A Mickey Mouse Themed Party for Our Big 2-Year-Old Boy

I'll go ahead and put it out there. I committed a terrible mommy crime and forgot to take pics at my son's second birthday party. I spent hours pinning ideas, planning the menu and games and looking for and buying the perfect pieces and then FORGOT to take pictures of the thing!!!! AAAGGHHHHH!!! I could kick myself. My camera was sitting on the kitchen table the entire time!!! But in the moment, it just never occurred to me. I was too busy HAVING FUN!!!! Oh well. :) I did take a few pics of the food tables before the party and asked family to share any pics they had, so blurry phone pics are all I have to work with.

My little man is REALLY into three characters right now: Caillou, Elmo and Mickey Mouse. He has a cousin who was having an Elmo party the week after his party, so I nixed an Elmo theme. Caillou is his very favorite book/tv character right now, so I wanted to do a Caillou party and started a pin board of Caillou Birthday Party Ideas, but once I started looking at Mickey Mouse ideas, I found so many cute ideas I just couldn't resist.

Here's what we did.

The Menu: 

• Hot Diggity Dogs: hot dogs (his birthday is in December so we couldn't cook these outside on the grill, so I did them in the crockpot following these Crock Pot Hot Dog instructions and they turned out great).

• Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Sandwiches: We pre-sliced everything and just set it out for people to make their own sandwiches the way that they wanted. I bought a Mickey Mouse sandwich cutter off ebay for $5.99 and it was PERFECT. My mom and I set up an assembly line the night before his party and cut ham, turkey and bologna (we bought lunchmeat that was not too thick and not too thin); cheddar and colby jack cheese slices (the real stuff) and white and wheat bread in no time! It was really fast.  Just a warning if you do this - you will be left with about half of your bread, lunchmeat and cheese as scraps, which are perfectly fine for making sandwiches and omelets (and for feeding the birds) later.....just be ready for all the leftovers. We also had lettuce, tomato slices and sandwich pickles as well as mustard and mayo for folks to fix their sandwiches with. 
• Nacho Cheese Doritos and Crunchy Cheetos: what's a party without chips????

• Store-bought Mickey Mouse marble cake with buttercream icing: I would've made his cake if we were having his party at home; but his party was three days before Christmas and at his grandmother's house (8 hours away from home, and we had gotten into town just before his party....his birthday is ten days before Christmas and while it's nice to be able to do a party for him a few days before Christmas (with much of his family there), making and decorating a cake after driving 8 hours with a toddler, going grocery shopping (I did get as much as I could in advance), prepping all the other food, etc., it was too much work to make and decorate a cake myself. So the bottom line is I decided to just go with a store-bought cake this year ...... I did make his cake for his first birthday party and it took four or five hours and added a whole 'nother layer of stress that I decided to just cut out this year. And who are we kidding, store bought cakes are GOOD and look better than any cake I would've spent half a day on.
• Icecream: We did a quart of both Birthday Cake and Oreo Cookies & Cream  :)
• Drinks: Soda for the adults and Juicy Juice juice boxes for the kiddos.

The Games: Since his birthday is in December, we had to do inside activities. Here is what we did:

• Cookie decorating: I wish I had pics of this! I used the sandwich cutter and baked a batch of Mickey-shaped sugar cookies the night before his party. I bought several pouches of squeezy cookie icing and a variety of sprinkles and let the kids just do their thing!
• Dum-Dum topiary game: I made the Mickey Mouse Dum-Dum topiary the night before the party following these Minnie Mouse Centerpiece Instructions. A week before his party, I had painted the pot white and glued a red-and-white polka dot ribbon around the top. I used two 4-inch and one 8-inch styrofoam balls because I couldn't find the larger size, but the topiary was plenty big for a cool centerpiece and game piece. The night I made the topiary, I used a bag of 300 Dum-Dum pops and it wasn't enough. I was not able to completely cover the back with lollipops, but it was about 10 p.m. the night before his party and I wasn't about to leave the house to try to find more. I had to put some in the back to even out the weight (it was front-heavy). We marked the sticks of 30 of the lollipops with a black sharpie and randomly stuck them in the topiary. For the game, we went in order of youngest to oldest; when someone's turn came up, he or she could pull as many lollipops out as they wanted, but once they pulled one with a black stick they had to stop and let the next person go. It's pretty simple but the kids really liked it! And of course, each kid got a ton of Dum-Dums to take home! At the start of this game, I gave each child a Mickey Mouse favor bag to keep their lollipops in. 
• Mickey and Friends Matching Game: I found a deck of flash cards at the Dollar Tree. The flash cards had one card with a number (the numeral, ex: 7) and a Mickey character (Daisy, Pluto, Minnie, etc.) and a corresponding card with the word of the number spelled out (ex: seven) and the same Mickey character. We taped cards with the words spelled out around the house before the party. At the start of this game, each child got three cards with the numeral and had to find the matching card as fast as they could. Adults helped the little ones. Everyone that found all three of their matches (which was everyone of course) got two of their choice of either travel sized Nutter Butters, Oreos or Chips Ahoy Chocolate Chip Cookies. I wrapped each of the packages with a curly ribbon just to make them a little extra special. 
• Goofy Dares: I came up with a list of kid-friendly dares. For every dare that a child successfully completed, he or she was able to choose one Dollar Tree prize (bubbles, silly putty, coloring book, etc.) from a bag of prizes.

