Mickey Party Complete

Here's some snapshots from the party (using birthday mommy's new Sony Nex-3).  Love the detachable lens feature with the point and shoot feel :)

 

 In time I will build links to the DIY's from each project...maybe later this week. Sorry I've been busy.

I should be packing...

So much has happened since the hubs returned from the sandbox :)  I could blog for days.  But considering how often he is home, I'd rather be snuggled up with him.  Sorry if I'm being selfish :P.  We are about to take a mini-vacation for a few days, so I thought I better get a blog up before I get too behind!  So here-goes...


My Halloween photo smash-up!

1) Gettin' Crafty: In my ongoing battle with my desire to have a daughter, I continue to live vicariously though my friends, making girlie outfits for their little girls.  I crocheted a hat and sewed a matching pillowcase dress for my little Haileigh girl.

2) BOO at the ZOO:  Last year, just a few days before the hubs departed, we took our boy to the local zoo to do some trick-or-treating.  While it is nothing in comparison to the Halloween Party our hometown zoo puts on every year, it was still a very enjoyable event.  And considering it would be so close to his homecoming, I've been looking forward to partaking in this for last 365 days!  My son demanded months ago that he would be Robin and daddy would be batman.  Daddy did not argue, but insisted I be his batgirl.  While the hubs and I did not go all out costume-wise for the zoo's event, we are attending a friend's party soon, where we intend on going in full batman/batgirl costume. My son has sense changed his mind on his costume and has chosen a new costume for the 31st.  Considering my love for Halloween costumes, I had no argument in a costume change request.   I'll keep this costume a secret until a later posting.

3)  I made little pumpkin and bat cookies to go in gift baskets to give to the neighbors.

4) Cake jars for the gift baskets...I'll try to post more details about these baskets later.

Pop-Tarts & Kool-Aid

I love Pop-Tarts & Kool-Aid.  When it comes to Kool-Aid, I like them all, but I LOOOOVEEE the Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade.  When I found this at the commissary is the instant containers, I hoarded every last one up.  I'm a bit less particular when it comes to my Pop-Tarts.  I like chocolate, strawberry, cherry, cookie dough, chocolate & vanilla, etc.  I love them all & so does my husband.  He actually requested a box of Pop-Tarts with every care package.  I did my best to fulfill this demand.  In fact, this family loves Pop-Tarts so much, I ordered him a $22 box of Pop-Tarts for his Welcome Home care package.  But I'll explain that at a later date. At any given date, my cabinet is full of Pop-Tarts & Kool-Aid.  A few days ago, when searching for a meal to prepare, I noticed my Pop-Tarts & Kool-Aid survival kit and thought, HMM...Clearly, I love Pop-Tarts & Kool-Aid.  What a great title for a blog post!  However can I tie this in??  I've got it! It's a stretch, but here goes...

Yes, I love Pop-Tarts & Kool-Aid, but what do I not love??  COOKIES! At the moment, I LOATHE cookies.  Cookies can bite me for once.  I used to be normal, I used to love cookies like my Pop-Tarts & Kool-Aid.  Macadamia cookies, sugar cookies, oatmeal cookies, peanut butter cookies...cookies in general made me happy.  But not any more!  Well, at least not for another month or so.  As I stated in a previous post, my husband requested one final care package filled with nothing but COOKIES.  Filling a large care package solely with cookies takes a lot of dough (that's a total homonym).  It was $46 for all the ingredients to pull of not 7 dozen cookies like I had previously thought, but 118 cookies!! It was a result of 1 batch of macadamia nut cookies, 1 batch of peanut butter cookies, one batch of Butterfinger cookies, one batch of turtle cookies (like the chocolate), and 6 batches of S'more cookies.  I didn't have the graham crackers, so I used more butterfingers.  After all the cookies were baked, I couldn't even fit them in the box.  I didn't have enough tupperware or zip-locks.  I somehow managed to make it work. At the moment, I am SICK of cookies.  My husband's company better be thankful! 

On the up-side, tough-boxes are starting to arrive this week...

One of the hubs' signs arrived this week too!!  I made a vague attempt to blur the name on here for security reasons.

I designed my son's Welcome Home shirt this week and it has been ordered.  The back has daddy's name on it as well...

Daddy will be here before we know it!! I can't freaking wait! :D

Star Wars Movie Night I Guess...

