Break Out the Mos Eisley Canned Tuna! It's Star Wars Day Food!

A few days ago, knowing that May was fast-approaching, I asked my Facebook friends for ideas of what to serve my Star Wars-loving children on Star Wars Day (May the 4th). A very talented and awesome friend went to town with some amazing puns and got so into it she lost some sleep over it. Since lots of her friends wanted a way to pin her incredible list of ideas, I volunteered to post this absolutely amazing list on my blog so that many more people could partake of her exhaustive list.  So without further ado, here is the list of Star Wars food options - even lots of ethnic options! - to make all your May the 4th dreams come true (as posted to Facebook by the incredible Margaret Peterson):

"For all of your May the Fourth (Star Wars Day) dining needs:

If you’re in the mood for Italian there are many Wampas-tas to choose from: Boba Fetticinni, Obi-Wan Canolli, or Bow-tie Fighters. Or maybe you’d prefer Pizza the Hut*, Rey-sotto, or Poe-lenta.

French maybe? Try DeathStarGo, Coq au Finn, RataR2Dtouille, Princess Souffléia, Lardon Calrissian, Wilhuff Tartine, Cheese Fondooku, Macaron Solo, BouillaRebelBase, or Emperor PalpaGratin.

How about Indian? Darth Vada, Darth Dahl, Obi-wan Tandoori, Padmé A-masala, Laddu Calrissian, Rose Tikka, Lamb Finn-daloo, SaMos(Eisley)as, Cucumber Rey-ta, Padowan Papadum, Princess Lassi, Saag Poe-neer, aLuke Gobi, and Naan Solo (or maybe Alder-naan) are all good choices.

Would you rather eat Mexican? Try the Huevos Kylo Rencharros, Darth Verde, Maize Kanata, Rose Taco, Flan Solo*, Admiral Ackbar-itto, Barbacoa Fett, Poe-zole, Chile Rey-leno, EnchiLeia, Dulce de Luke, Darth Molé, Chewie-changa, Lando Chorizo-an, and EmpanYodas. Or go Tex-Mex with Fritos Stormscoopers and Seven-Leia Dip*.

Would Chinese hit the spot? WonTaunTauns (also known as Padowontons* or Obi-Wanton Kanobi), C3POrange Chicken, Rey-king Duck, Egg Foo Yung Padowan, ChewBakChoi, Mon Mothma-po-do-fu, Szechuan Solo, Fortune Wookies, Kung Poe Chicken, and Shark Finn Soup are all great dishes to make in your E-wok.

Or maybe Japanese food like Rey-men noodles, Supreme Leader Poke, Bento Solo, YakiYoda noodles, Udon Jinn, a Tatuna-ine Roll, General Leia Onigiri, Katsu Ren, or Tem-Poe-ra is more your style.

What if it’s just all Greek to you? Then try Tzatziki-Gon Jinn, Han-akopita, Count Dooku-scous, Hummus Eisley, Souv-Luke-i, Boba Ganoush, Philo Ren, Padmé Ama-dolma, Mox Moussakanata, and some Chewbaklava for dessert.

But what if you just want to eat at a good old American Diner? Start with some Chicken Finn-gers and Mashed Poe-tatoes. Or maybe you’d rather have X-chicken-wing fighters and some Fry Fighters. Admiral AckBar-B-Que, Darth Taters, Hoth Dogs, or an R2-DTuna Melt made with Mos Eisley Canned-tuna. Order an Iceberg Wedge Antilles Salad, Yodagurt, Endor-itos, or Watto-melon on the side. On the light side, try a Bagel-bah with Lox Kanata. Wash it all down with a Captain Fanta, Yoda Pop, Qui-Gon Jinn and Tonic, or Iced Emperor Palpa-tea. And for dessert, choose from Banantha Cream Pie or a big slice of Aunt Baru-barb pie.

Hope that got some Endor-phins flowing!

(most of these are from my demented brain, but the * ones were shamelessly stolen from other people, but I can't remember where I saw them- obviously, there are many people on the internet who have also independently come up with many of the other ones that I think are my creation, so I'm happy to be one of the great minds that thinks like you if I've inadvertently stolen them - MP)"

Some more random ones that I came up with:
Aunt Beru-berries, BB Tom-8-oes, Hoth Chocolate (served Luke warm???), Jakku-cumbers, Obi-Wan Corn-obi, Tuscan radishes. And of course, Calamari is always a good choice for May the 4th.

One of my son's lunches:

You can download a decently convincing-looking Star Wars font for free if you google "Free Star Wars Font." I just typed out these foodie-puns onto labels, added some Star Wars stickers, and voila! A very festive lunch.

