First Down!

 

Football season in a box: contains football rice krispie treats, football chocolates, football oreos, football trading cards and other football goodies.  Decorated with Colts gear (what else) and of course threw in some Pork Rinds.

Laces Out, Dan!

So I've been holding onto this box for a while, patiently waiting for football season to begin.  I sent it out a little early still, but I have already passed the official cut off date for packages, so it's now or never.  Well anyhow, I had a lot of ideas for cookies, but I thought I'd again mix it up and throw in something new...so this week I made Rice Krispie Treats with chocolate peanut butter coating and vanilla bean icing for laces.  This recipe was sort of made up on the fly...so I'll give this tutorial a (pathetic) shot.

1) Make your Rice Krispie Treats
-Melt 3 TB of butter over medium
-Add 4 cups of mini marshmallows and stir until melted
-Mix in 6 cups of cereal
-Spread into a pan coated with cooking spray.

Sorry I have no photo of this. But if you don't know what Rice Krispie Treats look like then you probably aren't getting enough electricity in that cave of yours to turn on your oven anyhow.

2) Make a sinful coating
-While the treats cool, melt 4 squares of bakers unsweetened chocolate in the microwave (about 1 min).
-Remove and stir in 1 cup of peanut butter (preferably smooth and/or creamy...the peanuts in the chunky don't make for a pretty surface for these footballs) and heat for another 30 seconds in the microwave until soft.
-Once the treats have cooled to a room temp, spread this dangerous mixture of chocolate and peanut butter over the top.
-Cool in the fridge for at least 1 hour (until the chocolate mix is hard to the touch)

I didn't have a pan that was an appropriate size so I improvised...deal with it.

You can stop here and cut squares later, but If you want footballs...continue on...

3) Make the footballs...
-Use a football shaped cookie cutter and cut them out
-Smack yourself in the forehead for needing a tutorial for this step


4) Lace it up
-Combine 6 tablespoons of milk with 6 tablespoons of corn syrup in a mixer.
-Add in a tablespoon of Williams-Sonoma's Vanilla Bean Paste (if you don't have this, run out and buy it now!!)  If you aren't fortunate enough to get your hands on this paste, just bust out the regular old blah vanilla extract. *WARNING* It won't taste nearly as awesome. ;)

Legal Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for any damage caused to your wardrobe, taste-buds, or kitchen in the baking of these footballs.  They are extremely rich and not recommended for the amateur eater. 
 

No Bones About It

When picking up some scrapbook paper for one of my boxes a few weeks ago, my son was adamant that we purchase daddy some dinosaur paper.  If there's one thing my son loves, it's dinos.  So I didn't argue...I figured it wouldn't be hard to make a dino box and my son could have a little fun picking out the items for the box.  Unfortunately, my son was a little selfish this go-round.  He decided he wanted to keep just about everything we bought for the box.  I compromised and let him keep his own goodie bag.  The box this week contained only goodie bags...nothing specific for the hubby, although he did get his own heart adorned goodie bag which contained a few extra snacks and brownies.  The 6 bags contained dinosaur oatmeal, poprocks, fruity pebble snack bars and a mini dino.  They also contained some non-dinosaur related snacks like fruit snacks, bottle drink mix, and mini pop-tarts.  They also contained home-made brownies...Details on those are below this set of photos of the box.

Now onto the brownies :D...

I was so excited when I found a dinosaur cookie cutter a few months ago (cookie cutters around here are like...I unno something rare, I'm out of analogies for the night).  Anyhow so I bought this dino cookie cutter, but it was large...very large, it'd be ridiculous to expect a cookie that big to make it intact to Afghanistan.  So instead, I found a small bone cookie cutter last weekend at Hobby Lobby...that's a future blog :)  Anyhow, so I used the bone cutter hoping people wouldn't confuse it for it's intended purpose of a dog bone. Think archeology not "bark"eology (sorry, that was lame, I'm tired).  Well, instead of making my same-ole sugar cookies this week, I decided to mix it up and treat the fellas to some brownies...plus I'm in no mood to decorate because we got a new puppy. Yeah, you heard that right...again, future blog!  Well, anyhow, here's the good part...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.