Valentines Baking: Sweet and Bittersweet

Jeff and I have never been huge gotta-celebrate-Valentines-Day people (ironic since our first official date was on Valentines Day - you'd think we'd be ones to celebrate!) Oh, and today would have been Charlotte's birthday if she miraculously came on time, ha :)

This year, we had a MOPS (Mother's Of PreSchoolers group) Valentines party, and had to bring snacks inspired by the day of love ;) Since our meeting is 9-11am, I wanted to do something a little more breakfast friendly, so got a mix of Banana Bread Muffins.  I found this great idea on Pinterest (of course!) on how to make your muffins or cupcakes heart shaped and voila, Valentines Ready!  All you do is stick a marble beside the muffin paper in the tin, and when the muffins bake up, they turn into hearts!





They weren't perfect looking hearts, but they did the job.



(It isn't baking related, but at MOPS we decorated onsies for the local hospitals NICU!  Aren't they adorable!



We had a mix of iron-ons, stamps, and puff paint.  It was great fun and a good cause!)

We ended having so much food and so many leftovers, I had a ton of them to take home (the mix made 24)  And we won't eat that many muffins!  So I decided to send them to work with Jeff.  I was afraid they would dry out overnight, so I tried this Pinterest idea to put a slice of bread on top of your cake (I figured it would work with muffins) and the bread will dry out but your baked goods wouldn't.  It actually worked! So I sent Jeff off with the bowl of muffins this morning. :)



Our romantic plans tonight will include a spaghetti dinner with Charlotte, and then watching Breaking Dawn once she goes to bed. (you're jealous, I know)  But I did want to do something special for dessert.  We have a heart shaped cookie cutter that we use for Charlotte's play doh, so I cleaned it off and decided we could bake heart shaped sugar cookies.  I also wanted to make Jeff's favorite Peanut Butter Pie for our movie time.  So that was my plan this morning...

First up, Peanut Butter Pie.  Got the recipe out and realized I didn't have the cool whip needed.  Scratch that plan. I looked on Pinterest on my Yummy Board for something that I could cook using ingredients I already have, namely that  grahman cracker crust originally meant for the pie.  I found this great Chocolate Chip Cheesecake bar I figured I could put it into a pie shell instead of the 8x8 pan.  We got out all the ingredients, Charlotte helped my measure and dump stuff in.  I got through the first 5 ingredients and realized I had more than doubled the amount of brown sugar needed.  No way to salvage, so I dumped it out and started again.



This time I triple checked my measurements, but apparently was paying so much attention to that, I forgot to read the directions. I was supposed to stir it all together, THEN add the flour, THEN add the chocolate chips.  I had it all in the bowl together and tried to mix it.  Did not work well at all.

I gave up at this point. Charlotte even gave me a hug cause she knew I was frustrated.  I wasn't gonna attempted it AGAIN, I don't have enough butter to do this over and over!  I may attempt it again while Charlotte naps and I can fully concentrate. Blah.  Looks like we may only have sugar cookies for dinner... oh wait, those had their own FAIL!

I used Betty Crocker Cookie Mix for the sugar cookies (I swear by her dry mixes! They make great cookies and all you add is butter and egg!)  There is a version to make cut out cookies, so I added the needed flour to the mix with the butter and egg.  Turns out, I was supposed to put the flour in alone with the dry mix, combine those, then add the egg and butter.  I figured they would still work.  We laid out the dough and did our heart cut outs!



Sadly, they weren't solid or thick enough to pick up from the cutting board (yes, I dusted it with flour) and put on the pans. So, change of plans again, we rolled them up instead and baked them regular.



After they baked, we sprinkled sugar and pink sprinkles on them and called it done.  Still tasty, but not very cute :(



 

Well, it's time to go fix lunch. It may seem silly to have blogged about all this, but I was frustrated!  and my 140 character limit for Twitter just wasn't going to cut it.  Maybe I'll just give up on baking anything that does not come out of a box.

 

Christmas 2011

So we're a month past Christmas but I figured better late than never!   It was a different Christmas this year, with our being in Alabama we traveled the entire holiday and didn't get to have Christmas morning at our house :( I know other people have done this for years, and that this is just Charlotte's 3rd Christmas so it isn't a long standing tradition, but we missed it this year!  But I think we made the best of it and had a wonderful Christmas!

The Lyons Family Christmas: We traveled up to Bowling Green Kentucky Friday morning to spend some time with Jeff's side of the family.  We hung out on Friday and all the family came to Jim and Jolene's house Saturday for Christmas Eve fun.  We ate a great lunch, hung out with family, and watched all the cousins play together! That's the best part of Christmas to me  - seeing Charlotte enjoy her time with family, especially those that we don't see very often.  That evening we opened presents - it was fun chaos ;)   We had to pack up that night and head back down the Spring Hill, TN, but we had a fantastic Christmas Eve in Bowling Green!  Here are a couple photos from our trip, if you'd like to see more head here to Jeff's photo gallery.











We spent Christmas morning at my parents house in Spring Hill.  While we missed having it at our house, it was great being able to share in the Santa fun with my parents, sister, and Nana. Charlotte loved all her Santa toys!  (yes, it was a lot but they were all consignment sale buys or free from Kohls! Charlotte may be a bit spoiled but my wallet was happy.)







