Happy Birthday Dakota and Brooke (2.28.11)

I am a little late in posting this but I wanted to share a recipe and pics of the twins birthday cakes I made for them! I have a few cake books laying around and the girls were very intrigued with the possibility of eating a cake that looked like scooby doo. I gave the girls a few options of something I thought I could make and they chose Spongebob!

To save time I took a french vanilla cake mix and split it between a round and square cake pan (Two cakes would be too much around here). After baking and cooling I used one of those Wiltons wire cake trimmer things...sorry for not having its correct name - but its a metal handle with a thin piece of wire that is adjustable...this allows you to split cake layers and to also trim off that hump you get when the cake bakes.

I used some store bought ButterCream frosting and frosted the middle, top and sides keeping it as smooth as possible and let the frosting set.

Then I made the fondant - its really easy and I will share the recipe below. Two reasons - store bought fondant is expensive and it tastes like cardboard. So the recipe that I use is a marshmellow fondant.

The tweaks or differences I made: I did use the Kraft jetpuffed mini marshmellows but I used the walmart brand powdered sugar. I also made a half a batch at a time: adding water, food color then marshmellows to the bowl before micowaving - the fondant was very easy to color this way :)

Recipe from here:

16 ounces white mini-marshmallows(use a good quality brand)

2 to 5 tablespoons water

2 pounds icing sugar (please use C&H Cane Powdered Sugar for the best results)

1/2 cup Crisco shortening (you will be digging into it so place in a very easily accessed bowl)

Directions:

NOTE: Please be careful, this first stage can get hot.

Melt marshmallows and 2 tablespoons of water in a microwave or double boiler. To microwave, place the bowl in the microwave for 30 seconds, open microwave and stir, back in microwave for 30 seconds more, open microwave and stir again, and continue doing this until melted. It usually takes about 2 1/2 minutes total.

Place 3/4 of the powdered sugar on the top of the melted marshmallow mix.

Now grease your hands GENEROUSLY (palms, backs, and in between fingers), then heavily grease the counter you will be using and dump the bowl of marshmallow/sugar mixture in the middle. (By the way, this recipe is also good for your hands. When I’m done, they are baby soft.)

Start kneading like you would bread dough. You will immediately see why you have greased your hands. If you have children in the room they will either laugh at you or look at you with a questioning expression. You might even hear a muttered, “What are you doing?”

Keep kneading, this stuff is sticky at this stage! Add the rest of the powdered sugar and knead some more. Re-grease your hands and counter when the fondant starts sticking. If the mix is tearing easily, it is to dry, so add water (about 1/2 tablespoon at a time and then knead it in). It usually takes me about 8 minutes to get a firm smooth elastic ball so that it will stretch without tearing when you apply it to the cake.

It is best if you can let it sit, double wrapped, overnight (but you can use it right away if there are no tiny bits of dry powdered sugar). If you do see them, you will need to knead and maybe add a few more drops of water.

Prepare the fondant icing for storing by coating it with a good layer of Crisco shortening, wrap in a plastic-type wrap product and then put it in a re-sealable or Ziploc bag. Squeeze out as much air as possible.

MM Fondant icing will hold very well in the refrigerator for weeks. If I know that I have a cake to decorate, I usually make two (2) batches on a free night during the week so it is ready when I need it. Take advantage of the fact that this fondant icing can be prepared well in advance.

Stockpiling

A somewhat new term in our house. We have tried many times to stock up on food etc in the house...either by going to BJs wholesale or going to Aldi's - both place we spend a large chunk of money and then have to take the time to recover - especially if its BJs. We can easily walk out of there spending $400+. Aldi's was great for use when we had our apartment and it was myself, Matt, Madelyn and my brother. We could easily go there and buy a months worth of food and it was perfect financially. At that time - coupons were way too time consuming...

Now with 4 kids - and no time - I make the time to clip coupons. We are eatting all the foods we love, even some extras and I have saved nearly $1575!!

I took some time to take a few pictures of what I have been working on for the last few months.

This is the start of my stockpile - in the basement - we have a couple shelves that I have loaded up.

Here is the start of my Laundry stuff and the majority of the stuff that I canned.

This is the bottom half of my mother in law's freezer.

This is our freezer, I am out of room.

Canned foods.

Canned food, flour, ketsup, juice and cereal.

condiments in the pull outs.

More Dry food, Our H&B stuff is pictured below.

Thanks for checking our growing stockpile!!