So with the cut off date for overseas mail arriving within the next few weeks, I'm pressed for time to get these last 6 boxes out.  The way it's looking, I've got 6 boxes to send in a little over 2 weeks...yeah, that's crazy.  I'm probably going to press my luck and send them past the cut off date...it's no biggie, I'm not sending anything valuable anyhow.  With that in mind I was in a panic Monday night. Basically, if I wanted to get 2 out this week, I needed to get at least the first one out by Tuesday. Unfortunately, I was a bit unprepared this week...I didn't seem to have enough items for 1 box. I had half a Movie Night box filled and half of a Star Wars box filled.  So I figured, what the hey, I'll combine them...It's a Star Wars Movie night now I guess.  It cuts out one box and saved me from running to the store at 2 AM.  I didn't make cute cookies because I was up til 4 AM working on this box as it was.  However, I did make some yummy homemade snickerdoodles.  I'm fairly certain the guys prefer taste over cuteness anyhow.

 

This box contained 6 gift bags each filled with snicker-doodle cookies, a star wars pez dispenser,  a bag of popcorn, and star wars gummies.  I also tossed in some light sticks and a few other candies.  I sealed the popcorn goodie bags with star wars stickers.  Sadly, I didn't have a star wars movie to throw in so they could have a star wars movie night, but I'm sure they'll come up with something.

Picking at my brain

I love love love this box :)  You can read all about the details leading up to the box in the 2 posts that follow below this one.

Box Contents: The Zombie Survival Guide book, The Zombie Survival Guide playing cards, Rob Zombie t-shirt, Rob Zombie CD, a rubber brain and 5 goodie bags for disbursement. 

Goodie Bag Contents: Rubber fingers, candy eyeballs, mini candy bars, zombie fingers, and chocolate chip peanut butter cookies.  Each bag was sealed with a zombie button.

I don't know whom my husband passes these goodie bags out to but he says they all get a kick out of them. I sure hope so. Adding the goodie bags makes for a lot of extra effort.  But if I know they are going to appreciative soldiers, it's all worth it.

Finger Foods

Tonight I made up 2 batches of cookies, one for taste, one for fun.  The first batch I'll tell you about is the batch for show. They are just your basic run of the mill sugar cookies with some food coloring and a pumpkin seed.  They are zombie fingers.  Yes, I know there's still 2 months before halloween, but I'm not sending my husband a halloween themed box, so back off!  I am sending him a zombie themed box :)  My husband oddly has a major interest in the idea of zombies taking over the earth one day...it's a joke people, don't get your panties in a bunch.  Anyhow, so in honor of my husbands love for the zombie scene, I've centered this week's box around zombies (Jeez, I know I already said it, I'm just making sure you're paying attention.)  Anyhow, when doing a google search for zombie cookies I came across the idea of green fingers (yes, I know zombies don't have green fingers, witches do...big deal, they looked cool.)  Anyhow, so I figured the idea was pretty simple and quick so I went with it.  The recipe called for pistachios but I thought pumpkin seeds looked more like finger nails (yes I'm aware they wont taste that good on sugar cookies, but who cares, they are for show anyhow...jeez you are so rude tonight).  Well, like I said the recipe was pretty cut and dry, but if you really must have a step by step (mr. pushy pants), here ya go...

Step 1: Add green coloring to your sugar cookie mix

Step 2: Roll into log shapes, add knuckles by using a toothpick, press seeds in for fingernails and bake.

Take out of oven.  Turn the tables for once and eat a zombie :) 

My son wouldn't eat one, he said it would make him a zombie too. HAHA

Now I'm going to tell you about cookie #2 for the night.  These are chocolate chip peanut butter cookies.  You can find the recipe here. They looked and smelled yummy, but because I'm on a diet again, I can't tell you for sure.  Anyhow, I made up enough to place 3 in individual baggies for disbursement in the hubs care package.  I also left out a handful to give to the man at the post office who always teases me about not saving him any cookies.  Just a hint to my fellow army wives, when sending out multiple packages a week to go overseas, it's always good to have the postal employees on your side.