For dinner, we went with a "Mexican" theme (in quotes, because what's more American than a burrito?).

 We had Admiral Akbar-itos. The ingredients were: Maize Kanata (a nice fresh salsa made with roasted corn, cilantro, onion, and green pepper), Lavender Cal-rice-ian (have you tried purple rice? If not, you should because it has great flavor - find it in bulk food sections in stores like Whole Foods), POE-rk, Han Solo Cream (lame, but it worked), C-3Pico, Cheese-bacca, Tractor Beans (a runner up was REY-fried beans), and Darth Verde sauce.

Also, we served Yoda Soda, which was a little bit of sprite with a small scoop of sherbet in it (I could only find rainbow, but lime sherbet would definitely work better).
Dessert was Storm Scoopers of the Dark Side Sundaes (AKA: dark chocolate ice cream) with a Wookie Cookie, and topped with Mace Whip Cream. 

Building Pea Shooters Take TWO!

This year, my boys ALL wanted to be various Pea Shooters, so we dressed my husband up as the zombie and it was great fun. Since I had created a Pea Shooter the previous year, I already knew what I was doing! Wahoo! So, here is an Ice Pea, A Fire Pea, and a Repeater Pea (just repurposed last year's pea shooter by adding eye brows and a couple more leaves - easy-peasy - see what I did there?). Tutorial from last year found HERE. And then here are a few construction photos I took along the way. The ice pea crystals were really hard to get to stay. I used a whole lot of tacky glue and then also thumb tacks underneath sticking into the foam core. I also brushed the Ice Pea with iridescent glitter paint.

I will admit we lost a couple of the crystals on our walk that I had to pocket and reapply. Oh well. It was also a little back-heavy, so my son had to kind of hold the face hold down.
And the finished product. I am so glad our neighbor decorates her front yard so well for Halloween! Perfect for our theme! This was such a fun photoshoot.

 (He wouldn't let me paint his face. HAHA!)

 My kids told me they felt like celebrities, because so many people stopped them to compliment them on their costumes.

We are urban dwellers, so we trick-or-treat at businesses instead of houses. It's actually really fun.

Buildings of Gingerbread

This year's gingerbread creation - The Emerald City! Why do one house when you could do a whole city?
I still need to figure out royal icing, because this stuff was way too stiff to get very artistic with. Still, though, I think it turned out pretty fun. It is 4 layers of flat gingerbread stacked against each other and turned upright. Decent depth. I am going to have to try this again next year with some more thought and better icing.

Building with Paper Mache

I feel like this blog has become pretty much about holidays, but I don't seem to be all that crafty lately except when I have to be.
This year, my boys decided they wanted a Plants vs. Zombies theme for Halloween. The older two wanted to be plants, and the youngest ended up as the de facto zombie (he likes zombies, it worked well). These are not the sort of costumes one finds at the store...
After much thought on how to build the plant heads (the majority of the costume), I settled on paper mache. I first tried crepe paper, thinking its weight and little bit of stretch would lend itself well to the round shape. I was wrong. It pretty much disintegrated. I moved on to small pieces of construction paper in the desired color. For the paper mache, I mixed about 3 parts glue, 1 part water, and painted both sides of the paper with it as I wrapped it around the balloon. Each head is made of a double layer of paper mache, followed by a round of modge podge to make it shiny and seal it.  I used a regular balloon for the pea shooter, and then created the snout using cardboard with paper mache over it. For the chomper, I used a punch-balloon, since it has a slightly more round shape. The chomper teeth are made from craft foam, and the horns are a triple layer of foam core that is attached with tacky glue. The leaves at the backs of the heads are made with felt.
I cut the neck holes a little snug, then reinforced them with the thicker (3/16") craft foam in a ring around the inside of the collar, and then wrapped them with felt that was glued and modge-podged in place. I figured this would make them sturdy enough to take on and off more than once, and also comfortable enough that they wouldn't bother sensitive necks.
I took some pictures along the journey, in case anyone wants to attempt to recreate these. They were pretty fun, and the kids loved them. They found themselves repeatedly photographed while out trick-or-treating.
The Pea Shooter:

 The Chomper:

 It was really hard to keep the chomper mouth from collapsing. The interior of this one is all sorts of purple duct tape and foam core, cardboard, basically whatever I found hanging around that I could use to support it.

