Disney Dinners..

So many dinners - so lil time to upload pics and ideas!!

I decided to do two dinners a week, themed around a classic Disney cartoon movie. If at some point I run out of movies..I will then movie on to the Disney non classic, (Chicken Little, etc) and then on to non cartoon.

So we started with Emperor's New Groove...that was a fun night. But the creative juices have been swirling more and more each week....so, here are the others we have done....

Monster's Inc.

Monster Burgers ~ basically making the burger into a monster face
Hairy frys - a platter of frys, with 2 lil cups of ketchup for the eyes
Sully drink - blue milk, I painted with Hershey syrup lil eyes inside the cup before adding milk.
Mike W. Salad - I took a honeydoo melon - cut it in half and added a cup of yogurt in the middle to make hi eye ball.
Big Monster - I made a big cookie with a monster face!









Mulan




We had Chinese with chopsticks!!
and of coarse ended the meal with fortune cookies!










Aladdin

I found this wonderful recipe on Pinterest, Cranberry Pork Medallions, that became our main dish.
I called it - Sultans Medallions.
Also had:
Fruit rollups Carpets
Blue tortilla chips to represent the Genie
Castle turrets - whipped mashed potatoes
Jaffar - Red velvet cupcakes with chocolate frosting and red cinn eyes




Toy Story 2

Now this might have been my favorite dinner, so many characters to work with! My oldest daughter and I just had a blast in our local grocery store, coming up with ideas...enjoy!

 Little Green Men - kiwis with white choc chip eyes!
Pizza Planet Pizzas - we made pizzas in muffin tins, so cute sooo easy!!
Mr. Potatoe Heads - cute lil potato smiley faces.
Jessy's hair - I found the red licorice that you can pull apart.
Buzz's Lazers - the kids made kabobs with strawberries.

Upcoming Dinners: Little Mermaid & Fantasia!!

Advent Pt 2 - Read a Book, Create a Memory

So I promised I would write out the list of books, I happened to pick up at the local resale shop - we added some from our own collection, and got a few new ones for Christmas.
In our family we only had 3 specific dates, that had specific titles....
the 12th of Dec was Elf on a Shelf...and the children opened the box that night...and Mr. Elf, became part of our family for 12 days, creating mischief and chaos and fun....but more on him later.
We have a beautiful Twas the Night Before book, that I saved for of coarse the night before:) and then we read all together our book The Very First Christmas, before we opened our gifts.

Here's our list...


Silent night
Snowy day
Baboushka
Millions of Snowflakes
Winter Fun
Snowy Winter Day
The Mice Before Christmas
Roseblossoms first Christmas
Curious George's Snowy Day
Nutcracker Ballet
Rudolph
The Nutcracker
The Snow Bear
The Snowy Day
A Magical Crhistmas
An Angel came to Nazereth
The Very First Christmas
Elf on the Shelf
How the Grinch stole Christmas
The Mitten
The Hat
Christmas Tree
Snowmen at night
Little Polar Bear
Santa Claus
Xmas
The Night Before Christmas

Each book had a note inside that we would do that day. Each child took turns throughout the month to open the book before we leave for school, and when we came home we focused on the activity, and before bed read the book.

Our activities were not at all time consuming or cost much...I came up with a list of 24 things we normally do during the holiday season;

cookie making, movie watching, sibling shopping, mom/dad shopping, light decorating, cookie decorating...I added some RAK's for the the children to do also...

Leave Christmas candy canes around town, purchase items for food pantry with their allowance, neighborhood door drops...the ideas could be endless!

It was really fun this year to do this, to start this tradition. Our children have to read so many books/hours a week so having these books, wrapped under the tree helps make the reading even that much better!

Till another time....

baking yumminess!

I love baking, give me any excuse to spend a day in my kitchen, rolling dough, scooping cookies, crushing crackers - making the kitchen warm, cozy, and smelling wonderful!

Today I'm baking up a storm for a group coming to our youth group - I'm signed only for 1 batch of cookies and a batch of brownies....but that's no fun!!

So, my plan - cuz it's fall and you have to include apples!! - are these yummy cookies:
Apple Cookies!
and because everyone loves a good chocolate cookie:
Chocolate Cookie.

And my brownies - well, one pan just isn't enough, nor is just a box of mix...so, after owning many jelly-roll pans, gonna try Texas Sheet Cake!
Texas Sheet Cake


I will post pics at another time -- off to pull my first batch out of the oven!!