The Right Motivation!

With Eli it was a beaded necklace, but with the Diva we could not find anything that would motivate that girl to walk.  That is until tonight, who knew roasted pumpkin seeds would get that girl to walk! 

Dream lights

Nanny and Pop Po got the kids Dream Lights (or the Target equivalent) for their birthday.  I think they like them!

These things are awesome!  Eli has asked to go to bed, he even doesn't want books he just wants to go to bed to look at his dream light.

The car

Grandma and Pops got the Diva a car for her 1st birthday (and she thought she had to wait till she was 16!).  They got the Diva a car for her birthday because they gave her cousin, Aaron, a car for his birthday and she loved his so much she kept pushing him off his car so she could ride.

Since the Diva is not very tall she has a hard time pushing herself on the car so we have to push her around and after awhile that starts to hurt your back.  We found out a neat trick though, Eli thinks it's fun to push his sister around on the car!

Eli and the Diva discovered that the dinning room table made the perfect garage.

Sweet siblings!

road block

Love these kids!

Fall Project #2

Great Pumpkin Fun Run

Jealousy

Is it normal to be Jealous of your 1 year old's shoe collection?  Do to such sweet friends, (and a daughter with really small feet), the Diva has more shoes than a grown woman.

The Play House

Our sweet friends the Ouchleys gave the kids a really cool play house for their birthday.  

Eli started playing with the house as soon as he got up in the morning.

Then the Diva got up and the playing continued.

These 2 had the best time playing in the house and I had to drag them away for breakfast.

After nap Eli decided we need to start coloring the house in.

The Diva got into the coloring action too (she didn't eat one crayon!)

Eli was so proud of his coloring, he is really getting better!

Thank you so much Hudson for the really cool gift, we are so blessed to have you as a friend!

Halloween Project #8

Our last Halloween Project for the year was another cooking adventure.  This one included the Diva which made things all the more interesting.  We decided to try our hands at making candy corn cheese cake mousse.  

1st we got out all our ingredients,

Next give the Diva something to play with while the boy dumps the cream cheese into the mixer.  Make sure you forget to take the cream cheese out of the refrigerator that morning so that it only has 1 hour to come to room temperature before you mix so that there are a lot of little cream cheese clumps in your mousse.

next dump the  sugar and milk in with the cream cheese, mix well.

After the milk help the boy dump in the vanilla in the bowl.

after it is all mixed up give your 1 year old a glass bowl and food coloring to play with while the boy very slowly spoons in cool whip.  I then folded the whip cream into the cream cheese mixture.

next split the mousse into 3 bowls and wrangle the food coloring from the Diva.

make one bowl orange, one yellow and leave one white.  Eli loved that I let him put the food coloring in and enjoyed watching it change from white to yellow and orange.,

Then scoop the mousse into see through cups.  The only glasses that we had to see through were my crystal hot chocolate mugs.  Might not be the smartest thing to do with small children, oh well, it's all about the presentation (even though I didn't do a great job spooning the mixture in the glass)

Next take a magic pop break because cooking is hard work (even though they both liked the bowls clean)

Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving garnish with a candy cone.  There are only 3 because the Diva decided she was to busy for dessert that night.

Let daddy have the 1st bite to see how we did.

Strange man.

She wanted to just check everything out.

Lastly have your main cook eat the candy corn off the mousse then take one bite and declare that he doesn't like it!  Oh well, at least my crystal mugs survived and we had fun making it!

This is what it is suppose to look like. (did we nail it?)

Candy Corn Cheesecake Mousse

This recipe yields a sweet and fluffy, light cream cheese flavored dessert.

1 package (8 oz.) cream cheese

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/4 cup milk or cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 small container (8 oz.) Cool Whip, thawed

orange and yellow food color

candy corn (for garnish)

Directions ~

Beat cream cheese in the bowl of an electric mixer until fully smooth.  Slowly add powdered sugar, then milk (or cream).  Add vanilla.  Continue mixing.  Beat about 1 minute on medium to medium-high speed.  Fold cool whip into cream cheese mixture, and stir until fully combined.

Scoop about 1/3 of the Cheesecake Mousse into a bowl, and color orange.  Color another third of the mixture yellow.  Leave the remaining third white.  One color at a time (starting with yellow), scoop mixture into a piping bag or large ziplock bag, and squeeze a layer of the Cheesecake Mousse into small dessert dishes of your choice.  Repeat with orange and then white Mousse.

Refrigerate 30 minutes (or up to 1 day) before serving.  Garnish with candy corn if desired.

Recipe yields 4 moderate servings or 6-8 mini servings.

Recipe Source:  Glorious Treats