A Final Care Package

Just kidding...there's another care package to come after this one...

Anyhow, many many months ago when I saw this welcome home scrapbook paper, I decided I would make my husband a Welcome Home care package and bring it to him at the ceremony. Well, I'll probably keep it in the truck and let him open it after...but I digress.  Point is, for old times sake, I've made him one last package...

It's contents are as follows:
1) A welcome home card with a drawing by our son included inside
2) A skull ring he BEGGED for on R&R but thinks I never bought ;)
3) A new pair of Jordans
4) A $22 customized box of Pop-Tarts.  Remember my mention of that in a previous post...well, now you know why it was $22.  (A little pricey, but I think it'll be worth his reaction).
5) Crystal Head Vodka (It's very expensive so he always said he deserved it when he redeployed.)
6) (not shown) A t-shirt that says, "That's what she said". If you know my husband at all, you'll think that's funny.

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

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...

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...

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.

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.

Picture Perfect Cookies

Tomorrow morning I'll be dropping off my husband's 4th of July care package.  So tonight is prep night :)  I've been feeling a bit crafty lately, so I did a little online research and found some tips on cookie decorating here.  Instead of just smearing royal icing over a cookie, I learned about flooding a cookie.  It requires a thinner royal icing. You can add more milk to your royal icing or look up a recipe for glacé icing.  The technique requires you to first outline the cookie with your regular royal icing and then use the thinner icing to flow out to the edges.  I used a toothpick to help direct the icing to the corners.  This is a pretty simple technique, hard to mess up.  They turned out super pretty!

Celebrating our Wooden Anniversary

Well, it's been 5 whole years since we said "I do".  I'm sure a lot (if not all) of our family and friends didn't see us making it this far.  After all, we knew each other a whole five minutes before he popped the question, I said yes, and we were walking down the isle.  It was love at first sight, and though we were crazy, five years later we are still going strong.  This year is a milestone in our marriage, five years marks the first official symbolic anniversary, the wooden anniversary.  I wanted to get him a new golf driver (not actually made from wood, but it's considered a wood), I also pondered a guitar, a drawing table, a work bench, etc.  Unfortunately, I couldn't really come up with a wooden anniversary gift that would fit into a flat rate box...so I gave up on the whole wooden gift dream and decided a cardboard shipping box was close enough to wood and settled on a gift I knew he'd want.  When my husband came home for R&R last month, we had a spat over a pair of $100 headphones, yeah 100 freaking bux!  He wanted them, I responded with laughter.  He wasn't joking.  Well, I finally went back out and wasted way too much money and bought those suckers. I hope they are the best freaking headphones ever.  For that price, they better make Miranda Lambert sound like Patsy Cline. (Sorry if you don't like country music, that's my only analogy for this post).  While I had about a week to decorate the box, it was down to the last minute before I had purchased anything to go into the box.  I have a reasonable explanation, however.  I promise, I'm not a last minute shopper!  For one, I couldn't come up with any ideas...I shopped and shopped, but I had no clue.  Secondly, I was in the midst of packing up and returning to NY this week.  Well, basically if I wanted his package to arrive by our anniversary, it was going to have to go out this morning.  So at 9 am, I was running around town in a rainstorm, desperately seeking out some goodies in the grocery like I was a contestant on Super Market Sweep.  (Oh lookie there, I lied, I did give another analogy).  Anyhow, I got the box out on time and it's currently making it's way to the middle east.  I made sure to snap some photos in the truck before I dropped it off at the post office.