Strawberry-Maple Chex Mix

  I don't normally enjoy sweet Chex mixes, but this one is hard to stop munching on. The salty-sweet flavor with the crispness of the cereal, buttery texture of the pecans and the bright tang of the strawberries is really delicious. The one ingredient that's a bit unusual is freeze-dried strawberries... I found mine at Trader Joe's, but Amazon also sells them. (affiliate link)

  I show the strawberries being baked along with the mix in these photos, but after making it a few times I found that I definitely prefer them added afterward... they get a little burnt when baked too long, and the maple-butter mix doesn't really add much to them.

  You'll start by heating your oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit... if your oven runs hot turn it down a bit lower. Mix together your desired Chex cereals- I used 5 cups each of rice and corn, and 2 cups of wheat. Next, add some pecans. I like to lightly crush some and leave some whole. I used a cup and thought it was perfect, but my husband prefers it with fewer pecans.

  In a separate bowl, add 1/2 cup (1 cube) butter and 1/2 cup maple syrup.

  Sprinkle on some nutmeg... I went with 1/4 teaspon.

  and melt it all in the microwave, about 1 minute 30 seconds on 50% power for me, but that will vary depending on your microwave. If you don't have a microwave melt it over low heat on the stovetop, just be careful not to burn it. Avoid overheating it either way... maple syrup foams up like crazy when it gets hot, and you'll have a giant mess on your hands. I've accidentally boiled maple syrup too many times to count.

  Pour this delicious mixture over your cereal/nut mixture while stirring:

  Mix it up really well until everything is nicely coated. I used a spatula for this batch since it was for the baby shower, but it is much, much easier to use your hands. Just be prepared to wash them when you are done!

  Pour it all on a cookie sheet, the largest you have:

  Bake it for 45-50 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. When it no longer feels wet it is done, even if it isn't quite as crispy as you expected. It crisps up more as it cools. Finally, add 2 cups of freeze-dried strawberries, or more up to 4 cups, and serve.

  Here is the recipe all in one place:

Strawberry-Maple Chex Mix

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 45-50 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Yield: approximately 15 cups
Ingredients

• 5 cups rice Chex cereal
• 5 cups corn Chex cereal
• 2 cups wheat Chex cereal
• 1 cup pecans, partially crushed
• 1/2 cup salted butter
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2 cups freeze-dried strawberries

Cooking Directions

1. Heat oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Mix cereals and pecans in large bowl.
3. In separate bowl in microwave or pan over low heat, melt butter, syrup and nutmeg together, do not overheat.
4. Pour syrup mixture over cereal mixture while stirring. Mix well, until cereal is completely coated.
5. Pour onto large baking sheet and bake 45-50 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes, until cereal is dry to the touch.
6. Mix in freeze-dried strawberries and let cool before serving.
7. Can be stored in airtight container at room temperature for 2 weeks. 

 I hope you get a chance to try this out!

 
Thanks for stopping by!

 

Pink Lace Baby Shower

  I've finally finished editing (as well as they can be edited) the photos from the baby shower I helped throw last week. =) Some photos I re-took at home too. =)

  Since my sister-in-love is pregnant with her first little girl after having twin boys, I wanted the shower to be as girly as possible, so I chose pink and lace as a sort of theme. I was in charge of decorations and desserts, and my mother-in-love sweetly lent her home to the occasion, as well as taking care of the invitations and a lot of the food. My husband's grandma brought some food as well, and my younger sisters-in-love came up with some fun games for us to play. =)

  Here is the dessert bar.... I would have liked to have a backdrop behind it but with an island like this it wouldn't have worked very well. =) There's a lot going on in the background, but I think that is one of the hazards of having a party at someone else's home.

   I made cake pops for the first time.... I think they turned out pretty well! I also made the stand out of florist's foam wrapped with freezer paper and decorated with a punched strip of paper.

  The cake was decorated with rosettes again:

  and labeled with a tag I put together in Inkscape

  I used the classic white birthday cake recipe from this page and German buttercream to frost it. That frosting was amazing! I ended up doubling the sugar, and it was still much less sweet than traditional buttercream, which is what I was hoping for. =) It was pretty hard to decorate with, being mostly butter, and it doesn't crust, but I think it was worth it this time. Oh, and I also used the equivalent weight of the eggs with just egg yolks, since I had them left from making the cake, which made the frosting rather yellow but otherwise worked just fine.

