor space and can't kill enough mosquitos to really enjoy it) and I fell in love with the color and price of these buckets.  Love the lime green and bright yellow (am I on a yellow kick?  Methinks so, see my lamp re-do and the pops of yellow in the gallery wall) of these little plastic planters.

The green ones were $2.04 on clearance and the yellow ones were $1.48.  I didn't even bother to ask the cashier why they would possibly be a different price.  I just took my clearance and ran.  The plan was to get some herbs to plant in them which could be easily transported to the new house.  This plan turned out to be a good idea when Jon got pissed off during supper prep that his store-bought basil had gone bad.  So, off to Lowe's we went!  All I wanted was basil, so I let Jon pick out the rest.  He picked Lemon Balm, Hot Spicy Oregano, and German Thyme.

Hey guys, here's your new home!

A quick transport into the pots....

But my little herbs were having an identity crisis, so we gave them name sticks made from paint stirrers (swiped from the Lowe's paint counter when no one was looking).

You are basil.

I didn't really have an outside shelf to put them on, so they are squatting on our air conditioner at the moment, which brightens up the big grey box!

Are you herbing it up this summer?

Delicious Fattoush

I should have made this prettier for picture purposes, but I was too hungry to wait

A couple of weeks ago, I ate all of this dish that my friend Paul ordered "for the table" at Pita House, a Lebanese place here in Alexandria.  It looked pretty easy, so I googled it up and made it!  This would be an amazing summer salad to take to a potluck or something.  A unique taste, but nothing so exotic that it's an acquired taste!  Thought I'd pass on the recipe, from allrecipes.com.

Any changes I made are in italics. 

Ingredients for Salad:

• 2 cups shredded lettuce (romaine and/or iceberg)
• 1 large or 2 small cucumbers, small dice
• 2 medium tomatoes, chopped (We used three)
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley, leaves only, no stems (I only had dried, so I used less of it)
• 1/4 cup chopped mint leaves, no stems
• 1 bunch green onions, finely slices (didn't use at all, cause Jon hates them)
• 1/2 teaspoon sumac (bought this online here) 
• 2 pieces of pita bread toasted until golden brown, broken into pieces the size of a quarter (even faster? Smashed up pieces of pita chips)

Ingredients for Dressing:

• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 2 to 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Pinch of pepper

Directions:

In a small bowl mix all dressing ingredients well.

Put all salad ingredients in a large bowl and toss with 1/2 to 1 cup dressing. (We added the dressing in little by little until we liked the distribution) Serve immediately.

I would recommend serving the smashed pita chips on the side, so if there are leftovers they aren't soggy the next day.  We didn't do this, so I'm looking forward to some soggy fattoush tomorrow, which will probably still be delicious.

UPDATE: Soggy fattoush was not as delicious, so put those crushed pita chips on the side to be added as you eat instead of in the main bowl! 

Baby Cakes

Since I'm not a big mushy baby shower person, but I did want to do SOMETHING cute to tell people what I'm having, I opted to make gender cupcakes for my office!

Step 1 - Make a cupcake from a box mix.  Just like nature intended.

Step 2 - Cut a little cone out of each cupcake

Step 3 - Use pre-made icing (yay!) in a convenient spray-cheese-kinda can to fill up that cone with pink icing for a baby girl!

Step 4 - Cone gets cut down and place back on top

Step 5 - Ice away!  Fool the masses by including both pink AND blue sprinkles on the cupcake as well as a yellow baby bottle/pacifier topper.

That's all!  No one knows what you're having until they bite into that delicious pink icing inside!  Thanks SOOOO much to my mom who did everything from ice cupcakes to wrangle Avery away from the oven when it was time to open it.  Yay!  Learned during this process: substitute 1/2 a pureed banana when you are short an egg!  Just a fun fact from me to you.