Monster Cookies

A few weeks ago David and I found Monster Cookies in the bakery section at a store. David apparantely had never had a Monster Cookie and had no clue what they were. I was shocked. He clearly grew up under a rock. So I bought a package, because I will take any reason to buy baked goods.

He obviously loved them. Who wouldn't? They are like a baked good flavor explosion. Peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate. Yum! They are so hard to stop eating. Almost impossible hard. I even ate them for breakfast. They have peanut butter and oatmeal, that's pretty much breakfast food anyways.

When his work had potluck lunch he requested that I make some Monster Cookies for him to bring in and I happily obliged. From what David said, these were a huge hit at his work. Now I'm going to share the recipe with you! Yay! I'm so sweet. 

Monster Cookies

 

3 eggs
1 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
1 stick butter, softened
 M&M's  No amount, just use as much as you want

 chocolate chips, again, use as much as you want
 Raisins, optional
2 teaspoons baking soda
4 1/2 cups quick-cooking oatmeal (not instant)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper or nonstick baking mats.

In a very large mixing bowl, combine the eggs and sugars. Mix well. Add the salt, vanilla, peanut butter, and butter. Mix well. Stir in the M&Ms, chocolate chips, raisins, baking soda, and oatmeal. Drop by spoonfuls onto your baking sheet.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Do not over bake. Wait a few minutes minutes before moving to wire racks or brown bags to cool.

Now eat and enjoy!

Ipsy Glam Bag for July

I've totally been slacking on my reviews of my Ipsy Glam Bag. I honestly think I have done one review...and I've gotten 6 bags now. Oops! I will say that I am still loving my subscription. I'm extremely happy to have found Ipsy and I'm very much enjoying all the new products I've been sent. 

If you don't know about Ipsy, I'll give you a quick rundown. It's a monthly subscription service. Every month Ipsy will send you a reusable makeup bag filled( give or take 5 items) with a few different makeup/beauty products.The best part is, it's only $10 a month! 

The July Glam Bag was called "Beach Beauty". It came in this bright pink, plastic bag. Plastic sounds cheap. Is there another word for it? It's a thick plastic, not cheap, flimsy plastic. You know what I mean?

 This is what was in it this month. I'm going to be honest. I wasn't really that impressed this month. It was a lot of samples instead of the usual full size. Oh well, 1 out of 6 isn't bad.

 First we'll start off with the Big Sexy Hair weather proof hairspray. 

The hair spray is decent. Honestly, I didn't find it that Weather proof. My hair still went all crazy stupid when I straightened it and walked outside. I've tried a lot of "weather proof" hairsprays and things. The only one that I have found to work really well is Paul Mitchell Heat Seal. I've used it for 10+ yrs and it's the best I have found. 

Next we'll go with the Benefit Benetint. It's basically a liquid stain for your cheeks or lips.

I actually liked this quite a bit. I'm not typically a fan of anything on my lips, so I shy away from lipsticks. With the benetint, once it's on you can't feel it. It goes on and dries. No goopy, sticky feeling. It adds just the right amount of color for someone like me. For the cheeks it added a light blush, just enough to look a little flushed. I highly recommend it! 

Next is the Pop Pouty Pop Crayon.

I stated above that I'm not a fan of lipsticks. I do try them, but I'm just not a fan of them. This one wasn't that bad. It wasn't nearly as sticky or thick feeling as most lipsticks that I've tried in the past, which is a bonus. The color was...interesting. Definitely not my color!

 The California Collection eyeshadow sampler from BH Cosmetics is next. Each color has come from a different color palette that BH cosmetics has out.

I've tried the malibu and San Francisco color so far. The colors are nice. I was a bit leery at the shimmer of them, but they weren't bad. Unfortunately I didn't find that they had great staying power. I have oily eye lids and use a eyeshadow primer. Most shadows stay pretty well with my primer, these colors were gone pretty quickly. 

Last we have the Coola tinted moisturizer.

 Honestly, I haven't tried this yet. So I have nothing to say. Oops.

So there you have it. My July Ipsy Glam bag! If you are a fan of makeup and love trying new things, I highly recommend getting an Ipsy bag! It's a fun way to get and try new makeup.