The Simpson's Box

My husband and I have this funny thing we do. Instead of carelessly tossing around "I love you", we actually have to put a little thought in creativity in our words of love to one another by saying "I love you more than..." For example, he might say "I love you more than you love to win arguments" or perhaps I might reply "I love you more than Opera loves to put photos of herself on her "O" magazine".  That's just our thing.  It avoids us saying "I love you" out of habit or impulse. Every time we say it, we have to think about it, therefore we know we mean it.  One night I told my husband, "I love you more than you love telling my dad about that time you out-fished him." Believe me when I tell you, that's a LOT of love and there was no way he could top that one.  Well my husband was in humor shock which resulted in his creativity coma.  Therefore his weakened reply was, "I love you more than Homer loves Donuts".  I giggled at how lame his comeback was.  So a few days later when I saw The Simpson's gummy snacks, there was no doubt that this was to be the next theme of his box.  I'm still mad that I forgot to write "I love you more than Homer loves donuts" in the bottom of his box :(  All well, hopefully he'll get the pun on his own.  Read on to the post that follows for further details.

MMM...DONUTS...

This week's box is brought to you by The Simpsons and the letter mmmmm.... and the letter ooooooo....
My inspiration for said box started a few weeks ago, after finding some Simpson's gummy snacks at Michael's. I figured it'd be easy. I could throw in The Simpson's Movie, The Simpson's gummy snacks, those embarrassing and tacky Simpson's boxer shorts (you can find those just about anywhere), and some Butterfingers (remember those old Bart Simpson's commercials?) Of course, that's about all I thought of at the time, but I figured I'd think of more as time went along.  Well, I didn't think of much more, as that's about all the Simpson's items that inevitably ended up in the box a few weeks later.  However, my husband has requested I place individual snack bags in each box now, so there wasn't room for much more anyhow.  When considering cookie ideas for my Simpson's Themed box,  I thought about making beer mugs, beer cans, radio active symbols or a few other cookie ideas.  But there was no doubt I had to do donuts. We all know Homer loves Donuts, if you don't believe me, read the above post. Here is a step by step of this weeks cookie...

Step 1: Use a circular cookie cutter or a cup to cut out your cookies.  Then use a smaller circular item (like the base of an icing tip) to cut out the center hole.  Place on a baking sheet.

Step 2: Bake them (duh)

Step 3: Clean your mixing bowl so that you may prepare your icing for the next step.

Step 4: Pipe the outline of the donut icing with the thicker icing. Allow at least 1 hour of setting time before moving to step 5.

Step 5: Fill in the icing with the glacé icing and cover with sprinkles.

It's me...Mario!

My son is on a Mario kick.  We've redecorated his room with a Mario and Luigi theme.  I bought him Mario and Luigi action figures a few weeks ago and he just loves using them to help Batman and Spider-Man fight off the bad guys, as well as taking them on other various adventures with random superheroes throughout the realms of our living-room.  His imagination amazes and amuses me to no end.  Watching Mario fight off The Joker is one of those moments my husband shouldn't miss out on.  Unfortunately, my husband's chain of command didn't think Mario's missions were as important as my husband's, so they are not sending him home early.  Go figure.  Well, since my husband couldn't come home to Mario, Jagger and I decided to send Mario to daddy. My husband also requested that for now on I send mini bags of cookies with each box, since he gives a lot of cookies away anyhow.  I decided to take it a step further for this box and I sent 10 goodie bags.   Each bag contained a Mario fruit snack bag, a mini candy bar, and a Mario Mushroom Cookie.  The cookies were really unique.  Since it was very late (around 2 AM) and I had to leave for a week long photo session the following morning in VA around 8 AM, I was in no mood to mix up the icing and get out all the tips and icing bags and ugh...no thanks.  So instead I divided the cookie mix in two bowls.  In one bowl I mixed red icing coloring to turn the dough red, the other bowl I left alone.  I shaped the Mushrooms by hand and baked them to perfection!  Shaping the cookies probably took as long as icing them would have, but clean up was pretty simple and by 3 AM, I was in no mood to be cleaning up the kitchen.  Anyhow, here's the Mario box and cookies for this week...

Summer Vacation in a Box

This week's box is pretty self-explanatory.  In our five years together, my husband and I have never taken a summer vacation, it's one of those downfalls to being a military family.  He's either deployed, PCSing, or we just don't have the time.  We never had a honeymoon for this very reason.  We always talk about that vacation we plan on taking someday but to date, it's never worked out.  So this week's care package is the best I can do, it's our dream summer vacation in a box.  It includes a palm tree, pineapple shaped cookies (and watermelon cookies because they were cute), some crab shaped crackers, milkshake poptarts (because as I discussed in a previous blog, he requested poptarts in all future care packages),  some tropical snacks, Weekend at Bernies II (my favorite movie, set in my dream location-the USVI, which I someday hope to visit with the hubs...but that's a future blog post)... and a few summer toys.  I topped it all off with a big ray of sunshine :)  Happy Summer Vacation honey!  Maybe one day we can actually enjoy a vacation together.

