Both of my kids were “sweethearts” at school one day this week, which meant that they were in charge of bringing snacks.  Both classes requested “blue snacks”.  And seriously?  There are no naturally occuring blue foods.  Well, blueberries seem obvious…but a) blueberries aren’t really blue…they’re more of a dark purple, IMHO and b) I’m too cheap to buy enough blueberries to satisfy 30 kids.  (Was anyone else aware that blueberries were so expensive?)  There’s also blue corn…but I doubt the kids want blue corn chips.  Just guessin’.

So…instead of delicious, healthy blueberries and blue corn chips, I decided to make trans-fat-full, high-fructose-syrup-laden homemade dough bowls(dyed blue, of course) and oh-so-(not)-healthy candied popcorn(also dyed blue).  I know…other parents love me.

So if you’d like to corrupt your children’s digestive system and make them happy at the same time, this is how you do it:  Make these homemade bowls.  (We usually use them as ice cream bowls, but I couldn’t figure out how to keep the ice cream frozen long enough for school.)  And make this delish candied popcorn.  Try ’em together, or try ’em separate.  Either way, they’re yum-yum-yummy!

Homemade Ice Cream Bowls (shown here dyed blue, but usually a nice sugar-cookie color)

You’ll need the following ingredients: 1/4 cup of shortening(yes…lard makes everything healthier, right??) 1/4 cup softened butter, 2/3 cup sugar, 1 egg, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp baking powder, 1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips(optional, not used in these photos)

Beat together shortening, butter and sugar.  Add egg and vanilla until combined.

In separate bowl, sift together salt, baking powder and flour.  Then gradually stir into the batter.

Stir in the chocolate chips(or in this case, 3 jars of blue food coloring).

Divide dough in half.  Shape each half into flat disk and wrap in plastic.

Chill in fridge for at least 2 hours.

Heat oven to 375°.  Turn two 12-count muffin tins upside down.  Cover ten of the cups with squares of aluminum foil.  Spray the foil with cooking spray and set aside.

Unwrap one disk of dough and roll dough into “Peeps” sized balls. (Hey, we just had Easter…that’s the best thing I had to compare sizes.)

Flatten balls into small disks, and place each one over a cup bottom and mold it to the muffin form.

Bake 10-12 minutes(8-10 in convectional oven), or until light brown.  Let cool 10 minutes.

Remove foil and bowls together.  Let cool a few more minutes, then peel foil out of bowl.

Fill with yummy deliciousness…today candied popcorn, tomorrow ice cream!

Candied Popcorn

I almost always make candied popcorn at Christmas(red and green, of course).  It is fairly easy to make(as long as you are paying attention and don’t burn it).

You’ll need: 1 regular size bag of popcorn(popped) minus a few handfuls for “taste testing”, 1 cup salted peanuts or cashews(optional), 1/4 cup butter, 3 TBsp light corn syrup, 1/2 cup granulated sugar, 1 package(4 serving size) any flavor Jello.

Very important: Don’t forget to taste test the popcorn before you start.  If you don’t skim a little off the top, the candy to popcorn ratio just isn’t right.  🙂

Heat oven to 300°.  Seriously.  Not 301°.  It’ll burn.  I promise.

Line a 15x10x1 pan with wax paper.

Place popcorn and nuts in a large bowl.

Heat butter and syrup in a small saucepan over LOW heat.  Stir in sugar and Jello; bring to a boil on MED heat.  Reduce heat to low and gently simer for 3-5 minutes, stirring almost constantly.  (Be very careful to not let it burn!!) It should start out kind of thick and get more fluid as it heats up.

Immediately pour syrup over popcorn, tossing well.

Evenly spread popcorn onto prepared pan (like you used to do when people actually made Rice Crispy Treats).

Bake for 10 minutes(7 minutes in convection oven).

Cool.

Remove from pan and break into small pieces.

Eat it all in one sitting.  YUM!

These are the easiest, most awesome-smelling homemade ornaments you’ll ever put on your tree!   I can’t take credit for the idea; we made some last year at our old church’s advent festival(where the kids come and make all kinds of Christmas and Advent crafts).  Anyway, when I pulled out all the ornaments to put on the tree, I was surprized to find that not only were the ornaments we’d made last year not broken, but they still smelled quite yummy.  The only problem with making these was that my kids wanted to eat them…

I don’t have pictures, but the instructions are super easy:
Take 1 cup of store-bought applesauce and add 1 cup of ground cinnamon(about one whole regular spice-sized container). You can also add a tablespoon of white craft glue if you want. (We did because I think it makes them last longer, but if you don’t have any on hand…don’t worry about it.) Once you have all of this mixed up, you’ll want to make sure you have it at a good “cookie dough” consistancy. I had to add cinnamon, so you may want to make sure you have an extra container of it. Once it’s “dough-y”, use cookie cutters to cut out the shapes. Then use a straw to make a hole at the top of the ornament, so you’ll have a place to tie on a pretty ribbon once it’s all dry.

I found that it was easiest to cut them out on paper plates and leave them there to air dry. Trying to move them while still “wet” was really hard to do.  But you can either let them air dry on the plates, OR you could transfer them to a baking sheet and bake them until they’re hard.

