Woof!

Yesterday we were in full doggy mode for Bean's second birthday party.  So, today's Muffin Tin lunch consists of leftovers from the party.

Clockwise
cucumbers
pasta salad
puppy chow
hot dog
cheese
fruit and fruit dip (best fruit dip ever: 1 block cream cheese + 1 small can of marshmallow = heaven)

Happy Monday everyone!

MTM - Nests, Birds, and Eggs

I hope everyone had a happy and blessed Easter.  With all of the moving and life changing craziness going on, I've been hitting the hot tub and trying to get to bed at a decent hour. Of course that's not happening!  But the old house is spotless and is waiting for us to get the last small load out of the garage before it can welcome it's new family. 

The Easter Bunny is really good about bringing things that the kids need or that I'm going to end up buying for them shortly.  HOW DOES HE KNOW?!?!  One smart, furry creature.  Anyway, one of the things he brought the kids were some new silly silicone muffin cups.  So today's Muffin Tin Monday lunch centered around nests, birds, and eggs (because we have an abundance of them right now!).

A: Bird nest and eggs (rice krispie treat and M&M's... I was going to use jelly beans but Bean can't have them and Cocoa doesn't like them).
B: worms (spaghetti noodles with olive oil and parmesan cheese)
C: Eggs (well... they're eggs)
D: Bird poop (vanilla yogurt and chocolate sprinkles)

Now that we're almost settled in at our temporary home with my in-laws, I'm hoping to get back into the swing of scrapping and posting.  Have a great week everyone!

MTM - Easter

On Friday we are moving out of our house and putting all of our possessions in storage.  Needless to say, this weekend is going to be super busy, what with it also being Easter. So we had our Easter muffin tin today. (Be sure to check out the Muffin Tin Monday blog).

 

A: Cheddar bunny crackers

B: watermelon kabobs

C: Bunny shaped ham and cheese

D: Rabbit droppings (raisins)

E: Carrots... cause the bunny man likes 'em!

F: Red cupcake

The red cupcake is left over from apple shaped cupcakes I made for Cocoa's teachers as a thank you.

Check out the books "Hello, Cupcake" and "What's New Cupcake" for more cupcake designs like this.

Look at that smile!  Cocoa was so excited to give these to her teachers. Too bad a garbage truck pulled out in front of us this morning and I had to slam on my brakes!  Apple shaped cupcakes flew across the car and onto the floor.  Couldn't give them away!  UGH!   Figures... it's Monday.

MTM & 365

Yet another week where I didn't get my 365 post done on Sunday.  So, you get our muffin tin lunch along with the project 365 page.  :)

First, project 365.  Can you believe I'm posting week 14?!?! I'm just surprised I've lasted this long.  But, like I said, these templates make it so easy!  The Project 365 templates are by Joey Lynn Designs and Wild Blueberry Ink at Owl Tree Studio.

The kit used is "Life is Sweet" from Tickled Pink Studio (available at Two Peas in a Bucket).  Some seriously cute elements in this kit. Wait until next week when I use the pinwheel on week 15.  TOO CUTE!

On to Muffin Tin Monday!  I chose a flower theme today and had a lot of fun searching the internet for a way to cut strawberries into flowers. 

A: Flower shaped ham and cheese sandwich
B: Strawberry rose and flower
C: Cookie frosted with marshmallow and sprinkles flower (Check out Hello, Cupcake! and What's New Cupcake? for some great cupcake ideas. That's where I got this marshmallow idea).
D: Cucumber flower with cheese center
E: Blackberries with flower picks
F: Strawberry rose

I'm not gonna lie... I'm pretty proud of my roses. :)

MTM & 365

Happy Monday!  First off, here's my week 13 layout!  Don't forget to head over to Owl Tree Studio and snatch these templates. It makes Project 365 so darn easy!

Week 13

On to Muffin Tin Monday!  It's been quite some time since I posted a muffin tin meal (besides St. Patty's).  We've been having them, just haven't done a lot of themes and I always forget to take a picture.  Today I made the kids a bug themed tin.  Check it out.