 In the end, these turned out to be remarkably sturdy. They survived repeat use by a 6 and 8 year old. The chomper even survived a fellow kindergartener who decided to beat up on it (punching it several times) while it was on my son's head. These also survived a rain storm while trick-or-treating. So I have serious respect for paper mache and modge podge.
For the rest of the costumes, I painted a stem and leaves on black shirts, and had them wear black pants. Very easy.
As for the zombie, his costume was acquired at thrift stores and a couple pieces I had to purchase new (the tie and blazer). The cone I found at a party supply store. I drilled small holes in it and attached thin elastic.
And here is the finished product:

Boy Valentines Part II

My five-year-old son has recently developed a pretty intense Star Wars obsession.  Since I was custom making his big brother's valentines, I decided to make some for him too.  Sure, I could probably buy Star Wars valentines, but this is always a fun project for me.
I did some research on Pinterest to see what else was out there, and then got out the DSLR and created my own. 
Since these are made with my own Star Wars Lego figures, I am going to assume these are fine to share.  These are also formatted to Vistaprint's website. If you choose to print them that way, go to the site and go to Business > Stationary > Note Cards > 4x5.4 > Upload Custom Design

And the finished product, with the lightsaber candy I managed to find in the dollar section at Target:

(Glow in the dark candy???  Hmm...)

Boy Valentines

I love making custom Valentines for my kids.  Every year they seem to have some interest that generally is something I can't purchase pre-made.  They have unique interests.  My oldest son has had a Plants vs. Zombies obsession for the last couple of years.  Last year, I customized a Valentine that PopCap published on their blog.  Otherwise, Plants vs. Zombies valentines are pretty hard to come by.
This year, my son wanted something more specific: a Pea Shooter valentine.  I found the Pea Shooter on the web and then customized it to make it all cute and valentine-ish.  My son loves it.
My husband is an attorney, so I asked him about copyrights and trademarks, and whether or not it would be okay to post this for others to use.  He says its a gray area, but probably okay since I'm not profiting from it.  So, feel free to download and use, just make sure you give all the credit to PopCap, not me. This is sized to be printed using Vistaprint.com.  If you choose to use the website, go to Business > Stationary > Notecards > 4x5.4 > Upload Complete Design.

And the finished product with candy.  I went to our local candy store (THIS adorable place - we are on a first-name basis with Randy, the owner), and bought a whole bunch of Peas & Carrots (about 1-1/2 lbs).  Then, I separated out all the carrots.  I suppose green jelly beans or gumballs might work just as well, but my son was very set on peas.

Baked Architecture

I have been stuck at home with sick kids this holiday season, thus bored.  I decided to try out something I have wanted to do for a very long time: make gingerbread houses from scratch.  I created the patterns and made very simple houses for my older two boys.  Then I decided to make my own mid century modern-inspired gingerbread house.  I am a novice with gingerbread structures, so this was just a first attempt.  And my frosting was not cooperative.  I think next time I might go for a butter-based frosting instead of the traditional royal icing, which was thick and difficult to work with.  Also, to prevent a bunch of frustration, I did hot glue the pieces together initially (all in discreet places that would never be noticed).  And here was my MCM gingerbread house in progress and the final product.  I have to say that I was totally pleased with the way the beams fit into the structure - they were actually quite sturdy and support the roof!  Other tips I can offer: pez make excellent bricks, chocolate neccos work well for that slate-walkway style, and gumballs work great for those globe lights.  If only I could have found a way to suspend the globe light from the roof, that would have been truly awesome.

Beans as Symbols

Sometimes it can be a little tough for kids to grasp the whole of Easter as it is both a secular and a religious holiday.  The secular part, I like to think, is more of a celebration of life and the coming of Spring.  This involves the chicks, bunnies, pastel colors, candy, egg hunts, etc.  Because kids are so tactile, this "fun" part of Easter often overshadows the more important part which is Jesus' death and resurrection and his Atonement for our sins.  I found a cute idea (on pinterest, of course) to use the colors of jelly beans as symbols of the Easter story to help kids get that tactile/colorful/sugar-laden holiday-fix that they enjoy.  I changed it up to fit better with LDS theology.  Here is the graphic, which I am going to use tomorrow as a take-home for the Primary kids.  I am going to fill Easter eggs with jelly beans and this little hand-out.  Click on the graphic to download.

