Hot Chocolate Play Dough

Oh yeah I like to get a little crazy- who needs chocolate play dough when you can make Hot Chocolate play dough?

Not really. After promising Maddie we would make chocolate play dough I realized in the past 6 months that we have been in our new house I have yet to purchase cocoa powder. Go figure. Well of course Maddie was not happy about that revelation and told me to buzz off (not really) and went to the playroom. I figured with her out of the kitchen and not in the know I could attempt hot chocolate play dough without fear of her flipping out on me if it didn't work out. 

I was successful though and all was good. Hurray! I used the Chocolate Scented Play Dough recipe at The Idea Box and subbed the cocoa powder with two packages of sugar free hot chocolate. I am sure any kind of hot chocolate would work... except for the kind with mini marshmallows but I just happened to have sugar free on hand. 

 I spotted these heart shaped ice cube molds and adorable pink storage cups at the Target Dollar Spot yesterday and they worked perfectly with our new play dough! 

 I set Maddie up with play dough, a ice cube candy mold, mini rolling pin, some cookie cutters and heart shaped doilies to display her treats on.

 Maddie set to work rolling out her cookie dough,

 And molding her chocolates.

 Look mom a giant pile a chocolate scented poop cookies!

She was a happy camper and wasn't even tempted to try a nibble!

A Sweet Valentine

 Maddie spied some heart shaped, strawberry flavored marshmallows at the grocery store this week and there was certainly no swaying the girl from her NEED for them. Initially the only plan in mind when I tossed them in the carriage was keeping the whiny child happy but when we got home and I realized I had a huge stash of chocolate chips I knew marshmallow pops would be on the agenda for the afternoon!

 I always melt my chocolate in a double boiler with a bit of Crisco to help thin it out. 

 To be completely honest these marshmallows are a pain! Keeping their heart shape was practically impossible but alas I managed with a few.

 Who doesn't have a stash of seasonally appropriate sprinkles?

 I took care of dipping the marshmallow pops in the chocolate. This was by far the nicest one! You can still sort of tell they are heart shaped!

 

After I layed the pops out on wax paper Maddie took over with the sprinkles.

We have been storing the pops in the fridge which makes them perfect for dipping in hot cocoa! They help cool down the cocoa to nice temperature for Miss Maddie. Of course they are also delicious right of the stick too! I think they would be just adorable individually wrapped with a package of hot cocoa for a cute little Valentine's Day gift!

Shimmering Hearts

Once in a while Maddie and I do a project and I just absolutely, head over heels fall in love with it. By far these recycled hearts are top on my list!

While watching Chaos Theory (Ryan Reynolds movie, super good you should watch it) I sat down with a pair of scissors and a few brown paper grocery bags.

After cutting the bags open and folding them in half (print on the inside) I set to work cutting out free form hearts. No pattern necessary, I think they look better not all being identical. So you should be left with a stack of heart pairs.

Next up the sewing. I used whatever thread was already in my machine so the tops were white and the bottoms black. I would suggest using white throughout just because its a bit easier to paint over later. 

As you sew along your heart pairs make sure you leave an opening for stuffing.

I used shredded newspaper for stuffing my hearts but tissue paper would do the trick too.

Downfall of using newspaper? Inky hands, gross!

Lots of pretty stuffed hearts! Time to stitch up the stuffing hole and snip off all the extra threads hanging around.

Alright now all the mommy work is done and it's time for the kiddos to step in. We used some gorgeous DecoArt acrylic paints.

Maddie took care of most of the painting and i touched up when she was done. The Glamour Dust red required two coats of paint but it dried pretty quick between coats.

After all the hearts dried I took my mini hole punch to the tops and strung them up with some adorable baker's twine.

Maddie decided the hearts definitely belonged in her room!

We ended up stringing them up along the bottom bunk of her bed. At night with the rope the lights on the hearts glitter and they are just gorgeous!

A Lovely Bug

I saw these adorable love bugs over at Moments of Mommyhood last week (?) and knew they would be a perfect craft for my anti-snow agenda. Of course when I told Maddie we were going to make a love bug she looked at me like I was insane. A love bug mom? That is not a kind of bug. She officially decided we were making a butterfly because it had wings. Oh well.

 We went a little different with our love bug butterfly but started with the basic toilet paper roll painted red.

 We used contact paper and pink, red and purple glitter for the wings. I LOVE how sparkly they are!

