Time for another visit to the time capsule for Alice in Wonderland. We started with teeny tiny Drink me bottles from the dollar store so the children could shrink down enough to enter Wonderland. We had a mad tea party … Continue reading
For our Peter Pan movie night we did a fun pirate ship apple pie for dessert. I found some great instructions here but I’ve included the recipe below. Mine fell apart a bit because I didn’t use enough crust My … Continue reading
open-uri20160812-3094-1afk70m_65fadca9Screen shot 2017-05-10 at 4.37.46 PMFor Finding Nemo I made Squirt cupcakes. The recipe is here but I’ve included it below. For the craft, the kids both helped sew a swim bag. We embroidered together two blue face towels from walmart. Then I helped them sew drawstring straps and they embroidered the words “Just Keep Swimming” onto the bottom of the bag.
Screen shot 2017-05-10 at 4.38.01 PMSquirt Cupcakes
Ingredients
12 Cupcakes
Frosting
Sour Peach candies
Gumdrop candies (red and green)
Spearmint Leaves candies
Mini chocolate chips
Directions
1. Frost cupcakes.
2. For each cupcake, slice off and discard the bottom half of a red gumdrop. Place the gumdrop top on the center of a Sour Peach to create a turtle shell. Set the shell atop the cupcake, pressing down slightly to stick it in place.
3. For fins, slice a Spearmint Leaves candy in half.
4. Use the outer pieces for the front fins and the inner pieces for the hind fins.
5. For the head, use a kitchen skewer to poke eyeholes in the sides of a green gumdrop. Then press a mini chocolate chip into each hole, using a dab of white icing to help hold it in place. Set the head in place, again pressing down slightly so that it sticks to the frosting. Continue reading
Wow, it’s been so long since I visited and so much has happened. Sorry to everyone about the break. I got a lovely note from Samantha on twitter who requested Up and Ratatouille and I’ve finished off all the movies so I am posting Up today.
For this movie night my son turned had just turned seven, his official birthday, not the Hobbit party! And now he is eight! How did that happen? I swear I just brought him home from the hospital a few days ago! We did Up for our movie night (his choice). I looked for grape pop in bottles but I had no luck so we did a birthday cake covered with smarties for the snack.
For the craft, we did a canvas with a blue background and a little tiny house painted on and my son held the baby as he blobbed his fingers in a rainbow of colours to make the balloons. The colours in the photo are not reproducing that well here.
It was a very quiet birthday, I called it his “do whatever you want day” (I got the idea from his aunt). We had his favourite pizza for dinner and he played chess, lego and wii. His grandfather came and gave him walkie talkies for the park at Disney. He also got a copy of Spiderwick and some Ninjago Lego from us. Happy Birthday darling boy!
My son and I also made a dozen of these Ellie badges for all of my family on the trip, in memory of my mum. I just laser printed a bunch of grape pop logos and applied them with Mod Podge to bottle caps we had tapped two little holes in with a hammer and nail. We did a few coats to keep them from getting scuffed and then we just threaded a medium safety pin into each one. Here is a link to the video of the trip, the music goes perfectly with this post.
A little extra fun, a gingerbread house we decorated in the house colours. Much fun was had by all kids eating it and playing with the balloons afterwards.
This year we had a Hobbit party for my son for his 7th birthday. I was so busy with getting ready I didn’t get to take nearly as many photos as I would have liked. We had a “No admittance except on party business” sign on the door, flowers and and a birthday banner, and a table groaning with food.
The menu was from the book’s “an unexpected party” chapter: Seed cake from here, scones from here with raspberry jam, apple pie from here, mince tarts from here, cheese and pickles, ham, pork pie from here, cold chicken, plus a giant birthday cake like the one from “The Lord of the Rings”. I’ve put all the recipes at the bottom of the page.