Bunny Garland

Since St. Patrick's Day and Easter are so close together this year, I decided to forget about St. Patty's and go straight to decorating for Easter.  Sorry, but I don't have any Irish lineage.  My five-yr-old is perhaps disappointed about this since green is his favorite color, but in my opinion, Easter wins.  Besides, we are in charge of bringing drinks to his school's St. Patrick's Day party and I'm pretty sure I can redeem myself in his eyes with some green Gatorade and green shamrock pancakes on Sunday.
Anyway, last year's Easter garland craft turned out to be too delicate to last more than a year (it was string dipped in glue and wrapped around water balloons to make eggs - a serious pain), so I made a new one.  I loved all the variations of bunny-butts with cotton ball tails so I made my own template and got to work.  I don't have a die cutter or access to one, so I traced and hand-cut all 30 bunnies.  I used 1" white pom-poms for the tails, punched holes in the ears and strung them on some plain white grossgrain ribbon.  The bunnies are made out of colored cardstock, which I am regretting a little bit.  I like this garland so much, I wish I had made it out of something that would last a little longer.  Maybe when this one gets faded, I will remake it out of felt or foam.

I had a hard time finding a suitable template so I am posting my own here, should anyone else want to use it.  (Click on it to enlarge it, then right-click to download.)

Boys and Hearts

My favorite craft of the year, besides Halloween costumes, is valentines for the kids.  This is the first year both boys are in preschool, so I had to create two sets of valentines.  I wanted to create valentines that actually fit both personalities, so off to pinterest I went.  I loved the idea of a rock star valentine for my youngest, who loves guitars and rock music.  This was my interpretation of the idea.

My older son has a thing for hedgehogs.  I came across the idea of a "hedgehug" and went from there.  I found the cutest stamp EVER and I knew that was the direction we had to go in.  (By the way, if you happen to be looking for a great collection of hedgehog stamps, Penny Black has them.)  Had this been a year when I was feeling normal and not continually nauseus, I may have colored in the hedgehogs.  And how perfect to use Hershey Hugs for the treat!

Both of these valentines were embellished with old fashioned rubber stamps and embossing powder.  I used to love to craft with stamps when I was younger, so it was kind of fun to rediscover embossing.  I used powder I had from ages ago.  The stuff lasts forever.

I was also in charge of treats for both kids' classes.  We made heart-shaped rice krispie treats and embellished them with some frosting drizzle and sprinkles. 

Birds. SPACE Angry Birds.

This post will probably read something like "tales from a design-starved unemployed-architect-Mom..."  I have to take my design challenges where I can get them these days...

Since I have had children, I have had a blast each Halloween dressing up my kids - sometimes against their will (the monkey costume for the first two-year-old was NOT popular).  It has been fun, as the kids have gotten a little older and actually have opinions, to make their Halloween-dreams come true. From last year, you might remember the insane train costume.  This year, for awhile there were threats of wanting to be a mixer truck, then a dump truck.  I suppose I would have found a way... Gratefully, my older son changed his mind somewhere in August and decided he wanted to be an Angry Bird.  Specifically, the black exploding angry bird.  My younger son went along with this and decided he wanted to be the red angry bird.  Around mid-September, I decided it seemed safe enough that minds wouldn't change, so I bought boatloads of felt while it was half-price.  Sometime after I bought the fabric, the costumes somehow morphed into SPACE angry birds.  It was doable - the colors were the same.  The black one got more complex, though, because now it needed an orange belly and an orange ring around it. 

I spent lots of time figuring out how I was going to achieve the angry bird look while creating a comfortable costume that my sensitive (older) son would actually feel comfortable wearing.  I landed on a great sale where patterns were $1.99 and so I picked up a toddler pumpkin costume pattern.  I ended up having to get myself in gear a little earlier than I had planned because I just learned that I am about to get very busy.  I wanted these little time-consumers to be done as soon as possible.
Using the pattern as the starting-point for the costumes worked out SO well.  The only change I made to it was to stuff it with quilt batting instead of just an extra layer of fleece as the pattern called for.  I also used the base of the headpiece from the associated witch costume for the angry bird heads, then I created the necessary embellishments for each costume myself with trace, felt and scissors.  The costumes velcro at the shoulder and have elastic around the bottom of the bodies.  The orange ring attaches to the costume with velcro at the shoulders.  The hardest parts of building these were installing the elastic and sewing the black fuse into the black headpiece.  The only thing I'm not totally satisfied with is the angle of the tall head-feather on the red bird.  It really should be pointing a little more sideways.  Perhaps some built-in imperfection makes them more loveable somehow...
The boys will wear a long-sleeved shirt the same color as their bird and then black tights underneath (the bird bellies go down almost to their knees).  I am still deciding if these guys need some big yellow bird feet to go over their shoes or if perhaps black rainboots might be good enough...  Thoughts?  Big Bird-like feet?  Hmm?  (I'm not entirely sure how to make that happen, but I figure that I've gotten this far, I could probably find a way...)

The costumes will look even cuter with kids in them...I need to think of a good place for a photoshoot.  Stay tuned.

