Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

I made these muffins for the boys the other day and they were delicious.



Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1-1/2 cups mashed ripe bananas (about 3 large)
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips

Directions
In a bowl, cream butter and sugars. Beat in eggs, bananas and vanilla. Combine flour and baking soda; add to creamed mixture just until combined. Stir in the walnuts and chocolate chips. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups half full.
Bake at 350° for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks. Yield: 2 dozen.

Recipe adapted from Taste of Home

Valentine's Day Box

There seems to be a recurrent theme at our house. Care to guess what it is?

Baby Shower Cupcakes

I am going to a baby shower on Saturday for one of my husband's relatives. I was trying to decide what would be a cute gift to take.

I had seen Diaper Cakes before but I had never made one for anybody. I decide that since I am known more for cupcakes than cakes that I would see if I could make some Diaper Cupcakes.

After looking at various options I decided to still make the cupcakes but without the diapers. I used onesies and baby washclothes.

This is what I came up with....



Then I just added a bow and VOILA!



Not too bad for my first attempt. Next time I am going to try baby socks, wash clothes, and bibs and see how that looks.

Happy Birthday hubby!

Sometimes it is okay to not act your age!

Monday Monday

Monday was a fabulous day. I took the boys to school and came home and cleaned the house. The dishes were done and the laundry was caught up.

Then Tuesday came and things went downhill from there. I caught a 24 hour flu bug so needless to say all the work I had done on the house on Monday was completely undone by Tuesday evening. My hubby did go to the store after he got off work and got some snacks for me and spaghetti sauce so he could make spaghetti for dinner.

Wednesday our state was hit with an ice storm so my hubby didn't go to work and the kids were home from school. I was pretty much over my bug so the hubby and I decided to paint a coat of primer on the trim in the boys' room. Sometimes I think this room will never be done. One more coat of white and touch ups on the walls and floors.

My menu plan for the week had pretty much been thrown out the window and so I really wanted something easy to make for dinner. I had intended to make Pepperoni Pizza Pie but I wanted to make it with homemade crust and I was NOT feeling up to making homemade crust. So I made some Pepperoni Paninis.



We don't have a Panini maker so I used my indoor grill and I didn't have big crusty bread so I used sandwich bread but my family loved them and they were easy. Yeah for me!

By Wednesday evening C and AD had caught my flu bug so today has been catch up on housework day again.

Luckily it is a fast moving bug and they are back to their normal selves. Hopefully tomorrow we will be back to school since we are on our 6TH snow day.

I wonder what I am going to do with all those summer days while my kids are in school....hmmmm.....

Teenage Birthday Cake

Once our older son hit his teenage years it seems like it has been a lot harder to find a cake "theme" for his birthday. So for the first few years I left them plain. Then last year I decided to start making cakes of things that he likes or things he enjoys doing. Of course, most of those things are electronic gadgets of some variety.

Last year I made him an Ipod Shuffle Cake because he loves his.

This year I decided to make him a Wii Remote.



I think I could have done a better job but I threw this together rather quickly. I cut the edges off of a 9 x 13 cake then cut the cake in half lengthwise. I frosted and stacked them and then covered the cake with white marshmallow fondant. I made my own. It is so much easier to make than people realize. Then I cut all the buttons out of fondant, attached them, and wrote on it with edible marker.

We didn't have a big get together for him. He just had a few friends over for pizza and cake but the party and the cake were a big hit with him.

Menu Plan Monday and Pantry Challenge

Last week we did a good job of eating from the pantry. We got through all of our meals but one. I am going to add that one to our menu for this week. I did go to the grocery store on this weekend. I spent about $63.00 which puts us at about $145 for the month. It is more than I wanted to spend but hopefully we can go the rest of the month without spending too much more.

I think the most interesting day of our pantry challenge was Friday. My husbands car wouldn't start so he had my van and I had no eggs, bread, or milk. That was a creative day but I made it through. We had oatmeal for breakfast, homemade macaroni and cheese for lunch and Pulled BBQ chicken on english muffins with homemade potato fries for dinner.



