Magical Foods

You can't have a Harry Potter themed party without Harry Potter themed foods!  The internet is full of ideas inspired by the foods mentioned in the books.

What I did
This was our menu for snacks at the party, our "feast" in the "Great Hall"
huffle puffs aka purchased cream puffs
pretzel wands aka pretzel rods
dragoned eggs aka deviled eggs
herbology tray aka veggie tray
butterbeer
pumpkin pasties
cauldron cakes

We did some research several weeks earlier, testing out different butterbeer recipes.  One recipe we made had sweetened condensed milk in it.  It was very tasty, but it got gross after sitting out a few minutes.  We wanted something that would hold up and this recipe was it.





Butterbeer
2 liters cream soda
add butterscotch sauce (icecream topping) to taste
ice (optional)

My dear mother in law made the pumpkin pasties.  She made pie crusts and made mini semi circle pies with pumpkin pie filling.

The cauldron cakes were our birthday cake.  I made mini cupcakes and stuck them inside the plastic cauldrons.  Two mini cupcakes fill them well.  I made some vanilla buttercream frosting and used a pampered chef frosting tool to put a little frosting between the cupcakes and on the top.

No Harry Potter party would be complete without the snack trolley and it's magical sweets!  I bought small white paper bags to use as goody bags and created a Honeydukes label for them.  I found this font online, googling for "retro fonts."

Our snack trolley had
Bertie Botts every flavor beans aka Jelly bellies
licorice wands aka twizzlers
exploding candies aka Pop Rocks
jellied bugs aka gummy bugs
chocolate frogs

My mother in law and sister in law made the chocolate frogs the night before the party.  They decided to give them a marshmallow fluff  (dyed green) filling and they were delicious!

What I'd do differently
I would probably buy some frosting to save time.  The homemade frosting got a bit hard as well.  I really wanted to have the snack trolley set up all cute like, but it was a little too tempting for some of the kids who got into the treats we wanted them to take home.  I did end up packing the goody bags instead of letting the kids do it themselves.  I'd also get a different flavor of twizzlers, most kids don't like the black licorice.


Sources
plastic cauldrons, pop rocks, gummy bugs- Oriental Trading Company
frog mold- Amazon
chocolate melts- Michael's

party prep
Hogwarts activities post

Harry Potter Party PreparationsI

My oldest loves Harry Potter and she was so excited to have a day at Hogwarts themed birthday party.  I did a lot of looking online for ideas. An entire blog could be devoted to just Harry Potter party ideas.  I found a lot of cute ideas for invitations, activities, and food.  I'll share what we did  for food and activities in separate posts.

Planning the party~
Invites: With some input from my daughter, I decided to buy some cute Harry Potter clipart on etsy to use to make invitations.  Buying just the clipart and designing my own invitations was less expensive than buying a set of invites/decorations.  I liked having more control over it as well.   It took a little bit of time, but I think it came out pretty well.  Buying the clipart also gave me the freedom to use the images for other things like the food tags and goody bag logos.  The back side of the invites said "Come spend a day at Hogwarts to celebrate Jaide's 8th birthday (date, time, address)  After classes, we will celebrate with a feast of treats in the great hall.  We await your owl by no later than July 14th or RSVP by muggle phone or email (our phone number and email)"

Wands: A long time ago, I read online the idea of making wands filled with glitter.  I bought some cute paper straws in a few of the Hogwarts' house colors.  It would have been cooler if I could have found red and gold striped straws, but these ones worked just fine.  I had some special helpers, three of my sister in laws, to assemble the wands the night before the party.  The method we came up with for making the wands was to wad up a small piece of tissue paper, dip it in mod podge and stuff it in one end of the straw.  Once that dried, we used a piece of paper rolled up like a funnel to fill them up with glitter.  When the kids chose their wands, they gave it a shake and out came the glitter!  We had some fun testing it out the night before.

Gryffindor

Ravenclaw

Decorations: I bought sheets of felt in the house colors (red and gold, blue and silver, gold and black, and green and silver).  I planned to make some kind of decoration out of the felt, but ran out of time.  My dear mother in law stepped in and made some adorable bunting.  She measured out triangles on the felt, cut them out and then sewed them on to some string alternating colors, making one bunting for each house.  She used a zig zag stitch.  The bunting looked so good, I still have it up. Eventually it will go up in Jaide's room. I made several class schedules to hang in the various rooms we'd be using and I made signs so people knew what rooms they were (the Great Hall, the Dungeon, and the Divination Tower for example).

What I'd do differently
I should have done more in advance (we were a bit busy with the family reunion right before).  Most of the preparations got left until the night before or morning before.  I was very lucky to have family here to help.  If I'd had a little more time, I might have made a few more decorations.