Clockwise starting at top (12 o'clock):

Dirt cake with earth worms

Cucumber caterpillar (hard to see with the flash)

Apple and chocolate chip lady bug

Grilled cheese bee

Purple grape ants

If you've never done Muffin Tin Monday or want to learn more, head on over to the MTM blog. It's so much fun and incredibly laid back. There is no right or wrong way to do a muffin tin meal and my kids LOVE it!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I know I haven't been posting a lot of Muffin Tin Meals lately, but we have been having them!  They just haven't been super fancy.  Tonight the kids had a green meal.

I wasn't able to rotate the image... not sure what's up with that!  But they had cucumbers, green ranch dressing, green cottage cheese, green Bertolli pasta, and peas.  They also had a cracker with cream cheese and hot pepper jelly on it.  I can't get them to eat veggies, but they devour hot pepper jelly! 

First MTM of the Year

It's the first Muffin Tin Monday meal of the year... and I post a day late.  Sorry!  Yesterday's theme was "Food Picks, Skewers, and Kabobs".  I love a good, easy theme!  :)

 

A: Banana and blackberry kabobs

B & G: Turkey and muenster cheese open faced sandwich on fiber rich wheat bread (on toothpicks)

C: Mini M&M's

D: Ranch dressing for dipping

E: Avacado and cucumber kabobs

F: cottage cheese

Christmas Time is Here

For the next three weeks, the Muffin Tin Monday theme (should you choose to accept it) is "Holidays".  We celebrate Christmas, so I was super pumped to do a Christmas theme!  Then, we thought we were having a showing and wouldn't be home, but Cocoa got sick and the showing fell through.  WHAT'S A MOM TO DO WITH A THEME?!?!!?  Praise Santa for Rudolph!  We ate food that the reindeer would enjoy!

A: bananas and blackberries
B: oats (granola and a few chocolate chips)
C: apples
D: Snowflake and moon shaped PB&J (well, every time I think of reindeer I see Santa flying in his sleigh in front of the moon... that's where that came from)
E: carrots
F: snow covered in holly leaves and berries (cottage cheese with holly/berry sprinkles)








I got these rockin' (flimsy) tins at Target in the dollar bins.  I also got a snowflake one... only $2.50!

Now one of these days I'll post our Thanksgiving tin. Happy Monday!

A Spot of Tea

Well, the post title just happens to be my favorite place to have breakfast in Mobile, Alabama... but that's not what this post is about!  Today, Cocoa was treated to a princess tea for lunch.  Bean had the same things earlier, but chose not to eat.  Picky boy!

A - TEA! :) *decaf iced tea with splenda... nap is soon... I'm not crazy!
B - cucumber sandwich
C - scone (orange pumpkin cookie with orange icing)
D - pineapple and grape kabobs
E - pigs in a blanket
F - swiss cheese
G - cucumber sandwich

Of course, Cocoa was THRILLED to be having a tea and to wear her princess gown to lunch.  I even got out my good china tea pot and cups... and told her to be VERY careful!  Here are some pictures of her enjoying! :)

 

 

Muffin Tin Monday

MTM - Trees, Leaves & Harvest

Happy November!  I can't believe it's November.  Hopefully everyone survived Halloween.  I had such a busy weekend, Trick-or-Treating was extremely hectic.  We don't have a good picture of Bean in his costume, so I might be putting it on him again and staging a photo shoot!

Today's Muffin Tin Monday theme is "Trees, Leaves, and Harvest".  Because of the busy weekend, I haven't gotten to the store yet.  So, here's what we had on hand:

 

A - Hay bails (tater tots)

B - surprise cupcake with leaf and pumpkin sprinkles (I've frozen a dozen so I can just pull them out of the freezer when need be).

