Sweet Acorns

All right now…tell me if you can…have you ever seen anything so cute in all your life?!! Sweet little baby acorns.

I first saw these in an issue of Disney’s Family Time magazine and could not resist. They were so easy that it’s quite likely you don’t really need the instructions–but humor me.

Start with glazed donut holes…

and chocolate frosting, peanut butter or nutella. To me, the choice was obvious–but you do what you want.

You’ll also need crushed toffee bits and/or

those little chocolate sprinkly things.

Now, then–to impress upon your mind exactly how easy these little do-dads were to whip up, this is exactly when we started the process.

I should have been cool and poured the Nutella in a bowl, but having been raised by wolves, as I was–I just dipped it right out of the container. Don’t tell my family.

Now dip those little suckers in whichever topping you prefer–toffee bits or the sprinkly things.

Oh, I forgot to tell you that you’ll also need a small bag of stick pretzels. Snap about a third off and eat it. Don’t bite it off because that’s just tacky. Stick the pretzel piece in the top of your acorn.

Start to finish, INCLUDING clean-up. No lie and no Photoshop. Now that’s fast.

Be on the lookout for squirrels…or large teen-age boys pretending to be squirrels.

Eww…that would be creepy.

The Last Leaves…

About this time of year…every year, it is our most ancient of traditions to march on up to the canyon for one last evening picnic to enjoy the changing leaves before they fall. They were a bit late this year–but it doesn’t matter.

We’ve been doing this since my kids were little so it only seems right that we do it now…

that their kids are little.

The good old leaves are always here–

just waiting for us…

to rub a few sticks together…

and get down to what really matters!

After all–we must keep our priorities straight!

heh, heh.

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PS—Guess who’s got…

a boyfriend!!!

Way to go Laurie!

The Lion King

Ooooh-hooo…lookey where we got to go–thanks to our sweet little Jillian. She saw Lion King in London and would positively not allow us to miss it when it came here, to our very own town.

But first, for the sake of the evening, we simply had to go to the Melting Pot for dinner. It was an amazing place with melted cheesy fondue in pots on the table with bread and veggies to dip into it.

And then…then…

they brought out the chocolate…and all the incredible things to dip into it.

Yeow.

I personally thought it would be a good idea if they just pulled out pillows and blankets and just let us sleep over. It was that good and the only thing that would have made it even better would have been to not be rushed.

Ahh…but we had a show to get to.

Sadly, this is the only shot I was allowed to take–before the show started. We were strictly forbidden to take any kind of pictures once the play started…and I didn’t want to go to jail or anything. I’m kind of a coward in real life.

But I found a way to show you a bit of what we saw…oh, do brace yourself.

Amazing…

Simply amazing.

Thank you Jillian.

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Root Beer Float Ice Cream

Couldn’t help but to have one last smidgen of ice cream before we trade all that cold yummy goodness for Autumn. Besides, if I’m suppose to act like fall is here–then it really shouldn’t be 82 degrees outside at 7 o’clock at night. Sheesh.

Anyway, this is by far the easiest ice cream recipe you’ll ever make–so why not make it while summer weather is still hanging on? I mean really…

Root Beer Float Ice Cream

Ingredients

1- 2 liter bottle of A&W Root Beer

2 regular sized cans of sweetened condensed milk (NOT evaporated milk)

Directions:

Pour root beer and milk into an ice cream freezer–and freeze until it turns into ice cream.

See? I told you it was simple. Now the hard part will be not to eat it all yourself. Yum…

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Perfect Whole Wheat Bread

My pretty little daughter is becoming quite a bread maker.  We’re sharing her luscious recipe with you today. Grab it quick–before she changes her mind…

about sharing, I mean.

Sometimes I just need some good old homemade whole wheat bread.

It soothes a myriad of ailments, and makes my house smell good to boot.

I’ve been working on perfecting mine, as I’ve never been especially good at yeast baking. I think I may have finally gotten to where it at least rises every time. For a while there, I had these solid little lumps of doughy whole wheat. Kind of like a brick. One of those hasn’t shown up in my kitchen for a while now, though, so I think I may be out of the woods on that particular phase.

The next phase of my breadmaking career was the part where I kept making loaves that were too dry. They tasted great, and held together just swimmingly right out of the oven. Then, a few hours later, they were a crumbly mess. Too much flour, I was told.

Then, about a month ago, a lovely woman taught a class at a church activity about bread making. I had the same wheat grinder as her, and the same mixer, so I figured I couldn’t blame the bread problems on my equipment, at least. So I went. She gave me the perfect recipe, and I haven’t had a bread problem since.

So, my lovelies, if you’re a little less than savvy in the bread making department, maybe you should give this little beauty a try. It makes your house small absolutely amazing, and it tastes great too.

Download the recipe here.

Homemade whole wheat bread. Yum.

~ April