Really easy for you(with easy clean up, too!).  Fun for the kids.  Smells good for at least 2 years!  🙂  Looks cute for a long, long time…

Every now and then I’ll get all the broken crayon pieces, put them in those mini muffin tins, and melt them down to “new” circle crayons.  Sometimes, if I’m feeling like super-mom, we’ll melt the pieces down and pour them into cookie cutters so that we have “shape crayons”.  (Let me be honest…I did that once.  I probably won’t ever do it again!)

But I did find something that I thought would be fun to try…alphabet and number baking trays.  I figured it couldn’t be much harder than using a muffin tin(most letters weren’t), and it would be fun to spell things out with crayons.  You can also use them(obviously) for baking or for making ice. 

So if you want to try to make crayon letters too, here’s the low-down on how I did it.  Like I said it was pretty easy except for the letters “E” and “M” (which is kind of unfortunate because EMMiE has more than its fair share of “E”s and “M”s!).  I did learn, however, that by making them thicker(using more crayon pieces), it ultimately made it easier to pop them out with out breaking them.  I’m also thinking that the thicker crayons are going to withstand more use than the thinner ones…

So…what you’ll need is crayon bits and pieces, the alphabet baking trays, an oven and a freezer.

Start by preheating your oven to about 300 degrees. 
If you want to expedite the cooling process once the crayons come out of the oven, you’ll need to clear out some room in the freezer.

 When I was looking at these online, I wasn’t sure of the actual size. 
Here’s a quarter for comparison.

Once you have all your crayon pieces broken up, you’ll simply use them to fill in the letters, as seen here.  (You’ll notice that since I was spelling certain names, I only needed certain letters.  You could easily do the whole alphabet.)

I found it easiest to place all three trays on one big baking sheet.  That way you won’t have to keep it quite so steady when you move it out of the oven.  It’ll be pretty sloshy by then, and the potential for mess-making is definately there!  (Um, yeah…I dropped a red one all over the bottom of my freezer.  It took FOREVER to clean it all out…learn from my mistakes, folks!)

Then comes the hardest part to me…waiting.  Once you take them out of the oven, put them into the freezer to harden them up some.  Then take them out and let them finish cooling/hardening at room temperature.  If you try to pop them out fresh from the freezer they will be too brittle and they will break. 

It may take a little time and patience, but see how fun these look in the end????

I orginally planned on showing how to make a Photo Clock like you can order from Snapfish and Walmart and Walgreens for about $20, but I didn’t have a photo on hand.   So…I decided that the kids could draw a picture instead!  🙂  The whole project took about an hour from beginning to end, but that did include the 20 minutes or so my kids took coloring.

So…you only need a few things: pen, scissors, a large(12×12) sheet of paper, a large photo(based on the size of your clock, you may need an 8×10 or 11×14), a tiny screw driver, and a clock.  I grabbed a cheap $4 wall clock from Walgreens today(like the one shown below), but you could use any one that has screws on the back…some of the really cheap ones are glued together.

I’m going to give you a ton of pictures and a ton of directions…it’s really idiot-proof though.  I’m just trying to be really specific.

To start, unscrew all the little screws on the back in order to take the glass front off.  Be sure to set the face of the clock on something semi-soft so that it won’t get scratched.

Next is probably the hardest part:  You’ll have to take off the second, minute and hour hands.  For most clocks, you just have to pull on the second hand and pop it off.  Once you get it off, it’s really easy to get the other two.  When you’re pulling, you may think that you’re going to break it…you won’t…probably.  If you do break it, you’ve only lost four bucks!

Once you get all the hands off, it will look like this:

Next you’ll want to turn the clock over and carefully trace the edge of the clock on your 12×12 paper.  I say be careful because you’ll have the little center part sticking out.  If you break it, you’ve broken the clock.  So don’t break it!

Once you have it traced out, you will cut out the circle.  Remember that you’ll also want to trim a little bit off from what you traced because the inside of the clock is smaller than the outside.  It’s always better to make it too big than too small though…you can keep trimming it until it fits perfectly.

Once it’s all cut out and looks like it’s going to fit, you’ll turn the clock back over.  Center the circle over the clock and gently push down on the center post.  You probably won’t be able to push hard enough to puncture the paper without breaking the post.  So just make an indentation that you can punch out later.

I then used my little screwdriver I had on hand to make a hole where the indendation was, and make it all smooth.

Now you’re to the fun part!  Since I didn’t have a picture, I let the kids color on the white circle I had cut out.  If you were using a photo, you would take the circle and use it as a template for cutting your photo into a circle.  But remember to take note of where the clock hands will be once you place your picture in the clock.  You probably don’t want the hour hand sprouting out of Uncle Bob’s nose, or even worse…someone’s crotch!  (Or maybe you do…because really, that’s funny!) 

You’re getting close now!  Take your photo or artwork and glue or tape it onto the clock face.  I like to use double sided tape, but you could use whatever you have available.

Then you’ll need to put the hands back on(usually in the hour, minute, second order).  Make sure that they are all flat.  If they got bent when you were trying to get them off, they won’t run smoothly.  But you can easily straighten them back out.

Now just screw the clock back together…

And you’re done!  Congrats!

This will be a super fun gift to give my Papa.  I’m always trying to find something my kids can make for him, but that he can actually use, too.  I still plan on making a photo one for myself.  Once I do it, I’ll post that picture, too, so that you can see what it looks like!

I barely made the deadline for Nov 6th, but I’m still hanging in there!  You promise to keep on reading, and I’ll promise to keep on posting!