A camping trip in a box

Well, if the s'more & owl cookies weren't hint enough, here's the answer to the big riddle this week...my husband's 1st box for this week is a Camping Trip in a box.  I try to incorporate things my husband loves into the themes of each package, and we love to camp.  It's not something we've had the opportunity to do much because in the 5 years we've been married, my husband has been deployed 3 of them and also because we have a toddler.  However, this year we are devoted to the idea of taking camping trips more often.  Our son is old enough now and my husband SHOULD be home for a while after this deployment (fingers crossed).  The weather is perfect for camping right now, I'm super sad he can't be here to go camping right now.  So since we can't go on a camping trip, I decided to take the camping trip to him.  I sent him a mini-coleman lantern and a ton of s'more items (s'more snacks, homemade s'more cookies, s'more icing for s'more cookies, all the items to make his own s'mores...though i doubt that'll be possible, and of course s'more poptarts-because he's requested poptarts in every box now).  I also sent him some trail mix and trail mix bars.  I was going to send a scary movie too, but this box was filled to the tip top.  All well, I sure hope he enjoys this one.

I want s'more...lot's more.

Let me begin by saying OH MY GOSH!!!! These were the yummiest smelling cookies I have ever baked up.  I was drooling the entire time.  This way by far the worst idea I ever had, baking cookies like this while on a diet.  I had to bake them, they were perfect for the box theme, plus my husband's last batch arrived un-edible and I had to make up for that. Throughout the preparation there was this strange force drawing my lips closer and closer to the batter-filled spoon...but I successfully fought the urges.  When the warm steamy cookies came out of the oven, my toddler ran into the kitchen, his nose sniffing in full force and a smile on his face, "MOMMY! What's that smell!?"  Oh he has no clue how lucky he is, I think as I pass him a cookie.  Well, here's the devil looking innocent in the form of a tasty desert...

If you would like your own taste of temptation, you can find the recipe here.

Who gives a hoot?

So this week's care package is still a secret, but here's a hint...I made the hubs some owl cookies.  These were not easy to make, I couldn't find an idea on google that I liked, so I had to come up with something all on my own.  I'm not a creative thinker like that, I need visuals!  I also decided to only make 7 cookies this week as opposed to the typical 2 dozen.  My husband is a health nut, he doesn't even eat these cookies, I'm pretty sure he gives most of them away.  But he enjoys the surprise of the cookies, and I'm just making them for fun. So what's the point in making 24 at a time?  I decided to freeze the remaining cookie dough for next weeks' cookies.   It was nice only having to decorate 7 at a time, but it left no room for error. Luckily, I only screwed up 1.  I wouldn't really say I screwed it up, actually I forgot to decorate it all together, haha.  Luckily, my son didn't mind disposing of the sad forgotten cookie.   The cookies are ready, the box is ready, but I'm not headed to the post office today.  I have another batch of cookies to bake tonight.  Yes, you read that right another batch for the non-cookie-eating, health nut soldier.  Well, I can't help it.  This recipe was perfect for the box theme, plus this batch isn't going to be for show, they're all about taste!  I have a feeling my husband won't be sharing these so much.  You can read all about the in my next post...leaving you won't hint closer to figuring out the theme to the mystery box.

For now, here's my hooters...

The Coolest Care Package Ever

Yeah that title is a pun, but you can take it literally too...because Penguins are awesome! You would already know that if you had read my previous post.  Anyhow, as I've already noted, my husband loves penguins, so I HAD to send him a penguin themed box this month.  To date, this one is my favorite :D  Honestly, I think the boxes just get better and better.  I've got about 9 stacked up in my office, every other day I'm adding a couple items to each box until they are filled.  I have a box that is just about filled to the top, so I just need to make some cookies this weekend and I'll have it in the mail Monday.  I can't discuss the details of the box yet though, it's Top Secret.  Well, really it's because I think my husband has been checking my blog lately, spoiling his themed box surprises.  So you'll have to wait until he sees it before I can discuss it.  But to hold you over, here's this week's box.

Christmas in July, maybe?