We made a “Smaug the terrible” piñata filled with chocolate gold coins. To make Smaug I taped several balloons together for the body, a long thin balloon for the tail, and used rolled cardboard for the horns, wings, forelegs, snout, spines and horns. I covered it all with two layers of newspaper dipped in paste. When it was well dry, we painted it with acrylic paint and covered the wings in red tissue paper. We filled him with lots of chocolate gold coins and the kids all got a turn battling with him before he got a small hole in the bottom and gave up his horde. My son fell in love with him though so we ended up having to keep him once the battle was done. Loot bags were treasure chests filled with the coins and small lego hobbit sets, it was a huge success!
We had also planned for the kids to play “riddles in the dark” with gold rings my husband had “forged” but the kids were too busy playing so we just handed them out. To make them we took a package of kids toy rings from the dollar store, cut off the jems, sanded and spray painted them gold. They look fantastic. I had wanted to do fireworks but one small box was $50 and I was already at my budget’s limit and I was worried my husband was going to think I was getting carried away a bit (who, me?).
My son was dressed in the most adorable waistcoat I sewed him from a brocade runner I found at the Goodwill. I also tacked the hem of his grey slacks to just below the knee. He went to the theater like that with his sandals on and I carried him in from the car (during a snowstorm of course). We gathered up all his friends and went and sat down and as the movie began Ian Holm said the words “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit…” My son was sitting in the row directly behind me and he threw his arms around my neck in excitement. We’d had such fun with him reading the book to me and he was so excited and this was finally the big day! It was truly a “party of special magnificence” and it was
“brought home to me, it is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.”
And what, you may ask, does this Hobbit talk have any business on a Disney/Universal movie night blog? Well, I’ll tell you! This!
Lemon Seed Cake Recipe
Ingredients:
50 g poppy seeds
185 ml warm milk
220 g caster sugar
3 eggs
300 g self-raising flour
200 g unsalted butter, softened
1 lemon, rind grated, juiced
300 g icing sugar
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Lightly grease loaf pan.
2. Combine the poppy seeds and milk in a bowl and set aside for 15 minutes.
3. Combine the caster sugar and 185g of the butter until light and fluffy. Mix in the eggs. Fold in the flour gradually, alternate with the poppy seed and milk mix. Finally stir in lemon rind. Alternatively add the ingredients to an electric mixer. Beat on high for 5 minutes until the mixture is pale and thick. Pour into the pan and bake in the oven for 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Turn onto a wire rack to cool.
4. Meanwhile, melt the remaining butter and place in a bowl with the icing sugar and lemon juice. Beat with an electric beater until smooth, then drizzle over the cake.
Scones
Ingredients:
125 mL white sugar
25 mL baking powder
2.5 mL salt
180 mL butter
1 egg, beaten
150 mL milk
1 package white chocolate chips
375 mL frozen cranberries
Method:
1. Preheat oven to 200˚C.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut in butter. Mix the egg and milk in a small bowl, and stir into flour mixture until moistened. Add chips and cranberries
3. Shape into wedges or rounds, and place on the baking sheet.
4. Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown.
Apple Pie
Ingredients:
125 mL unsalted butter
45 mL all-purpose flour
75 mL water
125 mL white sugar
125 mL packed brown sugar
8 Granny Smith apples – peeled, cored and sliced
Method:
1. Preheat oven to 220˚C. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in flour to form a paste. Add water, white sugar and brown sugar, and bring to a boil. Reduce temperature and let simmer.
2. Place the bottom crust in your pan. Fill with apples, mounded slightly. Cover with a lattice work crust. Gently pour the sugar and butter liquid over the crust. Pour slowly so that it does not run off.
3. Bake 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Reduce the temperature to 175˚C. Continue baking for 35 to 45 minutes, until apples are soft.
Just adding a little craft Toby did. A pencil case for the first day of school. Just felt and fabric paint on a plain dollar store pencil case.
Here is our double bill The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Winnie the Pooh 2011 movie night. The sequel is actually quite surprisingly good and the kids couldn’t decide which they preferred. They thought the Backson was hysterical.
It was more of a movie day because for breakfast we had a Crystal Palace breakfast of puffed french toast. We found the recipe here which I’ve posted below. So delicious but highly unhealthy so we went for a run after breakfast to make up for it.
