..non*sense..

Friday, January 17, 2014

Jack's 1st birthday

such a cute lil buckaroo, if I do say so! (thanks mom for sharing your pictures!)

leading up to Jack's birthday felt a little hectic. not only because it wasn't long after the holidays, but we had new flooring started in the kitchen and entry way the week before that wasn't all buttoned up until a couple days prior to the party so my house was a wreck, then Jack got sick. I didn't know if I was gonna pull it off - it was touch and go there for a little bit.

I put a picture of Jack at each month on a digital frame, and I find myself just sitting in front of it watching the slide show to see how much he's grown in a year.

I had the idea I could make a cactus cake with marshmallow fondant, but I ran out of steam and just went with a Wild West Toob on top of yellow cupcakes with Almond Joy frosting. maybe next birthday I'll try something like that. I think it still came out cute.

Jack seemed a little unsure of the cupcake until he got a taste of the frosting, then he dug in!

and he wasn't as interested in opening gifts as he was in eating the paper, so once that was taken from him he wandered off to play with other things.

one of the things I'm really glad I found was this cute little chair. it's a rocker, but I kept the rockers off so Jack could climb on it. he really likes it and he's just so darn cute in it!

I didn't work too hard on favors this time (sorry Jack!) I just got jar mugs and filled them with gold nuggets and jerky. I did embellish them a bit, and I made Leo his own little cup lined with matching paper. his had candy rocks and toys in it - couldn't tell he was that impressed with it. oh well!

now off to get ideas for the next birthday party - the planning just never ends!

Monday, November 18, 2013

Arachnophobia

for our fall backyard movie night I chose Arachnophobia. I hadn't seen this movie since I was a kid! I remember being a little scared when I first saw it, and it still has its creepy feeling when all the real spiders are running around, but it was pretty corny, so that was fun!

I did a big no-no and tried stuff I hadn't done for a crowd before. I never have good luck when I just throw together an idea for a recipe, especially for a party. I will test a recipe out until we're sick of it so I know how to do it, but this time I just threw caution to the wind and hoped for the best, and if it didn't work out I had Matt's corn dogs to fall back on, but it all came together great :)

while I have made beer pretzels before, I only did 8. I made 24 this time, and set out a bunch of dipping sauces - a variety of mustards, "cheese" sauce, caramel, and chocolate - they doubled as a savory and a sweet treat. it's a nice little versatile "snack" :)

I made Rolo pretzel spiders which is not quite a first time "recipe" either, but I took a chance that they would turn out in a nice spider configuration, and they did :) I tried melting the Rolo and sticking the pretzels in, but that didn't work so I used candy melts to glue the legs to the candy. chocolate and pretzels seem to be a hit combination at movie night so I'm glad I did them.

a new thing I did that I hadn't tested out before was kettle corn. I used coconut oil and bacon drippings, stirred in some sugar and salt with the popcorn kernels and shook it all together on the stove in a big pot until it was done. this one didn't come out as awesome as I thought it would, but it was okay. some people really liked it so I'm happy I tried it.