Anouk and I have been making a lot of progress on our not-bummer-summer list over the past couple of weeks (stay tuned for an official update). One of our favorite projects so far has been making this recipe for homemade coconut ice cream! Not only is it dairy-free (good for me and my allergy), it's no churn and requires no cooking, which makes it definitely the easiest DIY ice cream recipe we've come across. You just combine all the ingredients and pop it in the freezer, you're done!

We made our ice cream mint chocolate chip flavored, because we're mint chocolate chip ice cream
fiends.

Ingredients:

• 1 can coconut cream (like this kind from Trader Joe's) 
• 6 tbsp sugar
• 3 tablespoons soy (or almond) milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp peppermint extract
• 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips 

Combine the coconut cream, sugar, milk, and extracts in a blender and blend until smooth. Add the chocolate chips and stir. Pour into a loaf pan or square baking pan and freeze for two hours, or until solid. Note: this recipe freezes kind of hard, so you might want to remove from the freezer and thaw for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Yum!

Recently,  our friend Mylinh (who I met through this very blog!) returned from overseas bringing us a delicious marzipan lion to devour. Just a few days later, I saw this post on making marzipan tree decorations for cakes on Oh Happy Day and it was perfect timing because Anouk had been asking for more "lion candy." We decided to have our friends over and give it a try. We also decided to go a little further than the original project though and make our own marzipan instead of using pre-made almond paste. Because how hard can it be, right?

Turns out it isn't hard as much as it is tedious, blanching and peeling all those almonds. But once you've done that (or if you find almonds already blanched), it's pretty much the easiest thing ever.

Homemade Marzipan

Ingredients:

1.5 cups ground blanched almonds
1.5 cups powdered sugar (with extra for dusting)
1 egg white
2 tsp almond extract

NOTE: This recipe calls for raw egg. If you are a little weirded out about eating raw egg, you can use the egg white substitute in the refrigerated section of the grocery store; it is pasteurized. 3 tbsp = 1 egg white.

Directions:

First, blanch the almonds: Bring a pot of water to a boil and dump almonds in for 30 seconds. Drain, and immediately transfer to a bowl of cool water. The skins should pop right off when you pinch the almonds. Dry with a paper towel before grinding.

Grind the almonds in the food processor until they are very fine powder. Mix the almonds with the powdered sugar, add the egg white and almond extract. Mix in a stand mixer until the ingredients come together into a ball (like bread dough). Turn out onto a surface coated in powdered sugar and knead until smooth. The marzipan should not be sticky -- if it is, coat with extra powdered sugar and knead some more.

To make our marzipan Christmas trees, we made cones out of the marzipan and rolled them in green sprinkles and shredded coconut (for snow) before inserting a pretzel stick into the base for the trunk. Oh Happy Day's recipe mentions wetting the marzipan very slightly before adding the sprinkles, to help them stick better. Next time, we'll do that.

We found that letting the trees sit for an hour or two led to a more stable tree but most of them didn't last that long.



 
 We also found that marzipan and pretzel is a combination that is pretty legit. Ritter Sport, why aren't you on this?

A few weeks ago, when Anouk had a bad cold, our neighbor brought over a few bath bombs from Lush as a little treat for her. A. ended up liking them so much that she's been bugging me for more ever since. Of course we love Lush around these parts but why buy when you can DIY? Bath fizzes seemed like something that would be really hard to make, but was a surprisingly easy and  kid-friendly project.

DIY Bath Bombs (adapted from this recipe by Martha Stewart)

You'll need:

• 1 3/4 cups baking soda
• 1 cup citric acid  (a powder; we found ours at Wine and Cake hobbies, in their wine-making section but you can also find it online here.)
• 2 cups corn starch
• coconut oil
• essential oil of your choice
• food coloring (optional)
• spray bottle of water

Directions:

Sift the following the baking soda, corn starch, and citric acid into a bowl and mix well.

Transfer one cup of the mixture to a glass bowl. Add the liquefied coconut oil, a little at a time, mixing well with your hands. With your spray bottle, gently mist the mixture and mix with your hands between spritzes, until the mixture is moldable (holds shape when you squeeze it). NOTE: if you want your bombs to be colored, add food coloring to the water in the spray bottle. If you hear the mixture fizzing, you're adding too much water.

Add 5-6 drops of essential oil and mix again. Press firmly into cupcake liners or molds. After 2 hours, the mixture can be unmolded, but we found it was better to leave them overnight.




