Tie Dye Party!! Let's Get Colorful, Colorful!!!

Emma turned nine yesterday...NINE!!! I can hardly believe that I have a nine-year-old in the house now. So this year for her birthday party I gave her a few ideas that I had seen on Pinterest and she chose to have a tie-dye party! I was excited, because this was going to be EASY!!!

So Friday night before the party I baked the cake. Emma decided on the colors for the cake itself, and all I had to do was mix up one boxed white cake mix, according to the instructions on the box, divide it up into separate bowls, and use food coloring to get the colors Emma wanted! As I said, EASY!!!

Next thing was to pour the batter in the pans. I'd seen a couple of different ways to do this on Pinterest. I decided to just randomly pour half the batter in one pan, the other half in the other. Next I took a wooden skewer and sort of swirled the colors, careful not to "over-swirl" which I thought would make the colors look brown in my final product!!

Of course the next step was to bake, allow to cool overnight, and move on to the next project!!! Here's what they looked like when they came out of the oven.

On Pinterest one person had taken the traditional Rice Krispie Treat recipe and used swirl colored Trix instead! What a great idea for a tie dye party! So here's Emma mixing it up and her final product! The girls DEVOURED these!! When I went to get one there were only two left...so I ate one and HID the other! We also had pink lemonade, Tootsie Pops and Gushers treats to go with the colorful theme...and I added in pretzels to add a healthier option!!!

 

The next morning my cakes were cool and I was ready to decorate! I found the cake, as I said earlier, on Pinterest and the frosting looked really cool! However, they used gel frosting, and I think that stuff is disgusting!! So I was attempting the same look using just white whipped cream frosting and adding food coloring drops over the top, then doing my magic. Well, I think I was "doing my magic" with a broken wand, because my tie dye cake top ended up as a flower!!! But for a screw up, I think it actually didn't turn out too bad!!! All the girls thought it was pretty cool anyway, and that's what counts, right??!! So on the left is what I intended the cake to look like...on the right is what it looked like!!!!

 

And now for the inside of the cake. Once again, it looks NOTHING like what I saw on Pinterest, but again, the girls thought it was pretty awesome. And you know what, so did I! Plus it tasted really good...add in the rainbow sherbet, and that, my friends, is tie dye food heaven!!!

In addition to having awesome treats, the girls tie dyed shirts and bandanas, which they thought was very fun. I even did a shirt and a couple of bandanas, and I had fun too! For some reason we failed to take pictures of the tye dying in progress, but Emma decided to wear her shirt and bandana to school on her birthday, so here she is...isn't she the cutest!!?? HAPPY 9TH BIRTHDAY BABY GIRL!!!!! 

 

Skillet Lasagna

While to some Pinterest might just be an addiction or a short lived phase, I honestly try to use Pinterest as a tool. Battling weight issues almost all of my life, the one way in which I enjoy using Pinterest is to come up with healthier meals that my family can enjoy.

Lasagna is one of those comfort foods that we don't enjoy very often. I love a good lasagna, but know that it's not the healthiest dish you could have! JC enjoys lasagna every now and then. Emma, my anti-cheese child, won't eat anything that has cheese in it. Josh, well let's just say he's a bit of a picky eater. He'll devour spaghetti, pizza, hamburgers and tacos...but if it doesn't look familiar to him, he's not about to eat it!

In my latest search of Pinterest I found Skillet Lasagna from the Shape website. Yes, Shape...the health magazine. Healthy lasagna?? That can't be possible. Well, not only can it be possible, this dish has very little cheese in it!!! So I thought what the heck!! Very little cheese, so Emma should eat it. And it's so similar to spaghetti that Josh should be willing to at least try it, right?? Well, I turned out to be wrong. Neither of the kids even gave it a chance, so they pretty much went hungry! However, JC and I thought it was very delicious, so I thought I'd share (with my comments)!! Oh and by the way, the photo is from the Shape website. Mine wasn't as pretty!! But it was very yummy, and that's all that matters, right??!!

Skillet Lasagna (if you click on the website below, you can get nutritional stats)
(http://www.shape.com/healthy-eating/meal-ideas/healthy-one-pot-meals/skillet-lasagna)

Ingredients:

• 1 can (28 ounces) no-salt-added diced tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion, minced
• Salt
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 pound 95% fat-free ground beef or pork (could easily use ground turkey)
• 10 lasagna noodles, broken into 2-inch pieces
• 1 can (8 ounces) no-salt-added tomato sauce
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• Pepper
• 1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese (I actually left this off because of the anti-cheese thing)
• 2 tablespoons chopped basil (I used dried basil from my spice cupboard)

Directions:

1. Pour tomatoes with their juice into a 4-cup measuring cup. Add enough water to bring the volume to 4 cups.
2 . Warm oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add onion and 1/2 teaspoon salt, and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes until onion begins to brown. Add garlic and red pepper flakes, and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in meat, using a wooden spoon to break it apart. Cook until meat is browned, about 5 minutes. Add noodles, but do not stir; let them sit on top. Pour tomato-water mixture and tomato sauce over noodles. Again don’t stir. Cover pan and bring to a simmer. Let simmer, stirring occasionally, until pasta is tender, about 20 minutes. Turn off heat. Stir in Parmesan and season to taste with salt and pepper. Drop ricotta onto top of lasagna, cover, and let stand about 5 minutes. Remove cover and sprinkle with basil.

Lip Gloss & Trains?

So here I am starting another blog. While my others have been officially ditched due to me just losing interest, I sincerely hope that this one is going to be different. This time around, I'm not going to be specific to a topic, which is where I believe I went terribly wrong with the others. This blog is about a mom. A mom of two amazing children...an almost-9-year-old girl (Lip Gloss) and a 3 1/2-year-old boy (Trains). What's it like to be a working mom with a daughter involved in softball, soccer, and youth group on top of school speeches, math tutoring and regular homework...and a son who isn't old enough for any of that yet, but keeps me busy with just being a toddler??

This blog is about the 4 F's that make up my life...Family, Friends, Faith and Free Time. Maybe one post will be about a game night with friends. Another post might be about family events, or maybe even add another "F" word in there...frustrations! (you thought it'd be something else, didn't you?) In other words, there are no rules!! This is my life in a blog. Maybe you'll like reading it...maybe you won't. Maybe you'll disagree with something I've said, or maybe you'll finish the last paragraph with a mighty "Amen"!

Regardless of the topic of a post, I hope that you enjoy reading Lip Gloss & Trains. Happy reading friends!