Mardi Gras Spaghetti

I meant to post this last Tuesday but something silly was happening with my computer and I was not able to use Blogger. 

My daughter is an extremely picky eater but she didn't hesitate for a second when I gave her purple spaghetti!  The green sauce was also exciting for her.

I didn't have purple food coloring so I mixed red and blue.

Just add the color directly to your water before adding the pasta.

Boil your pasta and a few minutes later you have purple spaghetti!

The sauce was quick and easy too.  I used a jar of white sauce because I wasn't sure how the dye would do in red sauce.

I added some green food coloring and stirred until the color was mixed evenly.

Perfect festive Mardi Gras Spaghetti!

Remember you can turn your pasta other colors too.  Great trick for the picky eater!

I'm linking this post here.

 

Easy Valentine's Day Snacks

Looking for some quick and easy ways to make fun Valentine's Day snacks?  We recently hosted a Valentine's party for my daughter's play group.  I wasn't up to making time consuming goodies but I did manage to turn some easy snacks into "love food" for our party.  I purchased a set of heart cookie cutters from Target and used them on easy food items.

I put out a tray of deli meat and cheese along with peanut butter and jelly to accompany our heart shaped bread.  It was the perfect sandwich spread for our party.

I used the same heart cookie cutter to shape some brownies.  Conversation hearts brightened up the brownies.

A different heart cookie cutter transformed the jello jigglers into a fun addition to our desserts!

Have fun putting together some fun Love Day snacks!

 

Fun Find Friday: Reindeer Cookies

Earlier this week I saw Bakergirl's Peanut Butter Reindeer Cookies and knew I needed to make some!  My daughter had so much fun helping with our reindeer!

The peanut butter cookies sounded yummy but I wanted to do something quick because my little three year old helper was in the kitchen with me.  I used cubed sugar cookie dough.

I tried to make each cookie into a reindeer shape before putting them in the oven. 

The cookies came out perfect circles instead of cute little reindeer heads.  Once they were decorated it didn't matter because they were so cute!

Go see Bakergirl for more fun recipes!

 

Fun Find Friday - Dora the Explorer Cupcakes

If you have children and allow them to watch television I'm sure you've seen Nickelodeon's commercial with a woman and children making Dora cupcakes.  Each time my daughter sees the commercial she begs me to let her make Dora cupcakes.  The project looked fairly easy and kid friendly in the commercial so I finally agreed to add the ingredients to my shopping list.

Nickelodeon's Dora Cupcakes - picture and instructions found at Nick Jr

Earlier this week my nephew came over for a sleep over.  My daughter anxiously waited all day for him to arrive because I told her she could make the Dora cupcakes with him.

The Nickelodeon website has full instructions and nutritional information for the cupcakes.  Go here for the printable version.

My daughter and nephew were very excited to get started on our project!

We baked the cupcakes and let them cool for awhile.  We started the decorating process by making Dora's hair. I used the printable template under wax paper on a cookie sheet.

We used melted chocolate chips instead of chocolate melting wafers to make the hair.  I chose not to outline the hair with the darker chocolate simply because my "helpers" wanted to move on to the next step.

I refrigerated the pan of Dora's hair while we frosted the cupcakes.  My daughter and nephew did a great job frosting...

...until my daughter decided she was the official taste tester!

I didn't take pictures of us completing the next few steps.  I had two messy kids and honestly was just trying to get this little project wrapped up.  My daughter and nephew didn't seem to mind that our cupcakes turned out looking slightly different than the beautiful ones they saw in the commercial.

This was a fun project and would have been great paired up with a Dora Summertime Coloring Page or Pinwheel Paper Craft!

 

Easy Spring Cookies

My daughter loves to make cupcakes and cookies.  While I also enjoy baking, sometimes I am looking for a quicker way to let my daughter help in the kitchen.  Last week we made some cute flower spring cookies using Nestle's refrigerated sugar cookie dough.

We made flowers on the dough using a butterscotch chip for the center and chocolate chips for petals.

We patiently waited 12 minutes for the cookies to bake in the oven! 

Uh oh, our flowers didn' quite look like flowers anymore!

Don't worry, the Writing Icing you stashed in your pantry last year will save the day! 

I used the icing to make our flowers pretty. 

Bonus - you can't go wrong with Nestle's refrigerated dough - they were yummy!