Toll House Pie

Is there anything better than warm chocolate chip cookies straight out of the oven? That's what this pie takes like! And it's unbelievably easy to make. 

Audrey was napping on Saturday afternoon so I recruited Sophie to help me bake a pie.

She made me wait until after "Sleeping Beauty" was over. Of course that took precedence. But once we made it to the kitchen we had this pie whipped up and in the oven in less than 10 minutes! 

I measured the ingredients and Sophie poured everything into the bowl. She also volunteered to be the official taste tester of the chocolate chips.

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs, beaten
1 stick melted butter
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 
9" Pie shell

 

I can sum the directions up in two sentences: Mix all ingredients together and pour into pie shell. Bake 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees. It doesn't get any easier than that!

Personally I think the pie tastes best served warm and gooey. With ice cream! But Robbie actually prefers it cold from the fridge.

Try it both ways and see what you like best!

Linking to these parties!

Sophie's 3rd Birthday Celebration: The Garden Party

We celebrated Sophie's 3rd birthday with a Garden Party this past Saturday! It was overcast and cooler than it  normally is this time of year but thank goodness the rain cleared up. Earlier in the week there was a 50% chance of rain at party time, but luckily the rain came overnight and moved off shore by mid-morning. What a relief! 

 
The highlight of the party was the dessert. Instead of doing traditional cake or cupcakes, we served dirt cake in tumblers that I painted to look like flower pots. Crunched up Oreos made the "dirt" which was topped with gummy worms. Then we put a colored daisy inside a green straw and stuck it in the middle to complete the flower pot. I absolutely LOVE how adorable they turned out! 

Here is the recipe for the dirt cake which was beyond yummy! I could eat a pound of this stuff!

2 packages Oreos, crunched
2 small packages vanilla instant pudding mix
3 1/2 cups milk
1 stick butter
1 (8 oz) cream cheese, softened
16 oz. cool whip 
Gummy worms

Mix pudding and milk. Add butter and cream cheese. Fold in Cool Whip. Alternate layers of cookies and layers of mixture. Refrigerate overnight.

Sophie declared it was "Yummy Yum!" 

And I couldn't stop taking pictures of these adorable little pots!

Find out what else we did for the party after the break! 


We kept it simple with the other food this year - chicken nuggets from Chick-Fil-A (Sophie's favorite!), fresh fruit, Chex Mix and goldfish. 

Robbie talked me out of making flower shaped iced sugar cookies when I started pulling out the ingredients at 10pm the night before the party. I would've been up until at least 1am and it just wasn't worth it, especially knowing that Sophie would've taken one bite before announcing "I don't like this!" 


Another special treat we served at the party was snow cones! Sophie loves ice so we looked into renting a snow cone maker for the party but found we could actually buy one at Bed Bath & Beyond for cheaper than renting one. Plus, we can use it all summer and for future parties!

Our activity for the kids was potting their own flowers. Everybody loved doing this -- even the parents! We had a small pot for each child and they potted their own Vincas to take home after the party. 

Here was the table before we got started (with a couple pots blown over by the wind!) Robbie used four 1 gallon buckets and a piece of plywood to set up the potting station which was the perfect height for the kids.

And then the fun started! 

 

 Here are some of the party guests with their creations:

I found these cute little favor boxes at Dollar Tree which we filled with Snickers and Milky Way's. I made the favor tags in PicMonkey. 

I also made the invitations myself on PicMonkey. 

Sophie wore a dress I made which was featured on THIS post. She looked so cute in it and I found the most adorable silver shoes with a hot pink flower to complete the outfit.

I couldn't resist doing a couple tissue paper crafts. These pom poms are super easy to make using this Martha Stewart tutorial.

I also made tissue paper flowers to accent the food table using One Little Project's tutorial. I decided to cut the ends of the tissue paper in a round shape instead of pointed as shown in the tutorial. I wrapped a green pipe cleaner around the middle to make the stem and put them in striped tin cans (a Target dollar bin find!) stuffed with green Easter grass.  

Sophie was thrilled that her cousin Robert was able to come in from out of town to be at the party. These two are peas in a pod! I can't believe both of them didn't collapse after how many times they went down the sliding board together.

At the end of the day, Sophie said "Today was the best day ever!" As always, all the work was worth it! These smiles are the only payment I will ever need!

Linking to these parties!

