So as I mentioned about eleventy billion times last month, we took a road trip out to Las Vegas to celebrate our first American Thanksgiving with our dear friend Nichole and her four children! She is originally from the south and I am..well, I’m me, so we went all out. Our Vegas adventure was short and sweet. We drove out after dinner on Wenesday, checked into Circus Circus, did some late night wandering around the hotel and went to bed alarmingly late. Fun! We had an incredibly lazy Thanksgiving morning, much to Nichole’s dismay, but we did have a fantastic evening together once we finally got there!

The whole menu is pretty crazy, but it was a lot of fun and there were 11 of us total. We had to leave all the leftovers with her (sorry!!), but there are 5 of them so that made sense anyway! She made a lovely turkey with stuffing and gravy, she and her wee ones also made the cranberry sauce, ham, pinto beans, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. I brought my very first sweet potato pie, apple crumble, cocoa brownies for the kids and my trio of tarts; lemon meringue, pumpkin and Sailor Jerry pecan (and of course my cherry apron and matching headband – essential items).

I’m linking to three recipes I just put up on the site from that day. They are all equally bananas-amazing.

	Lemon meringue has been one of my husband’s favorite pies since we met so I have a lot of practice with this, and I’ve tried a few different recipes over the years but this has been the absolute best one. (read)
	These are another piece of the trifecta of awesome that was my tart collection at our first American Thanksgiving. Half a dozen are made without any run and the other half are spiked with Sailor Jerry. (read)
	It sounds typical to say I’m from Canada and I’ve never had sweet potato pie, but I think it’s just all in who you know and my exposure to Southern Belles up to this point has been pretty limited. However, I spent Thanksgiving this year with a real life Southern Gal, and she put me in charge of the sweet potato pie – she even gave me her Granny’s recipe. (read)

On Friday, we picked three of the zillion things there are to do in Vegas with kids and each of them was a hit.

First we just went downstairs to The Adventuredome in Circus Circus. As the name implies, it’s an indoor amusement park, and it’s way bigger than this Canuk remembered from my own childhood! Like, woah. We wanted to get to make sure we got to do all three things before we headed home so we let the kids each pick a couple of rides and away we went! Please note there are very few actual horses on the carousel. Wee One #2 picked the dragon and Wee One #3 picked the flying bunny. There were also flying bears and pigs. I honestly thought that was pretty rad.

We are all a little in love with Vegas and we’re all eager to go back again. This was our first road trip since we moved to LA and I have to be honest, it feels pretty amazing to come home to California. Like, taking a vacation from vacation!

Our next stop was The Silverton to check out the aquarium and the mermaid that was rumored to hang out there. While we waited for her to make her entrance, we saw a leopard print sting ray. What?? We spent some time this summer with Wee One #3’s Godmother, exploring the aquarium in Long Beach and we got to see a lot of sting rays but I had no idea that leopard print sting rays existed! So cool!
The chocolate factory was a must do because every year for years and years and years, going back before I can remember and ending when my granny started getting ‘the old’, my aunt went to Vegas every year with either her girlfriends or her sister in laws or nieces or all of the above. Every single time she came back, she’d bring us Ethel M chocolates. It only felt fitting for us to hit the chocolate factory and pick her up a box of Ethel M chocolate. The kids thought it was pretty cool to see where M&Ms come from, though I’m sure this is not the only place they are made!
	This picture is hilarious to me and really sums up where they are right now. Wee Ones #2 & 3 are crazy and hyper and delightfully insane. Wee One #1? Well, he’s 12 now so he’s not about to get into shenanigans with them ON CAMERA, but trust me, he is just as delightfully insane as they are. 😉

This week I’m linking up with Organizing Junkie!

First thing on my mind this morning was hitting up random.org to choose a winner for the Williams Sonoma / Sur la Table giveaway, sponsored by Country Crock. We had 5 entries, I numbered each person 1-5 and the random number generator picked…..

Congratulations Julie! Email me back and Country Crock will get your prizes out to you!

So most of you know we are going to Vegas for Thanksgiving this year to celebrate with a dear friend and her children. A dear friend who just happens to be a real, live, Southern Belle! Please note the capitalization. She’s from the south, y’all so our very first American Thanksgiving is going to be a down home American Thanksgiving. We will be spending the whole day cooking and cleaning and then cooking and cleaning and cooking and baking and cleaning – all with 7 children underfoot. I will do some prep here since I’m not sure it’s physically possible to do the entire menu in a single day at her house. We are, both of us painfully, overachievers. Expect epicness next Thursday.

