On Hold

I have more to share with you all and I fully intend on sharing it sometime, but at the moment graduate school and family is consuming all of my time. Hopefully I will get back to you all soon. In the meantime, feel free to visit me over at: hootsonmission.blogspot.com

Infant Play

 Pintried - Crayon Sensory Play - #24

He's a smart kid.  He knows those crayons are for writing.  

And a new one of our own - straw basket.  

Poke them through the holes, pull them out, pile them in the middle, toss them around the room.  

It's all fun!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Thursday was a chilly, windy day - the kind of day that begs for cookies to be made.  I was craving No Bake cookies, but we didn't have any Quick Oats in the pantry.  So I went on an Internet hunt for something with peanut butter, chocolate and oatmeal.  I found the most remarkable cookie on one of my favorite blogs, Brown Eyed Baker.

The only variation between our cookie and the original is that we used mini-chocolate chips, which happened because that is all we had on hand, but it turned out to be fantastic.  I am certain this is our new favorite cookie.  It's a simple but perfect combination - the peanut butter is subtle, the oatmeal adds a crunch and the mini-chocolate chips perfectly distributed chocolatey-ness throughout the cookie.  

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Tinkerbell Halloween

I used the Prudent Baby Tinkerbell costume tutorial and the Tutu-torial.

We added a glittery pink tulle ruffle to the middle because her Tinkerbell has an outfit with pink and the purple tutu for the same reason.  I ran into two issues: the top is a little tight up under her arms and the strips of tulle cut for the ruffle along the bottom of the skirt took more than it was supposed to take.  I didn't have enough for two ruffles, but it still turned out cute.  Also, I would probably have only used 3 yards of tulle, the 4 yards made the skirt a little pouffier than I wanted.

Pintried - Chick-fil-a Nuggets & Cinnamon Rolls

I have gone back and forth on whether or not to publish this round of posts because I'm adding very little information to something that is already out there in the blog-o-sphere. Obviously, I decided to go ahead and publish. I realized that I appreciate reading other people's reviews of things they have Pinned then tried so here's my review. Take it or leave it.

Chick-fil-A Nuggets

This were amazing!  I mean it - so good and other than cutting ours into larger pieces I didn't need to change a thing.  I made the honey mustard sauce too then turned it all into an absolutely divine fried chicken salad.  I think next time I might grill them, just for the health factor but the pickle juice in the marinade - GENIUS!  And I stumbled across this recipe while I was looking up the recipe for these...

Mini Crescent Cinnamon Rolls

Honestly?  Not as good as I thought they would be.  I think I have some pretty high standards for cinnamon rolls though.  I normally make them from scratch and they come out all doughy and buttery and wonderful.  These were okay but not divine.  But I will tell you why they are really worth making.  My toddler can help in every step of the process and she loved making them with me just as much as she loved eating them.  Sure, these are quick and fun because they're tiny but the greatness is really in the fact that she took ownership in them and enjoyed sharing them with her family.  I tweaked the icing for these a bit because I didn't have maple syrup.  We made maple-vanilla icing that tasted a lot like maple bar donuts.

Maple-Vanilla Icing:
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
1/2 teaspoon maple flavoring
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 Tablespoon skim milk (more or less depending on your desired consistency)

Whisk skim milk into powdered sugar until slightly thicker than your desired consistency.  Then add the flavorings.  If it is still too thick then add some more milk, too thin add some sugar.  But I recommend a goal of too thick because the icing is smoother if you add milk than if you add sugar back in.  When you add sugar a lot of times it gets clumpier or grainier.

ETA:  After I posted this I found this little Pinterest Challenge on Better Life Bags.  Personally I made myself a board called THIS WEEK.  It is entirely for pinning the things I intend to make from Pinterest in the current week.  I pick them out on Sunday - everything from crafts with my kids to cooking and baking - then work through them all week long.  So far, I'm loving it!