Summer Painting

 Here are two simple "painting" activities for your kiddos to do this summer.

The first is seriously too easy. Grab a bucket, cup, bowl, whatever of water and a paint brush.

No mess and the fun goes on.

Another simple way to let your kids paint the sidewalk is with sidewalk paint.

 You may have seen this idea and not known how super uncomplicated it is. The link I originally used is gone now, but the mix is an easy 50-50 mix of water and corn starch and add whatever food coloring you like. Stir, stir. 

 Once again. hand over a paintbrush (like paint the house style, not water color variety) and let them go at it.

Candy Cane Marshmallow Dipper

 

 We were trying to think of an easy and fairly quick treat to make together the other night. I had seen this idea here for making these candy cane "pops", as they called them, to use with hot chocolate and thought it would be perfect. My kids and I are big fans of hot chocolate. 

Supplies:

-Large marshmallows

-Small candy canes

-Wax paper

-Hot chocolate of your choice

-Rolling Pin

-Chocolate for melting (I used these chocolate chips, but in the future I would use normal candy making melting chocolates)

 

As I frequently mention, I like to see what fine motor skills practice we can get in during our projects and this time I was surprised to note how hard it was for my girls to get the candy canes out of the little packages without breaking them. 

 

We opted to use scissors to open them (which is still fine motor practice, I guess). :) So we unwrapped a  bunch of little candy canes.

 We used a rolling pin to crush a bunch of still wrapped other candy canes.

 We then stuck the long end of the candy cane into a big marshmallow. They liked this step. I was surprised that even my 2 year old could do this step well.

 

We laid out wax paper, put our crushed candy cane bits on a plate and melted our bowl of chocolate chips. I made sure our center was all ready to go before we melted the chocolate because I know how fast that melted chocolate will harden.

 Like I said before, I wouldn't use chocolate chips again. I think I over heated the chocolate because it wasn't smooth after I heated it. Ours got kind of clumpy so we couldn't just dip the marshmallow. We had to sort of "paint" or spread the chocolate on. It was fine because they still thought it was fun.

 Immediately after they spread the chocolate they  rolled the chocolate covered marshmallow into the crushed candy cane bits.

 Ta-da! I thought they turned out pretty cute, even if our chocolate was a little weird.

 The kids loved them and dipped them in their hot chocolate then would eat part of it and then dip it again. I opted to dump my whole thing into the mug and let it melt to add some yummy flavor to my hot chocolate. We put the rest that we made into a baggie and froze them until all the way cooled and hardened and have them ready to use for our next hot chocolate drinks. It was a hit and I would definitely make them again. They would also make really cute neighbor or teacher gifts.

Food Friday- Chocolate Chip Reese's Puff Treats

 

When I saw this treat here I thought, "what a wonderful and delicious sounding treat." It sort of felt like a Halloween season type treat, but we didn't make it to making it before Halloween, so now I think, "What a great Thanksgiving type treat." ;) 

 Chocolate Chip Reese's Puffs Treats

Ingredients:

-7 Cups Reese's Puffs Cereal

-4 oz Box of Reese's Pieces

-12 oz Bag of mini marshmallows 

(I used a couple bags of different left over marshmallows I had)

-4 T Butter/Margarine

-Cooking Spray

-Chocolate Chips (The recipe I saw didn't have chocolate in it, but I love peanut butter and chocolate together and had to try it)

 

We measured out the Reese's Puffs cereal into a big bowl

 

Melt the butter and marshmallows until melted and smooth, but don't over cook it.

  

Pour the marshmallows and butter into the Reese's Puffs bowl and mix

Quickly add 2/3 of the box of Reese's Pieces and a few handfuls of chocolate chips. They will melt a little, but that is the idea.

 Smooth the mixture into a greased 9x13 pan

 Add the rest of the Reese's Pieces and a few more chocolate chips to the top of the mixture and then start your mouth-watering stares.

 Because we are impatient and it was WAY passed bedtime we put ours in the freezer to harden a little.

 I must say, it was DELICIOUS!!!! Quite rich, but delicious. I recommend a large glass of cold milk with it. It really was yummy and the kids loved it too and it was super easy. We will be repeating this one. I think the chocolate really added something to it too.