Anyhoo, so since we have so many kids between the two of us and since arts and crafts will only distract them for so long, I’d love for them to jump into the kitchen for a kid-friendly recipe! This comes from Linda Collister’s Baking with Kids (the best kid’s cookbook we’ve ever used). My kids have made this recipe so many times I’ve lost count. Not So Wee One #1 likes these with a little butter, Wee One #2 likes them with jam and Wee One #3 likes them with maple syrup – and they all like them still warm! They’re a hit with grown ups too, especially good with gravy – you know, like with a serious turkey dinner!

Popovers – via Baking with Kids

1 cup whole or half fat milk
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon wheatgerm or oat bran
3 extra large eggs
2 tablespoons melted butter

Preheat your oven to 425 and add the milk, flour, salt and wheatgerm (or oat bran) to a food processor or blender and process just to mix them.
Now it’s egg breaking time and they’re really serious about it.
Melt the butter and add it and the eggs to the processor and pulse again until it’s well blended together. If your food processor has a spout (or you used a blender), you’re set. Otherwise, pour the batter into a pitcher to make it easier for the kids to pour it into the (lightly greased) muffin cups. Each muffin cup should be about half full.
Now carefully watch them puff up. 🙂 Bake for 25 minutes and then without opening the door turn the oven down to 350 and bake for another 15 minutes.
They are best just a few minutes out of the oven, which is perfect for impatient wee ones, but they are still good later the same day!

Now, since it’s menu Monday after all, here’s what’s up this week around here!

This Week’s Menu (Nov 12 – Nov 18)

Monday – Beef Stew with Cheesy Pull Apart Bread and Boston Cream Whoopie Pies for dessert

Tuesday – Chicken Alfredo with Ceaser Salad and Fudgey Oreo Brownies for dessert

Wednesday – Toasted Ravioli with Parmesan Knots and Sugar Cookie Bars for dessert

Thursday – Chicken Crescent Rolls with Hush Puppies and Triple Chocolate Pound Cake for dessert

Friday – Chicken Florentine Bowtie Pasta with Garlic Cheddar Biscuits and Rolo Cupcakes for dessert

Saturday – Old Fashioned Chili with Bacon Cornbread and Cookie Dough Brownies for dessert

Sunday – Chicken Parmigiana with Scalloped Potato Stacks and Nutmeg Donuts with Berry Icing for dessert

Happy Halloween!!!

There is so much going on today for us that I have no idea where to begin. We ended up spending most of the day on Monday dealing with long distance house selling issues. Please note, however stressful irritating maddening ahem troublesome you think selling a house may be, imagine for a moment that you are about 2600 miles away from it and all cleaning, packing, moving and signing of official documents will be done long distance. Yeah, so that was Monday.

Yesterday was a fun meeting with Wee One #2’s teacher, I really like homeschooling this way. Support from the teacher, freedom to accomplish it our own way and most important the time we all get to have together! Amazing, really. So instead of Twinkle Twinkle’s Halloween party on Monday, we are going this afternoon and the kids are really, really hyped for it. I’m not going to lie, I’m super hyped for it too. It’s my favorite place to take the kids for some fun (and too many Caffe Americanos for mommy).

Today, we attack a stack of cookies and turn the kitchen upside down. It seems the best days around here end in a destroyed kitchen that I then spend a good hour after they’re done cleaning – but it’s totally, undoubtedly, absolutely worth it. <3 This recipe is from a book of activities to do with preschoolers, so you know this cookie is sturdy! They are not horribly chewy, which would be a really weird texture for a cut out cookie, but they are not so tough they're really crunchy either - just perfect. Especially perfect for handing over half the batch to an eager 3 year old and 6 year old with royal icing covered aprons, an arsenal of sprinkles and a whole lot of imagination. They didn't break a single cookie! This is officially my new go-to recipe for cut outs. The only thing to note about them really is that they are not as white as a traditional sugar cookie and the cinnamon and ginger give them a spice cookie taste without being overwhelming.

Sturdy Cut Out Cookies – via The Preschooler’s Busy Book

2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter
1/2 cup liquid honey
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg

Super super simple, just mix all the dry, then the wet and then the two together! I found they rolled out and baked best when I followed this method: Divide the dough into four balls and roll each one between two sheets of parchment and pop in the freezer for as long as it takes to roll the rest out between their own sheets of parchment. Then take out the first one you put in and cut out the shapes, pop it back in the freezer and repeat that until all four balls are rolled out and cut into shapes. Follow the same process for lifting the shapes onto a baking sheet lined in parchment and rolling and cutting new shapes. Bake at 375 for about 7 minnutes.
The beauty of these is you can cut out whatever shapes you want (or whatever shapes your kids want) and then decorate them in any way you (or more likely your kids) choose – or even better, both! Win-win! I chose ghosts, Wee One #2 chose tombstones (the other two were totally uninterested in what shapes we used). I made my standard Royal Icing (2 large egg whites, 3 cups icing sugar and 1 teaspoon lemon juice). I tinted a little bit black, a whole lot gray and left the rest of it white.