After Santa time, we had a great brunch and set about opening presents!!  We take turns opening presents so it takes a bit to get through them all - Charlotte actually lost interest in opening her gifts!  Regardless, we had a great time enjoying each others company and then playing with all our new toys.











All in all, it was a great Christmas spent with lots of family.  :)

To see more photos you can also visit my Facebook Album.

Autumn Crafts

This post is going to make me look a lot more crafty then I actually am :)  The crafts are either made at the library's story time or ideas I pulled off some websites, but I thought it would be fun to share the crafts that Charlotte and I have done.  On a side note, it's funny how its story time for toddlers but the mommas end up doing most of the work!

Our first craft at our new story time was about falling leaves, so it was a pretty simple project of glueing leaf cut outs on a piece of paper.  But, it was C's first time to use the glue stick on her own, so she had fun.  And it's a pretty on the fridge!



For Halloween we made a spider at the library.  It was really easy, just a small plate turned upside down and colored black (or in C's case any color) and then we accordion-ed 8 black strips of paper to be the legs.  Top it off with some googly eyes and you have a spooky spider!



We made a pumpkin during the library's trick or treat event.  It looked like a pretty simple idea - glueing the strips together at the bottom, then pulling them all up to the top and glueing them together at the top.  Slap on some leaves and you've got a pumpkin!  Somehow this mom screwed it up and our pumpkin turned out totally lopsided!  Oh well... it's cute, right??



This past weekend Jeff's parents came down to Huntsville to see the new house and visit C of course!  Charlotte loved having them here, and we talked about the next time we were gonna see them - at Thanksgiving.  Well, for a 2 year old, we deal in the matter of "tomorrow" not 2 weeks from now.  So we made a paper chain to count down the days until Thanksgiving!  I've been trying to explain that we only tear off one ring a day just like we only take 1 vitamin a day (weird analogy, but she understands it!)  Then we count the rings and talk about how it's that many days until we get to go to Granna and Grandad's house.

Anyway, I got out my scrapbooking scissors that are somewhat child proof and cut out cool patterns.  So Charlotte got to do some cutting for the first time and loved it.  Of course she burned out pretty quick and I finished the cutting.  Charlotte got to help with the stapler, but we ran out of staples, so we resorted to glue!  It was a fun little project to do.



Today we had a turkey craft day!  We traced Charlotte's hands and feet to make a special turkey for daddy to decorate his office at work. She usually loves having her hands and feet traced so this was the perfect craft for us!  The brown turkey is actually made of her two feet traced (without defined toes) and laid on top of each other, spreading them out just a bit at the bottom.  Jeff thinks it looks more like a potato, but oh well!  Charlotte loved being able to do all the glueing and putting the eyes on.  She was super excited to show daddy when he got home.



We also had to have a turkey to put on the fridge, so we made a Thankful Turkey.  On each of the turkey's feathers we wrote a name of someone we were thankful for - Daddy, Mommy, Granna, Grandad, Nan, and G.  (sorry to everyone else, we had limited leaves!) I think he is a pretty cute turkey!  This is something I hope we can do every year to remember what we are thankful for.



That wraps up our Autumn crafts!  If you have any cute winter or Christmas ideas, send them my way!  I want to be more proactive on doing arts and crafts with Charlotte a couple times a week, especially things she can do more on her own and less that mom has to do!   Happy Fall everyone :)

Halloween Weekend

We had a fantastic Halloween weekend!  We journeyed back up to Spring Hill Friday night, visited with friends to catch some of the World Series, and spent the night at my parents house.  Charlotte looooves sleeping at Nan and G's house up on the Ridge!  Saturday we just got to enjoy the day and prepare for the bonfire!

During Charlotte's nap Jeff and I got to have a little afternoon date - lunch and a movie, we saw "In Time" - it was great!  When we got back it was bonfire time!  I love having bonfire's at mom and dad's house.  I remember when our church was small enough that we all gathered at the Ridge to fellowship around the fire at least once a year!  Charlotte really got into the bonfire this year and was very excited about G starting the fire.  We had hot dogs, smores, and just enjoyed being outdoors with friends and family!

The next morning we got to head back to The Bridge for church - it was like we'd never left!  That afternoon Jeff and I got another mini-date - we went to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch Titans game!  It was nice just being together :)   When the game was over and Charlotte was done with her nap it was costume time!  She was the cutest ballerina ever!!!!

We headed to the Bridge for our church's annual "Trunk or Treat"  and Charlotte had a blast jumping in the moon bounce, trick or treating around the trunks, petting the pony, and seeing friends.

Our little family was exhausted that night and headed back to Huntsville.

Monday was officially Halloween, and that morning Charlotte and I headed to our public library for their trick or treating!  They had story time, crafts, and of course trick or treating around the different areas in the library.  It was a very nice and safe thing for them to do for our little ones.

Sadly, we got no trick or treaters at our door that night :(  I was all ready too!! I guess we'll just have to eat the candy.... oh well.... hehe

Enjoy the gallery below of all the photos from our Halloween Weekend!

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