C - Fall apple

D - ketchup to dip the tater tots

E - "Fall" and "Tree" cheese

F - Leaf and pumpkin pasta from World Market

G - Tree branches (pretzels)

This was Bean's first time with ketchup... at one point he looked like he had a goatee.  I forgot to show him what it was for, but he got the hang of it once I did. 

A Muffin Tin Halloween

Today's Muffin Tin Monday meal theme was Halloween!  I've been looking forward to this theme for awhile!  Here's what the kiddos had to munch on:

A - Speared eyeballs (grapes on a toothpick)
B - Monster Mouth (quartered apple with almond slivers)
C - Spider web cupcake with a sac of spider eggs (a surprise cupcake with a spider chocolate chip)
D - Rotten pumpkin juice (chocolate milk and whipped cream... I forgot to add gummy worms to it.... what am I going to do with this package of worms?!?!)
E - Candy Corn (cheese pizza)
F - Severed fingers (string cheese and a green bell pepper)
G - Monster munch (pretzels and candy corn)

Cocoa ate until she said "my tummy hurts".  This kid NEVER gets full.  She's like a bottomless pit!  She still managed to eat her cupcake though.

 

Bean started his cupcake, but most of it ended up on the floor.

 

The surprise cupcakes are a family favorite from when I was little!  In fact, I made 4 dozen for my sister's wedding a few weeks ago.  Here's what the inside looks like:

Yum-diddy!  The inside is a cream cheese mixture with chocolate chips.... I thought it looked like a spider egg sac.  Kind of gross, I know, but it's HALLOWEEN!!

Interested in joining in for Muffin Tin Monday meals?  You don't need anything fancy!  Check out the Muffin Tin Mom's blog for great info and inspiration!  Next week's theme is "trees, leaves, and harvest".  

MTM to heal some wounds

Yesterday completely slipped by me.  It was one of those, "Get back here missy" and it ignored me.  So I wasn't able to post my Muffin Tin Lunch.  Yesterday's lunch was an ode to the heartbreak that occurred in our house on Saturday evening.  My husband was so upset, he couldn't sleep and stayed up late.  Yes, I'm talking about Ohio State's loss to Wisconsin.  It was so bad that we didn't watch the second half, but turned on the "Glee" episode that we had missed.  *Sigh*

So, thinking that the Buckeyes needed some support right now, our MTM lunch was dedicated to lifting their spirits!

A - Football shaped ham and cheese sandwich

B - "O-H-I-O" spelled out in strawberries

C - A crowd of fans on the bleachers at the game (celery with peanut butter and raisins)

D - Buckeye (brownie with peanut butter... didn't have time to make edible buckeyes)

E - cucumber music note to go along with F

F - Ohio shaped cheese with the beginning lines of "Carmen, Ohio"

I had some awesome JoAnn Fabric coupons, so I went and purchased the Wilton fondant letter cutters and edible pen writers.  I was not pleased with the pens.  They claim you can write on all sorts of surfaces, including cheese and fruit slices. I had a difficult time getting them to write on the cheese, so I have no idea how they would write on fruit!  Here are the kiddos enjoying their lunch!

 Bean ate everything that Cocoa did, except the celery fans.  Check back later for a new release from Kerry Stewart and some exciting news!

MTM Pumpkins

Happy Muffin Tin Monday to you!  Last week Michelle, mom in charge of Muffin Tin Monday's, put out a message to those of you who may not have tried Muffin Tin meals yet.  Her disclaimer is... you don't have to have a bunch of fancy tins, molds, foods, etc. in order to make a healthy, well proportioned Muffin Tin meal.  All you need is a muffin tin... or muffin cups... or something to hold your food!  Check out her message here.

