February Fun

I can't believe February came and went already. While my postings were limited, our activities were not. We continued to have Princess Kaitlyn's Kitchen and also some other fun events to celebrate Valentine's day and birthday's for several friends.

Here Princess Kaitlyn is making chocolate peanut butter balls dipped in sprinkles as Valentine's for her classmates and some friends. She's also modeling her chef hat and PK apron for everyone to see.

Princess Kaitlyn is rolling the peanut butter filling to make the balls before we dip it in chocolate.
Check out that sly little smile...I wonder if one of those peanut butter balls disappeared into her tummy?
After we dipped the peanut butter balls in chocolate, Princess Kaitlyn covered them with sprinkles.
Princess Kaitlyn places her chocolate peanut butter balls in mini cupcake wrappers so we can package them up for friends and classmates.

The place where Kaitlyn takes dance class had a fundraiser Valentine Daddy-Daughter dance. Kaitlyn and daddy attended together. Before the dance, daddy brought Kaitlyn home a flower for Valentine's day. She loved it!
They had a wonderful time at the dance and finished it off with a cookie sandwich. It was so big that Kaitlyn actually brought some home. Shocker - we ended up throwing the rest away because Kaitlyn didn't want it!
A friend's birthday party. These are classmates of Kaitlyn's and the birthday girl's daddy is a fellow wolverine!!
Kaitlyn and the birthday girl at the table. Prior to eating pizza and cake, the kids played in a bounce house arena to burn off some energy.
Happy Birthday!!!
We had a couple of other birthday parties for friends, but I don't have any pictures from those. Regardless, Kaitlyn had lots of fun at each of them.

On Valentine's day, Kaitlyn had a friend over to decorate Valentine's cookies for family. I think both girls had lots of fun and enjoyed eating the fruits of their labor too!
Kaitlyn making a cookie for daddy. She had to be sure it had lots of sprinkles on it.
Taylor saying cheese for the camera in between cookies.
Our decorating set up for cookies below:
Madelyn showing off her spiky hair. It's so cute!!


PKK storyline for the banana bread... Princess Kaitlyn and Cookie PiePea the bear were playing adventure tag in the enchanted forest. Princess Kaitlyn climbed a tree in an effort to escape getting tagged from Cookie Piepea. Upon climbing super high, Princess Kaitlyn met a scared spider monkey. He got lost and couldn't find his troop. The monkey, Cagadadayga (how am I going to remember all these names!) explained to Kaitlyn that he got separated from his troop when they were racing through the trees during playtime. Cagadadayga looked tired and hungry, so Princess Kaitlyn suggested he 'hang out' with her friend Cookie Piepea. She told the two of them that she would be back in a jiffy. Princess Kaitlyn ran back to the castle, whipped up some banana bread (since monkey's like bananas) and hustled back to the trees where she left Cookie PiePea and Cagadadayga. She shared the bread with her friends. Shortly after, they heard Cagadadayga's troop hollering for him. Cagadadayga gave Cookie PiePea and Princess Kaitlyn big hugs and promised to visit them and swung off to meet up with is troop.


Princess Kaitlyn starts mixing ingredients to make banana bread. Yum!!
She carefully monitors the creaminess of the fats to see if we can add our dry ingredients.
Time to add the dry ingredients to the fats and make sure they mix together well.


Princess Kaitlyn shaking the pan to release any air bubbles. Mommy tries to teach her well.
Is it time to eat the bread yet?

I love it mommy and I refuse to give you a good smile anymore. :-)


Daddy with his girls - ahhh!!!
Hope you enjoyed some of February's happenings in our household.

PKK: Valentine Day Themes

I fell behind in January on Princess Kaitlyn's Kitchen posting. While we still had our stories and kitchen time, here is an update of a few things that we did. Mommy started a chemistry class, so much of my free time is now taken with studying. At least I know what sulfites in wine are now!

My ballerina with a tutu that she made during a craft day with mommy.
Princess Kaitlyn's kitchen making gummy hearts. We shared these with classmates in early February.

Madelyn No Likey...

So, I made Madelyn green & yellow beans (microwaved & pureed) and fresh broccoli (steamed and pureed) as new vegetables to try. I believe this is a photo of her trying the beans. As you can see, she wasn't a fan.



She's one smart kiddo because after about four bites, she started pursing her lips together so I could not get the spoon in her mouth. The airplane trick didn't work either. We tried a little big sister distraction, but she caught onto that as well.


I usually don't microwave the veggies, so I naturally thought she didn't like the taste because I microwaved the green and yellow beans. However, given that her reaction to broccoli was the same, it's obviously a texture and/or taste issue. At least she loves avocado and sweet potatoes and likes asparagus and peas. We'll give regular steamed beans a go in another week or two.

Fun pics

Today was princess day at school. Kaitlyn chose to dress as Belle. It's rather cold, so we had to wear pink pants underneath - tights just wouldn't do.

Last week while daddy was gone, Kaitlyn and mommy made a tutu. Kaitlyn wore it to ballet class that afternoon.


Since we don't get to see Aunt Niki enough, mommy finally caved and took Kaitlyn to get her hair trimmed. Ms. Jessica is great with kiddos and Kaitlyn did awesome. It helped that Max and Ruby was on t.v. during the haircut.




Kaitlyn combing out her hair after the trim - we only took off two inches.

Another craft Kaitlyn glued (with a little help from mommy gluing).
Kaitlyn and her daddy headed to see Tangled. Unfortunately, daddy reported that Kaitlyn spent a third of the movie in the hallway because of scary or 'not nice' parts in the movie. Granted, Kaitlyn is already asking to go back, so she at least thinks of her movie experience fondly. Daddy offers other dads this advice... when you take your kid to his/her first movie - sit on the aisle!

