Dinosaur Treasure Stones

One of the fun things I did for Bubba's birthday was make Dinosaur Treasure Stones. It was a really fun activity to do together from beginning to end.

I found the link through Pinterest (of course) and gathered up all my supplies. Here's what you need:

1 cup flour

1 cup used coffee grounds (I got mine, along with a lot of weird looks, at the local Dunkin Donuts.)

1/2 cup salt

1/4 cup sand (I got a small bag at Michael's) 

1 cup water

Mix dry ingredients together. Slowly add the water to make a stiff dough; you may not need all of the water - you don't want it to be too runny. [I scratched my bowl pretty good with the sand, so make sure you use a bowl you don't mind to get scratched.]

Fresh stones on top; stones 6 days later

Hide surprise inside

Knead on a floured surface until fairly smooth. Break off dough in the desired stone size and hide the surprise in the center.

Set in a safe place until totally dry - at least 3-4 days. [I put my stones on parchment paper lined baking sheets; turned them over every 12 hours or so...it took closer to 4-5 days to dry.]

Once they are dry, they look and feel like stones. You can "carefully" break open the treasure stones using a hammer (we used a wooden hammer so they wouldn't damage the dinosaurs). If you put them in Tupperware, be advised they will release moisture and need to dry out again.

Deciding on the size of the prize inside makes a big difference - my dinosaurs were not very big at all yet I still ended up making two batches of dough and ended up with about 18 treasure stones. The stones were also a good size so as mentioned above, they took a long time to dry. It was a good lesson in patience for Bubba. 

We didn't have enough treasure stones for all the kids either at the party or at school, so after using them as part of the decorations at the party, we ended up breaking them open ourselves at home. The whole family had a good time breaking them open and finding the cool dinosaurs. Since the stones were just sand, flour & coffee, we just swept all the remains into the mulch when we were done.

Rosemary Cornbread

We are having Thanksgiving with family again this year. And once again, we don't have to cook! We did volunteer to bring a few things though so hopefully that will help alleviate some of the guilt at not doing much of the cooking.

Imagine two eggs in front... 

One of my favorite things this time of year is Rosemary Cornbread. I found the recipe 7-8 years ago and have made it almost as many times. Every time, I wonder why I wait until the holidays to make it. It's so easy and tastes great!

All you need is 2 boxes of Jiffy Corn Bread mix, 2 eggs (lightly beaten), 8oz plain yogurt, 1-2 7.5 oz cans whole kernel corn (I only use one because I think it's "too corny" with 2 cans) and 1 Tbsp rosemary. Mix it all together, pour it into a greased (spray) 9x13 pan and bake 20-25 minutes.

It's a nice change from plain cornbread and goes great with turkey and gravy. If you get a chance to make it, let me know what you think.

Rapunzel Hair Clip Holder

One of the more fun things I have made recently was a pair of Rapunzel hair clip organizers for my two nieces. They love the Disney movie "Tangled" and have a ton of hair clips and ribbons, so I thought they might enjoy these organizers.

They were very easy to make (see the directions here). When you read the directions and see "3 yards" of yarn - make sure you use the correct length. 3 yards comes out to around 9 feet which seems like an awful lot of yarn. However, as you can see from the picture, the first one I made ended up quite short since I thought 9 feet of yarn must be an error. The second one turned out much better after using the appropriate amount of yarn. After all, if it's going to represent Rapunzel it has to be long, long, long.

The best part was giving them to my nieces. Instead of using them for hair clips they used them as pretend wigs! They put them on their heads and kept them there with head bands around their chins and danced around as if they were Rapunzel. Very cute and very satisfying.

Broccoli Cheddar Soup

I saw a post the other day about homemade broccoli cheddar soup (you can read original post here). Once I saw it, I couldn't get it out of my mind. Luckily, my husband is willing to put up with my little obsessions and gamely agreed I could make it for dinner.

While at the grocery store I saw a box of organic cream of broccoli. For a few seconds I thought about just buying it and adding cheddar to make it cheesy. Maybe I should have but I enjoyed making the soup from scratch and overall thought it went well and tasted good.

I couldn't find any small bread "rounds" so had to get a big one. Way too big. We ended up sharing the bread but it was still way too much. The broccoli probably should have been steamed a bit longer since it ended up still being quite crunchy (even after it was pureed and heated in the soup). My husband told me to stop analyzing and just enjoy - eventually I did and must say that warm, creamy soup in a bread bowl on a cold day was really nice.

Goldfish Costume

I saw this costume idea last year...after I'd already bought a personalized astronaut costume for Bubba. I've been thinking about it for a year, gathering supplies and thinking of how cute Bubba would look in it. I figured this might be the last Halloween where I get to pick what his costume is...

You'd be amazed how hard it is to find an orange sweatshirt. Especially if you don't want a Florida Gator on it. The orange hat wasn't much easier. The costume actually called for an orange hoody - even harder to find than a plain sweatshirt. Plus, I figured Bubba was more likely to wear a hat than the hoody so it worked out OK.

The hardest part was finding the right glue for paper onto fabric. One of the issues was that I didn't want to ruin the sweatshirt - I would prefer it if we could still use it after Halloween. Amazingly enough, I ended up using Elmer's Glue. Supposedly it will come off in the wash. We'll see...

Bubba wore the costume Friday night for Boo at the Zoo. My parents came down to go with us and we met up with my cousin and her family there. It was fun but I would have liked to have seen more animals...Quite a few people commented on the cute goldfish which made me feel better about all the effort I put into it. Though to be honest, once I had gathered all the supplies, making it was actually the easy part.

Have you ever made a Halloween costume for your kids or yourself? How'd it turn out?