Food Friday- Halloween Popcorn Crunch Bark

 I know it isn't Halloween yet, but around my house I want to celebrate Halloween all year long, so if we are this close to Halloween, I go into full Halloween mode.  I saw a few different Halloween snack ideas I wanted to try and I noticed that lots of them had similar ingredients. I wanted to try each of them and then got a wild idea to MIX all three of them. The end result was yummy, but I would still like to try them separately some time. Beware this might be sugar overload. We have enjoyed the treat and experiment. Here are the three recipes I pulled my mix from:

 

Halloween Popcorn

 

Candy Corn Cookie Crunch

 

Halloween Candy Bark

This should also explain why I have this snack title such a long name. If you look at the full recipes for each of these three treats, you will see that I didn't use Butterfingers and Oreos. For starters, I didn't have any, and secondly, I thought we probably had enough chocolate and flavorings going on.

 

Here are the supplies I DID use (remember, I said yummy not healthy. haha):

-Wax paper

-Cookie sheet

-Melt-able chocolate

-Almond Bark

-Candy Corn

-Almonds (these were the only nuts I had and they were smokehouse flavored, which was a weird flavor to add. I would not recommend smokehouse almonds, but definitely regular almonds or peanuts would be great)

-Toffee Bites

-Reese's chips or actual Reese's pieces (we were sort of cleaning out the cupboard of random supplies. i.e. VALENTINE'S Reese's pieces. haha)

-Pretzels (I would recommend the sticks. Ours were a little stale so I had to just break up the pretzel twists we had that weren't stale. The pretzels had a much needed and yummy crunch to the snack that I wouldn't omit.)

-Popcorn

-Peanut M&Ms (we used Halloween colored ones for more fun)

-Halloween sprinkles

 

 We got all our toppings chopped that needed chopping: pretzels, some M&Ms. In retrospect you wouldn't have to chop anything as long as you used the stick pretzels. We over chopped some of our items unnecessarily.

 We heated enough chocolate  to make a thin layer along the wax papered cookie sheet. Then you have to act real fast as you spread all the ingredients except the popcorn, almond bark, and Halloween sprinkles because you want all of it to stick to the chocolate before it hardens.

 Here is the chocolate bark of goodness. In retrospect I should have put this pan into the fridge or freezer to cool all the way so the chocolate was all the way hardened. It would have made for a less soupy looking finished product, and again, I over chopped some items.

 Pop the popcorn while the assistants lick the chocolate bowl. :) Again, in retrospect I should have let the popcorn cool all the way so that I could have added cooled off popcorn to cooled chocolate so there would be no messy chocolate melting happening.  It would have made it much cuter in the end too.

 Break the bark and popcorn into chunks and drizzle the melted almond bark over the whole mixture, mixing the popcorn and chocolate bark as you pour the almond bark on.

 While the almond bark is still warm, sprinkle the Halloween sprinkles.

 I then spread it all back onto wax paper and put it in the freezer to harden.

Then we ate our delicious treats. Again, the only mistake besides the smokehouse pretzels was not letting the different items cool before mixing it together. It tasted yummy regardless.

Food Friday - 1-Hour Cinnamon Rolls

Baking homemade bread usually takes several hours and so hasn't been on our list of regular things to make in the kitchen.  

But, my son and I decided to try our hand at a new recipe for Orange Cinnamon Rolls that claimed it only took 1 hour.  

At that short of time - it tempted us enough to try...

One Hour Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients:

Water

Sugar

Oil

Yeast

Salt

Eggs

Flour

Butter

Cinnamon

First Mix:

3 1/2 c. warm water

3/4 c. sugar

1/2 c. oil

6 T. yeast (or 4  1/2 Instant yeast)

Let sit for 15 minutes:

Then add:

1 T. salt

3 eggs

10 1/2 c. flour

Mix together for 10 minutes, then sit for 10 minutes. 

Oil cupboard, dump out dough. Divide in half. Roll one half out into rectangle. 

Spread with ¼ c. melted butter and then with cinnamon-sugar mixture. 

Cinnamon-Sugar
1c. sugar
1 T. cinnamon

Roll up tight, but not too tight.

Divide into 12 rolls and place on greased cookie sheet. Repeat with other half of dough. Let rise. Bake for 12-15 minutes at 400.

 

Frosting

1 cube butter

2 dashes salt

2 t. vanilla

6 c. powdered sugar

milk

 Orange Rolls: Add orange concentrate to regular frosting

Other variations:

Chocolate Rolls: Add baking cocoa and a few drops of water to regular frosting

Cream cheese Rolls: Add cream cheese to regular frosting

The kids gobbled these up almost as fast as we baked them.  We will definitely make this recipe again!

Originally seen here