We made two different kinds of fizzies -- peppermint for the holidays and chamomile, for a relaxing bedtime bath. With the chamomile, I just tore open three or four tea bags and emptied them into the powder mix before adding the oil. The scent is really mild but there. Next time I might try chamomile essential oil to make it a little stronger. For peppermint, I used peppermint extract, from the baking aisle. It's a little less potent than the oil but still smells delish.

Store the leftover mixture (if there is any) in a ziploc bag to make more later. It should keep for a few weeks, as long as it doesn't get wet.

We're thinking of giving these away as Christmas presents to our friends. In the meantime we've been having a lot of fun testing them out.

You know how in old novels people are always spending a wild Saturday night taffy pulling with their friends? A few weeks ago, simply because we have run out of things to do, it's been a long summer, Anouk and I decided to try it. She's really into cooking lately, and I'm always up for eating something delicious. And it turns out taffy candy is a great thing to make with little ones who want to try making something a little more advanced than celery boats or Watergate salad but still beginner level. There are bubbles! Thermometers! Lots of stirring and rolling! It's kind of a gateway recipe to actual cooking.

We decided on saltwater taffy (because isn't that one of the best parts of a beach vacation?) and used the recipe found here as our jumping off point.

Funfetti Saltwater Taffy (adapted from the Cupcake Project)

Ingredients: 

1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2/3 cup light corn syrup
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Candy thermometer
Sprinkles of your choice

Directions:

Butter a shallow baking dish. Combine the sugar, cornstarch, corn syrup, butter, water, and vanilla in saucepan, mix to combine, and set on the stove over medium-high heat. Heat until the mixture begins to boil and the candy thermometer reads 265 degrees (or the hard-ball stage, if you don't have a thermometer and are winging it, which means that a little of the hot syrup, dropped into cold water, will form a hard ball but will still flatten if you try to squish it).

NOTE: The original recipe called for a lower temperature and a softer taffy but I was worried it might not be taffy-like enough and upped the temp. The result is a very chewy candy that is the texture of a Sugar Baby -- you may want to watch out for loose teeth when eating!

Once the candy has reached 265 degrees, pour into the buttered baking dish and cover with a layer of sprinkles. When the candy cools is cool enough to handle, scoop it out onto waxed paper and begin to pull. This basically means you pull it toward you, fold it back over on itself, and do it again. Continue for about 10 minutes -- the candy will lighten in color and become harder to work as you go.

Roll the taffy into a rope and, with buttered scissors, cut into pieces, which you can then wrap in wax paper (or else they will stick together). I let Anouk do some of the cutting so we ended up with pieces of nonuniform size -- about 35-40 of them in all. We ate most of them and gave some to our friends. They went fast!


Good luck to everybody starting school today! Here's to a fabulous first day for a wonderful year.

This post was sponsored by ThinkFun. I received a free version of their Move and Groove game in return for writing an honest review. The opinions in this post are my own.


One of the most difficult things to deal with as a stay-at-home parent is figuring out a way to keep Anouk entertained and active while the weather is less than cooperative. The answer? Board games.

But some of the traditional little-kid board games are just a wee bit too complicated for my only just three-year-old, with all of the many rules/dice/moving parts. Enter ThinkFun's innovative Move and Groove game, which was developed specifically with the active toddler in mind. The focus is on getting up, getting creative, and getting silly instead of getting competitive. It's a simple-but-fun concept: you roll the soft colored cube, choose a corresponding card, and then act out the action on the card (like "dance like a ballerina" or "do the swim" -- which J. and A. are doing below).




Anne's favorite part of playing just might be taking her turn to roll the cube (she's gotten extremely creative with how she kicks/bounces/throws it around the room) and also laughing at mommy and daddy as we march in circles or crab walk or raise the roof along with her. For our parts, James and I are happy that she has a new way to get active and we love the opportunity Move and Groove gives us to spend time together doing something as a family.

Besides Move and Groove, other games in the ThinkFun catalog that sounded intriguing to me include the brand new Last Letter creative card game (for ages 8+) and Zingo! Time Telling and Zingo! Word Builder games (ages 5+). In addition, some old favorites (Rush Hour Jr., Hoppers, and Square by Square) are being re-released with new challenges.