These cards were a fun afternoon with the kids, a way to show our far flung family and friends some Halloweeny love. I mean of course we try to send postal love as much as we can anyway, but festive love is the best kind of love, oui? Le duh is the appropriate response.

-card stock
-heap tons of Halloweeny scrapbooking paper
-Halloweeny cookie cutters
-Halloweeny stickers
-construction paper
-silly festive jokes
-glue sticks
-loads more construction paper to make envelopes
-tape (to seal the envelopes)

*I also used a ‘just for you’ stamp that I fell in love with at Michaels and want to stamp on everything I make

First, I cut each 8 x 10 piece of thick card stock in half and then folded it in half (using my Knit Picks guage ruler doodle but you could use a bone folder if you want to be proper about it). Then I stamped the back of each card with my cute stamp and started tracing the cookie cutters over scrapbooking paper.
I put an unreasonable amount of thought into which shapes should be cut from which paper. Totally unreasonable, I especially love the ghosts with the green chevron and the eyes. The eyes and mouth of the ghosts came straight from my hole puncher – that’s some really effective recycling right there.
I also stuck a Halloweeny sticker in the corner of each card – and cut out a zillion more ghosts and pumpkins. With the pumpkins, I also cut out Jack o’lantern faces and glued them on. Then I added one of 5 silly jokes inside each card and a cute note to our folks, our aunts and uncles and our long distance friends and then we all signed them. Well, I signed for Wee One #3, but otherwise, we all signed them. Theeen I took apart a cute envelope that fit the cards and made a stack of envelopes, addressed all the envelopes, taped them shut and away they went! Hopefully everyone adores receiving them as much as we loved sending them.

So so so much is going on this week and so much fun happened last week! I made a lot of Halloweeny treats in the last couple of weeks and they were all hits with the kids! Wee One #1 is dressing as a warrior skeleton type guy (he’s been picking pretty much the same costume every year in a bigger size for 3 or 4 years now), Wee One #2 is going as Hello Kitty and out littlest is going as ‘The Tooth Fairy’, she is very specific about what kind of fairy she is exactly. Much running around Los Angeles in costumes!

Sparkly gold shoes, ridiculous wedges with an equally ridiculous bow, a really cute necklace and dress combo and some Halloweeny cocktails rounded out my week. We made normal screwdrivers but we used black vodka and then we made Bloodtinis, which were just as delish without any booze in them at all. I really just wanted an excuse to use the shaker. 😉

Oh, and my piggie spatula, which is probably my most prized kitchen possession at the moment. You love it right? Of course you do!

Back in the morning with Menu Monday!!

First my husband’s wonderful parents came to visit us for the first time in LA and we had such a fun time showing them around. So much fun that I fell behind in both homeschool prep and with the Coursea classes I’m taking. The good news is I’m up to date so I’m back to the blog to share with you some of our adventures!

These pictures are from Twinkle Twinkle, a really cute and laid back indoor play space that serves perfect Americanos and really pretty pots of Earl Grey tea (and ice cream piled high or fries for the kids), Disneyland we met Sleeping Beauty, Tiana and Jasime and man I was way more hyped than I thought I’d be, Pacific Park at the Santa Monica Pier (and then later the Santa Monica beach of course), Silly Goose Indoor Playground, Chuck E Cheese, Redondo Beach and duh the Hollywood sign. There are a heap of delicious rando shots I got with my phone too but I will have to add those another day.

Actual blog posts coming at you this weekend, I promise. 🙂 I always struggle with eating awful (as in it tastes good but I know it’s not good for me) food when we have visitors and this time was no exception. I’m back on the wagon and am armed with a ton of recipes I can’t wait to share! Plus homeschooling has been going really well and we’ve all been learning a lot (& also having a lot of fun with arts & crafts) so there are fun things to share on those fronts as well. Happy Friday!!!

Ok so I have been walking and taking the bus in LA for 5 whole months. I take the Metro Transit City bus all the way to the end of the line and then transfer to the Blue bus to get to Venice and sometimes take that to the end of the line to get to the Santa Monica Pier (2 hours, people)! I take that same Metro Transit City bus up and down the PCH to Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and the other way all the way out to Long Beach to hit up the Aquarium. We take other buses to the farmer’s market and it’s all very sweet and environmental and wonderful – until it isn’t.