Sources
striped paper straws- http://sweetsandtreatsboutique.com/
clip art- etsy
free harry potter fonts http://members.outpost10f.com/~lindax/harrypotter/fonts.html

food post
Hogwarts activities

Adventures in Vegetables

This year we joined a CSA, so for the past three weeks we've been getting some veggies I'd never tried before.  Hooray for the internet for showing me what to do with these new to me foods (and the large quantities of others not new).

Beets- I read online how to roast them.  It turned out alright.  I probably should have added more butter, salt, and pepper after removing the skins.  My husband had previous experience with the canned kind I believe, and didn't like them, but he didn't mind them prepared this way.  The big hit though was what I made with the leftovers.  I pureed it and made it into the chocolate cake recipe from the Deceptively Delicious cookbook.  My girls knew it had beets in it and didn't care.  My oldest told me she wanted beet cake for her birthday!  I ended up making it twice, once as a cake, once as cupcakes.  Even without frosting the girls loved it.  This fudge frosting recipe was pretty darn delicious on it though.  I tweaked the cake recipe a bit.  Here's what I did.

Chocolate Beet Cake

1C brown sugar (first time we ran out, so I used white and brown)
1/4C oil or melted butter
2 large eggs
1/3C chocolate chips melted
1/2C milk
1tsp vanilla
2C flour
1tsp baking soda
1tsp salt
cocoa powder (maybe 1/3C?  I just added it in until the batter looked dark brown instead of reddish)
mix sugar and butter or oil,  beat in eggs, then melted chocolate chips, beet puree, milk, and vanilla.  Next add the remaining ingredients.  Bake at 350 for 35 to 40 minutes.

This week we got another three beets and the girls asked if we could make cake :)

Kale- My only previous experiences with kale were finding it on the list of foods high in vitamin K and wrapped around the base material in an edible arrangement.  We ate some of it in this garlicky mushrooms and kale recipe.  It was pretty good despite the fact that I burned the garlic (oops).  The kids wouldn't touch it.  The rest I made into kale chips.  They were delicious!  The kids didn't like they way they looked, and I didn't care because more for me!  I tried making spinach chips with the last of the spinach we had, it wasn't the same, the spinach just kind of fell apart.

Kohlrabi with leaves removed, picture from wikipedia

Kohlrabi- I didn't even know what this was, thanks wikipedia page about vegetables for helping me figure it out.  I decided to try this kohlrabi and apple salad recipe.  I cut up the kohlrabi earlier in the day when baby gave me a few minutes and it didn't turn brown or anything.  I put lemon juice on the apple to keep it from turning brown.

Patty Pan Squash-  This picture is from www.emily-malloy.com, she's got a stuffed recipe too 

Pattypan Squash- I like squash, but I'd never had this kind before.  I decided to try a stuffed recipe because of the fun shape.  Lucky me, this recipe also called for spinach which we had in abundance.  I used parmesian cheese instead of the cheese it called for.  We got more of it this week, and this time I think I'm going to cut it up and grill it.

Spinach- I've used spinach before, but never had so much at once.  I like to use it in lasagna, we tried some chopped up and cooked with scrambled eggs (green eggs, but no ham!).  We got a bunch more this week and I'm looking forward to trying this hot spinach dip recipe from Martha Stewart.  Her site has a bunch of seasonal veggie recipes.

Green Beans- I've cooked with canned and frozen green beans, but this is the first time I've used fresh ones. We had them cooked in the microwave the other night with some butter, salt, and pepper.  Tonight I made green bean fries using this recipe baked at 375 instead of fried.  I didn't make the sauce though.  My husband and I ate them all up, the girls refused to even try them, they are nuts!

Swiss Chard- We got some swiss chard once before and made a tasty recipe that called for orange juice in it.  Of course I couldn't find it when I looked recently.  We made this very tasty Swiss Chard recipe which calls for chickpeas and tomatoes.  We just used a sweet onion instead of the shallot and green onion it called for.

We'll keep trying to get the kids to eat more of these veggies.  Hopefully our eating them every day is at least setting a good example for them.  And now through November our mission will be to eat them all up before the next Tuesday!


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Teacher Gifts

I've been a bit busy lately.   Little babies are demanding.  I saw this on pinterest while I was pregnant and it made me smile.
I'm not sure what my slogan could be now.  I'm such a DIYer I make milk?  Well moo, that is a lot of my day and night.
I do have some things I'm hoping to post soon, like the stuff I got done before the baby was born but was too tired to blog about.  I'm also currently working on a new cushion cover for a thrifted rocking chair in roughly 2 minute increments per day.  And next month we're hosting a family reunion and a very important birthday.  So there is lots to do.
One project I managed to get finished in a timely manner was making teacher gifts for my girls' teachers.  It helps a lot when you find a good idea online and can just copy it.  She even had the flags downloadable.  Thanks Lisa Storms!
Here's how mine turned out.

