Halloween Monster Finger Cookies

I wanted to make witch finger cookies, but my sugar cookie dough puffs up too much and they looked more like monster fingers to me after baking!  They were a huge hit though, and very easy! 

Use your favorite sugar cookie recipe and mix in some green food coloring.  Scoop dough and roll into "fingers" and press an almond into the tip before baking.  Gross and yummy :)

I saw this cute menu planner idea on How About Orange from Ollibird and I love it!  You can get it free by clicking HERE.  She suggests framing it under glass and then writing on it each week with a dry erase marker- so cute I might actually do it!

The tea party: Mrs. B turns 9

I never posted pictures from the tea party!  It was cute if I do say so myself, Miss B and I had a lot of fun planning, cooking and setting it all up but to be honest, the real hit with the kids was the swimming!  It probably had something to do with the 100+ degree heat...

We shopped around places like Home Goods, Marshalls and Tuesday Morning for some cute tea towels and I made tea towel aprons for each of the girls.  They served two purposes, they helped to decorate the table and then went into their take home bags.  Mine were simply wide grossgrain ribbon sewed across the front of the towels, but if you wanted to be a little fancier, you could add pockets, buttons and trim or stitch or iron on a monogram.

B. is a *bit* like me when it comes to food- she wanted all of her favorite foods there!  Every day she thought of something else we should serve, but we eventually narrowed it down to cinnamon rolls, little fower and butterfly sandwiches, chocolate strawberries, cream wafers, and mini muffins.  To drink she insisted on hot chocolate (remember the heat?) and orange juice.

For the sandwiches, we did cucumbers with chive cream cheese on flowers (cut from white bread of course!)  and then turkey with cheddar cheese in butterfly shapes.  The little pink and orange flags were a clearance Martha Stewart find and since they matched our colors we just had to use them!  We grabbed a bunch of mixed roses from the grocery store at the last minute, cut them short and put them in some little empty jars I had and tied them off with hot pink ribbon.

One other idea I had that would have been really cute, would be to use a vinyl cutter (Cricut, Silhouette etc.) to decorate or personalize the tea cups!  I didn't have a collection of mis-matched pretty china patterns, and didn't want to buy more for the party so we just used my wedding china which was plain and simple, but could have been adorable with some added pink and orange flowers or something! Oh and one tip, chocloate covered strawberries are best served on cooler days- the first one that was taken slid right out of the chocolate! 

PS- Did I mention I have a 9 year old??  How and when did that happen?  I can't possibly be that old! SHE can't possibly be that old! 9 more years and she'll be a woman.  Going to college.  That cannot be possible...

Food

I think I have a somewhat troubled relationship with food- I like to eat, and I like things that taste good, and I too often choose what sounds best (or is easiest) rather than what would actually benefit my body best. I stress about what to feed myself, and even more about what to feed the rest of my family and I really wonder what "healthy" people eat, and what their kids eat, and how they grow children without food issues. So I was excited to see blogger NieNie do a series this week called "NieNie's Vegetarian Life." She shared what she feeds her family on a vegetarian diet. And most of it sounded good. So if that interests you, you can check out her blog HERE. The only thing missing is the recipes! If you know her, request she put on some recipes, and do another week! I really like some of her thoughts and attitudes towards being a wife and mother and how she seems to really "get" the spirit of provident living. I hope I can soak some of that up. Oh and she has lots of really cool pictures. And she MAKES her own marshmallows!
***Update! I wasn't the only one excited about her food posts and she has now started a food blog where she posted all the recipes and hopefully will do more! You can check out CuisineNie by clicking HERE.

You can make cornbread!

I needed something to go with my Chicken Tortilla soup tonight, especially since I didn't have any tortillas to fry or chips. I decided cornbread was the way to go, but when I looked at that little box of Jiffy Cornbread muffin mix, I wasn't getting excited, because they always turn out gross! So I tried a recipe from scratch and it was SO easy and SO yummy I can't believe I've never tried it before! Here's the recipe: