Orange and Lemon Cupcakes-When Life Hands You Lemons Part 2…

Arizona is full-on spring time!  The citrus trees’ produce is perfect for picking.  We keep going to my parents citrus orchard (really it’s just their backyard but they have plenty of trees!) and picking bags of citrus.  So I’ve been trying to make as many different citrus-y things as I can.  Did you see my orange and lemon rolls?

A fantastic recipe to bake inside of citrus is cake! I grew up doing this at camp. 

1. Cut off top of fruit.

2.  Take flesh out of fruit (then eat the flesh or juice it).

3.  Fill fruit shell halfway with cake batter.

4.  Put top/lid back on and put into muffin tin.

5.  Cook as directed for cupcakes.

6.  Either eat with a spoon, or peel the citrus skin away (kind of hard to do).

7.  Enjoy!

We used to make these at camp.  You make the batter and fill them while at home.  Then when they are filled with the cake batter you cover each fruit tightly with tin foil.  Keep these in the cooler until you are making dinner.  Throw these into the fire while cooking your dinner.  They take a little longer than cupcakes would.  I think they are best done this way.  Isn’t everything yummier when cooked by a fire?

This is a great project to do with your kids.  You cut the tops off and let your kids pull the flesh out.  We then ran all the flesh through the juicer and enjoyed our juice while the cupcakes were baking.

The cake totally takes on a citrus-y flavor that is awesome!  And they cook up super moist! 

 

We made these in oranges and lemons.  We also used chocolate and vanilla cake batter.  All 4 variations were delish!

 

Try this and let me know what you think!

 

I’m still searching for more recipes using citrus.  Please let me know and I will post a list!

 

Rebecca

Orange and Lemon Rolls-Or, When Life Hands You Lemons…

We just picked more than a bushel of oranges and lemons!  My parents have a backyard full of citrus trees.  The kids and I headed over and helped lighten the load of those poor trees’ branches.  They were gorgeously full!  I love how pretty trees are fully laden with their fruit! 

Such a great way to spend some time with my kids!  Outside, gathering fruit, helping each other….

So we’ve been busy making everything citrus that we can.  First up was lemon and orange juice.  As a crafter, I just could NOT throw all of that beautiful peel away.  So, as I juiced we cut the fruit in half and pulled the flesh out to save them as fruit cups.

Next, I added frozen dough to each one and let it rise.  I also made a citrus butter (just added lemon juice to melted butter, or orange juice for the orange rolls) to coat the tops with before I baked them up!  I just baked them like I would normal rolls.

Oh these smelled like heaven while they were baking!

 

My overall conclusion was that they were not as citrus-y tasting as I was hoping for.  Next time I will add way more lemon or orange juice to the butter!  They also needed extra cooking time because the bottoms (that were inside of the fruit cups) wanted to stay dough-y.  They were still all devoured in one day.  We love carbs in my house!

 

After we ate the rolls out of the fruit cups, I shredded the cups and added them to my compost.  So that made these oranges and lemons a 3-for-1!!  YAY!

 

I have a few more fun things that I have done with my citrus bounty.  I have many more lemons, orange, limes, and grapefruit.  I’d love to know what you have done with yours.  Do you have any great citrus recipes?

 

Rebecca

Feeling Refreshed and Recharged!!

 
Can you guess by this picture where we have been?  We’ve had this trip to Yellowstone planned for a long time!  It was heaven! 
In all we drove around 50 hours roundtrip, making our way through many places and states that we had never been to!

There was plenty of kids getting to enjoy the outdoors to the fullest…

Lots of “way too up-close-and-personal” moments with animals…

Everywhere we went there were so many different kinds of animals from bison, to coyotes, to uinta ground squirrels, to canadian geese, to elk, to moose, to bald eagles, and more!  I have children that want to grow up to be animal rescuers, so this was HUGE to them….

so many beautiful plants that do not grow around us…
 
of course the landscape and views were breathtaking, no matter which way you were looking!!…
 
We actually hiked most of the way to the bottom of that amazing waterfall.  I have 3 pretty young children and was sooo proud of them for doing this difficult and scary hike!  My son told me he was more than just scared, he was, “scared and totally fweaked out!!”  In the end, even he thought it was well worth it! 

We hiked so many trails and went on so many boardwalk paths.  Again, I’m so proud of my kids most of all because they loved it all.  It was not me forcing them into this.  It means so much to me that my children enjoy this kind of thing as much as I do. 