  

  Silly Putty boogie....I guess? Not sure what was happening here. :)

  

  Feet Kissing.

• Make the funniest face you can. 
• Stick your tongue out while crossing your eyes. 
• Quack like Donald Duck. 
• Try and rub your tummy while patting your head. 
• Count to ten.
• Sing your ABCs. 
• Do your best Goofy laugh. 
• Do your silliest dance. 
• Stand on your head for ten seconds (get help if you need it). 
• Spin around in a circle 5 times. 
• Eat a spoonful of mustard. 
• Eat a spoonful of ketchup. 
• Try to lick your elbow.
• Make a monkey noise. 
• Kiss your feet.
• Sing “I’m a Little Teapot” and do all the motions.
• Act like a fish. 
• Pretend you’re a bug someone just stepped on. 
• Name the seven dwarfs.
• Do “this little piggy” on your own feet.  

 After we ate and played games, we opened presents.

Then, we sang Happy Birthday to the Birthday Boy.

And of course, ate lots and lots of cake and ice cream!

Lastly, for the party favors, I bought plastic Mickey Mouse cups and filled each with: the contents of one bag of Mickey Mouse party favors, a Fruity Pebbles cereal bar, a bag of Elf graham crackers, a glow bracelet and a bag of Mickey Mouse Jelly Belly jellybeans. There's a pic of those above (by the drinks).

I also bought a soundtrack of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse songs but forgot to play the dern thing during the party. Oh well. I get to listen to it every day in the car now at the insistence of my 37.5-inch tall back-seat driver. :/

I am upset about not having taken more and better pictures but am thankful for the pictures that I do have and even more thankful for all of the wonderful memories I have of my sweet, big boy having fun and much of his family being there to help celebrate him turning one year older! He really loved his party this year (he was pretty miserable at his first birthday party) and I will treasure the memories of his little Mickey Mouse party forever! :)

Candy Bar Brownies

Sunday at lunch I told my husband (who has the sweetest tooth of any person I know) that he could choose any dessert he'd like me to make for dinner that night.  Would it be a pie or cobbler? Cake or cupcakes? Cookies or some sort of bars? He couldn't decide! So what'd we do? Pull up my Pinterest boards, of course, to help make the big decision. You should've seen him. "Scroll up, no scroll down, slower, down, back up, the other window, go back, go up, slow down, go back up".....hahahahaha. He was like a kid in a candy store. And what caught his eye? A brownie filled with candy, naturally.  
This is a popular Pinterest recipe, it's shown up in my feed a number of times. Store bought brownie mix (two packages, baked according to package directions) with candy bars in it. As much as my husband and almost-two-year-old would love to have that much brownie to have to eat; it's more than we need, so I halved the recipe and used just one package of Betty Crocker basic fudge brownie mix (which called for an egg and some water and oil) and about 20 miniature sized chocolate bars. 

We used Twix, Butterfinger, Reese's, Milky Way, Three Musketeers, Krackle, Hershey's (original) and Snickers, but you can use whatever you like. Pour half the batter in a well-greased baking dish (I used an 8x8 one). Layer your candy bars (avoid putting any too close to the edges of your dish) and pour the other half of the batter on top. I had to do a little bit of spreading to get the batter even over the candy bars. Bake according to directions. Ours took somewhere around 25 minutes at 350 until a knife poked through the brownie came out clean(ish)....remember it has candy in it, so I you may have test it in a few spots where there is brownie instead of candy.