We had a nice healthy Rabbit’s garden for lunch to balance it out (carrots, cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, tomato, zucchini and peppers with dip).
Snacks during the movie were haycorns (mini shortbread cookies iced together with a chocolate kiss). Just the perfect size for tossing in your mouth. A whole tray did not last long. I saw them here and I’ve posted the recipe I used below.
Haycorns
Ingredients:
500 mL butter
250 mL white sugar
10 mL vanilla
1 L all-purpose flour
chocolate icing
chocolate kisses
Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C.
2. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Stir in vanilla; add flour and mix well.
3. Roll out small balls of dough about the size of a loonie on baking sheets and press to flatten slightly. Bake for 10 – 12 minutes.
4. When cool, ice a blob of chocolate icing to the back of the cookie and attach a chocolate kiss. Ice a small stem on top with chocolate icing.
And for dessert, a beehive honey cake! I found the idea for that here with a beautiful verison but I made a lot of changes because of my daughter’s nut allergy. I made the cake and icing both honey flavoured (from a box mix), and I used fondant, instead of marzipan for the bees. I’d love to take a cake making class one day. I hate how my cakes NEVER look as good as the ones in the photos. The kids don’t seem to mind though! I’ve posted the recipe below.
For the craft, the kids and I decorated balloons to look like Pooh and Piglet. Well truth be told, they blew up the balloons and spent the afternoon playing with them and they got me to draw the faces on. They did do the tissue paper ears though! You could also do a Tigger balloon too but our orange one popped before I realized that. I got the idea here, all you need is a sharpie, some balloons, tape and matching tissue paper.
We also painted honey pots which we are using to organize bibs and face cloths in the baby’s drawers. You just need acrylic paint, a brush and a flower pot – easy!
“It’s a Useful Pot,” said Pooh. “Here it is. And it’s got ‘A Very Happy Birthday with love from Pooh’ written on it. That’s what all that writing is. And it’s for putting things in. There!”
Crystal Palace Puffed French Toast Recipe
Ingredients:
2 whole eggs
37 mL sugar
2 mL salt
5 mL vanilla extract
500 mL milk
500 mL all-purpose flour
22 mL baking powder
8 slices Texas Toast (or other thick-sliced bread), cut in half diagonally
oil for frying
187 mL sugar
15 mL cinnamon
Optional toppings: powdered sugar, maple syrup, fresh fruit, fruit preserves, whipped cream
Method:
1. First, pour the 187 mL sugar and 1 tablespoon cinnamon into a shallow glass dish. Stir well and set aside.
2. Next, cut each slice of bread diagonally into two triangles.
3. In a large bowl, mix eggs, remaining 37 mL of sugar, vanilla and milk with whisk until well blended. Slowly add the flour, salt and baking powder and stir until lumps are gone and batter is smooth. It will be appear similar to pancake batter.
4. Heat 1-inch of cooking oil in a deep frying pan. Test the oil by dropping a tiny bit of batter into it, if it begins sizzling it is ready.
5. Take a bread triangle and dip it into the batter, turning to coating both sides. Then carefully drop it into the hot oil. Using kitchen tongs, flip the bread over as soon as it puffs and turns golden-brown. Once the other side has cooked, remove it with tongs and place it on the empty plate with paper towels to let it soak up any excess oil. Move it on over to cinnamon sugar and roll until completely coated.
7. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, and serve with syrup, fresh fruit and whipped cream.
Beehive Cake
Ingredients:
Boxed cake mix with milk oil and eggs
200 mL honey
Container of icing
Yellow and black Food Coloring
Fondant
Method:
1. Butter and flour an 8-inch cake pan and an 8-inch metal mixing bowl. Line the cake pan with a parchment paper round. Set aside.
2. Prepare cake mix and add 125 mL honey. Divide the batter between the cake pan and the prepared bowl.
3. Bake until a tester comes out clean. The cake in the bowl may take a few more minutes. Remove and allow to cool completely.
4. Add 75 mL honey to icing. Divide in half and add yellow food coloring to the other.
5. Slice each of the layer in half, then fill the layers with the icing. Using a small amount of the yellow icing, create a crumb coat to lock in the crumbs and smooth the surface of the cake. Chill.
