Featured on Friday: Tatiana

Happy Friday everyone!  Tatiana is a good friend of mine and is supermom to two little cuties, Walter and George.  Today she is sharing  a fall treat...don't you just love this time of year?!
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Hello Everyday Easy Readers!!!

 Autumn is in the air!!!!  This is my favorite time of the year.... bon fires, walks in the park, beautiful crafts, and APPLES!!!  It has been a family tradition to go apple picking in Wisconsin since I was a little girl.  My favorite part is all of the wonderful recipes that are made in the days that follow a visit to the orchard!  So, I thought I would pass along one of my favorite recipes involving apples (whether they are fresh from the orchard or fresh from the produce section)!

Apple Spice Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

   .   2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

   .   2 teaspoons baking soda

   .    1-2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (depending on your taste)

   .   1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

   .   1 teaspoon salt

   .   8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

   .   2 cups sugar

   .   2 large eggs

   .   1 teaspoon vanilla extract

 .  5-6 Apples, shredded (I love Gala or Macintosh)

Preheat oven to 350 Degrees

1.)  Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, & salt in a medium bowl, set aside.

2.)  Beat butter and sugar in a mixer on medium speed for 3-5 minutes, until light and fluffy.  Add eggs, on at a time, and vanilla.

3.)  Add apples to mixer and mix on low speed until just combined.

4.)  Add flour mixture in 3 parts, on low, until well combined.

5.)  Pour halfway up into a paper-lined cupcake pan.

6.)  Bake 18-20 minutes, turning halfway, until tops are golden brown and springy.  

7.)  Once completely cooled, frost.

Frosting

1 8 ounce package of cream cheese

1 stick of butter, softened

4 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon vanilla

1.)  Beat butter and cream cheese in a mixer on medium-high speed for 3 minutes.

2.)  Add vanilla, combine

3.)  Add sugar, one cup at a time

4.)  Frost!!  I use a pasty bag, but a knife works as well:)

I hope that everyone enjoys these!!!  They are a BIG hit in our house and my boys even love them without the frosting!!!

Happy Autumn,

Tatiana

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 Thanks for sharing Tat! These look amazing!

White Trash Snack Mix

I mentioned in my birthday party post that I made White Trash Snack Mix for party favors.  Let this be your warning:  This stuff is super addictive!  Its called White Trash because you take whatever you have in your pantry and coat it in white chocolate.  But, if you want a little more guidance, this is the recipe I followed:

Here's what you need:



1 bag mini pretzels- I only used half a bag, but totally could have done a full bag
5 cups Cheerios
5 cups Corn Chex
2 cups Salted Peanuts
1 pound M&M's
2 bags vanilla chips
3 Tbsp vegetable oil

Here's what you do:

Combine the first 5 ingredients in a large bowl.
Melt vanilla chips and vegetable oil.  Stir until smooth.
Coat the dry ingredients with the melty goodness.
Lay on wax paper lined cookie sheets to cool.
When cool, break apart and store in an airtight container.

Here is a couple of tips.  I didn't have a big enough bowl, so I divided the dry ingredients into 2 gallon sized zip lock bags.  If you do this, make sure the bags are well sealed before you start shaking them up.  And if for some reason you did not follow that last piece of advice and your bag opens mid shake and you end up with white chocolate coated cereal all over the kitchen, clean it up immediately!!!  Otherwise it will harden to your counters, floor, etc and it will be much more difficult to clean up.  Trust me.

Enjoy, it won't last too long!!!

1st Birthday Party

This past Saturday we celebrated Baby K's first birthday with a party at our house.  I wanted to keep it simple, so we celebrated with our immediate family.  I also did not have a ton of money to spend, so I made the decorations myself.

This is the cake table:

I used my Silhouette to make the pennant style banner and hung it on white yarn.

I decided to go with cupcakes and a smash cake.  I like how they look on the tiered cake plate.  I wasn't too happy with the cupcakes and cake from the grocery store bakery though.  I had asked for pink icing and they gave me white with a little bit of pink airbrushed on.  Oh well, now I know for next year!  I won the cupcake toppers from Little Monster Hugs through a blog giveaway.

The favor bag toppers were inspired by several pins I had made on Pinterest.  They were actually pretty easy.  I cut out a bracket/frame shape on the Silhouette, folded it in half and then added layered circles for eyes and a folded diamond for a beak.  Inside the bags was this delicious concoction I discovered known as White Trash.  This stuff is seriously addictive!

A little tip for balloons.  I didn't want to pay $1.00 each for balloon weights, so I wrapped cans of soup in tissue paper and tied it off with curling ribbon and made my own.