These were for my preschooler.  We still haven't put the oldest's together yet.  Last day for her is Friday.  I swear we are always the last ones to get out of school, despite starting in August and not having any snow days this year!  I tried to buy cups from walmart.com and have them shipped to the store weeks ago.  Who knows if they'll ever arrive.  I ended up buying these at Joanns with a coupon, which made them come out to a better deal that the walmart ones.  Inside the cups are lemonade packets, the tag that was around the cup and a note from my daughter.

Baby 2012 giftbags

Before the party, I made all the moms goody bags.  My original plan was to crochet everyone a baby hat.  I got a little burned out on making hats for all my nieces and nephews for Christmas.  I felt like making blankets instead which was easier in that it required less looking at patterns, but not as far as how long it took.  To make it easier on myself, I only used three patterns and just did some variations (to keep it interesting for me and to make everyone's blanket unique).  The hard part was coming up with ideas for gender neutral blankets.

Here are examples of the three kinds of blankets I made (and they're all my attempts at gender neutral).  The first is just rows of double crochet.  Those ones usually ended up being the biggest blankets because I always start with too big of a chain.
The second one is a big granny square.  One of the granny square blankets I made had nine little squares I'd made previously crocheted together.  I made a shades of blue granny square, that patriotic one, and the sock monkey inspired one below.
The third pattern is one I found online called the brain dead pattern.  Once you get the hang of it, it's just as mindless as the other patterns I used.  The example in the picture is made with a variegated baby yarn.  I also made one with girly colored stripes.

The other item I made for each mom was a clip on strap to turn any blanket into a nursing cover.  I suppose you could use it to turn a cloth napkin into a bib as well.  I got the pattern from this site.
I used some pink and blue flannel I got from the remnant bin at Joann's, some neutral colored ribbon, and drapery clips from Ikea.  Ikea seemed to have the best prices I could find for clips.

My pregnant self making nursing cover straps

The last item I put into each bag was a small bundle of newborn diapers tied up with a ribbon.  That's a fun way to give diapers because then everyone can oooh and ahh at how small newborn diapers are.  You forget so quickly!

For the gift bags, I used plain white gift bags and made mini posters to decorate the front sides of the bags.  Here's the file for my bag fronts.  I printed them out two to a page.

Baby 2012 Congratulations


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BABY 2012 Party

I know a lot of women having babies this year, maybe you do too? For some reason 2012 is a very popular year to be having a baby. Most of my pregnant friends are having second, third, fourth, or even fifth! babies and most have both genders already so they probably won't be having showers. I wanted to have a girls night to celebrate all the new babies coming this year. This being an election year, I thought it would be fun to have a pink, white, and blue campaign theme. This would work well for a regular baby shower too.

For invitations, I used a patriotic themed evite. For decorations, I started out with some pink, white, and blue paint chips. Using a 1" circle punch, I punched out many paint chip circles.

I sewed them into garlands, alternating pink white and blue and hung them from the ceiling with regular old scotch tape. I used a few of the three colored chips and cut them into flags. They probably would have looked nicer if I had made all the edges straight or cut them with a shaped pair of scissors. This garland ended up a bit heavier than the little circle ones and I had to knot the ends of the string so they wouldn't slip out of the tape holding them up. I had a few pieces of pink and blue paint chip flags left over and I used them for food label cards.

I made three posters for the mantel.

I've included them as pdf files below (vote pink, vote blue, and undecided). I also printed the same design out 6 to a page and used my 3" circle punch to make buttons out of them. I taped on a safety pin to the back of each. For the finishing touch, I bought pink, white, and blue balloons and filled them up with helium.

Baby 2012 Vote Pink

Baby 2012 Vote Blue

Baby 2012 Undecided

For food I tried to have pink, white, and blue items.

My girls helped me make candy coated pretzels with patriotic sprinkles. I got some pink wrapped candy and some pink and white m&ms after Valentine's day. I bought some regular m&ms and sorted out the blue ones. I also bought some cookies and cream hershey kisses which are wrapped in blue foil.

I made pink lemonade, had water with lemon slices in a large white pitcher, and I made a foamy blue punch. My family didn't care too much for the blue punch.

I had found a recipe online that looked good but couldn't find it again when I went to make the punch. Perhaps winging it wasn't the best idea. The food table was filled out with other appetizers, mostly stuff from the frozen food section at the store, and other items a few people volunteered to bring. One of my friends made that gorgeous cake with pink and blue fondant dots and a green fondant bow.

