How to: make a watermelon baby carriage

Yesterday I posted about the baby shower my aunt and I did for my cousin's new baby. It was such a fun shower. There's just nothing like a new baby! Sigh. They're so sweet.

We wanted to serve fruit at the shower, and I thought it would be fun to carve a watermelon out to look like a baby carriage. It turns out, other people have done it too! Who knew? I found some images on Pinterest, but thought I'd whip up a little tutorial so you can see the process in case you'll be hosting a shower of your own.

It wasn't hard...but it was definitely messy. The end result is worth it, though!

First you have to make sure the watermelon will stay flat, so find the part that you want to be the bottom of the carriage, and make a thin slice so the watermelon will rest on a flat section.

Then trace your pattern. I wanted a scalloped edge, so I used one side of a small cup to trace around for the scallops. (tip: use a light pencil - or make sure to trace just outside where you will cut so you won't see the lines on the finished carriage) Then do a rough cut of the section that will be removed and carefully pull a few pieces off of the watermelon.

I cut out the scallops by following the lines I drew, and then carefully tried to take watermelon out of the center using a melon baller. I made sure to get all the seeds out and put the balls in a separate bowl. But there was SO MUCH fruit, that I eventually just got out a big ice scream scoop and started taking larger pieces out.

When the melon was all hollow, I decided to try to clean off my pen lines. Oops! They would not come off...so I ended up cutting the scallops back further to get rid of my markings. Hopefully you read the tip above and won't make the same mistake!

This was the mess left in my kitchen! I used up one large serving bowl, and three cereal bowls just putting the extra watermelon somewhere. I put some of the melon balls I had made back into the carriage and added strawberries and blueberries. You could add any other fruit you wanted, too.

Once I got to the party I added the wheels. I simply took a slice of grapefruit (but you could use orange or something else too) and placed them on sucker sticks I had pushed into the watermelon. (you could use toothpicks, I just didn't have any on hand) Then I put a little blueberry at the end to cover up the stick.

Voila...a finished carriage!

If you make one, please share a picture. I'd love to see it!
What other fun ways have you come up with to serve food at a party?

Welcome 2013!

The recap of the holidays continues...

There's a big family-friendly event in our city every New Year's Eve. We tried to take the kids a few years ago but it was WAY too busy for our little ones. We took one look at the crowd and left.

This year we were excited (and thankful) that the sponsor of the event is a supporter of Elliott's school and opened the doors of the event early for their employees and the families at our school. There were a few hundred people there early but the arena is so huge it hardly seemed like anyone!

The kids had a blast playing on every inflatable. Every.single.one. They also had a bunch of carnival games set up and the kids won lots of prizes! Their prize of choice was pencils and they came home with dozens!

Isa wore the new 'princess' skirt I made her last week (more details to come on that soon). She looked adorable all 'purple-y' climbing up the inflatables!

Snow White was a huge hit!

The superheroes were too...although at first Elliott refused to get his picture taken with the 'spider girl.'

 All that jumping and fun tired the kids out!

Back at home we had our own New Year's Eve party (around 6 o'clock). My parents celebrated with us and we had a whole meal made of appetizers, and sparkling cider in 'fancy' glasses. I had gotten some noisemakers, crowns, and snappers too. We did a countdown and the kids even gave each other kisses!

On New Year's Day we had a leisurely time watching the Rose Parade and getting some use out of the girls' stocking stuffers. Hello Kitty press on nails. :) They are about as impractical as could be for an active 3 and 4 year old...but surprisingly Isa kept hers on most of the day.

Grandpa thought they were beautiful!

My genius-in-the-kitchen husband (remember the grated butter?) made a unique and tasty breakfast for the whole family. My brother had given us a cake pop maker for Christmas. We used it for cake pops and they turned out great. Michael decided to also try putting pancake mix directly into the cake pop machine and out came little balls of deliciousness!

He dipped the pancake pops in melted butter and then rolled them in a mixture of powdered sugar and cinnamon. To top it off he drizzled them with syrup and we added some yummy fresh fruit...MMMMM! (He also made eggs and sausage...it was impressive!)

What a great start to a brand new year! Here's to a fantastic 2013!

Grating Butter??

I love Saturday mornings, even though we don't get to sleep in (thanks to the internal clocks of our children that won't let them stay in bed even 5 extra minutes on weekends...grrr). But it's so great to have my partner in crime life around...and even though the kids don't...he lets me be a little lazy sometimes and stay in bed while he cooks breakfast!!

The past few weeks we've been loving the arrival of pumpkin pancake mix to the stores. Target has a particularly good one, although this weekend we also tried a locally made mix that was also delish. Michael made the yummy pumpkin pancakes and when I came into the kitchen he had a plate all made up...just for me. He's the best!

But...he has some quirks. This is a good one, and not one I would ever have thought to do. Since we keep our butter in the fridge, it's always really hard. I usually cut a tiny slab and put it on the warm pancakes to let it melt...but Michael takes the super cold butter and GRATES it with a cheese grater! Have you ever done that?

