play dough

During our recent Thanksgiving Break, it's always my task to get up the decorations so that they're up and done with, and we can sit back and enjoy the Thanksgiving break with all the Decor done. BUT in the middle of all of the decoration boxes, and chaos, Baby Girl, wanted to make play dough. She loves play dough, it's her favorite toy in the world. AND wants me to purchase Kool-aid everytime we are in the store so that she can have some scented playdough.

She had to have us completely stop what we were doing to make the play dough, and I thought it might keep her occupied during my decoration mess. BUT I didn't have any of the magic ingredient, Kool-aid. Karlie had recently found a recipe for Jello playdough, so we thought we would give it a try. We had jello and the rest of the ingredients so we tried it out.

 I love my cookbook, the computer...

 mix the ingredients.

 add salt.

 Yep, you can add the jello.

 Stir it up

 Cook it up till it firms up 

Let it cool for 30 mins...

This jello playdough, smelled nice and had a great color, but it seemed to stick to us and make a mess. I might try it one more time, before totally giving up on the jello version of the recipe. I do like the vivid color it makes the dough. BUT we don't like how it sticks to us.

A Berry Good Day for Berries and Pies

Today my friend Shannon's girls came over to play for the day. 

We decided that since it was such a pretty day, we might just pick some berries in the front yard.

Yep! We found some berries.

We looked high and low and picked every ripe berry we could find.

 We knew we needed at least 4 cups of berries for 2 pies...so we were desperate to find all the ripe ones. AND we kept a watchful eye for snakes that could be lurking, but did not see any, Praise. The. Lord!

It was such a beautiful morning to pick berries with friends.

 Yes! Jolie had to pick berries with her lipgloss!

Look at all those feet in the berry patch, even one in a cast, but that cast didn't slow her down.

We headed home with buckets and bags of berries.. 

We decided on our way back to the house that we really needed to make those pies...

With a little help from Pioneer Woman's cookbook  and her website we made a list for the ingredients we needed and headed to the store to get them.

Before heading to the store, we always tell dad bye, when he's working from home. Jolie told me that I couldn't kiss dad bye, because it was her turn. LOL...so I snapped this photo really quick...and got my bye sugar when she wasn't looking.

When we got home with the ingredients we started to work. We made the crust from scratch.

I found every rolling pin I own, and put the kids to work. Shek and "K" even recited the roll it, pat it and mark it with a B nursery rhyme. They were having a fun time laughing, giggling and rolling dough.

Jolie thought this was "play dough" play to the extreme...

Look! I really was there, supervising.

Chelsea was awesome at rolling out a thin top crust for the pies. She even got fancy with it and used some cookie cutters for a little extra cuteness for our pies.

Karlie was snapping photos and slicing butter for the pie.

ta-da! pie number 1 complete.

I told ya she got fancy with it, this one has mickey faces.

Pie Aftermath! Fun is usually messy.

Here's the cooling pies. I heard more than once, "When can we eat some?"  Finally,we scarfed down one whole pie,and it was finger lickin' good,to quote Col. Sanders, if we do say so ourselves.

My berry pickin' pie bakin' crew.

We had a Berry good time today.

I am Participating in Favorite Photo Friday at
The Long Road to China and back...

My favorite photo is the one with all the kids' feet with the berries. I did nothing fancy with my photos, it was just a special fun day with friends and family that was just too special not to share with others. I love making sweet memories with family and friends.

Cookin' with the kids...

Karlie's favorite show is Paula's Best Dishes. In fact, we record them all. The other day they made a Key Lime Mousse Pie...and Karlie announced that we should make that for her birthday on Thanksgiving. Since it has to be made 24 hours in advance and placed in the freezer for a whole day...we got busy this morning. And I took Paula's advice and got in the kitchen with my kids...so basically they made this thing with little assistance from me...and if it tastes as good as it did when we all 'licked the pot'...it's gonna be mighty fine!

Crushing up the Graham crackers...cause Kroger was out of the boxes of already crushed crackers.

 Melting the butter

 IT took a lot of Graham crackers to make the crust.

 Some of the ingredients! Any recipe with 3 packages of cream cheese has got to be good!

Jolie enjoyed the graham cracker crumbs.

 Shek mixing the butter, sugar and graham cracker.

 squeezing limes

 squeezing limes is a workout...

 Who would have thought that 21 years ago when I used the red and white checked Better homes cook book that now, I would be using a  recipe on my iphone?

 Melting white chocolate in the gelatin key lime mixture...a recipe with white chocolate and cream cheese...will be awesome.

 where's the zest.

 Smilin' and zestin'

 lime zest, it's hard work

 had to beat the cream with honey's mixer because my mixer was busy

 folded in the cream along with the white chocolate, keylime mixture....

 Pouring it in the spring form pain.

 to the freezer it goes...for a whole day.

 Lickin' the pot is the best part of any recipe creation.

 Look! I was there, frizzier hair than usual, cause I'm outta hair mousse.

Now to deal with the aftermath...cleaning up! UGH

24 hours later...

YUMMY

Happy real 16th Birthday, Karlie!

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

Pray for us...it's now time for the Christmas Card photo taking marathon...my family is always so over it...before we begin...BUT I am praying we get the awesomest Christmas card photo ever...after all it's Jolie's first Christmas...