The Friday Five: Random Fun

#1: I made this peanut butter chocolate cake a week or so ago. 

Yep. It was pretty darn good.  But I NEED to stop baking! Ack!

Oddly enough the recipe includes directions for a fluffy chocolate frosting but doesn't mention how much of the ingredients you need. So, I just used a chocolate frosting recipe from one of my cookbooks. 

#2: We had our Cub Scout Pack Meeting last week and had an international theme.  The assistant Cubmaster found this fun craft for the kids to do, African Drums from styrofoam cups...

The kids loved making them.

#3: Erin, the assistant Cubmaster (yep. Both the Cubmaster and the assistant are named Erin...kind of funny)also made a really yummy Italian Lemon Ice.  It was deliciously tart.  I think we've found a new family favorite. 

#4: In honor of Cinco de Mayo, we had mexican food for dinner last night and even added a colorful centerpiece to our table.  I found the instructions for these fun tissue paper flowers Here.  The kids had a great time trying out different color combinations.  And even my 3 yo could make these.

Luckily I had some bright vases to put them in. 

 #5: Also...we made our own pinata!  It was so much fun. I used THESE directions. 

When it was all nice and dry, we painted glue on it and then stuck tissue paper scraps left over from the flowers. 

We love how it turned out!

We hadn't popped the balloon yet in that picture.  And I'll tell you what, that was probably the best part! The kids loved watching the balloon "disappear" when I poked it with a push pin. 

But sadly, we didn't smack the pinata yet.  My handsome cowboy had to work late. He was busy lighting fires (he works for the BLM and they were doing a controlled burn). And I didn't want him to miss the crazy good time with a blindfold, a bat and our homemade fun. http://erinshakespear.blogspot.com/2011/04/thrifty-thursday-funky-spray-painted.html

Rainbow Cookies a.k.a. The Coolest Cookies I've Ever Made

Last week we had our big Blue and Gold Banquet for the Cub Scouts with St. Patrick's Day theme since it fell on that green holiday.  On the invitations I asked the kids to make a creative dessert and told them there would be prizes for the best green outfits.  We had a big mystery dinner (where they didn't know what they were ordering...this was better in theory than in practice!) and had awards and lots of fun!

I made these funny little leprechauns for table decorations...

Prizes were given to the family who dressed up the best and to the best dressed person.  I had to give that last one to my 6 yo Sam.  He wore two green shirts, froggie jammie pants with green shorts over top, green froggie slippers, his green superhero cape, a green tie tied around his waist and a green snow hat. Yep. He really got into the spirt of it. And I forgot to take a picture! Ack! I get so busy at these things, conducting and keeping scouts in line and trying to make sure everything runs smoothly (or actually...trying to fix things when they DON'T run smoothly!)

 The dessert that won was this cool cake...

So fun, right?

When Emmett and I were trying to figure out what dessert to make we googled around and found a really cool rainbow cookie recipe....

Aren't these great?!  And you could do them in any colors! Red and green or pink and purple or...anything! We had a lot of fun squishing these together. You can find the recipe Here.








Play Dough Cookies (we prefer the name Rainbow Cookies! And we just made them without the lollipop sticks, although those would be fun, too.)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 3 ounces cream cheese
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• assorted colors of paste food coloring
• 24 lollipop sticks

Directions

1. In a bowl cream butter, cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; beat until smooth.
2. In a medium bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Stir till soft dough forms. Divide dough into fourths. Tint each with a different food color. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Working with half of each color, shape dough into 3/4 inch balls and for each cookie place 1 pink, 1 green, 1 blue and 1 orange ball together to make 1 large ball. Shape into a 12 inch long roll (like a snake), starting at one end, coil roll to make a 2 3/4 inch round cookie. Place cookies 3 inches apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Carefully insert lollipop sticks into bottoms of cookies.
4. Bake cookies for 8 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool and store in an airtight container.

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