Dr. Seuss' Birthday

This Saturday is Dr. Seuss' Birthday. To celebrate, this Friday, my son's second grade class will be reading Dr. Seuss books and having Dr. Seuss inspired treats. I thought I would share with you what I am taking. I went for the Lorax theme and will be taking Nutter Butter Lorax cookies and suckers with the Lorax's mustache on them.

 

 

The cookies were very quick and easy!  I purchased a package of Nutter Butter cookies and 1 container of white frosting.  I made yellow and black frosting, but each one in a freezer Ziploc bag and snipped a very small hole in the corner of the bag.  I then just piped the frosting on the cookies.

 

 

 

For the suckers, I was lucky enough to be able to use my mom's Silhouette machine and cut the mustaches out of yellow cardstock.  If you do not have a Silhouette, you can just print the mustaches on yellow cardstock and cut them yourself.  Click HERE for the printable mustaches.  Put your mustaches on your suckers and you are set.  You could also use these on a bendy straw!

 

 

I hope you can celebrate Dr. Seuss in some way this week!

 

 

 



 



Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie Muffins

I have seen the Oreo Stuffed Cookies on Pinterest, but heard about this muffin on Facebook and thought I would give it a try.  They were delicious!

 

First we found our favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe that is found in the My Family Meal Planner #2 and made a batch of dough.  (The dough I think is even better than the cookies!)  This can easily be done with store bought Chocolate Chip Cookie dough. 

 

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1/3 cup butter, softened

½ tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup Crisco shortening

3 ½ cups flour

1-2 cups chocolate chips

 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Mix everything together except the flour and chocolate chips.  When mixed thoroughly, blend in flour and then fold in the desired amount of chocolate chips.  Bake for 10 minutes if you are just making chocolate chip cookies, not Oreo stuffed.

 

After the dough was made, we lined our muffin tin with liners and sprayed the liners with cooking spray.  I then used my handy Pampered Chef scoops.

 

I used the small one and put a scoop of cookie dough in the liner.

 

I added an Oreo on top of that and pushed is down a little.

 



 

Then I topped the Oreo with another scoop of cookie dough using my medium sized Pampered Chef scoop.

 

 

I decided to push the cookie dough down with my hand so that the Oreo would for sure be covered with the Chocolate Chip Cookie.

 

 

I then baked them at 375 for 10-15 minutes, making sure the chocolate chip cookie was golden.

 

 

The inside of the Oreo was warm and gooey.  They were awesome!  We even dunked them in milk!  (Yes, I still have Halloween Oreos.  I got them the day after Halloween for 50% off and store them in my freezer.  I had to stock up at that price!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1st Place Valentine's Box!

My daughter's 4th grade class had a contest for the best Valentine's Box and my daughter won 1st Place!  We decided that we would make hers look like a Redbox DVD Rental machine.  I realize I am posting this after Valentine's Day, but she did not want me to share her idea with anyone before the contest.

 

 

Sorry, I don't have a tutorial for you, but here is an up close picture of the box.

(Her name is Andi, so that is why we called it Andi Box.)

 

 

 

 

Spinach Smoothie

My family and I decided to do a fitness/health challenge this year that we started back in January.  We are following the Six Sisters Stuff Weight Loss/Get Healthy Challenge.  You can find it HERE.  You receive points for eating fruits and vegetables, exercising, no sweets, not eating after 9 pm and so on.  It has been great for our family and extremely hard!  I realized just how much junk food I was eating throughout the day.  I decided to try and knock out a fruit and vegetable right away in the morning and try a spinach smoothie.  Much to my surprise, it was GREAT!  What is even more amazing is that ALL of my KIDS will drink it too!  It tastes like a strawberry banana smoothie.  You can't even taste the spinach. 

 

Spinach Smoothie

1 banana

4-5 frozen strawberries

1 cup vanilla yogurt or 1 (6 oz) container (you can use plain, strawberry or greek yogurt too)

1 cup milk

1 handful of fresh baby spinach

2 cups ice chips

 

 

 

Put your banana, strawberries, yogurt and milk in the blender and mix until smooth and creamy.

 

Next add a handful of spinach. Stir it up if necessary so that all the leaves get chopped really well.  Mix with your blender until the mixture is smooth.

 

Add in your two cups of ice chips.  (You can use ice cubes, I just find it chops better if they are already ice chips.)  Mix it with your blender until it is smooth.

 

 

Here is the finished product.

 

 

Like I said, my KIDS LOVE IT!  We have had them every day for the past 4 weeks.  We have also added in blueberries some days and don't tell my kids, but now I am adding in milled flax seed for more fiber.  If you have a really great blender, you may be able to just throw it all in at once and mix it one time.  I just want to make sure it is smooth so I do it in steps.  Also, if you are afraid your kids won't drink it because it is green, add lots of blueberries or introduce it around St. Patricks Day!