Contest Alert!
If you are a memeber of WeUseCoupons.com or you are thinking of becoming a member - Now is the time!! They have reached their 1,000,000th post and are giving things away to celebrate - one of which is:

Go to Laura Williams Musings - there will be 4 different winners each winning 4 sets of Coupon Inserts!! Here is what she is giving away:

2/20/11 Red Plum insert
2/13/11 Red Plum insert (this has the HOT $3 Gain Coupon in it)
1/30/11 Red Plum
1/30/11 P&G

Also, if you go to The Coupon Posse' there will be 10 winners - each receiving over $1200 in coupons!

I wanted to take some time to tell what you I have been up to:

SICK- is the word in this house - for several weeks. We started with the sniffles, then strep, then the flu, then some more sniffles and now we are on strep again. Madelyn relapsed so if she gets these inflamed tonsils again she will require more testing - but she has tested negative for mono!! Thank goodness.

So in between doing loads of laundry and walking around the house with my lysol I have squeezed in some cupcakes, cookies, chocolate cover strawberries and grapes, a few shopping trips and I made a card!!
Wanna make some of your own? It's Easy!!

Wash and dry your grapes and strawberries. Melt Chocolate in a double boiler, I add about a teaspoon-ish of crisco to the mix to help smooth out the chocolate. Then I dip away...berries are much easier because you hold on to the enitre stem. The grapes - I just dropped them in and spooned them out - bringing them to the side of the pan so excess chocolate comes off. Then I took some white chocolate and melted it and add some food dye gel to get the colors - found out that it was very hard to make red chocolate - but the pink is super pretty. I then poured the colored chocolate into my wiltons piping back with a writing tip and drizzled away. Another sucessful Target Trip
8 boxes of Ronzoni Healthy Harvest Pasta 1.13 ea = .63 ea after Q
Glade Candle 2.99 = .99 after Q
2 Rimmel Eye Shadows 2.49 ea = .49 ea after Q
Maalox $3.79 = free with Q plus 1.21 overage ea
Ky 14.99 = 7.99 after Q
Card 2.99 = free w/ purchase of Ky
Garnier Facial Moisturizer 4.99 = .99 after Q

Total order $47.56 after Qs 15.99 minus overage 2.42 = 13.57 plus tax of 2.02 = 15.59 minus the $5 Gift card I earned with purchase of KY

Total for all: 10.59 a 78.5% savings

Cupcakes and Cookies!!

I made a lemon supreme cupcake and sugar cookies with a poured fondant frosting. I decorated the cupcakes by dipping them in yellow fondant allowing to set then I piped the pics/designs in green. For the cookies I spooned the frosting on the cookies allowing to set. Then I piped on the white hearts and Madelyn added all the fun sprinkles we had.

I also took a set of 12 cookies and used the wiltons cookies frosting and wrote I LOVE YOU in 12 different languages for Matt for valentines day. I also made a steak, crablegs, baked potatoes, green beans and salad for our Valentines Day dinner.

Lastly, I made Matt his Valentines day card:

This is a Gina K design's stamp set that I used to make this little card for Matt. I try not to get to frilly with his but it was Valentines Day - so Pink and Red it is!! You are not able to see in the pic but I used a clear irridecent gel pen around all the black edges on the card to give it a little sparkle.

He found the card after I set the following up: He had to follow a train of hershey kisses to the shower to where he found his cookies and the card hanging with a Rose from the shower nozzle. On the inside of the card it said - Now that I have kissed the ground you walked on, Showered you from Roses...Will you be My Valentine? He did say that was cute :)

Thanks for stopping by! Please wish for the germs to leave my house!!

My Target Shopping Trip!! Total out of my pocket I paid $55.78 ($230.22 before coupons)
Tide release: .99 each coupon
Motrin PM: .99 each after coupon
Lightbulbs - free after coupons
deoderant - free with purchase of soap (I wont stink for at least a year)
Rimmel mascara - $5.49 ea (target gave it to me for $2.24 because it was hung in the wrong spot - I was just not going to even buy it) - after coupon - .24 cents
Candy - BOGO with coupon
Scrubbing bubbles - 3.49 ec (all the other scrubbin bubbles on the right - free with coupon)

The other stuff I didn't have coupons for. I also used a $50 visa gift card that I earned doing a survey) - So basically - I paid for the diapers, wipes and part of the trash bags and got the rest free!!

For those of you interested on how I do this - I get most of my info from www.weusecoupons.com each store has a forum and everyone posts the deals they find etc. It's great for coupon matching etc. This is my second round at trying couponing...but I think I have found a way to stick to it!!