Attempting Oreo-stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

Say What?!? I know I primarily blog about books and crafting, but I made sure to include "and things of interest" for precisely this type of situation.

Chocolate definitely qualifies as a thing of interest, and chocolate chip cookies, doubly so.

I originally caught this post over at Craft blog. I followed the link to Amandeleine for the recipe, and I had to try it. I am not going to repost the recipe here, but I do want to add a few notes for those of you who may want to try this for yourself. I am not the best baker in the world, so I have plenty of little mistakes you can learn from. But fear not-- the cookies are delicious if not perfectly beautiful morsels!

1. I have my ingredients ready to go.

2. Wet ingredients and dry ingredients are mixed.

3. Cookies are formed! But here's where I goofed, folks. My first mistake was using too much dough to encase the Oreos. Easy does it! Also, space your cookies out for heaven's sake. No more than 6 per tray, I would say. However, it is entirely possible that fixing problem number one would also make problem number two a non-issue.

4. Here you can see where the cookies were too close. My first batch was undercooked by a minute or two, which made them very soft-- good for taste, but messy on the transfer to cooling racks.

5. Batch two did much better with the longer baking time. Here's a close-up of that golden brown exterior.

6. This is what the final product looks like. They may not be pretty, but yummmmmmmm! I could only eat one, which is saying something.

And remember: milk does an Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookie good.

Upcycled Dinosaur Crayons

In addition to crafting some plush brontosaurs for my daughters' pink and yellow dinosaur party, I decided to make some dinosaur shaped crayons for the goodie bags. Since the other children at their childcare are all between 2 and 4, I figured the chunky crayons shapes would be perfect for them to color. Also, this craft gave me the excuse to upcycle all of the old, broken crayons I have sitting around the house. When I decided that I was going to do this, I also started saving all of the crayons that my kids get from restaurants (my husband deserves credit for that idea). Why let them go waste?

Materials:

- crayon pieces, labels peeled off

- 1 or 2 cooking pans (depending on how many colors you are using)

- tin cans or aluminum cans (1 for each color)

- popsicle sticks or wooden skewers for stirring

- a candy mold (I used this one)

- wax paper (to cover the workspace)

- lots of paper towels (for quick clean up)

1. After peeling the labels off the crayons and sorting them by color, I put each color into a metal can. Tins cans work especially well because the edges aren't as sharp, but a cut aluminum can does just fine. I would recommend breaking the crayons up into little chunks-- they will melt faster. (I forgot to do that and it was a pain.)

2. Heat the cans in your pans on the stove. A low heat (2-3 on my stove) was sufficient. If you turn it up much higher, you start to get a funky odor and stress out your pans. Use the popsicle sticks to stir as needed. If you mix different shades of the same color, the stirring will help blend everything together.

3. Pour heated wax into the mold. The cans don't get super hot, so you could do this with bare fingers, but I thought it was easier to use a pot holder once I got the can out of the pan. Since the shapes in my mold were pretty big, each child is only going to get one crayon. I wanted each crayon to have different colors to give it a neat effect. On the first batch, I stuck the mold in the freezer between each layer of colors. This allowed each layer to be very distinct, but it took a lot of patience. On the second batch, I pour the colors into the mold without allowing cooling time in between. The result was more of a tie-dye effect, which is visible in this picture.

4. Once the crayons cool completely (again, the freezer helps speed this up), they pop right out of the mold. These are some of the crayons from my first batch to show the distinct layers. The whole process took about 45 minutes and was pretty fun. Be sure to wear clothes that can get dirty... I ended up with quiet a few splatters.

Happy crafting!

A Pink and Yellow Dinosaur Party (Part 1)

My daughters will be turning 1 and 3 in March, which means it is time to start planning a birthday party. We let our 3 year old do a lot of decision making, so she was pretty gung-ho about the discussion on what sort of party to have this year. At first she weighed heavily toward a Dora and Diego deal, but when I threw out the idea of dinosaurs, she got really excited. Once we had a theme, we started looking at colors. As usual, my 3 year old picked pink. My 1 year old picked yellow (by pointing, grabbing, and trying to eat the yellow plates at the store). Now I am planning a pink and yellow dinosaur party.

