Basketball Birthday

My girl asked for a basketball theme birthday. I booked a local gym and let all the kids play ball majority of the party. Just had cake and a variety of chips. The party was a lot of fun.. see the pictures for yourself.

Cool Down Punch

 

Party Favors & Drink

Game time balls= Cheese Puffs

Half Time Pop corn

Slam Dunk Chips

 

Instead of a card, we invited the guest to donate a can of food that Vivianna donated to our local  food pantry.

She is in the double digits.. 10 today!

I find it hard to wrap my head around the concept that my oldest 'baby' is 10 years old today! I swear it seems like just yesterday I was bringing her home, watching her first steps, and wishing for her hair to grow long enough to put in a pony tail (it took awhile for her). Now I have this tween girl who is turning more and more into a little lady every time I look at her.  

 

You will forever be my baby!

 

We already had her birthday party on Sunday, but we always have a birthday dinner on the family members actual birthday (or as close to it as we can). Birthday Girls choice of dinner. She picked country fried steak, mashed potatoes, and corn. She also requested that daddy make it. she loves her daddies cooking and to be honest I love it to, my favorite part is I don't have to cook. We had cake and then went to the playground and had a family walk and sat on the swing set and talked about our hopes for the up coming summer, since school is officially out for her next week. Her summer is booked solid with adventures, camps, and vacations (with her grandparents). I'm not sure if I will actually get to see her to much this summer. Slow down time baby girl. The days are long and the years are short. It was a good day.

 

Banana Bread

So here I am, up past midnight making banana bread. that's normal right? In my universe, yes! I've had a busy day of re-arranging the boys into their new bedrooms and I just happened to notice the bananas on our counter were in that "we are ripe now, do something with us before we go bad stage", which also happens to be the perfect stage for banana bread.

I love banana bread, which is strange because I don't like to eat an actual banana by itself. My Granny, who was the best cook of all time (I'm not biased either) made the most amazing banana bread. Its another recipe people think is too complex but its actually easy peasy.  Its yummy, easy, and hard to screw up. My favorite qualities in a recipe!

Ingredients

• 3-4 ripe bananas, smashed
• 3/4 cup melted butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

Pre-heat oven to 350. smash banana and mix in the melted butter. Next mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle baking soda and salt and mix. Add flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

Teacher Appreciation Gifts

I've pinned about a half dozen teacher appreciation gifts on pinterest, but I couldn't decide on any of them. I thought and thought and figured that was something more "us".

Weird as it may seem, we decided to send some fresh eggs from our chickens and made some homemade apple butter in for our teachers. My middle child (whose teachers we were giving the gift to) really enjoys helping with our chickens so it was a perfect combo.  You can find my crock pot recipe here . I just used twine and made a tag stating "thanks for an eggcelent year" I'm sure you could come up with some apple saying for the apple butter, I however just went with "from the kitchen of.. colton"

Apple Butter for teacher who LOVE apples, because Teachers love apples.

 

"Thanks for an eggcelent year"

His teacher and both the assistant teachers loved our appreciation gift. they thought it was unique idea and so much more useful than *another* crayon wreath. ;-)

 

My Little Graduate

We have a graduate, a preschool graduate. Colton, our middle child graduated from preschool this week. End of the year field trips are out of the way and we even had a little graduation. Let summer begin. We still have to let big sister to have her last day of school (then I will have a middle schooler.. sigh) I'm sure we can have some fun for 2 weeks while sister is still in school.


Summer is almost here!!

 

This is our youngest Quinton and daddy on Colton's field trip the zoo. I had to post because it was so adorable seeing Quinton feed the giraffe.

Homemade (Crock pot) Apple Butter

I've attempted crock pot apple butter a total of 2 times now. The first time seemed to take forever (well it kinda did like 24 hours of cooking) but it was still pretty darn yummy. The second adventure in making turned out perfectly. So great in fact I thought I would share it with all of you.

Now let me tell you how labor intensive and hard this recipe is to make! Nah, I'm just kidding you. This is so super easy. I was frightened off because "homemade" stuff is HARD, right? I mean making your own condiments?! yikes. but honestly this is so easy and I will let you in on a few pointers I learned the hard way.

To get started you might have to add a few spices to your spice rack but after that you'll have then and you should only need to pick up the apples if the mood strikes you to make a batch.

So first head to the store, stock up on all you'll need (if you don't already have them) and get 6lbs of apples. now here's the secret I'm gonna share that is so stupid I should have put a sign on my forehead the first time. BUY A SOFT TYPE APPLE. I used Red Delicious the first time because they are my favorite, but they took forever to break down and it just didn't turn out so apple butter texture. the second time I bought MACINTOSH and had success. But any soft apple will do.

Ingredients
6 lbs peeled, cored, sliced apples (the smaller, the easier it is to break down)
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 table spoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Directions
1. Place apples in crock pot. Mix all dry ingredients together in separate bowl then gently mix mixture into apples in crock pot. Cook on low for 10 hours. (I cooked over night.. so easy)

2. mix in vanilla extract  and mix , breaking up and large chunks of apples, and replace lid to cook for another 2 hours.

3. Use a immersion blender (I got one at rite-aid for $15) and mix until smooth.

4 Allow the mixture to cool, then spoon into jars and store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks, or freeze for up to 2 months.
recipe adapted from brown eyed baker