 How did it turn out? An oooey, gooey, hot mess. Well, not a mess. My husband said it was beautiful, but this is not the kind of brownie recipe you can take somewhere to show off your master culinary skills. It's perfectly acceptable for enjoying at home,  but don't plan on taking this to any church potlucks or for the breakroom at work. It falls apart because of all the candy. The flavor? Great. It's brownie and candy bars, come on!  It also is kind of exciting to know what you're going to get in your brownie slice - maybe caramel, peanut butter or butterfinger? It's just not the kind of brownie recipe that "looks" as good as it tastes, since it breaks apart so easily....so you and your family will have to eat them all by yourselves! :) Now, go make these, turn off the lights, sit on the couch, turn on the TV and ENJOY!  :)

My Baby Sister's Vacation Gift

My baby sister is going on her first real vacation EVER. She’s 28 years old and has only ever taken weekend trips but later this month is taking a real trip for 10 DAYS! I am so excited for her; she is going with her boyfriend to Vegas and then driving to Los Angeles and San Francisco up the California coast to Napa Valley. Now that is what I call a vacation! This is cause for a gift! We live 497 miles away from each other, so I would have loved to have put together a cute tote for her and wrapped it up so that it would have presented better, but a box will have to do since it has to be shipped. And getting a unexpected package can be exciting, too, right? I tried to add some bright tissue paper to the box to make it more cheerful. Everything is better with yellow tissue paper, right?

The gift was just an assortment of goodies that she could use on her big trip.

Here’s what I included:

Bath & Body Works Hand Sanitizer

Bath & Body Works Foxy Hand Sanitizer PocketBac Holder

Blistex

Crossword Book

Kleenex

Magazine

Nerds Candy

Nutter Butter Bites

Old Navy Scarf (on sale!)

Old Navy Socks (on sale!)

Old Navy Tote-in-a-Bag (on sale, too!)

Orbit Gum:

Sour Patch Candy

Teddy Graham Bites

Tic Tacs

Wet Wipes

Shipping (priority flat rate with USPS, the box was free)

I could have gotten one less thing or found less expensive options on some of the items, but was overall pretty happy with what I put together. I hope she loves it! And I hope she has a fantastic trip!

Game Day Goodies: Wings, Corndogs, Ham & Cheese Pinwheels, Cupcakes and More....Oh My!

College football season just started. Football season means weekends of my husband sitting on the couch yelling at the T.V. while I play in the kitchen. I can see the T.V. from the kitchen, so no worries, I’m not missing the game. 

We kicked off the start of football season with three footballfood recipes I pinned: baked ham and cheese pinwheels, hot crab dip and homemade mini corndogs, along with wings, white cheese dip and tortilla chips and yellow cupcakes with chocolate icing. Here’s my success (or not) of the recipes (along with my husband’s official ratings of them).

Hot Ham and Cheese Pinwheels: I used crescent rolls instead of making my own dough because I never have any luck with yeast. I also used sliced cheddar. My variations only made 16 pinwheels instead of the 24 in the original recipe. I rolled the crescents out flat like a sheet, spread out 12 pieces of ham and 6 slices of cheese. Rolled up and cut up as described in the original recipe, baked for 15 or so minutes at 325 degrees and they were good! The hubs gave them a 7.

Mini Corndog Muffins: I used one box of Jiffy mix and followed the directions on the box for cornbread muffins. I spooned the batter into 24 mini-muffins and put a half of a turkey cocktail weenie in the middle and baked for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees. The boys ate them with mustard and ketchup and liked them, but John thought that they were too much breading and not enough meat. Next time I will use cut up fatter hotdogs instead of cocktail weenies. Hubby’s score:  6. 

Hot Crab Dip: I forgot the Worcestershire and used canned crab meat (because a half-pound of fresh crab meat would be waaaaayyy too expensive). I also used lighter variations of the mayo and cream cheese, instead of the full fat versions. I really like crab and love a good crab dip, but this was sour and more seafoody than I expected   – a couple of bites was all I needed before diminishing marginal return set in big time. I would probably cut out some of the mayo, use a little less lemon juice and use Tony Cacheres instead of Old Bay.  My husband doesn't eat crab, so I'll rate this one: 3.5, maybe?

The wings were made with McCormick’s Hickory BBQ Buffalo Wings dry seasoning mix. They were incredibly easy. Rinse and cut up your wings and shake them in a Ziploc bag with the seasonings, bake for a half hour and you’ll have one very happy husband. Mine tore these up and gave them a score of: 8.5!