We are trying to visit as many national parks as we can.  They each got their Junior Ranger badges, as they always do, and we got sooo many stamps in our national parks passports!  We love all of the visitor centers and ranger stations with all the history, information, dioramas, and movies!

And we stayed in amazingly cute cabins in the midst of all that beauty!

Our road trip also included a much needed reunion with family, including cousins (and their children that I had never met) that live out of the country, and most of all my wonderful Grandma that I named my daughter after (she’s one of those Grandmas that everyone fights over who gets to name their child after!)! My whole family is super amazing!  I have the most loving and kind Aunts and Uncles, and fun cousins to boot!  I’m so thankful for these wonderful people being in my life!  So much to live up to!

This trip was also partly made with some of my siblings and their families in my car, and caravanning with us!  We have done this so many times and it is always a hoot!  Thanks to Erika’s husband who stopped at all the best places (including an amazingly cute visitor center in such a beautiful setting) and took all the rural roads that made the drive as much of the fun of the trip as the rest of it was!  If you ever need an 11 hour trip to take 16 hours, we’ve got it figured out for you! ;)  I wouldn’t have changed any of it (except maybe my poor nephew who puked, poor guy), and making it longer!  I did not want to leave my family or Yellowstone.

No other vacation or trip could have recharged me like this one did. 

What helps you to recharge and reset your priorities?

Rebecca

Great Summer Activity-Boondoggle

I grew up making things like boondoggle and friendship bracelets in the summer.  I can’t believe I haven’t done this before with my children.  I grew up calling this boondoggle.  However, it is also known as plastic lacing or scoubidou.
This has been an amazing summer for us so far!  I love having so much time with my kids.  Last night I had a house full of giggling kiddos because we had a sleepover.  As a parent, nothing is better than giggling happy children!  LOVE IT! 

Well, I busted out the boondoggle last night and was so surprised that my youngest daughter found it so easy!

Here she is working on her boondoggle creation.  I showed her how to one knot and off she went!  I was just going to have them do the simple square.  However, she saw I was turning in mine and wanted to try it.  She adapted to this with no problem as well!

Here are the four variations that were worked on last night.  I love the color combinations that they each chose!

Here is the basics of how to make boondoggle:
I think that looking at my pictures will be more helpful than my directions! ;)
Cut two long strips of the plastic, which is called gimp.  We chose lengths of 30” and our boondoggle turned out about 3”.
At the halfway point of each strip you overlap them in a +. 
Bring your gimp that was going up and bring it down.  You want to make a loop of it.  Then, take the gimp that was going down and bring it up, again making another loop.  Hold the end that’s at top with your pointer finger and the end that’s now on the bottom with your thumb.  This frees up your other hand to do the next steps.  Refer to the picture above.

Now you will move your sides to the opposite side.  You are going to weave your sides through your loops going over the first loop and under the second one.  This is the same on both sides.  Again refer to the picture above.

Now you can let go of your gimp and pull the knot tight.  I pull two strands in one hand and two in the other.  Then, I alternate the two strands that each hand is holding and pull again.  You want this knot tight. 
Repeat these steps over and over again to finish the whole project up.  For a uniform look make sure to keep your gimp straight and don’t let it have a twist in it.  Also make sure to pull all the knots uniformly tight.  You will see if one section was not pulled as tight as the others.  I have heard you can pull too tight on this plastic and it will break.  However, I haven’t had a problem with this.
    
Are you ready for a variation?  Lets do the spiral now!
You are going to do the same basic thing of making two loops and then weaving in the side loops.  However, instead of making the top (right) loop come straight down and the bottom (left) loop go straight up you are going to make the loops diagonally. 
See the top gimp is to the right of the one going down?  Well when you form the loop bring the gimp to the left of the bottom gimp.

Next, you will take your bottom gimp that was on the left of the top one and when you bring it up to make your second loop you are going to cross diagonally over and to the right of your top gimp. 
Notice they aren’t crossing each other.

You will weave your side weaves the same way you made your top and bottom loops. 
Your gimp on the right side is below the left gimp.  So you will weave your right gimp over and under the loops, but you will want your gimp to end up above the left gimp.  See the above picture.