Easy dessert pizza

As a Mom of 3 boys with varying degrees of food picky-ness, I'm always trying to find/create new snacks that will please all 3 of them. Creating is hit or miss, but this one has definitely been a hit. We've made them for a few years now and the boys still rave about how it's their favorite.        

It's a no bake, no fuss, quick recipe that kids get to help make or possibly make themselves. For ingredients you will need:

large rice cakes (we use the caramel ones)

nut butter of some kind

toppings (raisins, chocolate chips, dried fruit, nuts, coconut, candies, etc)

This is the most difficult part, are you up to the challenge? Spread your nut butter on the rice cake. Whew, that was tricky. It's well worth the effort though.

Now pass the cake over to your kid and take a break. You deserve it. Let them go crazy with the toppings.

Seriously, that's it. Easy, right. Now let the kids eat while you enjoy hearing how awesome you are for letting them have dessert pizzas for an afternoon snack.

I'm not going to lie, I'm a huge fan of these myself. My favorite toppings are butterscotch chips, coconut and raisins. It has a rice cake base, so it can't be that horrible for you, right?

Make Ahead Smoothie Bags

What do you do when you have 5 lbs of fresh picked strawberries and not enough time to eat them before they go bad?

Make smoothie bags, of course!

Start out by flash freezing all of your fruit. Better Homes and Gardens has a great tutorial on Flash Freezing if you've never done it before.

We used Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and per Corbin's request, some bananas and oranges.

If you want, you can freeze yogurt in ice cube trays to throw in your bags as well. I use a large tub of Vanilla Greek yogurt, but use whatever type of yogurt you want. I apparantely don't have plain ice cube trays, so I got to use fun shaped cubes. Yay!

Next comes the fun part. Assembly! It's easy but gets insanely repetitive and I loathe repetitive. Luckily David was forced willing to help me and it went a bit quicker. 

In a freezer ziplock bag, I put about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of fruit (I don't use an exact ratio of fruits, I add what looks good), 2-3 cubes of yogurt and sealed it up. Easy peasy. 

We started out with about 5 lbs of strawberries, 1 lb blueberries, 1 lb raspberries, 2 large oranges, 2 bananas and a large tub of yogurt. With all of those ingredients we ended up with about 3 dozen bags of smoothie ingredients.

When you are ready to make your smoothie, dump the ingredients in a blender, add a little bit of juice and blend it up. 

A few things that we do to make them easier or to jazz them up...

• My blender hates anything that is solid frozen, so I flash thaw my bags in hot water for about 5 minutes to make them easier to blend. 
• If I have them, I add a banana (not frozen) to my mixture before I blend.
• The boys love when I add 1-2 tablespoons of oats to their smoothies before blending. 
• I add 2 tablespoons of ground flax seed to my smoothies before blending.

 

The boys love smoothies, so they are very excited to have these for breakfasts! 

What is your favorite smoothie recipe?

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

Last weekend was crazy fun, but crazy busy. We did a lot of random things, so I decided to lump some of it together and share with you!

My crafting. I did make quite a few things, but I'm only going to show you one right now, because the rest are saved for future blog posts. Oooh the anticipation!  Remember the Doctor Who shirt I made for Dawson? Corbin insisted he get one as well. He recently watched the episode "Dinosaurs on a spaceship". Corbin is obsessed with Dinosaurs. He loooved it. So he wanted the Doctor on a triceraptops. If you've seen the episode, you may remember that the Doctor hops on the triceratops and says "Go, Tricey! Run like the Wind! How do you start a Triceratops?" So I incorporated some of the words onto his shirt.

He looks so cute in it! I love my little Doctor Who fans. 

We also drove out to Franconia Sculpture Park in Franconia, Minnesota. It's basically a big field with tons of sculptures hidden throughout. Not only will you find sculptures all over the place, you will also find artists working on new sculptures, you can watch them work, ask them questions and in general, be amazed. The best part? It's 100% free! They do have a donation box though, so throw a few dollars in if you go visit. 

We exploded a bottle of Diet Coke with Mentos!! The boys have wanted to do this for so long. Corbin was really excited to do it.

Finally, I started painting this room and I kept painting this room and I'm still painting this room. Why didn't anyone tell me that red completely sucks to paint??