 I punched a hole in the back of the toilet paper roll for the sparkly pipecleaner antennae.

 Maddie took care of stringing on a few beads for good measure.

 

 I used the glue gun to adhere the wings and some googly eyes. I entrusted Maddie with a Sharpie to finish up.

Adorable and sparkly! Maddie gave the love bug butterfly long hair because her name is Rapunzel!

Valentine's Day Cometh Early

I am giving up on winter. We don't get snow down here in Virginia apparently and that makes me super jealous of everyone back home in Connecticut with their 20+ inches. Grr. So I have decided we are skipping winter, snow, snowmen, snowflakes, penguins and polar bears. Kaput. 

Instead we are saying Hello! to Valentine's Day instead! I stumbled upon this post on Everyday Art and knew the gorgeous melted crayon hearts would be perfect for our giant front window. We used this same technique in the past to make an adorable fall leaf mobile.

 I would LOVE to say Maddie was all about helping with this project but that would a big fat stickin lie. The kiddo has been little Miss Cranky Pants lately. Oh well.

 I would also like to state for the record there apparently is a reason we haven't done a crayon shaving project in over a year- because I despise shaving crayons!! It took sooooo long! Pretty colors though!

 Once the hard work was finally done I busted out the wax paper and cut open a paper grocery bag to iron (gotta protect the iron and board, or else).

 Little Miss decided she would be willing to help with the sprinkling part- aka the big mess part.

 Time to iron!

 See I told you the paper bag was important! Talk about a waxy mess! Eww! 

 Oh how pretty our trash cans colorful hearts are!

 Of course I was in charge of the cutting too.

Hello beautiful!

Valentine's Day Sweets

Madison has been all about Valentine's Day this year so of course we had to whip up some sweets!

I am a sucker for a cute packaging and picked up this box to make chocolate truffles at Target.

The mixing and melting was mostly mommy duty.

Madison did have fun rolling the truffles in pink powdered sugar and sprinkles though!

YUM!

Next up was a quick batch of strawberry cake mix cookies. Cake mix cookies are soooo easy! You can easily mix and match baking chips and cakes mixes for super yummy cookies!

This time we drizzled the baked cookies with white chocolate and sprinkles!

Of course we made up a box of goodies to send to work with hubby in the morning!


Cake Mix Cookies (recipe found on cake mix)
1 boxed cake mix
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Remove 3 tablespoons from the cake mix and set aside.

Add eggs and oil to cake mix and combine until smooth. If mix is too wet, add more dry mix. Drop in one inch balls on ungreased cookie sheet or baking pan.

Bake for approximately 7 minutes or until slightly browned, being careful not to overcook.

**Favorite Combinations**

Chocolate cake mix with peanut butter, butterscotch, white chocolate or cherry chips

White cake mix with cherry or chocolate chips

Strawberry cake mix with white chocolate chips

Playdough FAIL

Goodness gracious. I don't know why I do this to myself but I do. I was so excited to help Madison make Valentine's for her preschool class and we decided together that we were going to make some pink sparkly homemade playdough for her classmates. Why oh why did we decide this?!
Well I made my first mistake by trying a new recipe even though I knew I had to make enough playdough for 21 kiddos. Madison had lots of fun dumping ingredients and mixing but then everything went wrong.

The new recipe never firmed up. I tried adding more dry ingredients. I tried putting it on the stove like I do with my usual recipe. I dumped it on the counter hoping it would cool and I could knead it into a proper dough.

Fail. Fail. Fail. I ended up with a messy counter, broken spatula and big bowl of pink glittery mush.Well I had just enough ingredients left to whip up a TRIPLE batch of my regular playdough recipe.

Once again FAIL. Sort of. I don't know if it was because I tripled the recipe, or because I added raspberry extract but once again I had a big ole' mess. Thankfully I was able to salvage this batch!

Nonetheless the Big Pink Glittery Playdough Monster was not my friend yesterday.

After kneading the dough into submission it did look pretty all rolled out. I cut out 21 hearts for Mad's classmates.

Then I realized there was no way they would stay hearts in the transfer from home to school to home so I made blobs.

Hurray! Packaged and ready to go. Ignore the GIANT mess of a kitchen in the background. Of course as I sit here and type we are in the midst of a giant snow storm leaving Madison's Valentine's Day party only as a maybe since school may be canceled tomorrow. UGH.