6. Put a thick layer of icing over the chilled crumb coat. Starting at the top of the cake, use a spatula and create a spiral by slowly spinning and moving the spatula downward.
7. To create the bees: Take a small piece of the fondant and roll it between the palms of your hands until it is lozenge shaped. Taper one end slightly to be the back of the bee. Paint the stripes on the fondant with a clean paintbrush and black food coloring. Allow it to dry until it is no longer tacky. Once the stripes are dry, press flattened balls of fondant into the sides to create the bees wings.
While the baby was little the movie nights were more like movie weeks. Dinner one night, dessert another, then one or two days to finish the craft. Thinks are a bit easier now, he stood up for the first time on Mother’s Day for me! And Dumbo is the perfect movie night for a house with a new baby in it and the perfect Mother’s Day movie.
For a circus dinner we had corn dogs, candy floss and popcorn balls. The recipe for the corn dogs is here. It makes a lot so I would freeze half of the corn dogs once you are finished. For the best effects we put the whole corn dog in the oil and then put the skewers on afterwards, and we used half regular hot dogs and half veggie dogs. Here is the recipe for the popcorn balls but we used butter instead of margarine and only 1/2 a cup of marshmallows (some 6 years old ate all of ours when we last made s’mores – or smoes as we call them here – 5 points if you get that reference). I’ve put both recipes below. Caution: these are super sweet, you may want to pick up some insulin while you are out getting the ingredients! The kids LOVED them! Then we just bought some cotton candy at the bulk barn and made those little white cones with card stock to hold them.
For the craft, my girl and I created an iron-on transfer for a onsie for the baby. The quote is “The very things that hold you down are going to life you up. – Timothy Mouse” with some clip art of a little feather. Learning how to iron safely is always a useful skill for kids. Oh! He’s so tiny here! By the way, our iron-on transfers started to flake off so I had to wash this onsie and let drip dry when it needed cleaning but a friend tells me that this site sells good transfers that work much better than the ones you can find in stores.
Corn Dogs
Ingredients:
250 mL yellow cornmeal
250 mL all-purpose flour
1.25 mL salt
.75 mL black pepper
75 mL white sugar
20 mL baking powder
1 egg
250 mL milk
1 L vegetable oil for frying
2 (450 g) packages beef frankfurters
Method
1. In a medium bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, salt, pepper, sugar and baking powder. Stir in eggs and milk.
2. Preheat oil in a deep saucepan over medium heat. Insert wooden skewers into frankfurters. Roll frankfurters in batter until well coated.
3. Fry 2 or 3 corn dogs at a time until lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Drain on paper towels.
Popcorn Balls
Ingredients:
180 mL light corn syrup
75 mL butter
10 mL cold water
655 mL confectioners’ sugar
125 mL marshmallows
5 L plain popped popcorn
Almost everyone in our family is born in the same month so we had a big family party, and because almost everyone coming to the party is joining us in Disney, we had a Mickey theme. We had Epic Mickey 2 playing on the Wii for the boys and The Spirit of Mickey on the television downstairs.
We decorated with red roses and balloons, and red table cloths and black mouse ear garlands made from black bristol board. I also have been planning a painting for the dining room for ages but I haven’t finished it yet so I took an old canvas and sketched out a vintage Mickey to hang in that space just for the party.
The menu was black rye bread with red tomatoes, white turkey, havarti and swiss cheese cut into mickey shapes, pizza cut in mickey shapes, fruit plates with raspberries, watermelon, and strawberries, veggie platters with cherry tomatoes, red pepper, button mushrooms and cauliflower with dip, strawberry juice, water and coke to drink with mickey labels made by my son
Dessert was mickey shaped cookies (iced shortbread with white chocolate chip buttons) and cupcakes (chocolate cupcakes in red cupcake liners with two white hole punch buttons, iced with chocolate icing and dipped in oreo crumbs, then two chocolate biscuits stuck in with extra icing for ears), cinnamon hearts, malt balls and candy sticks in an apothacary jar, and bags of popcorn.