This week's theme is Pumpkins!  Check out our meal:

Love the plate!  It's a candy dish, but fun!  We have from left to right:
Pumpkin 1: tiny jello pumpkins (molded from an ice cube tray I got at the dollar store), orange flavored pumpkin gummies, and an iced sugar cookie shaped like a pumpkin that Cocoa frosted at her grandparents over the weekend.
Pumpkin 2: Pumpkin shaped cheese and pumpkin shaped pasta in EVOO and parmesan cheese.  If found this pasta at World Market.  It was an autumn theme and had leaves in it too, so I picked out the pumpkins.  They had tons of different shaped pasta.
Pumpkin 3: Orange pepper with fruit leather jack-o-lantern eyes and mouth; pumpkin seeds.

And here are my pumpkins, eating their pumpkin lunch.

Muffin Tin Monday - Circus

Happy Monday everyone!  This week's Muffin Tin Monday theme is CIRCUS!  My kids have never been to a circus, but they enjoyed the lunch anyway.  I'll have to find a circus video online to show them.

A - Pineapple clowns
B - Cheese hot dog
C - Peanut (for the elephants)
D - Strong man's dumb bell (cucumber)
E - Cheese hot dog
F - Elephant ears (cut up).  They originally looked like this:

 

And you can find the recipe for them here.

Cocoa ate her entire tin lunch and then said "I'm still hungry".  She then proceeded to eat what Bean didn't finish.  The kid has a wooden leg, I swear.  Or two stomachs.  I don't know how the kid is so skinny!  To top off the Circus experience, I found some clown noses and glasses at the Dollar Store.  ENJOY!

Ah... I love that you can see a pile of dirty towels behind Bean.

Muffin Tin Monday

It's Monday, and that means the kids were geared up for another Muffin Tin Meal.  There wasn't a theme this week, so I decided to do something that goes along with what Cocoa is learning in preschool.  This month, her teacher is focusing on the numbers 0 and 1.  So, we did foods that were shaped like zero's and one's. 

A - carrots (1)
B - Apples cut into zeros
C - licorice and marshmallow kabobs (1)
D - deviled egg (0)
E - Veggie Sticks from Costco (1)
F - Zucchini Pizza Bites (0)

Not too exciting, but I felt it was a healthy lunch overall.

If you're visiting today or the next few days, I'm looking to revamp the blog a bit.  You may visit while I'm trying out something new.  So, please excuse the page if things are a little wonky!

MTM Shapes

I'm a little behind. Yesterday was kind of crazy, so I didn't get my Muffin Tin Monday photos posted.  On Sunday, Mr. Pepper took Cocoa and Bean to a model home to take a look (we are looking to build when we move) and Bean took a face plant on concrete floor.  I took him to the doctor yesterday to have his nose checked out, and everything's ok!  But the appointment was around lunch time, so, CRAZY!

Yesterday's Muffin Tin Monday theme was shapes.  I had big plans to do something with the book "It Looked Like Spilt Milk", but didn't get to.  So, here's what the kiddos dined on:

The two tins with yellow looking stuff consists of "Toy Story" Mac N' Cheese.  Then I sliced an apple widthwise in order to show Cocoa how there is a star inside.  The bottom tin has dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets.  And for dessert... triangle shaped candy corn. If candy corn were crack, I'd have overdosed by now.  It's not something I can or should keep in the house.  Did I mention that it's GONE!?!?!?  Oh Candy Corn, you are my kryptonite.....

MTM

It's Monday and the theme for this week's Muffin Tin Monday "Movies" (for explanation of Muffin Tin Monday, click on the link to visit the site).  I decided to ask Cocoa what movie theme she would like to do.  EVERYTHING is Toy Story right now, so I was confident that she would choose it.

She chose Peter Pan.  Right....

Bean's is the top tin and is modified because he can't eat everything that Cocoa can.  Cocoa's is the bottom tin.  Here's the lunch:

A: The Lost Boys/Peter Pan's tree (see this post for instructions on how to make it)
B: Swords(pretzels)
C: Peter Pan (PB&J... made with Peter Pan peanut butter)
D: Peter's shadow (Fruit Roll-Up)
E: Tink's wands (ham and cheese stars on a toothpick)
F: Mermaid's Lagoon (vanilla yogurt)
G: Pixie dust (sprinkles to put on the yogurt)
H: The crocodile that chases Hook (Rice Krispie Treat shaped like croc)
I: Hook's hook (avacado)

Cocoa, sprinkling Pixie Dust on the lagoon.