  The cake was pink ombre inside but I'm pretty sure nobody noticed, and this is the best picture I got that day. (Did I mention I was having major trouble getting my camera to focus?)

  I also made strawberry Chex mix (my own recipe, I'll share in a few days)

  Saltwater taffy, from Betty Crocker's cookbook, cherry flavored:

  Mini-strawberry pies and raspberry cream cheese danishes (I used raspberry jam under the filling and colored the icing pink):

  The macarons I bought, rather than making, since I ran out of time to make them and haven't perfected making them yet.

  We also had storebought ice cream in little containers with wooden spoons (affiliate links).

  I also ordered a LOT of white boxes (affiliate link) stenciled about 30 of them, and requested that people take home desserts in them. I have quite a few of the stenciled ones left, and even more that are still plain white. =) I used this silkscreen (affiliate link), but I'm pretty sure I paid a lot less for mine at Michael's.

  On to the drink setup! I made raspberry punch, and requested berry water as well, then my mother-in-love added pink lemonade and orange juice. The punch was pretty simple... I mashed some raspberries through a fine-mesh sieve and lightly sweetened the juice that resulted, then mixed that with Sprite and topped it with a berry sherbert. It tasted amazing though!

  Since this was a brunch party, we had pancakes, baked French toast casserole, mini-quiches, sliced oranges and berries, maple syrup, strawberry and regular whipped cream, cream scones, butter and raspberry butter, and egg casserole. We were going to have bacon and sausage as well, but I think the egg casserole was made instead of those. I made the scones, French toast, raspberry butter, and whipped creams. =)

  For the favors, I made strawberry-scented liquid soap using this recipe as the base, and with glycerin added to help thicken it up. It was super-fatted a little more than I would have preferred, but otherwise was nice.

  The lotion and lip balm were both conglomerations of several different recipes. For the strawberry scent, I originally bought one just for soaping but it smelled really artificial, so I ended up using LorAnn's strawberry flavoring (affiliate link) for a light strawberry scent.

  I made the labels in Inkscape and printed then punched them out of label paper with a scalloped punch (affiliate link). I should have made the circles just a tiny bit bigger or removed the stroke, but I didn't realize that until I'd already printed it on the label paper and I only had one sheet, so I just went with it. The hardest part of the favors was filling all the little bottles and tubes... 72 of them.

  Almost all of the supplies for these were bought at Brambleberry, which will probably leave out part of your order or send you the wrong thing, but which has amazing customer service and will fix the problem immediately when you call them. The only things not from Brambleberry were the flavoring and coloring in the soap and lotion.

  As for decorations! I made doily pomanders, following this tutorial. They were hard to fluff but I love the way they turned out.

  I also made ruffled streamers, following Dana's tutorial.

  Flower pomander balls, following this tutorial with a few substitutions. I couldn't find the hydrangea punch locally and these were a day-before-the-shower addition, so I used the three-in-one punch (affiliate link), and instead of pearl corsage pins I used regular corsage pins found at Hobby Lobby, which were a lot more expensive than I expected.

 I also hung mine with a ribbon as suggested in the tutorial but it was pulling a little loose by the end of the shower... next time I think I'd tie the ribbon on then pin it all the way around. Also, these took FOREVER. I love them anyway. =)

  I made tissue poms too, but mine looked really squashed in the middle following the usual method (I think my tissue paper was too thick) so I ended up cutting the tissue into scalloped-edge circles, scrunching a bit in the center, and gluing them onto a piece of cardstock.