Now you will take your left gimp and weave it over and under the loops, but you will want your gimp to end up below your right gimp.  See the above picture.
Finish off by pulling this knot tight as you did with the straight square knot.  If you continue this you will have created a spiral design.  You can switch back and forth between knots in your design for whatever look you want to achieve.
     
Here are our two finished boondoggles so far!  However, as I’m typing this up the other two are being finished up and we are starting up some harder designs.  There are tons of different knots out there to try.  I looked through a bunch of kits at the stores and really did not care for their directions.  The best directions for more complicated knots that I have found is at Boondoggleman.   His site has wonderful directions with pictures and a large variety of knots to try!


How cute are they?  My kids love putting things like this on their backpacks so I’m sure this is where they will end up.  We will be going on a big (for us) vacation this summer with the kids (4 days in the car) and I had planned on breaking out the boondoggle for our road trip.  However, I’m so glad that I broke this out earlier as these giggly kids just loved it!  Now I wont be trying to explain how to do this at rest stops on the road!  I’m sure we will come home with lots more of these to show everyone!
I told a few friends that we were making boondoggle and they had never heard of it.  Have you?  I thought everyone grew up doing this at summer camp!  I’d love to hear everyone else’s ideas of if they did this or what are the other activities that they did as a child, during the summers, to keep them occupied!

This was a must do summer activity for us!  All five children from ages 5-12 gave it a thumbs up! ;)

Rebecca

Linking to the following parties:  Life as Lori, KoJo Designs, Fingerprints on the Fridge, ABC and 123,

Old Fashioned Summer Carnival-Great for 4th of July (or 24th of July)

Here are some great activities to make/do at your Fourth of July celebrations this weekend. 

We always grew up having an amazing Old Fashioned 24th of July celebration with our family (this is a Utah/Mormon holiday).  It was truly amazing.  So, last year we put together our own carnival, for our children.
I think you can figure out how to make each of these activities, but incase you can’t you can find tutorials for all of them, here!  This is a post about our carnival last year.
The above picture is a Water Bottle Bowling Game.  It has a super cute placemat that you have to go check out!


Fun action shot of my Nephew throwing the dart at the balloons!  This is a simple game to put together that I love the look of! 

Bean Bag Toss Game.  With homemade beanbags that each have a patriotic word embroidered onto them!  The game itself is made from a box!  Are you getting that we wanted the games to be part of the decoration?
Homemade Rubber Band Shooters!  Remember those from your childhood?  They are super easy to make!   Katrina made enough of these for each cousin to have one!  They are so much fun!  We just shot empty cans and bottles with them.
How about some Cork Guns!  These are made out of wood, pvc pipe, string, and a cork!

Tin Can Stompers are another super easy yet effective activity!
         
Tin Can Knock Down!  We used a ball that you get wet, just to keep water flying around the whole yard!

Hope this gives you some inspiration for old fashioned carnival games you can make yourself, from mostly things that you already have around the house!

Rebecca

Need A Summer Boredom Buster? Get Out Your Cups!

Sometimes we just need to get creative with what we have.  No scissors, glue, paint, or sewing involved and yet this activity was so much fun and kept my kids busy for hours!

I don’t use disposable dishes, but I do have stacks of cups and plates on hand in the craft room.  They are great for so many things.  This time we drew pictures with them.  Pretty obvious that this is a stick figure, a star, and a heart?

Next up is a dog chasing a cat!

And then we just built with them!  They also made a tower with them that was taller than me -though I’m not that tall so maybe that’s not saying much ;)

What quick and easy summer boredom busters do you do?
Rebecca

A Beary Fun Summer Cake

This was the cake at my Son’s last day of school party! 
Look closely at the details as they are so genious!

Teddy Grahams with icing swimsuits!  Every swimsuit is different.  They are so darling!  Beach towels out of rainbow sour candy!  Lifesaver circle floaties!  Gumball balls (it’s a stretch, I know!). 

Starburst lounge chairs.  I’ve made things out of starburst before.  Just heat it for a few seconds in the microwave and it becomes quite pliable and you can mold it into whatever shape you need.  I’ve even rolled it out and cut shapes out of it before.

The slide and stairs are made out of pretzels, an upside down ice cream cone, fruit by the foot, and more icing!

One of my Son’s wonderful teachers made up darling cakes for all of their parties this last year.  This was the cake she made for their summer party!  I think she did an amazing job all year long, but this one really takes the cake!  (Sorry I couldn’t help it). 

