painted tote

the boys helped me paint a canvas tote to give to Nana for Mother's Day.  they loved making it, and it was fun to do with them.  Leo was so cute while we were making the flowers, too.  after each fingerprint he'd say "it's so pretty!"

we did fingerprint flowers and footprint butterflies on one side, and I wrote their names and ages underneath their heels.  I used two paint colors together on each fingerprint to give the flowers more interest, which is easiest to see on the orange/red one in this pic, but it really made the bluebonnets pop.

I wanted to duplicate the same scene on the other side, but the boys ran out of steam so we just did some handprints on the two front pockets surrounded by a few flowers, and I doodled the rest to fill in some.  I really want to make myself one, so maybe I can get around to that before they get too big!

chocolate butterflies and pistachio cream cheese pie

I watched a video from How To Cook That showing how to make chocolate butterflies, and I thought it would be perfect to decorate a pie I made for Nana.

I did the butterflies with candy melts because I didn't want to mess with tempering chocolate.  a few of them didn't work out because they were too thin and it's HOT right now, so if they didn't crack while I was trying to peel them from the wax paper they melted when I touched them, but I made them a little thicker they did just fine.

I thought I came up with the pie recipe myself, but after a quick search I found it on cooks.com and it was exactly how I thought about doing it, so I went with just the addition of cream cheese to the pudding like it was written.  I would double the cream cheese next time, use less milk as if for a pie (1 3/4 cup instead of 2 cups), and maybe use heavy cream or evaporated milk instead of regular whole milk.  it was still good as it was - just a little mild for my taste! O:)