Bean, making a giant mess out of the lagoon. Seriously.  I didn't take pictures of what was to follow.

1 - 2 - 3, Count with Me!

Today's Muffin Tin Monday theme is numbers/counting.  With the wedding, I wasn't able to get to the store last night, so I made a very quick stop at the Dollar Store.  I found some wonderful goodies to use.  I bought some gold cut-out numbers and letters and decided I would have Cocoa count the items in each tin cup and then put the corresponding number next to that cup.  We reviewed the numbers first (she even showed me that her 6 and 9 could jump upside down and become the other number) and then it was time to count!

Cocoa counting her grapes

Now putting the number above her sandwich.

Here's the meal:

7 - grapes

2 - PB & J sandwich cut into a star and halved (found the cutter at the dollar store)

9 - Cheddar Cheese Bugles

6 - Finger jello cut into strawberries

1 - ranch dressing dip

4 - carrots

I found the silver tin at the Dollar Store, as well as the crazy straws and the juice jugs.  I was overwhelmed with remembering drinking these when I was little, so I just had to get them.  And now, here's a picture of Bean eating his bugles.

Overall, successful and educational Muffin Tin lunch! :)

An Apple a Day

Well, the apple the kids ate for lunch would make the doctor faint!  Themes are back from the Muffin Tin Mom, and today was "ABC".  I also thought it was numbers, but that's next week.  Oops.  Oh well!

I decided to cut foods into shapes of things from A-F, and then have 2 groups of 1, 2 groups of 2, and 2 groups of 3.  Before eating, I had Cocoa help me figure out what letter each one started with by first listening to the sound.  She got about half of them, which for being three, I'm happy with that! :)

A - Apple-shaped chocolate chip cookie - 1
B - Bear, boat, and butterfly shaped cheese (kind of hard to see) - 3
C - Cat shaped tortillas - 2
D - Dinosaur shaped PB&J - 1
E - Elephant shaped cantaloupe - 3
F - Flower shape cut into the middle of a cucumber - 2

There aren't any pictures of the kids eating today because as soon as I put their meals in front of them, I had to scoot to a doctor's appointment.  My mother-in-law stayed and enjoyed watching the kids eat their lunch.  :)

A New Year

For most people, the beginning of the year is January 1... when resolutions are made and a new calendar is opened.  Well, that time is NOW for me.  My calendar has always, and probably will always, run by each school year.  Last year, I made resolutions in September rather than January.  It's what happens when you're a teacher... married to a teacher/administrator... have kids in school.  It's inevitable.  So, right now I'm searching for a new planner. I've stumbled upon MomAgenda, and I'm thinking I like it.  I just can't decide if I should purchase the bound version or the spiral version (that doesn't ship until September 17... my year has already begun people!!!).  So, what do you think I should do? Leave me a comment and I'll take your thoughts into consideration before ordering.

And, now to menu planning.  With it being the beginning of the school year and my husband being an administrator, I'm a single mom this week.  It's the first week of school... very busy.  And since Mr. Pepper is driving 50 minutes to school right now, his hours are like 5am-9pm.  SUPER!  :(  Plus, my sister is getting married this weekend, so my menu plan is lacking.

Monday: Mac N' Cheese and hot dogs (request from Cocoa)

Tuesday: Taco in a Bag... yeah, I'm doing it!  Just need to find some small bags of Fritos.

Wednesday: Bertolli simple meal

Thursday: Beef Stroganoff (Mr. Pepper's favorite)

Friday: wedding festivities

Saturday: wedding festivities

Sunday: pizza (who knows what's going to be going on after the wedding)

So, not the greatest of weeks, but we have to make due.  Tomorrow, themes start again for Muffin Tin Monday.  I've got some fun things planned for ABC/123!!!