This got me thinking about all the amazing teachers my children have had!  You know the ones, the ones that go above and beyond?!  This year we were lucky and had amazing teachers like the one who made all these delightful and fun cakes for my Son’s class the whole year!  They could have just bought a sheet cake (or none at all).  But instead this teacher went above and beyond to add that extra touch to my Son’s parties.  It is the extra touches like this that will help my children to have magical childhoods. 

What experiences have you had with teachers like this?

Rebecca

Starbucks is my new best friend-Coffee Grounds For The Garden

I have always thought to myself that I needed to go to a coffee house and ask for their used coffee grounds (don’t use new as they are too acidic) for my compost.  However, I am not a coffee drinker.  So, I always forget to do this (and don’t have any of my own).
Today I happen to be at Starbucks for a snack.  I was SO excited when they had an awesome bucket out front that had these large bags of used coffee grounds, already ready to go.  They even put them into the empty coffee grounds bags so there is no additional packaging other than the sticker to seal it.  I always think about stuff like extra packaging for things.  Anyways, these bags of used coffee grounds are free and now super convenient!  I could have kissed the woman behind the counter when I saw this!
 
I am no composting master and have never used these before in my compost.  However, the sticker from starbucks had great information about it.  When I got home with my bag of coffee grounds I did a bit more research about using this. 

*In my research I also found coffee grounds are a great way to organically take care of slugs, ants, and to keep cats from using your garden as their toilet.

So, I decided to use it straight in my garden first.  The kids loved helping me spread it into the garden and it was a great way to reinforce that plants need food and water.  Then, I dumped the rest of it in my compost.  I also added some ash, to the compost, that I have from my patio fireplace (all wood burning).  I have always heard about adding this as well. 

I’m curious to know if other people have used either coffee grounds or ash and what their results/opinions have been!!!

Rebecca
Happy gardening and composting! 

Make Your own Zucchini Horn

Yes, you can make music from a zucchini stem, or Zucchini Horn!  These amazing Zucchini Horns actually blow pretty loud.  My Brother-In-Law showed me this, this summer and I think it is the coolest thing! 

It reminds me of making noise from a grass blade.  Anyone else do that in their childhood?

I love having my kids in the garden with me.  Anything like this that I can do, to help them enjoy it even more, is frosting on the cake to me!  Actually though, this gets me pretty excited too!

My sister’s garden is growing so well!  I have been reaping the benefits of her garden all summer!  This zucchini is about 15 inches long! 

They are finding their zucchini is wanting to take over their garden box (don’t they always take over!?).  So, they have to keep cutting back their zucchini foliage.  I was lucky enough to be over when they were doing this and my Brother-In-Law showed me this super cool activity to do before adding those zucchini leaves to the compost.

You want to cut the whole length of the zucchini leaf off, including the stem, down to the vine.

Then, you are going to cut the leaf off of the stem.  Make sure to get pretty close to the leaf, as marked on the above picture. 

The zucchini leaf’s stem is hollow between those two parts.  However, you want to make sure you cut close enough to the leaf that the stem part, at the mouthpiece, is solid and not hollow. 

Here is your cut stem.  This is the horn.  You will now need to do 2 things.
First, cut about 3/4” slit down the center of the mouthpiece side, which is the side that was attached to the leaf.   If you look closely at the picture I marked where you slit it.

Next, you want to scrape the outside of the mouthpiece about 2 inches down, on the outside of the stem.  This is because you will be inserting this into your mouth and it is kind of prickly if you don’t scrape off the bumpy prickles.

We actually used a kitchen knife to do all this cutting and scraping.

Next, you put the mouthpiece into your mouth.  You have to put more of it into your mouth then the length that you slit. 

Now, blow.

I’m telling you.  This is the coolest thing ever!  The mouthpiece vibrating from the slit is what makes the noise. 

These zucchini horns only work for a few hours as they don’t work once they start wilting and go soft.

Also, as my children played with it they would close the slit up and it wouldn’t work.  So, I would just kind of push open the slit a little and then it would work again.  I didn’t have this problem when I did it, so I think it was probably my son who tends to bite down on things. ;)
If your first one doesn’t work, practice with how you are cutting it.  My Sister’s horns didn’t work.  She would either cut too far away from the stem, or too long of a slit.  My Brother-In-Law’s worked every time!

Rebecca

I’d love to hear from anyone that does this!