The craft was mouse ears and my daughter made them for everyone. Just rounds of black bristol boaerd attached to headbands from the dollar store (and red bows for Minnie) Unfortunately the baby hated them and screamed the house down when we tried to get a photo with Grandad.
The dog also loathed them. Look at him, you can tell just by looking at him, he’s thinking “Only because I love you. But I still really hate them.”
Just a little snow globe we made out of an old baby bottle, a mickey figurine, some metallic confetti and some glycerine and water. Oh, and we sealed the lid with crazy glue and wrapped it in red duct tape.
We did Atlantis on April fool’s meal because we did “beans, bacon, whiskey, and lard“. The whiskey was apple juice and the lard was white ice cream cut into rectangles. Only thing is, the kids had never seen lard before so they didn’t quite get it but my husband laughed!
Pretty easy preparation, I don’t even have any recipes for this one. Just crack open a tin of beans and heat, cook some bacon, cut up a block of nut-free Chapmans’ vanilla ice cream, pour the apple juice and serve!
For the craft we did Kida’s necklace. I ordered a glowing crystal from China for a dollar or something crazy off of ebay. I got some brown leather necklaces from the dollar store and my son glued the crystal’s cord inside the leather. The cord was pretty fragile and it snapped (what do you expect for a dollar) so my son had fun learning how to help daddy rewire it!
So we had originally thought to have a Hallowe’en party/movie night to introduce the baby to everyone in our family. I wanted to cancel but the kids were so looking forward to it so my sweet, darling husband offered to make everything. I had purchased all the materials and ingredients before the baby was born so off he went. I spent the day feeding the bairn and he spent the day cooking, baking, and helping the kids carve pumpkins. He even knew that I wanted photos of the movie nights so he did that too! We never did get to watch the movies that day but the following Friday was a PD day at the school so the kids and I hung out and watched the double header (while I fed the boy) – the Haunted Mansion and the Nightmare Before Christmas. When I watched the Haunted Mansion when it first came out I thought it was dreadful but apparently if you are between the ages of nine and six, you are at the perfect age to think it’s pretty funny. I even laughed with them when Eddie Murphy meets Madame Leota. I am so excited for the new version of The Haunted Mansion that is (hopefully) coming out with Guillermo del Toro directing. And in even more exciting news, we had to move our trip dates back a bit to suit everyone’s schedule so we will be at Walt Disney World this year during their Mickey’s Not So Scary Hallowe’en Party!
Here are the Jack Skellington Cookies baked by my husband. The recipe is from here but is pasted below.
Shortbread
Ingredients:
500 mL butter
250 mL white sugar
10 mL vanilla
1 L all-purpose flour
Vanilla and chocolate icing
Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C.
2. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Stir in vanilla; add flour and mix well.
3. Roll dough out on well-floured surface, cut into circles and transfer to baking sheets. Bake for 10 – 12 minutes.
4. When cooled, ice with vanilla icing, then decorate with chocolate icing in Jack Skellington pattern.
My brother in law printed out tombstones for the cupcakes my husband made and my son decorated. I found the artwork here. The chocolate cupcakes were iced with chocolate icing and then dipped in a bowl of oreo cookie crumbs (smashed beautifully by my son).
Poison (green tea crystal light with green food colouring), skeleton bones (white chocolate melted in a jello mold from the dollar store), and Zero’s kibble (chocolate and yogurt covered raisins in a dog food bowl).
Oogie Boogie Guts (jelly worms and tarantulas) in a paper bag, sewn together by my daughter using wool. I got the idea for the guts and the kibble from this site.
The crafts were pumpkin carving and haunted mansion bookmarks. The website for the bookmarks was here. And this website here has the other two portraits on it as well so the kids and my niece and nephew created all four.
For decorations we had a Christmas tree decorated with the black ornaments that my son painted, photographer here with a bottle of poison (grape juice), and a glass of chocolate milk with a candy cane stir stick.
Chalk this party up to one of my most idiotic ideas ever. But a great time was had by all 17 guests.
Family Movie Nights 