It works pretty well and you will definitely not hear any complaints out of me because I get to enjoy them, and not cook them. :)

And, in case you were wondering...NO...we don't have a working stove yet. We cook our pancakes on a little wok-like griddle. In the picture above you can see that the hubs was also making eggs in said griddle (which is on loan from my parents since they took pity on us only having a microwave to heat things up in). We also attempt to make pasta in it since it can almost get water to boil. It's rather amazing how creative you can get to cook food without a stove or oven when you need to.

it was almost good

Snacks are a big deal at preschool. There are a very limited number of things kids are allowed to have for snacks since the school tries to be 'allergen free.'
On birthdays, kids are allowed to bring a special snack...but if you want it to be a cake you have to make the entire thing from scratch to make sure only approved ingredients are used.

For Elliott's birthday...I didn't want to make a cake from scratch and cart it 2 hours away since we were still living with my parents and driving a long way to school.

Instead, I found a fun idea on Pinterest and decided to try it...mini caramel apples. (the ones below are not mine...they're the ones I pinned.) I had to do mine differently so the caramel was wrapped all the way around. Process detailed below...

 

christyrobbins.blogspot.com

I found a brand of caramels that were peanut-free and thought the bite sized apples would be much easier to handle than whole apples for a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds. :)

They were almost great! The only reason they fell a bit short of "the best snack ever" was the 2 hour drive. As the apples got warmer, the caramel started to slide off of them and became a little messy. I also waited too long to put in the pretzel sticks (I didn't want them to get soggy). By the time I tried to do it, the caramel had hardened and the pretzels just kept breaking. Bummer. But apparently the kids liked them anyway.

Here's the process in case you want to try making them sometime. They'd be cute rolled in white chocolate chips for a Christmas party too. Actually...I have another idea...wouldn't it be cute to do 3 apples (or other fruit) stacked like a snowman and covered in white chocolate? If anyone tries it please let me know.

The process:

1. I had to get caramel apple wrappers after trying a batch with melted caramels. I absolutely couldn't figure out how to get the melted caramel to stick...it just slid off every time. The wrappers were perfect. I cut each sheet into 5 pie shaped pieces.

2. Use a melon baller to cut the apples into bite-sized pieces. You end up wasting quite a bit of the apple...but you could probably cut it up and use it in another way.

3. Wrap the apple pieces.

I wanted to put the apples in something to make it easier for the kids to pick them up and eat them so I used parchment cups. I'm SO glad I did that because it was much easier for the kids.

 

Step 4 should have been to add the pretzels but since I had the drive I didn't want the pretzels to get soggy and I waited. If you do them...just add the pretzels as soon as you wrap them and you're done! Enjoy! 

By the Pool

I'm still catching up on posts from the summer. It was hot...a lot! And, if you know me, you know I hate being hot. I'm not a fan of super high temperatures during the summer and would rather be inside doing anything than outside sweltering. But the kids have to get out or they go crazy so we got a little pool and they played away many summer days in it.
I'd say the $11 pool and $20 slide were well worth the countless hours of fun...and relief from the heat!

The Perfect Popcorn Bowl

You've probably seen the ads for Orville Redenbacher's new Pop-Up Bowl where the popcorn bag itself becomes a bowl. I got a sample of it in the mail and it's a pretty nice idea. (although somehow I managed to burn the popcorn to a crisp in the bowl so I didn't actually get to taste it)

Since we've been 'homeless' for the last few months...we've spent LOTS of time in the car driving the 2 hours each way to see the hubs. I've been listening to the radio quite a bit more than usual...especially talk radio. One of the personalities on this station was talking about how he doesn't need to buy this expensive specialty bowl popcorn because EVERY bag can do this.

Why didn't I think of that? :)

Most people open the popcorn bag at the top and then if you try to eat out of the bag you get your hands all icky with butter and salt. But...if you cut the side of the bag...voila...popcorn bowl. Try it...it works!

Cake Pops

We have been in major down-size mode for a while...trying to sell or give away tons of stuff so we don't have to move it back into the house. I took a huge box of books and games to Half Price Books and sold it all. (And actually made more money on things there than I asked for at our garage sale! Score!) But they are crafty little sellers and while you're selling things to them they make you wait in the store and browse for a little while.

Well...they got me to buy something. I certainly didn't need any new books, but I had wanted to try making some cake pops for a while and I found this great book by Bakerella. I whipped up a quick batch for the kids to try them. (they picked the style they wanted) I was surprised at how difficult they were to make but I didn't fuss too much trying to make them perfect. Next time I'll do a few things differently to make the candy coating more smooth. But here's what they looked like...a fun little treat.

These strawberries were made with strawberry cake and chocolate frosting.

 These little teddy bears are enjoying the swimming pool. Emma especially loved the pink bikinis on the girl Teddy Grahams. :)

 They licked the sticks clean. Yum!