 Yes, I realize it's Tuesday so I'm a bit late on the weekend recap thing, but I was creatively broken yesterday. I think all the paint fumes ruined me. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Citronella Jars

I love tiki torches, but we've spent a lot of money on them. Year after year we end up buying new ones because we break the ones we had, or we lose the tops, or we lose the whole dang tiki. I finally decided I wasn't going to buy anymore. They just weren't worth it.

A while back I saw something on Pinterest where someone had basically made a tiki torch with mason jars. Unfortunately I didn't pin it and when I decided I wanted to make them, I couldn't find the directions again. Armed with only the mental image of how it was made we headed to the store to pick up mason jars, citronella and wicks.

Once back home I took my Mason Jars and drilled holes in the top using a bit big enough to fit the wick through but that was snug enough that the wick wouldn't flop all over the place.

I fed the wick through the hole and trimmed it so about an inch was above the top of the jar.

I filled the mason jar with citronella oil, put the top ring on and was finished! It could not have been any easier.

That night we had friends over and I couldn't wait to try the new candles! I lit one up and set it on a table on the deck. It looked Awesome! I was so proud!

Then I almost started my house on fire.

At the time it was scary, but now it's kind of amusing. My friend and I were watching the candle and noticed that some of the oil was coming up out of the hole and spilling over onto the lid. Then it started spilling over the edge onto the table. Then the lid started on fire. We both kind of panicked. I wasn't sure if throwing water on it would make the fire worse or not. After what felt like an eternity of indecision, I finally threw a bucket of water on it. The fire went out, the house was saved and luckily I was in front of on of my BFF's so I didn't look too much like an idiot.

What I learned from that mistake is, you shouldn't put the citronella oil all the way up to the top. Oops. About an inch below the top is perfect. Please learn from my mistake and don't start your house on fire.

So now that I'm not starting any fires with my candles, I'm extremely happy with them. They look cool and they are functional. Win!

The Doctor? Doctor Who?

The other week Pick Your Plum had an awesome deal on heat transfers. I'm all about making t-shirts so I was insanely excited and snatched up a few.

I had a million things to do the day they arrived, but none of it got done. I don't even think these transfers lasted more than an hour in the house before I forgot about the world and holed myself up in the craft room. 

Our entire family has been really into Doctor Who lately and Dawson has been begging for anything Doctor related. Because I'm an awesome Mom, I decided to make him a Doctor Who shirt.

First I started with this super wrinkly shirt. I won't tell you why it's so wrinkled, but it involves clean clothes, a week of time and a Mom who hates putting clothes away.

Daleks are Dawson's favorite. If you've never seen Doctor Who, imagine big salt and pepper shakers that shoot lasers and say "Exterminate" over and over again in a robot voice. Now imagine a 7 yr old boy who runs through the house pretending to be a Dalek, all day long. Welcome to my world.

Anyways...I used my Silhouette to cut out a Dalek using Black heat transfer and the word Exterminate using white heat transfer.

Then I got distracted by searching for this adorable little guy.

I finally got back to the project and pulled out my iron. According to the directions, you are supposed to lay a thin cloth over the transfers and iron over it on the hottest setting your iron has. Sounds simple and for most it would be. My problem is, I stole borrowed this iron from my Mom, so I have no clue how to use it and I can't iron for crap.

About 30 minutes later I finally had it ironed on. I'm not exaggerating and I'm also not lying when I say that David had to re-iron a few pieces when he came home from work. It's definitely NOT the heat transfers fault though. That's all me. I think I need ironing classes or something.

Dawson finally has his Doctor Who shirt! He's worn it 3 times this week already. Something tells me I should probably make him more shirts.

Does anyone in your family watch Doctor Who? It seems to have become a nightly thing in our house!

4 week Kitten update!

Remember a few weeks ago when I posted that my cat had kittens in the ceiling? If not, go read that here.

They are 4 weeks old today and have changed so much!

We went from this on day one...

 

To this on week one...

 10 days old and opening their eyes!

20 days old and starting to get curious! Their eyes are open, their ears are popping up and their muscles aren't nearly as shaky anymore!

Now, at 4, they are getting a bit crazy! Definitely into exploring and holy cow have they gotten fast! Their personalities are starting to show, which is adorable. 

They are so much fun to watch. These last 4 weeks should be the interesting ones now that they are mobile! Keep your fingers crossed that I don't go insane with 5 crazy kittens running around!