Have Your Cake...

After someone at work mentioned I hadn’t posted in months I made a mental note to post soon. Fast-forward several months later, and look, I’ve actually done it! Yay me!

(Paste gold star here.)

Anyhoo, I hosted a huge summer reading cooking program. Some would call me insane (I prefer ambitious) but we made a boat load of food. Now that I’m on an “eating plan” (the polite term for diet), I’m glad I went all out because I can’t have any of the foods we made, meaning right about now the only thing stopping me from braining someone for a peanut butter cookie is that I don’t feel like calling Hyjentec. We made toaster oven pizzas, BBQ pulled chicken with crackers, chocolate dipped strawberries, dinner salad, peach cobbler, popcorn, carrots with dip, decorated cookies and made cake pops. The kids loved it, one saying, “We should do this again!” before I even had a chance to recover, pat her gently on the head and say, “That’s nice, dear,” and another telling her mom she wanted to do some of these things for her birthday party, which made mom happy since it’s a lot cheaper than a bounce house.

My work here is done.

After watching someone make cake pops from scratch on TV, I concluded the process made the time I amended my taxes by hand seem downright joyful. I went online for easier ways. The easier ways weren’t quite easy enough for me, so I came up with my own because sometimes making something doable sometimes trumps my Martha Stewart dreams.

Sometimes...


Easy-Peasy Cake Pops

Ingredients:
Donut holes (purchased a box of 55 at Safeway)
Vanilla Frosting (room temperature)
Sprinkles (I got the tub, put them in small cups with spoons)
Food coloring (optional)

Other materials:
Popsicle sticks
Butter knives
Paper plate
Spoons
Cups

1. Spear a donut hole with a popsicle stick.
2. Smother said donut hole with delicious, sugary, ooey gooey I-wish-I-was-allowed-to-eat-this frosting. I made several batches in different pastel colors.
3. Over a paper plate, sprinkle the cake pop with sprinkles.
4. Use the paper plate to funnel the leftover sprinkles back into the sprinkle container.

Okay, I’m off to eat some more broccoli now, but feel free to enjoy your cake pops. Just not in front of me, seeing as that would be totally wrong...

The Teen Lantern

It’s been a while since I last blogged---I was preparing for the Iowa Caucuses with my “Election Season Should Only Last 6 Weeks Because We’re All Sick of You” platform.

(For those of you non-news watchers, I came in second behind Romney.)

Anyways, I recently opened an e-mail discussing summer reading program ideas, reached back through my pecan pie-induced brain fog and remembered that yes, this was discussed at the last Youth Services meeting. And all I could think is, “Nooooooo! It’s too early! I just barely remembered to block off the meeting room for April programs!” Because prepping for summer reading is like going to the mall right after Christmas and discovering that management is already merchandising the bikinis---it’s a reminder to drop the mouth-watering, succulent turkey drumstick out of your hand and dust off your gym membership.

Or at least buy some workout clothes.

Whatever the case may be, I decided to do lanterns. It’s something that all age groups can make. Besides, libraries may be low on money to buy, say, books, but we’re not running out of paper any year soon. Just the accidental one-line prints patrons leave behind are enough to keep our areas decorated with paper snowflakes for decades. And paper crafts seemed safer than doing anything on dream interpretation. Adults have issues, teens have issues, and think about all the issues kids must have, especially babies. Every night all babies likely dream about is people’s giant heads being right up in their faces and saying things they don’t understand like, “Goo goo, gaa gaa,” and “You’re going to have to figure out your own way to pay for college.” Still, lanterns seemed a little boring, and I needed to jazz it up a bit, hence, the Starry Night lantern. It combines the best of my creativity with a pre-made program listed in the summer reading binder, and it's fairly easy.

Supplies:
Paper
Colored pencils
Washable markers
Safety scissors
Rulers
Stapler

Tape

1. Color the Starry Night coloring sheet linked on the Enchanted Learning site.
To format, go into Print Preview. Turn off the headers, change the orientation to Landscape, change the custom enlargement to 215%, and set all margins to 0.3.

2. Fold the paper in half along the long side, picture-side out. Reverse the fold, turn it picture-side in.

3. Follow the lantern making instructions.

But why limit it to just Starry Night? You can color Sponge Bob or Dora the Explorer, or use Twilight coloring pages---yes, they do exist. (Scary, isn't it?)

Some call it love. I call it pedophilia. Everybody calls it a cash cow.

Stay tuned for more craft posts to come!