Homemade Rainbow Rocket Pops

One thing about my mom: she loves to buy people presents. I mean, she LOVES it. The build-up to Christmas starts, I swear, in September, and at some point in each telephone conversation after that point, she tells me what she has bought for whom for Christmas since our previous conversation. She's generally pretty good about adhering to my rules about what makes an acceptable present for the girls, although her enthusiasm causes her to cross the line occasionally (I've given in on My Little Pony, but I will NOT give in on ANY My Little Pony plastic playsets or accessories), and since I have a whole blog to whine about stuff I want, as well as my pumpkinbear wists, she always manages to surprise me with something that I have totally wanted forever, as well.

This year, one of the things that I got from my mother was a set of rocket pop popsicle molds. Do you remember rocket pops? Popsicles shaped like rockets? Don't you think it would be awesome to make your own rocket pops?

Well, I can assure you, it IS awesome. It is AWESOME!!!

You can make a rocket pop with just juice, just like you make a regular homemade popsicle (as if I'll ever be making any of those again!), but one of the cool things about rocket pops, out of the many cool things about rocket pops--Did I mention that they're shaped like rockets?--is that they're striated. Your rocket isn't just a rocket, but a RAINBOW rocket. You can't do that with juice!

You can, however, make a delicious, nutritious, frozen rocket rainbow treat out of yogurt. Here's how:

You will need:

• white yogurt, plain or flavored--I used Trader's Point Creamery low-fat vanilla. Another option is to flavor the yogurt yourself, with honey or spices, perhaps.
• liquid food coloring--my professional-grade food coloring is in paste form, so I used some generic liquid food coloring from the big-box grocery store. Another option is to experiment with natural food colorings--blueberry juice, colorful herbs, etc.
• several small bowls with a spoon for each bowl
• room in the freezer for each mold to sit nicely upside-down

1. Spoon some yogurt into several small bowls.

2. Letting the littles choose colors, add a judicious amount of food coloring to each bowl. For little littles, this is the time to review color identifications or mixing primary colors or just how many infinite ways there are to make brown.

3. The littles get to stir.

4. Letting the littles choose the order of colors, carefully spoon each color of yogurt into the pop mold. Try not to slop the yogurt against the inner sides of the mold as you spoon it in. As long as you put your yogurt in a spoonful at a time, each layer will sit nicely on top of the previous layer:

You could make themed popsicles, in patriotic colors or Halloween colors or spring colors, or you could practice the order of colors in the rainbow or complementary colors, or you could just go crazy, like us.

5. Leave a nice half-inch headspace at the top of the mold to account for the yogurt's expansion as it freezes:

6. The instructions that came with our rocket pop mold advised us to let the pops freeze for at least four hours. In order to avoid having to inform two small children every five seconds for four hours about whether or not the pops are ready, we made our pops as a family activity just before bedtime, and then the girls got to eat their pops for breakfast. Willow, actually, didn't care much for her pop--Trader's Point Creamery yogurt is on the tart side, which is what I think she found unappealing. I'll have to think up some kind of natural pudding or a different kind of yogurt for her future popsicles.

Sydney, however, was a big fan:

She ate two of these in a row, and another one later for her snack. When we make a new batch today (our current supply of rocket pops being dreadfully low), I plan to add in a couple of layers of frozen berries, just so I feel a little better about letting the baby eat nothing but frozen yogurt all day.

Because frozen yogurt + berries? You could totally live off of that.

Happy 2010!

Countdown to Noon at the Indianapolis Children's Museum, three hours at Gameworks (who knew that two little girls who adore dinosaurs more than anything else in this world would also adore so much a game entitled Primeval Hunt, the goal of which is to realistically kill realistic dinosaurs using a real orange plastic shotgun?), swimming, pizza, champagne, hotel breakfast, and the prospect of more swimming in a few moments, followed by late check-out and the Goodwill Outlet Store:

An auspicious beginning to the new decade, don't you think?

Dressing in Pink

Christmas dinner did not exactly go off without a hitch this year.

Papa always makes cornbread dressing. It is always delicious. It is also, apparently, always dyed with food coloring. Cornbread is already yellow, of course, but there are other ingredients, and I guess Papa likes the end product to remain as yellow as fresh-from-the-oven cornbread?

However, for whatever reason this year--it was busy, and it was hectic, and there were two little girls screeching around underfoot in a house that's normally only peopled by the voices of Fox News--Papa reached for the little bottle of yellow food coloring and picked up the red instead.

And so the dressing was pink this year:
Now, by the time the rest of our family arrived for Christmas dinner, Papa had put a spin on the story so that now it read that he decided to dye the dressing red this year, in order to be "Christmas-y." And it certainly didn't hurt the taste any, and it did look rather festive on the plate:

However, I was there, and I know the real story. And now, so do you.

Tiny Little Cricut Cut-outs

Can you guess what project I need these teeny-tiny little Cricut cut-outs for?
Hint #1: They're all from the Paper Doll Dress-Up cartridge, and they're all cut at 3/4".

Hint #2: Here's what they look like using selective focus:

Hint #3: If you know me on Facebook, you might have seen me update about a corollary to this project today.

Hint #4: They're for my five friends.

If you're the first one to guess it, I'll give you one, too!

A Wreath for Every Soldier

I have the feeling that I am capable of becoming VERY tiresome on the subject of my new selective focus lens, but what can I say? I love my Lensbaby.

Today's series of photos was taken at the Fort Smith National Cemetery--yep, we have an awesome old fort, a gallows where a noose is hung on the anniversary of its executions (yes, seriously--ask me sometime and I'll tell you a really funny story about that), and a gorgeous national cemetery that holds not only the judge who ordered all those hangings, but also an uncle or two.

Yes, the military does indeed love itself some uniformity, but I think it's also a beautiful illustration of the way in which a generous repetition of one simple element can add meaning and impact to a scene.

Cookies for Santa

A sweet cousin gave the girls some cookie baking kits for an early Christmas present--perfect for the obligatory, last-minute, "Crap, I've got to help the girls bake cookies for Santa" Christmas Eve revelation:

This is the second cookie kit we've used in recent memory that has come with paints made from food coloring. There's never enough paint in the kit, and the brushes are all really small and cheap, but the paint itself does work quite well: Of course this means that I've added food coloring paint to my list of projects to figure out. If it's just food coloring and some sort of applicator, that seems a bit pricey for the kinds of large-scale artworks that we usually do. Must look into bulk pricing for food coloring?

Anyway, I'll stop cutting through the non-craft for a moment--Santa's cookies are thusly left out for Santa (with a carrot for the reindeer, of course):The added sugar and fiber sitting conveniently on a low table nearby are extremely important, because while Matt stays up half the night doing this--

--and this--

SOMEBODY has to stay awake with him to drink beer and eat cookies and watch Get Smart on Netflix:

It's hard work being a parent, let me tell you.

The Best Christmas Present Ever

The girls favorite Christmas present, made all the more special because we're celebrating not at home up north, but waaaay down south in Arkansas:
Trickier question--can you guess my favorite Christmas present, the brain child of my most-awesome Matt?

Selective focus, baby!