Do any of these sound like something your kids would go gaga for? Well -- you might just get the chance to try it out! ThinkFun has generously offered to send a choice of one of these above-mentioned games to a lucky (U.S.) reader. You can enter to win below -- the contest will run through Sunday, April 6, and a winner will be randomly chosen and announced next Monday.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

On our snow-day-before-last (? they've all started to blend together), when boredom was setting in with a vengeance, I learned how to make bagels at home. This might sound really stupid, but I'm not sure I ever really knew that you could make bagels at home. I mean, I guess I knew ONE could, but not an average person like me. I think I thought you needed special training or equipment or something like that.

Turns out -- you can make bagels at home! You make the dough, you let it rise the appropriate number of times, and then you boil your bagels in water before baking them in a very hot oven. It's all a lot simpler than it seems it should be (although once you get going things move pretty quickly, which is why we have only iPhone photos to mark this post, sorry about that).

And yes, I will admit that ours are not the most attractive bagels ever but you have to trust me: they are so, so good. I never had had a fresh, just out-of-the-oven bagel before and now that I have, I don't think I can ever go back.

We've sampled several different recipes over the past few weeks but keep coming back to this one for New York Style Bagels by the Sophisticated Gourmet because 1) it's tastiest and 2) you don't have to let the dough proof overnight, which I hate because I am impatient. We like this recipe so much that we've been making up a batch every Sunday. A. really loves the whole play-dough aspect of this recipe and I really love having my family together in the kitchen baking for the week ahead, it seems like such a wholesome (read: generally unlike us) thing to do. And James really loves these bagels with butter, and he's not a carb guy, so that's saying something.

Happy Thursday!

James's mom sent me this copy of My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag: And Other Things You Can't Ask Martha -- almost as soon as I saw it I knew it was destined for a place of honor on the kitchen shelf with my favorite cookbooks. I generally think the idea of being a "housewife" is a little nauseating (even though I am one?) but I do take a secret pride at being good at cleaning and I love learning new tricks.

Jolie Kerr's second book answers reader questions on how to clean the most random (yet filthy) things: everything from hair dryers to car seatbelts. The book has only been in the house a few days but I've already read it cover to cover and even used a few of its tricks (Woollite + vinegar to de-deoderantify workout clothes is my fave).

Most of all, I love Jolie Kerr's refreshing honesty and ability to deal with the grossest, most off-colored scenarios. And for reminding us all that you can still be a Clean Person even if you occasionally fall asleep eating chocolate in bed.

Are you and your little ones going stir-crazy yet? We are -- at least, we were yesterday. Today it's thankfully warmer, which means we can spend more time outside but when the temps were hovering in the low 20s? Forget about it.

It made for a long day but we did end up having a lot of fun in it. Here are a few of the crafts and activities we've been doing, to beat the homebound feeling.

1. Paint tie-dyed marshmallows.


A tablespoon of milk and 1-2 drops of food coloring made the paint that we used to decorate our marshmallows. Anouk and I had fun coloring them with (clean) paintbrushes and then set them on a paper towel until they dried. They looked lovely floating in our hot chocolate after we came in from the snow.

2. Make colorful ice balls.



A Pinterest idea that worked! We dropped 4-5 drops of food coloring in each balloon, then stretched it over the faucet and began to fill it veeeeeeeery slowly. Tied them off and stuck them in a bowl outside to freeze overnight. In the morning, we snipped the balloons off and had fun rolling our new treasures through the snow. (They took a long time to freeze, so putting them in the freezer might be a good idea to help them along).

3. Bake "snow" cookies.



I found this recipe ages ago by searching for dairy-free cookie recipes. It's actually from Weight Watchers' site (the cookies are 1 point, if you are interested). Anouk calls them "snow" cookies because of the sprinkling of coconut in the dough. I call them delicious. We were mixing up a big batch right as it started snowing on Tuesday, perfect timing. Find the recipe here.

What have you other snow bunnies been up to? Stay warm out there!

We've been enjoying all of our Christmas presents over the past few weeks but one of the big hits for us as a family has been a little unassuming board game -- a coloring game called The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse, based on a book of the same name by Eric Carle. Anouk got it from her Aunt Bonne, who has a knack for picking out some of the best presents. Thank you, Auntie B.!