I figured we would mostly just eat and chat, but I did plan one little activity.

I set up a ballot box on a table near the door and asked people to write on strips of paper either funny/weird advice they had been given about pregnancy/babies, or funny things kids had told them about the same. We read them during the party.

At the end, I sent all the moms to be (and two who had already had their babies) home with a little gift bag.

I made each one a crocheted blanket and a nursing cover clip. I also included a little bundle of diapers tied up with ribbon.  You can read more about the gift bags here.

It was a very fun evening!

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Fun with Fabric Dye

Fabric dye is some awesome stuff. You can totally transform stuff by dying it. It is always a bit of an adventure though. Will it work? Will the color come out right? Am I going to destroy the thing I'm trying to dye and/or all the things nearby? Here are the stories of my experiences with dying fabric, from best to worst.

The first and second things I ever dyed turned out the best, I believe.

First was a pair bright blue swim shorts. They were 100% nylon so I used dye specifically for synthetic fabric.

These swim shorts used to be about the color of that blue kayak before I dyed them.

The instructions call for heat.

Basically you cook the water, dye, and fabric in a pot you intend to never use for food again. I bought a large aluminum pot at the thrift store just for this purpose. I used black dye and at first the shorts looked pretty black. After dying you have to wash the fabric, sometimes several times, to get out any dye that is going to leach out. The shorts ended up a very nice navy blue. Even the plastic button took the dye. I'm not going to lie, this dying process is smelly and can be messy, but it was totally worth it. I've been using those swim shorts a couple of years now and they've held up beautifully.

The second thing I dyed was a sweater.

Our family dressed up as the Scooby Doo gang for Halloween a couple of years ago. I was Velma. I hit the thrift store to look for a big turtleneck sweater. Finding one that was orange was never going to happen, but I did find a white cotton one.

Using regular, orange fabric dye, I dyed the sweater in the washing machine. It was so easy! The color was perfect.

The next two projects are tied so far for um, second place I guess. Our new house has an HE washing machine and only fills up enough to cover whatever is inside-just barely. I don't think dying fabric in this washing machine would work well, so I haven't tried it.

The thing I wanted to dye was also very, very large (it takes two separate loads to wash). So I gave dying in the bathtub a try. I bought a slipcover for an L-shaped Ikea Ektorp couch from the as-is department.

It was brand new in the package and only $10, but it was pink.

I figured I'd try dying it before we committed to actually buying the couch. I used regular brown dye and had to dye the cushion covers separate from the frame cover- it was A LOT of fabric!

It's not really recommended to dye stuff in your bathtub because it can stain.

We had a tub already in kind of bad shape (it needs to be re-glazed or something) so I wasn't too worried. The first "batch" didn't even stain the tub.

The second did a little bit (may have had something to do with not having time to clean up as thoroughly afterward that time). The dye job worked well enough. The cover is brown, there are a few splotchy areas (it's hard to move that much fabric around freely and that leads to a bit of a tie-dye effect). The fabric close to the welts still looks a little pink if you look really closely. But overall it looks fine. The biggest problem I had was that I followed the directions on the fabric tags and used hot water when I washed it afterwards. It caused the cotton fabric to shrink a little bit. I did not put it in the dryer.

We did end up buying the couch to put the slipcover on and are pretty happy with it.

Here's a pic of the couch on Christmas morning.

My latest project was dying my pink diaper holder/changing pad black.

It is nylon, so I had to use the pot method and special dye again. The fabric is somewhat rigid and the pot was a little small for it to move around completely freely.

I did my best though to move it frequently.

I think I might have "over cooked" it a bit. The fabric got a bit crunchy wrinkled. It was very dark after dying and has gotten a bit more gray with repeated washings (dye kept coming off on my hands from it so I had to rewash a couple times) and it's a little splotchy too but not bad.

I realized later that there were little black spots all around the stove after this project. I guess some dye got carried in the steam. A magic eraser took them all off though.

My worst dye project was a dye fail. Before we moved, I tried to dye our polyester bed skirt.

It was way too big for the pot, but I tried to just do the visible edges. It didn't work. It looked tie dyed and the green fabric+brown dye turned a very ugly color. That one ended up in the trash and I bought a new bed skirt which I was prepared to do anyway.

Those have been my experiences with fabric dye. It can be risky, but it can also be awesome. In the future, I may try dying some of my stained maternity shirts to see if they can be saved. I've also seen people dye old jeans darker and people who have to wear black clothes for work dye them to keep them from looking faded. I've bought dye at Michaels and Joanns. Joanns is where I've found the nylon/polyester dye and they usually have a larger selection of dye there as well.

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