Beautifying for Fall

I have ignored this blog for a very long time.  Why?  Mostly because I am completely sucked in to watching West Wing on Amazon Prime and I have to stream it through my computer, so it is unavailable for anything else.  Lame, perhaps, but that is mostly the reason.  Well, that and the fact that school started and now I spend most of my week being a taxi driver and by the time I am finally home for the day, the last thing I feel like doing is...anything.  I will probably back-date a few posts, though, so go ahead and scroll down if you wish.
And now, for the highlights of this year's Fall decor.  I found this idea on pinterest and LOVE the results.  It is just a bunch of cardstock bats that I cut with a template and then attached to the wall with that gummy wall adhesive. I like them so much, I am considering making more for another wall.

I love festive garlands.  Felt is such a great medium for holiday decor because it is cheap and easy to work with.  It also lasts for more than one season.  I was thinking about how to incorporate some Fall leaves into my living room and I came up with an idea to make a garland of leaves. 

• I chose a bunch of appropriate colors of felt. 
• Then I made a template of two different sizes of maple leaves out of cookie cutters traced onto cardstock.
• Then I cut out equal numbers of large and small leaves.
• I sewed the large leaves together with a simple stitch about 1/4 of the way down from the stem (through the widest part of the leaf). 
• I sewed a ribbon loop onto each end.
• Using fabric glue, I glued the smaller leaf over the large leaf to give the garland depth and to hide the stitch.

I chose to create a random-colored garland.  If you are in need of strict order, I'm sure a pattern would look equally nice.  I just liked the diversity because it reminds me of how leaves change and fall from the trees this time of year.  It is never in a very uniform way.  In fact, we live on a wonderful tree-lined street.  Our particular place is on a long-block (equivalent to three city blocks with no breaks) and every tree is the same except for a single Thundercloud Cherry.  I hate that kind of tree.  Its leaves are this ominous dark purple/black.  Alas, diversity.  I was thinking today how it gives the street character.

 And one last thing related to Fall...I LOVE this candle.  It has a nice, spicy pumpkin smell.  Brought to you by Bath & Body Works.

 



Boiling vs. Baking

Some words on dying Easter eggs.
So of course I can never *just* dye Easter eggs the normal way.  Why?  I have no idea.  I love a good experiment.  Perhaps you will remember my mixed-results last year with natural egg-dyes (cabbage, beets, etc.)  I did a bunch of research looking for interesting ways to dye eggs that didn't involve the traditional PAAS kit.  I landed on the kool-aid method.  The idea is that you can use kool-aid packets to dye eggs and you don't even need to add vinegar because the packets are full of citric acid.  Sounds easy, right?  Enter the search for kool-aid packets.  I'm not sure if it's just the region that I live in or the time of year but kool-aid doesn't seem to be a hit around here.  All I could find at about 6 different stores (including WalMart which I drove quite a ways to!) were various colors of red and purple.  I knew the boys wouldn't be satisfied if there was no blue or green dye.  After going to about 6 or 7 stores, I gave up and bought a PAAS kit. 
Did the experimentation stop there?  Of course not!  I looked around and decided I would try out a method of tie-dying eggs.  I also decided to try what was supposedly a much easier way to hard-boil eggs: by baking them in the oven.  Let me just say I do NOT recommend this method.  1/3 of my 18 eggs came out cracked beyond use.  Two of those eggs exploded in the oven.  Awesome.  The shells also lose a little bit of their white lustre in the oven.  I boiled a few on the stove to sub in for the broken ones and they came out pristine and perfect.  Lesson learned.
The tie-dying was the one part of the experiment that turned out fabulous.  It is easy and fun.  You just wrap an egg in a piece of old cloth (I used an old t-shirt) and rubber-band it off on the ends and wherever else you want to, just like how you would tie-dye a shirt.  Then just thoroughly soak the wrapped eggs in dye and let them dry still wrapped up for about 24 hours in the fridge.  And voila!  Fun eggs!  The more wrinkled the fabric and the tighter the rubberbands, the more patterns will show up.

Oh...and my son accidentally landed on another interesting thing related to the traditional dye-kits.  When I was setting up all the little cups of vinegar for the tablets, my older son dropped two tablets into one cup (yellow and blue).  He referred to the resulting color as: asparagus-green.  That's an accurate description.  I think it would be fun to try mixing more colors to see what happens.  I think mixing a purple and pink tablet and mixing red and orange would probably create great colors.  Here are our eggs.  You will notice the asparagus-green egg one to the far-right.

Who knows what I will dream up to further complicate my life next year...