For those of you with daughters who like dinosaurs, you are probably well aware that dinosaurs are generally relegated to the realms of boy-dom. It seems weird to me because I loved dinosaurs as a kid, but every dinosaur search turned up blues and greens and reds. No pink dinos. In an effort to focus my search a little, I Googled "pink dinosaur party" and found these awesome ideas from the Serving Pink Lemonade Blog. Between that and my new Handmade Pledge, I decided that this birthday was the perfect opportunity for me to get a lil crafty.

Since my daughters are small, we are only going to have two little parties. One party will be at the home-based care where my daughters go during the days I work. The other will be a family party at home. I still have a bunch of pink plastic utensils and pink cups from last year's birthday party, so I will use those and just get some yellow plates and napkins to make the table colorful. We generally decorate with crepe paper and balloons as well. Nana is in charge of the big cake for the family party.

Here's what I will be making:

- Appliquéd pink dinosaur shirts for the birthday girls

- Big stuffed dinosaurs for their birthday presents

- A "Happy Birthday" banner

- Placemats for the family party

- Dinosaur cupcake toppers (for the childcare party)

- Little stuffed dinosaurs for gift bags (for the childcare party)

I am also thinking about maybe making a tablecloth for the party and some dinosaur-shaped crayons if I can find the right mold. I will know more after I poke around in a few stores next week. So far I have worked on the appliquéd shirts and one of the small party-favor dinosaurs.

These are the stencils for the appliqué (top) and the stuffed dinos (bottom). I sketched both designs and cut them out of a manila file-folder:

For the party favors, I cut two pieces out of scrap fabric I had lying around. I machine-sewed the outer edges, leaving enough of a gap to flip the fabric right-side out. I stuffed it with scraps from a fleece tie blanket that were cut into tiny 1/2 inch chunks. Once stuffed, I hand-sewed the bottom seam. I still have 5 more to make, but here is what the first one looks like:

For the appliqué, I raided my daughters dresser drawers and came up with two plain, pink, long-sleeved shirts. They were solid basics from The Children's Place-- just right for jazzing up. I used the stencil to cut the dinosaurs from a flannel fabric to give it a little extra weight. I am too cheap to buy fusible interface, so I machine-sewed a straight stitch around the edge to hold it in place. Then I went right over it with the zig-zag stitch to keep the edges from fraying. It's probably not the best method for appliqué, but I have an ancient sewing machine and little patience for hand sewing. I am open to suggestions! Anyhow, here's how they came out:

I sort of wish that I had picked two different fabrics for the dinosaur since it really blends on the darker shirt, but c'est la vie. I was trying hard to use materials I already had in my scrap drawer. As I get more goodies done for this party, I will post.

Peace, love, and pink dinosaurs.

Ponyo, Ponyo, Ponyo, fishie in the sea...

So my not quite 3-year-old daughter has taken quite a fancy to the movie Ponyo. She walked around the house all day proclaiming "Ponyo is my favorite. I love Ponyo. I love Sosuke." She also started pretending that her various stuffed animals were Ponyo and re-enacting scenes from the movie. Cuteness abounds.

I caught myself wondering if there were any Ponyo dolls available, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to make one. You see, aside from being a fly-by-night book reviewer, I am also a crafter.

And here is my creation. Now, it is very obviously homemade and decidedly rough around the edges. But it definitely resembles goldfish Ponyo! For not having a pattern or anything fancy, it's not half bad. Of course, now it has to pass the test with my little one...

If she can pretend a pterodactyl is Ponyo (and she did), then this little gal should do the trick.

Welcome!

This is my little push to get writing again (for fun) now that I am done with graduate school. I plan to post book, music, and possibly movie reviews as my whims take me. Also, I might post some original work from time to time. So, here goes...