I used Picnik to print the month (1 month, 2 months, etc) on her monthly pictures and printed them out for a display.  I used yarn and clothes pins to hang them across the mantle.  Everyone loved seeing how much she has changed over the past year.  I apologize for the quality of these photos.

And finally a picture of the birthday girl in all of her cake and frosting glory.

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!!!

Linked at:

Party Invitations

Well, the invitations for Baby K's (soon to be Toddler K????) birthday party went out, so I wanted to share them with everyone.  Sticking with my owl theme, I found a pattern to use with my Silhouette.  I love how they turned out!

For the information on the inside, I typed it all out in Microsoft Word and then trimmed the paper down to fit inside.

I also wanted to share these great downloads I found on the Mead website.  Perfect for organizing and list making!  I have been using the meal planning sheet and will be using the party planning sheet as well.

Featured on Friday: Margaret

A couple of weekends ago I got together with my very best girlfriends for a bachelorette party at my friend Margaret's home.  It was an amazing weekend of boating, swimming, chatting - and of course, eating.  Margaret makes a mean guacamole...you would be shocked to know how many bags of tortilla chips we went through that weekend!  This week Margaret is sharing her popular recipe with you!
 
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Guacamole - Food of the Gods

I don't know when it happened, but somewhere along the line I became addicted to guacamole. For real. Addicted. It was probably when I was in Costa Rica where the avocados are grown locally and are perfect nearly all year round. My family and I enjoyed this treat daily so I became rather skilled at mixing it up. The trick is to use fresh ingredients and avocados that are just right (they should have some give to them when you give them a light squeeze, but should not be mooshy. When you open them up they'll be a beautiful bright green with a creamy texture.) Today I am excited to share this recipe with Everyday Easy readers and hope you enjoy it as much as I do! 

Guacamole: 

3-4 avocados, diced 

Juice of one lime (MUST be fresh) 

Half of a small red onion, diced  

Bunch of fresh cilantro, chopped 

One clove of garlic, minced 

Hot sauce, as much as you dare! 

Salt to taste 

Mix up and dig in immediately with tortilla chips or veggies like celery or red peppers. You can also change up this recipe by adding diced tomatoes or even fruit, like mangos or pineapple - it gives it a great tropical zing! 

 Elise from Romantic Hippie sampling the guac!

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Delish!  Happy weekend everyone!

Layered Breakfast Casserole

One day last week I went to the store to get the essentials and thought I needed eggs...turns out when I got home I already had a dozen.  Not wanting anything to go to waste, I made this breakfast casserole for dinner to use some of them up!  My hubs looooves this casserole, and he really loves breakfast for dinner.

Layered Breakfast Casserole 

What you need:

7 eggs

1 cup milk

1-1 and 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1-1 and 1/2 cups shredded Colby jack cheese

1 pound sausage

10 frozen hash browns (patties)

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground mustard

What you do:

1.       Heat oven to 350 degrees.

2.       Brown and drain sausage.

3.       Place thawed hash browns in a single layer in a greased 9X13 baking dish.

4.       Over the hash browns, layer cheddar cheese, sausage, and Colby jack cheese. 

5.       In a bowl, beat eggs, milk, salt and mustard. Pour over cheese. 

6.       Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour.

7.     Uncover; bake 15 minutes longer or until edges are golden brown and knife inserted near the center comes out clean.

 I like to think of this as sort of a "base" recipe - you can get creative and add whatever you want!  Try diced tomatoes, onion, and peppers for a little kick, or add some of your favorite salsa!  You can also substitute the sausage and use bacon or ham.  Turn it into a breakfast sammie with toast or a biscuit - yummmm.  This refrigerates well and makes great leftovers for breakfast or lunch the next day!    

Birthday Wreath!

Well - that was an unexpected break!  Missed you all.  Things got extra busy with the start of school and by the time I would actually sit down in the evening...well, I was done.  I'm happy to say that I have an awesome group of kids and work is going really well!  Nothing better than loving what you do all day!

That being said - my first graders and I will be celebrating our first birthday of the year tomorrow! I love love love birthdays, and when I saw this great wreath idea via pinterest I knew it would be a hit with the kids.

What you need:
wreath form (straw - keep it wrapped)
balloons (I used big and small)
floral pins
ribbon

I decided to wrap my wreath in yellow ribbon so I would not have to TOTALLY cover the wreath (I got this project done in about an hour - I think without the ribbon it would have taken a lot longer!)

Simply pin the balloons on using floral pins.  I roughly followed a pattern - pinning on a big balloon and little balloon together, then 3 little ones, then repeated. 

Here is the finished product:

How fun is that?!  I only had to buy the balloons as I had everything else on hand so this project was under $3!  This will be really fun to hang outside our classroom door on birthday celebration days!