Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Much has changed since my last post from June 2009. Shortly after that time I found out I was pregnant and we had our second child this past Spring. I have gone from having some free time to zero free time :) Still, I have found some time to bake and create.

Being that it is close to Halloween time, I decided to share my costume from 2008.

This was easy to make. I took a large stroller box, spray painted it white, and then figured out where to cut arm holes and a head hole in the bottom of the box. I then cut windows into it with an x-acto knife. I used yellow and black foam sheets to fill the windows in and then found a pic of Dorothy on the Internet, printed her, and taped her in the door. The roof was tricky. I folded a piece of cardboard and then made shingles out of extra cardboard. I duct taped them on, but they wouldn't stay so I ended up gluing and duct taping. I used some ribbon and stapled it to the cardboard to hold it on my head. Technically, the roof is going the wrong way, but I didn't have the time or energy to figure out how to see with a roof on my head. My daughter went as the Wicked Witch of the East complete with red and white striped stockings.

Enjoy and Happy Haunting!

Happy Father's Day!

My daughter and I were inspired by Bakerella's post this month.

www.bakerella.com

Here is how our version turned out. I used milk in the cupcakes and brownies. On my cupcakes, I ended up cutting the middle out so the top and bottom would look more bun like. On the burger part, I used a 2" biscuit cutter which made for thick hamburgers so we ended up cutting them in half. We had trouble getting the frosting to really look like ketchup. I didn't have any violet. But lo and behold, the package of Betty Crocker cookie frosting from Christmas was still in our cabinet and it made excellent "ketchup". It looked alot like ketchup coming out too. My daughter had the brilliant idea to put some on the "fries". The turned out really cute! Totally forgot the sesame seeds though.

I didn't have card stock so I used regular paper for the fry packages and used paper towels to wrap the burgers. I used the Bounty select a size kind and half was perfect. I plan to put them into brown paper bags to serve them. Thanks for the inspiration and ideas Bakerella!

Happy Early July 4th!

My niece spent the night and we spent part of our time making cookies. Check out our patriotic creations. The girls did most of the decorating :) I used a baby bottle cookie cutter to make the firecracker..sort of looked right. Flags were cut by hand.

Homemade Cinnamon Rolls

Made the homemade cinnamon rolls from Mommy's Kitchen blog. Not bad for a first attempt. I thought they needed more cinnamon personally, but I love cinnamon. Used two kinds of frosting, the first one was the kind that Mommy's Kitchen used and the second was from allrecipes.com and was a thicker. Both were good with some people preferring both.

Sopapilla Cheesecake aka Soapy Pillow Cheesecake

Two weeks ago I got this recipe from a girl at work and am finally giving it a try. It was really easy to make and Pillsbury now has crescent dough in sheets so no more pinching the seams! I have addapted the recipe some to lower fat content but it still has a stick of butter. You could probably reduce it some and still keep the flavor.

Sopapilla Cheesecake
2 cans reduced fat crescent rolls or 2 cans crescent sheet dough
2 8oz packages 1/3 fat (neufchatel) cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 C. sugar, separated
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 stick unsalted butter


Preheat oven to 350. In 9x13 dish, ( I sprayed with cooking spray, but not sure you need to) lay out 1 roll of crescent dough, pinching seams if necessary. Mix together cream cheese, 1 C. sugar, and vanilla. Spread on crescent roll, then lay other on top. Melt butter and mix in sugar and cinnamon. Pour on top. Bake for 30 minutes.

YUMMY and oh so simple!

Kicking and Screaming into the 21st Century

My main interests and what I will most likely be sharing about on this blog are Speech Therapy, baking, cooking, crafting, and any other hobbies of the moment.
Made some darling little bottle and stroller cookies last night for a friend. I used the Betty Crocker dry package mix and homemade icing. They came out really cute! The blue didn't turn out like I would have liked, but overall they were darling! Came across a neat site that has tons of baking supplies:
www.fancyflours.com

Quote for the day: From one of my speech kiddos- when asked"When do you wear your seat belt?" She responded, "When the cops is behind us!" Gotta love those kid quotes!