  I made a banner which hopefully will be hung in the little one's room, from ribbon, pink scrapbooking paper, printed cardstock, eyelet lace, and tiny pink ric-rac:

  And finally, I made these adorable babies from diapers, washcloths, socks, and wiggle eyes, and scattered them around the house. I first saw something like these on Pinterest but I failed to pin it:

  And finally, the hit of the party wasn't even something I made, but something I bought. Remember the pink outfit I made for this baby? I packaged the shoes up in one of the stenciled boxes:

  And had some fun with the rest. First, I folded it all in tissue paper with some washi tape:

  then tucked it in the funniest box I've ever seen and wrapped that up:

  Want to see the box? =D

  I found it here (affiliate link) and it was worth every penny. The shocked expressions... priceless. =)

  So, for the first real party I've thrown or helped throw (again, sleepovers as a teen with no decorations and group-made pizza don't count) I think it turned out well. It would have been nice if I could have cleaned things up a bit and if it had been bright enough for good photos, but overall I'm really pleased with the results. And since I had several people suggest that I start a party-planning business, I think I notice the things I don't love a lot more than they did. =)

  I'll be back soon to share more information about the swaddled baby decorations and the strawberry Chex mix recipe. =)

Thanks for stopping by!

Sewing Printable

  I've been quite busy lately planning and executing a baby shower. Since this is the first real party I've ever planned (birthday parties for myself when I was a teen don't count) I went a little wild with it. I took photos, but since the shower was thrown in a very low-light environment, they are going to take a whole lot of editing to be viewable.

  In the meantime, and since I miss my sewing time, perhaps you'd like a copy of this printable I created while I was learning to use Illustrator a few months ago. PDF is available here.

  Mine is simply taped to the wall with some gold-and-white washi tape, but it would work well in a frame too. Hope you like it!

Thanks for stopping by,

Pink Eyelet Dress And 4th Birthday

  The whole time I was sewing the pink eyelet outfit for my baby niece, Booper was standing by admiring it. So for her birthday yesterday, I made her a matching one!

  There are a couple small differences, and one is the skirt... I made it as full as I could eke out of the remaining fabric in one piece, but I would have liked it to have more gathers.

  I tucked in a simple hair-bow as well, using a scrap of eyelet, some tiny pink satin ribbon and pink ric-rac, and some white satin ribbon, all tied, glued, and sewn together and glued atop a clip.

  Both were well-received. =)

  It turned out longer than I'd intended, which is probably due to a measuring error, but I still can't pinpoint where I messed up.

  I used the sloper I created in preparation for sewing her flower-girl dress last year, sewed up a couple of quickie muslins (removing the darts in the back in favor of sloped side seams), and ended up with something that fits quite well, especially considering how much this girl has grown since last year!

  The hardest part of this dress, besides hand-sewing the waist seam of the too-sturdy lining,

  was trying to match up all the seams, ribbons, and top-stitching right.

  I love the result though! And so does Booper. =)

  I don't think I mentioned before that this fabric is from Wal-mart. It's really flimsy, but once it's underlined it is plenty thick enough... as long as it doesn't get caught on anything! The only other pink eyelet I could find locally was almost $20 a yard and had a circular pattern instead of a floral one, so I didn't want that one.

  I was running low on white fabrics too... I had to use three different types on the inside of this! For the skirt and waistband, I used leftover backing from an old duvet, the same fabric I used for my triple-ruffle skirt.

For the bodice, I used scraps left from the skirt portion of the baby eyelet dress, a thick cotton. And for the underlining, the very last of my white muslin, which I seem to use a lot more than I'd expected to.

  I didn't think to pre-shrink the ribbon at the waist, because I had no problems with it in the baby version, but when I pressed the waistband on this dress the ribbon shrank a little and made the waistband bubble a little. It's not super-noticeable, but I do wish I had thought of that.

  I also made a cake for my darling daughter, who is getting so old.  I used a boxed mix with homemade frosting, and frosted it with simple rosettes.

  I first saw this technique on girl. Inspired. and I think it came out beautifully. It was really simple and quick to do (a little less than 30 minutes total frosting time, including the crumb coat), in spite of the fact that I forgot to mark my circles first and my frosting was just a tiny bit too thin. My husband was even impressed. =)

  I also gave Booper the one gift that she'd been hoping to get for months, the one that makes absolutely no sense in parched Arizona: an umbrella.

  This is a store-bought umbrella which turned out to be unfortunately flimsly (ALL of the ribs are broken, already) and dangerous (painful scratch on this child's eyelid) but which she totally loved.

  And that is how we celebrated our funny, talkative, curious, sweet, energetic little girl for her 4th birthday. She also had a lovely visit and gifts from one Grandma and Aunt, and a beautiful outfit and shoes (which she is wearing in these photos) from another Grandma and Aunt. =)

  Thanks for stopping by,