The concept is simple: each player gets a handful of small drawings and has to take turns coloring them in. The one who finishes the first is the winner. There are very clearly defined rules (you can only use the color you are given at any certain point) but there's also a lot of room for creativity, too (you can color your drawing in any way you want). Which makes it pretty much the perfect game for the wiggly, I-do-it-myself toddler stage (though I think older kids, and even adults, would enjoy this game just as much. James and I can get pretty cutthroat over it, it brings out our competitive streaks.)






This is the first board game we've ever played with A, and it's gotten me really excited about doing it again in the future. What board games do you play with your family? And am I the only one who thinks there's something incredibly soothing about coloring?

Happy Monday!

Ever since our Norfolk murals post -- and since we got to see some of AlchemyNFK's amazing artists working at First Friday a few weeks ago -- Anouk and I have been really into murals and thinking we'd like to try to make one of our own. So we asked our playgroup if they would like to pitch in. Molly generously offered her house to get all paintified -- we taped craft paper to the wall -- then we poured water-soluble paint into trays and let the kids get to it. The results were kind of awesome.

I think one of my favorite things was seeing how the kids worked together to build on each others' handiwork. One would use markers to scatter dots across the paper, then the next would come through and draw a line of finger paint between them. It was truly a collaborative process. I especially like how little Z. saw the other kids making handprints and then decided to add a border of his own all along the top of the mural.




This project is perfect for a group because you can pool your craft supplies -- the more types of paints/markers/brushes/stamps/crayons you have, the more you can put the little ones' creativity to work.

I think it looks so so cool. I'm really proud of our guys and I think they had a lot of fun. Plus, the finished product makes an awesome photo backdrop.

Lately, Anouk's most-often uttered phase is, "I do it myself!" She says it during bath time, when she gets dressed, when we return books to the library, and most of all, when I ask her if she wants to help me cook. Because I have an inquiring mind, I started to wonder, what WOULD happen if I let a not-quite-two-and-a-half-year-old cook something -- all by herself? Then I pulled out all of the ingredients for banana pudding and decided to find out. Because of A's milk allergy, our version of this pudding is dairy free (hooray!).

Ingredients:

1 package instant vanilla pudding
1.5 cups coconut milk
1 box vanilla wafer cookies
3-4 sliced bananas
Coconut whipped cream

Directions:

Follow the directions on the back of the instant pudding box to prepare the pudding. The trick of using coconut milk for this is to 1) use full fat coconut milk, the stuff in cans as opposed to the cartons, and 2) to use a half a cup less than the package calls for. It should set up nicely, but if it's too thick, you can add more milk, a little at a time, to think it out. Put a layer of cookies in the bottom of the bowl, follow with a layer of pudding and a layer of sliced bananas. Repeat. Serve with whipped cream on top.






I measured out the milk for the pudding and helped A. stir the lumps out. I also sliced some of the bananas and gave her a general overview of the project. But other than that, Anouk assembled this recipe on her own, all by herself.

The end result is a little pudding-heavy, and several of the banana slices and a bit more of the cookies went into her mouth instead of the bowl. Oh, and our carefully mixed up coconut cream had a tragic accident with the floor, so we were sadly without delicious (non)dairy topping this go-round. But she was so happy with her creation that I'm deeming the project a full-blown success.

Tastes like victory!

I saw this craft on Design Mom a few weeks ago -- she used balloons to shape tissue paper into beautiful paper mache bowls. We didn't have any balloons in the house, so Anouk and I adapted the craft a bit by using kitchen bowls of various shapes and sizes for our designs.

First, we coated the outsides of the bowls with cooking oil and covered them in plastic wrap. Then A. and I got to work tearing strips of tissue paper into small pieces, and pasting them to the plastic wrap with a thin coat of watered down Elmer's glue. After about three or four layers the bowls seemed pretty completely covered, so we set them outside and let them dry. An hour later, we (read: I) gently turned the tissue paper bowls out and sat back to admire the pretty stained glass effect of the light coming through the paper.





We trimmed the edges of the biggest and smallest bowls, but I thought the ragged edge on the purple bowl (which A. did all by herself) was kind of cool so we left it. Currently, our bowls are scattered around the house holding small things like loose change and pins (I like to throw them in there as I sew, so much quicker than poking them into a cushion) and the random stuff A. collects on her travels around the house and yard.

We really enjoyed this project -- it doesn't take a lot of finesse and there is something therapeutic about turning your mind off and just piling the colors on. I'm currently thinking about ways to adapt this project for the holidays, so stay tuned. This craft will surely pop up again in the coming months.