Happy 9th Birthday Munchkinman!!!

{ December 15, 2008 @ 1:44 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Well, it was 9 years ago today that my fabulous son came into this world. He is a wonderful child that deserves a wonderful party, and this year was no exception. This year, the theme was Luau complete with the ocean (local swimming pool that we rented) pineapple, and a roast pig (the birthday cake). Chase had 40 or so of his closest friends in attendance and a great time was had by all!

We began by greeting everyone with leis. Let me tell you about those leis. My husband is a genius!!! I failed to by boxes of leis this summer when all the party stores had them relatively cheap. Well, in the winter, you can only by the leis individually, which, when there are 40-50 kids invited, can be expensive. As we were wandering aimlessly through the party store, Robert had a flash of brilliance. The store had doorway flower curtains made out of the same flowers as the leis for sale and he thought that it would be really easy to take them apart and make them into leis. Since the leis themselves were $1.50 each and the curtains were $4.99, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that this would be more cost effective. We were able to get about 25 leis out of each curtain and had more than enough for our guests. Plus, it was very easy to do and we made them while watching tv at night. Even Chase was able to make them. Way to go BOB!!!

Our invitations were surfboards that we made ourselves also. This was also a family project that was basically completed on evening during Thanksgiving. It took Bob, Angela and I to do it, but they were all done in a matter of hours. Then we, Chase and I, typed up the Party info so it would fit on the boards and found some Hawaiian phrases to include and took them to Kinko’s to print on clear labels. They were sooooo cute, I hated to give them away!

I made the roast pig cake and Timon on top. The surfboard is one of the invitations with the front label pulled off. The cake was chocolate with raspberry curd, which of course I made myself. We also had jello aquariums, though a word of advice should you ever make them, don’t use nerds. They give a dirty take kind of look…Still yummy, but not as cute.

This was the easiest birthday party we have had so far! Everyone had a blast at being able to swim in December and the pool area was nice and warm, though I heard from adults that the water was a little cool. Didn’t seem to bother the kids one little bit!

I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Cupcakes, Cupcakes, Cupcakes

{ December 15, 2008 @ 1:16 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Well, this semester of Kids in the Kitchen has been really eventful. So eventful in fact that I have not had the time to post all of the wonderful things we have been doing. Luckily, the holidays are upon us and that means time to blog to my heart’s content.  I will start with our most recent project and work backwards over the next few weeks.

It was cupcake time for my class and we thought that we would share our creations with the school during our Mercado event. Two of the classrooms combine to do a cake walk and so we donated a portion of our product to them.

I broke up the class into groups and each group made a box (yes we use box mix for these) of cake mix into cupcakes. I use box mix because I want them to learn that you can do wonderful things with prepackaged items. For example, two groups made marble cupcakes, one group did chocolate cherry cupcakes, one group added lemon curd to their lemon cupcakes and the last group added chocolate chips to their chocolate cake mix. What did our cupcakes look like you ask? Well they were adorable, of course!!!

We made penguins, icebergs, popcorn, ornaments and worms in dirt. Unfortuately, I can only find pictures of the penguins and popcorn, but I will look for the others and add them if I find them. They did a great job and had a great time doing it. I do think that the penguins were my favorite.

Happy Birthday Andrea!!!

{ October 7, 2008 @ 11:24 am } · { Uncategorized }
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I just wanted to wish Andrea a very happy 30th birthday. For those of us who know and love her, it is hard to believe that she turns 30 tomorrow. I know that she will have a wonderful birthday surrounded by friends and loved ones and fabulous cupcakes. Happy birthday!!

You’ve got class

{ October 4, 2008 @ 11:04 am } · { class }
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Well, it is the start of the school year and let me tell you, I can feel it!! I am teaching my cooking class again at Chase’s elementary school and it is going great!! I have 17 kids this semester- I know!! what the heck was I thinking??!!!- and they are soooooo great! I spent the first couple of weeks trying to figure out exactly how to manage them and get everything done that we needed to do. This is no small feat since we have only one oven. We are making it work though. Can I just say, Thank God for husbands!!! He has really been helping me out this semester while I await volleyball season to be over so that my helper will come back.

So I suppose you are wondering just what types of things we make in our class. Well, this semester we are taking on quick breads (banana, pumpkin, cranberry, zucchini and blueberry) with 3 variations, nuts, pineapple, chocolate chips etc. I just depends on the bread. There are chocolate chip cookies with 3 variations and snickerdoodles that everyone loves to make, so we make it every year. We are spending 2 weeks doing Halloween goodies-caramel apples; mummy, owl and spiderweb cookies; mummy dogs, candy necklaces and decorating cookies that I am bringing from home. Then we are moving on to cupcakes. Not just your average cupcakes though. Of course not, you would say, because you know me! We are making specialty cupcakes for our school Mercado. They will work in groups and make popcorn cupcakes, penguin (our school mascot) cupcakes, dirt and worms cupcakes, ornament cupcakes and snowball cupcakes. The kids will share with each other and donate some to the school cake walk. I am super excited about those!!! The last event that we will do this year is ornament cookies that the kids can hang on the tree or around the house if they like. These will be more intricate than the gingerbread houses we did last year.

I am still working on the plans for the spring semester, so if you have any ideas, please let me know. I know that we will make sugar cookie barns (from the wonderful Whimsical Bakehouse website, http://www.whimsicalbakehouse.com/), ratatouille, perogis, and have a family dinner but I have 15 weeks to fill!!! I also think that we will do a Mardi Gras theme for 2 weeks, I want to make King’s cake that they can take home to bake. Other than that, I have no idea what else we will do. Really, send you ideas and I will see if I can make it work in my class.

Until then…. Happy Baking!!!

Po, is that you?

{ August 18, 2008 @ 9:27 am } · { baking, class }
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My sister-in-law, Angela, recently took a few Wilton cake decorating classes and is doing a great job. She decided to make Loren’s, my brother and her hubby, birthday cake and I think that it came out really cute. My brother is a black belt and also  teaches judo in Roswell. He even got my son interested in it! Anyway, I thought that you might like to see their cake, so here it is:

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