Our menu for this week is:

Monday- Hamburger gravy over mashed potatoes
Tuesday- Pepperoni pizza pie
Wednesday- Cheesy potato soup
Thursday- Salmon, potatoes, and a veggie
Friday- Homemade pizza
Saturday- Roast, carrots, and potatoes
Sunday- Chicken and Dumplings

You can find other menus at I'm an Organizing Junkie and more Eating from the Pantry Challenge at Life As Mom.

18

Today this child of mine is 18.

Photo by LCPhotography

It is so hard to believe. I know in the eyes of everyone else he is now a man but in my eyes he is always going to be my baby.

Happy Birthday R! We love you so very much!

B-B-B-Batman

Since AD is in preschool this year he had his very first birthday party with friends on Saturday.

We went with a Batman theme for a couple different reasons. The first reason is that he got the Imaginext Batcave last year for Christmas and it is one of his favorite toys. The second reason is that I was given some free Batman napkins. Yep, I planned the boy's birthday around some free napkins.

AD and I went to the store to find some invitations to send out for his birthday. The Batman invites were $3.99 for 8. We were inviting his entire class so we would have needed 3 packages for a total of $11.97 + tax. I felt that was a little steep so we made our own.

I freehanded a bat symbol, traced it and cut them out of card stock we already had.



Cost of invites = free.

When I was trying to come up with some games to play a couple different friends suggested capes and one of them suggested decorating masks. I printed out a Batman mask template and traced and cut out the masks on white cardstock so that they could decorate them. I did buy new cardstock because I didn't have white on hand. I also got some elastic to attach to the masks.



Cost of cardstock and elastic = $4.30.

For the capes I bought some fleece blankets that were $2 a piece. I originally thought I would be able to get 3 capes out of a blanket but since these are 4 and 5 year olds I was able to get 6 capes out of blanket. I had a hard time figuring out how to close the capes and finally I decided to just sew on some ribbon.



Cost of capes = $4.50.

For activities we decorated the masks, played Batman, Batman, Robin (Duck, Duck, Goose), and Pin the Bat-a-rang on Batman. I had a hard time finding a Batman poster but I did find some Batman color pages. I had our 8 year old color on in and that is what we used for our poster.



Cost for the activities = $3.00.

We had the party at lunch time. We feed them hot dogs in the crockpot, chips, and applesauce. I also made the cupcakes using some Batman confetti that I had found. I taped the images on to toothpicks and stuck them in the cupcakes. We had lemonade to drink.



Total cost for food = $14.50.

The paper products we bought at the dollar store. I actually bought more than I needed. So total cost for what we needed for the party = $5.00.

Goodie Bags

I know we could have used the capes and masks and their "prizes" but I wanted to get them a bag with stuff to take home. We put fruit gushers, straws, stickers, and candy in them.

Total for goodie bags = $13.50.

So the total for our Batman birthday party was $44.80. All of my information is based on 12 children which brings my total per child to $3.75. I am sure there are odds and ends that I forgot so it is probably more around $4.00 a child.

I am sure that if I had tried I could have done it cheaper but I think for 12 children it was pretty cost effective. Plus we had one happy Batguy.

MPM and Eating from the Pantry Challenge

Well, I don't know that we did too good of a job last week. I did get through 4 of our meals but we still have 3 that we didn't eat. We had AD's birthday party on Saturday and so we had leftovers from that on Saturday night. Today we had lunch at Costco and dinner at my father-in-laws.

One of my main goals was basically just to reduce the amount we spent on groceries this month. I was hoping to stay at around $100 for the month but we are getting pretty close to that. We are right around $80 so that only leaves about $20 for the rest of the month and I am not quite sure if that will happen or not. Even reducing our grocery bill by $50 will be okay.

So here is the menu plan for this week (with the 3 meals from last week).

Monday- Hubby makes dinner. (probably mac n cheese)
Tuesday- Chicken tacos
Wednesday- Chicken pot pie
Thursday- roast, carrots, and potatoes
Friday- Pancakes
Saturday- Out to eat (This is our son's 18th birthday)
Sunday- Family dinner

More menu plans can be found at Menu Plan Monday.
Other Eating from the Pantry Challenge results can be found at Money Saving Mom.