 

Store bought white cheese dip & tortilla chips never fail. The yellow box cake and store-bought icing cupcakes (I’m so gourmet) also yielded no complaints.  

I’m excited about next weekend! I’ve already started researching recipes to try. Any suggestions?

Comparisons of Yours Truly to Dolly Parton, RuPaul and Mama June

Is it normal to reach a point where you just feel silly getting made up? Last night, I thought I’d fix myself up for the old man. We were meeting for dinner at a big fancy (not) Mexican restaurant in town. Side note: When we eat out, it’s with a 20-month-old, so all of our meals are fast and consist of us trying to get our dear child to “sit back down in the high chair, fine, sit in the booth with us, but be still, stop banging on the table, stop staring at the people behind us, stop screaming, stop flicking water across the table, hurry, get the chip stuck from out of this throat, hurry, give him some water, he must’ve gotten a jalapeno, and on and on and on….it’s literally a fun  fest. I don’t even know why we eat out anymore. It’s no faster than eating at home and certainly no cheaper. But part of me misses those days when we could go out to eat, talk about our day, and have someone else do the dishes. Maybe that’s why we eat out. I just don’t want to do dishes. 

Anyways, so I decide I need to change up my every day appearance and fancy it up for my husband. I feel bad for the poor man; I only ever wear real clothes if we’re visiting his family (In-laws: it’s the truth). The rest of the time, and I mean, every single day, I wear an old t-shirt (I have four or five of the really old, thin, comfy ones that are my favorites that I keep in constant rotation), boxer shorts in the warm months and pajama pants in the cold months, no makeup and a ponytail and that’s it. I don’t even wear jeans. If I have to go to the grocery store, I’ll get “dressed up” with some gym shorts and flip flops. I can’t blame my wardrobe choices on the baby like most moms can because I dressed this way long before he was even thought of. I’ll blame it on working from home and not having to wear real clothes for work. I HAVE to blame it on something; it’s not MY fault I look this way. ;)

So I curled my hair and did full makeup and felt like a clown. Seriously. No, more like Dolly Parton and/or RuPaul. I had big hair, lipstick, and felt ridiculous. But the only way to “fix” it was to shower and ain’t nobody got time for two showers in one day, so I tried to brush down the curls and blot away the lipstick and make the best of it. My husband always compliments me when I wear real clothes and makeup, because it is so rare. As soon as my husband saw me, he said “Oooh you curled your hair” in the way a man might say if he saw a little girl wearing her mom’s eye shadow or nail polish. And I could tell he was even laughing at me on the inside. I told him to drop it; I did the best I could. He made some comment about how he liked me wearing real clothes and “couldn’t wait to get me home,” but that was a pity compliment and got him nowhere. Trust me.

So what happened? I used to get fixed up and think I looked good. Well, not good. But not bad. Instead of feeling confident, I just felt like I was in a silly costume. I have either officially hit dumpy mom mode or something else is going on. I just don’t know what. Perhaps it’s just because it is such a stark contrast from my normal, everyday wear that it felt incredibly out of place. But part of me also felt afraid that I looked like Mama June wearing makeup. You know how when Mama June puts on makeup it just looks weird? Mama June just shouldn’t wear makeup. Maybe I am the same way.  Or maybe I just need to learn how to put makeup on in a way that isn’t drag queen-ish. I know how to put makeup on for a regular occasion but was trying to get “fixed” up like I see other people do on Facebook (yes, I’ll admit, all of this was so I could take a decent pic to put on Facebook)...I guess I just don’t know where the line between the all-natural look stops and the over-the-top look starts. Or maybe just go back to my t-shirt and boxer shorts.

Anyone else felt this way? 

P.S. - Anyone who knows me well knows I LOVE LOVE LOVE Dolly Parton. I have been her #1 fan for as long as I can remember.  I even dressed up as her (fake boobs, sequin dress and curly blond wig, high heels and all) for a middle school project. In fact, I did more than one school project on the Backwoods Barbie. So no disrespect to Dolly here.

Hello! Back to Blogging!

I've decided to take another stab at a blog. I tried one a few years ago and got bored of it; and the same thing may happen again this time (I can't make any promises that this will last more than a week). But let's give it a try. 

I have always loved trying new recipes. Pinterest now allows me to waste more time and money than ever before trying out new recipes. Some have DEFINITELY been failures; some turn out not so bad. So, I will try to share recipes that I try (the good and bad ones) as well as funny stories (I have a hilarious husband and son) and other thoughts and adventures that I think our friends and family might find interesting.

Enjoy!