My husband's favorite animal is the penguin. I mean, can you blame him? When God designed these cute little wobbly creatures, he dressed them in a tuxedo.  They're also a bird that doesn't fly, but swims.  Ha, it's like a slap in Charles Darwin's face, and who doesn't love beating up on ole Darwin now and again?  So anyhow, when I first started this whole "themed box" idea, the penguin box was the first one I started working on.  It's taken a very long time to perfect said box, mainly because it's been my favorite box to date and I just looooved adding stuff to it, but partially because it's very difficult to find penguin items in July.  Well, last week I finally was prepared to send out the penguin box so I started working on my penguin cookies.  Here's the process and final product...

Along Came a Spider...

As mentioned in my previous post...this week's care package theme is Spider-Man.  Obviously, this choice was made by our 3-year-old.  He loves Spider-Man, but he's not biased, he pretty much loves all superheroes equally.  But back to the point.  Spider-Man was a fairly easy choice for the box considering there's a lot of Spider-Man items out there to be found.  As noted in the previous post, I began with Spider-Man Cookies, then I added some Spider-Man candy, Spider-Man gummy snacks, a Spider-Man toy and tossed in a Spider-Man movie to finish it off.  I think the hubs will really enjoy this box.  In the future I think I'll do a Hulk box and a Wolverine box as well.

Look out! Here Comes the Spider Cookie

So this week I let my son decide on the theme of daddy's box.  After a short debate, he settled on Spiderman.  Since I've recently decided that each of my husband's themed packages must now contain a unique homemade cutout cookie,  I Googled some Spiderman cookie ideas.  I decided to attempt the ones I found on this site.  They didn't come out nearly as professional as the ones I found, but I don't bake cookies for a living.  So I'm still super proud. Here's the process.  First, I made a template for the eyes and placed parchment paper (I was out of wax paper) over the template and used black royal icing to pipe over it.  I filled in the black outline with white thin icing using the colorflow (or flooding) technique from here.  I let that dry for about 4 or 5 hours.  While waiting, I baked the cookies.  Once cooled, I outlined them in royal icing and again used the colorflow technique to fill them in with red.  Once dry, I piped a spider web.  To finish the cookies, I carefully pulled the eyes away from the parchment paper and placed them onto the webbed cookies using royal icing as a glue to hold them in place.  And there you have it! Spiderman cookies.

Operation Camo Care Package

Based upon yesterday's posting about the camo cookies, you should already know that today's box theme is all about the Army.  HOOAH! I packed this box with camo cookies, some camo cake jars (later posting), a military movie (Born on the 4th of July-also appropriate for the month), The Art of War (a common military book he's been requesting for a while now), and a couple other odds and ends. I recently found some camo paper that I had apparently bought 5 years ago this week.  I had bought it for our wedding for some reason but never used it.  Anyways, I finally put it to use.  I wrapped his jars of cookies and cakes in the paper (and also in bubble wrap for extra measures) and then covered the box in the paper. I topped the box off with the team of soldiers I hired to protect his cookies in transit.

Combat Cookies

I'm on a cookie kick this week.  Considering this week's box theme is ARMY, I decided I wanted to make camo cookies.  I figured I would bake sugar cookies and decorate them with a camouflage pattern with icing.  So I did a little google surfing for ideas and I came across a whole new idea.  Bake them camo!!! What an awesome concept!

First you make your cookie dough (packaged or homemade will work)

Next you divide the dough into 4 separate bowls and add your coloring (Brown, Green, Gray, and leave the last bowl alone for the tan.) You can use basic food coloring if you'd like. However, I prefer Wilton's coloring because it tastes better and the colors are more accurate.

Unfortunately, I wasn't paying attention and picked up a butter mixture sugar cookie pack, which resulted in a sticky dough that was too hard to work with.  If you made this same mistake, just refrigerate the dough for about an hour before continuing on to the next step.

Now you want to take a little bit from each bowl and mix it together in your hand to form a ball.  I burned my thumb on the oven and it was in killer pain, so I opted to use my cookie scoop instead.  Luckily, this was a much cleaner method anyhow.  I just scooped a little out of each bowl and dropped the balls onto the cookie sheet.

 

Bake at the time indicated on the cookie package or in your recipe...and viola!

CAMO COOKIES!

Since I intend on mailing these to my hubby...I decided to stack them in a jar and use the last of my camo material to cover the jar and make it pretty.  I also hired a team of soldiers to guard these cookies until there safe arrival in Afghanistan.

Freedom isn't Free

My hubby's 4th of July box is packed and ready to go out in the morning! :D  Here's a quick peek at the contents.  Check out the post that follows for more details on baking & decorating the cookies.