PKK: January Fun

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Princess Kaitlyn. She lived in a beautiful castle by an enchanted forest, a magical lake, and a fantastically fun playground.

One day, she saw a swarm of fireflies off in the distance while singing and dancing with the boisterous butterflies near dusk. Princess Kaitlyn told the butterflies that she wanted to go meet the fireflies. The butterflies told her that they lived in a special part of the forest where a mirror of silk covered the ground to reflect the light when the fireflies lit up at night. It was a special light show in the enchanted forest for the fireflies. Given the delicate nature of the silk ground covering, only animals, insects or people that can fly could visit the fireflies.



The boisterous butterflies saw how sad Princess Kaitlyn looked when they told her about the flying requirement to meet the fireflies. So, they decided to help her out. The butterflies told Princess Kaitlyn how to make a special concoction so that her nose would light up (like Rudolph) and she would grow wings to fly and meet the fireflies. She had to mix cherries in a special red elixir and mandarin oranges in a sweet syrup. Upon eating this concoction, Princess Kaitlyn would be able to fly to fireflies and swirl around in the air with them making streams of light at dusk and long into the night.

So, Princess Kaitlyn saw mommy updating this story. When I recounted it for her, she informed me that I had the story wrong and that she wanted to fly to meet the flying lion and sore through the enchanted forest with her do loop d' loops, dives and swirls in the sky. Oops...I get all these stories mixed up!

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This is a passion cake that we made from a Kids Nutritious & Healthy Cookbook for another Princess Kaitlyn's Kitchen. The ingredients were quite fun (turbinado sugar, whole wheat flour, shredded carrots and pumpkin pie spice) and it turned out to be a nice, not overly sweet, bread like cake. It had a light cream cheese icing that went on top. Pa Mark and I enjoyed it more than daddy and Kaitlyn. Granted this poor cake had to compete with Dobash cake from St. Louis, which Kaitlyn declared as her favorite.

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We invited some friends over for dinner and the girls made their own personal pizzas. They rolled out the dough, put on the sauce, added cheese and toppings. It was fun to watch them make it and enjoy eating it. The parents dined on crab cakes instead - yum!

Good out of not so good

I found a recipe for a Seven-Layer Greek Dip. It had hummus, cream cheese with garlic, dill and lemon juice, cucumbers, tomatoes, kalamata olives, green onions, feta cheese and parsley in it. At first read, it sounded quite tasty. However, upon making it and tasting it, we decided it did not quench our foodie thirst. Instead, we found ourselves pining for some Seven-layer Mexican dip - now that stuff is good!

One good thing came out of the recipe...the cream cheese mixture (the bottom layer) would work quite well as a vegetable dip. While I am typing the ingredient list with cream cheese, I wonder if you could cut the fat/calories by substituting some of the cream cheese with greek yogurt. Here is our recipe:

• 1 pkg. cream cheese, softened (you can use light or fat free if you wish)
• 1-2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 - 2 tsp. dill weed
• 2 tsp. lemon juice (fresh squeezed preferred)

Using a stand mixer or food processor, combine the cream cheese, minced garlic, dill weed and lemon juice. Beat until light in color and until it has the 'whipped' texture - okay fluffy. Allow to chill for an hour or more so the flavors can come together. Bon apetite!

PKK: Apple Stepping Stones

Welcome to Princess Kaitlyn's Kitchen! But first look at me, I'm sitting!!

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Princess Kaitlyn. She lived in a beautiful castle by an enchanted forest, a magical lake and a fantastically fun playground. One day Princess Kaitlyn ran through the castle grounds to the fantastically fun playground when she stopped dead in her tracks. In front of her stood an EMPTY playground!


Instead of all the slides, monkey bars, rock climbing wall, and swings, stood green and red circles. They looked like gigantic stepping stones. She noticed the not-so nice, slithery snack Serano slowing moving around the playground.

Princess Kaitlyn walked over to Serano and asked him what happened to all her playground equipment. He explained that it was a game and that she had to use the red and green stepping stones to build a path from one side of the playground to the other. She could use mud, rocks, feathers or whatever she needed to build her path. Once she made it across the stepping stones, Serano would return the playground to it's fantastically fun state.


So, Princess Kaitlyn started creating a path to get across the super sad playground landscape. She added some mud onto a green disk with some rocks to give her traction. Then she added mud and feathers to the red disk to cushion her jump onto it. She continued this pattern on each green and red stepping stone until she made it across. When she reached the other side, she looked at Serano with her hands on her hips and big wide eyes waiting for him to return her playground back to normal. He lived up to his end of the deal and with a twirl of his slithery tail, a twist of his snake noggin and two blinks of his yellow eyes, the fantastically fun playground returned.



Princess Kaitlyn's Stepping Stone Apple Snacks

Ingredients

• 1 green apple
• 1 red apple
• peanut butter
• chocolate chips
• caramel sauce
• coconut
• dried cherries or cranberries (optional)

Instructions

Princess Kaitlyn's mommy sliced the apples into thin 'stepping stones' for Princess Kaitlyn to decorate. She decided to spread peanut butter and chocolate chips on the green granny smith apples and caramel and coconut on the red apple. We adapted this recipe from a kid friendly cookbook and it also recommends dried fruit and oatmeal as a potential topping.

The great part about this is that despite the sweet toppings, Princess Kaitlyn opted for the plain apple in the end.