Sesame Street Birthday Party

 
For Sophie's second birthday last April we had a huge Sesame Street party. I spent HOURS planning and creating things for this party. I saw so many great ideas on Pintrest and it just got out of control! I have promised myself not to go so overboard this year considering the fact that my due date is only about a month after her birthday. 

Let me share with you how it all came together:

CHARACTER POMP-POMS

 

The pom poms were the perfect decoration to hang from the trees in the back yard. So colorful and fun! I saw the pom poms for sale on Etsy but decided I could make my own  The pom-poms themselves were a piece of cake to make using this tutorial from Martha Stewart. Attaching the faces was a different story.

I drew the eyes, noses and mouths using a Sesame Street coloring book as a guide, and cut them from construction paper. I originally tried to mount the faces on the tips of the tissue paper but that did not work. So I attached the face pieces to the ends of pipe cleaners with tape and wrapped the opposite end around the center of the pom-pom. That took the weight off the ends of the tissue paper but caused the front of the pom-pom to droop so Elmo & friends appeared to be looking at the floor. 

On to plan C! When I hung these with fishing line on the day of the party I ran an extra piece of fishing line under the mouth of each character to help support the extra weight in the front. So each was hung using 2 pieces of fishing line -- one running from the center and one supporting the front. 

Many of the sellers of these poms on Etsy state that they will include instructions for attaching and hanging the faces to the poms so if anyone out there decides to buy these instead of going the DIY route, let me know if there is an easier way to do it!  

THE ARRIVAL

Signs that I made directed guests to our backyard for the party.

Guests were greeted by a sea of Sesame Street character footprints as they entered our backyard. Luckily, we had a beautiful sunny day! 

THE ACTIVITY CENTERS

To keep party guests busy, we had a variety of activity centers which included: 

• Cooking with Cookie Monster

 
(***How adorable is this kitchen???? You can read about it in this post.)

•  Oscar's Trash Toss with a genuine aluminum trash can.

 

•   Bubbles with Big Bird

 

• Bert & Ernie's Chalk Station

On a side note...Sophie got this easel as a birthday gift and we LOVE it. It has a dry erase board, chalk board and paper in the middle which can be pulled over either side for drawing and painting. Want one?

• Elmo's Crayon Station & Grover's Play-Doh Station

 

 

•  Pin the Nose on Elmo with magnet noses, using the easel she got for her birthday. My dad had a piece of aluminum cut to fit the front of it that Sophie can use for magnets. We simply clip it on with some binder clips and take it off when she wants to draw.

• Count with with Count

The ideas for the bubble station, trash toss and counting game came from Annie's Eats. I came up with with others myself.   

THE SESAME STREET SIGN

The party would not have been complete without Sophie's name on a Sesame Street sign. I drew and cut the sign from green foam board. The yellow border around the sign was cut from yellow poster board that was laid over the green foam. I used Interstate Bold Compressed font for the letters. I just printed really big versions of the letters which I traced on to and cut out of white poster board.

It was the perfect decoration for the playset Sophie received for her birthday!

The sign now resides over the window in her play room. 

THE CUPCAKES

We got inspiration from Annie's Eats for the cupcakes, which included Elmo, Big Bird, Oscar, Cookie Monster and Grover. Big Bird's beak is made from a cut marshmallow lined with a red sugar sheet and covered in yellow icing. Candy eye balls, jelly beans and black sugar sheets were used to create the facial features. We used colored cupcake liners that coordinated with the color of the character, with the exception of Oscar who got a silver liner to represent his trash can. (Thank you to my husband Robbie for that clever idea!)


The cupcake tower was actually just a plastic Wilton cupcake tower that I embellished with red and white polka dot ribbon.

We learned our lesson the hard way that you should not put the candy eye balls on the cupcakes until right before the party. They will absorb the color of the icing. We put the eyeballs on the night before the party and woke up the next morning to find Elmo with bloodshot eyes.  Robbie had to make a made dash to the store for replacements. That wasn't the only disaster...read on to the cake section.  


THE CAKE 

Since Sophie has an egg allergy, we made the cake ourselves, using the following chocolate cake recipe:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 vegetable oil
1 cup cold water
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tsp. vinegar

Preheat oven to 350. Mix all dry ingredients together. Mix all wet ingredients in separate bowl except the vinegar. Add wet ingredients to dry & stir until all dry ingredients are mixed. Add vinegar quickly & stir in. Pour into cake pan and immediately put pan in oven and bake for 25 to 30 min.

I have to give most of the credit to Robbie for the cake decorating. I was engrossed with decorating cupcakes so he took charge of the cake preparation. The yellow icing was smoothed out to look like fondant by using a wet knife. Elmo was molded out of Rice Krispy treats held together with tooth picks. As with the cupcakes, his face was made from candy eye balls, a jelly bean nose and mouth cut from a black sugar sheet.

We were up until 3am the night before the party decorating the cake and cupcakes! In addition to the discolored eyes we were met with the following morning, we found Elmo had fallen apart and was laying in a pile on top of the cake. The original Elmo was larger and we can only figure that his head and arms were just too heavy for the toothpicks to support. 

The eye balls were easy enough to replace, but the cake? I thought it was a goner for sure. Once again...Robbie to the rescue. Before I knew it he'd whipped up another batch of Rice Krispy treats and red icing and made a smaller Elmo that survived until party time! He would do anything for his little girl!

It was insanity around out house that morning, to say the least!    But most importantly, Sophie thought the cake was yummy!

 THE FAVORS

Attendees received two favors: A handmade Sesame Street coloring book with pack of crayons and a chocolate covered Elmo Oreo. 

I made the coloring books from construction paper, twine and coloring pages I printed from HERE. I printed two pages per sheet so they were roughly half the size of 8.5 x 11 paper. Then used a paper cutter to cut the sheet in half and hole punched twice along the left side of each sheet. I folded a piece of construction paper in half, hole punched it in the same place as the coloring sheets, placed the coloring pages inside the folded construction paper and used twine to tie it all together. I made a cover using  Sesame Street clip art and used rubber cement to glue the cover on the construction paper. 

To make the Elmo Oreos, I inserted lollipop sticks into the center of Oreos and then in melted Wilton red candy melts. Double Stuffed Oreos work best since there is more cream to hold the stick. 

Here is a handy tip for you: Before dipping, careful open the Oreo, gently press the stick into the cream, and place a little bit of melted chocolate over the stick to hold it in place before replacing the top of the Oreo. Then dip, and place on wax or parchment paper to dry. We tried just poking the stick up into the cream without opening the Oreo, and half the time the Oreo would break. 

The face is made from candy eye balls, an orange jelly bean nose and a mouth cut from a black sugar sheet. Gently press these items on immediately after dipping the Oreo in chocolate. 

We covered the Oreos in clear plastic treat bags and attached a "Thank you for celebrating with me!" tag with twine. 

  

 

The Elmo Oreos's received Sophie's stamp of approval.

Other supplies used at this party included:

THE INVITATION (AND AN OLD FRIEND)

I purchased the invitation on Etsy and had to search for awhile before finding one with Grover. Sophie loves Grover. Poor Grover got the shaft when Elmo came along, and he's not as easy to come by as the other characters. She used to call him "Super Yo-Yo." The "Super" part obviously came from Super Grover but the Yo-Yo? Who knows! She was just learning to talk. 

And speaking of Super Yo-Yo. He was one of my favorites as a kid too. Here we are sitting at a wooden table set made by my dad. (Which is still around and is now being used by Sophie when she visits her granddaddy.) 

On a side note....This little guy was stashed away in the attic for the last couple decades. I decided to pass him along to Sophie, but unfortunately he had that awful attic smell. So I washed him and 2 days later (after multiple tumbles in the dryer) his head was still so wet that he couldn't even hold it up. I thought he was a goner. But Robbie suggested cutting him open, removing the stuffing and replacing it will fresh DRY stuffing. 


What did I have to lose? He was destined for the trash at this point. So we told Sophie that Super Yo-Yo was going to the hospital for an operation, but was expected to make a full recovery. We took the seam ripper to him and would you believe that his head was full of this nasty stuffing that looked like carpet padding. We threw that all away, replaced it will fresh polyfill and sewed him back up.


Now he's as good as new! Well...maybe a little more matted that he used to be after being in the dryer so long but he's still kicking and enjoying new adventures with Sophie! 
 

I couldn't be happier with how the party turned out. It was a lot of work, but seeing Sophie's excited face made it all worth it! 

P.S. Then we went to Disney World the following month and she hasn't been interested in Sesame Street since! 

And now I bet I've got you wondering...what is our party theme for this year???