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All I want for Christmas is a zombie apocalypse

We wish you a scary Christmas...

I am going to get back on the blog next week.  It is my New Year's resolution to get healthy and get back to things I love.  I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday season.

Our family had a good Christmas even though things have been crazy in the last few months. Christmas Season started with Holiday Photos.  With 3 boys this is never fun.  There are tears.  There is dragging kids out from under the bed.  This year we thought we would try a more individual approach.  Each kid would be in his own picture.  We would take them at our house with a hand made background. We started thinking about the photos around Halloween so this gave us some creative and unusual ideas.  What says Halloween like zombies?  Make-up was available.  Google tutorials were available.  Thanks to the stores which no longer have time between seasons - you can buy Santa hats and Halloween props at the same time.  My friend was Boxing Day shopping yesterday and they had Valentine's Day stuff out... CRAZINESS.

The blog is not called zombies vs cupcakes for nothing.  We decided a zombie themed card would be funny.  My kids were not on board with the make-up.  I was a little nervous as I do not even own a tube of lipstick.  Thank goodness for YouTube tutorials.  I did a few trial runs of make-up.  One while my husband was sleeping.  I managed to do a half decent job with liquid latex.  I went and stood beside the bed to scare him but started laughing.  I just had visions of getting punched in the face just like on AFV.  I started laughing and ruined the surprise.  Probably a good thing.

The background is a green sheet with liquid blood handprints and some spray on blood.  Creepy.

Santa's suit was also decorated.  We did some simple makeup.  Kids just needed Santa hats and a BB gun.

At the end we just downloaded them onto the computer and uploaded them on to a card.  We used Vistaprint and Costco.

Just a few notes...

There are some people who thought this was hilarious... others not so much.

For those unhappy people:

1.It is a joke.
2. My family loves zombies.
3. No tears.
4. NOT A REAL GUN.
5. No zombies were harmed in the making of this Christmas photo.

So, whether you agree or disagree...

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.

Merry Christmas!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cream Pie

Cookie dough

6 tsp butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/8 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1 tsp milk
1/2 cup choc chips (regular or mini)

Cream together butter and both sugars.  Add vanilla extract.  Add flour and milk and mix well.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Roll into small little balls.  Pop in the freezer.  This has no egg in it so it is safe to eat raw.

Pie Crust

I cheated on this one and used a graham cracker crust from the store.  I have really bad luck with graham cracker crumbs.

Filling

8 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tub Cool Whip
1/2 cup choc chips

Mix together cream cheese, sugar and brown sugar until smooth.  Stir in cool whip.  Add your frozen cookie dough balls and remaining chocolate chips.  Allow to freeze completely before serving.
Drizzle hot fudge topping right before serving.

Browned butter cupcakes with apricot cream cheese icing

The big apricot festival cooking contest is over.  I did not win but I had a lot of fun and a lot of ideas for next year.  These are my new favorite!!

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup milk
• 
  
• Frosting:
• 1 8 oz package of cream cheese softened
• 1 stick butter softened
• 1/2 cup apricot preserves
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 
  

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners.
2. Melt butter in a small saucepan and cook over low-medium heat until butter has turned an amber color and smells toasty, but not burnt. Butter will darken quickly once it begins to turn. Pour from saucepan, scraping all the browned bits from the bottom with a spatula, into a small bowl to cool.

3. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.

4. In a medium bowl, whisk together cooled butter, eggs, vanilla and milk. Pour into flour mixture and stir until just combined.

5. Distribute batter evenly into prepared muffin cups. I made them too big and only got 11 instead of 12.  Lol.

6. Bake for 16-19 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean.

7.Cool completely on a wire rack before frosting.

For the Frosting:



1. Mix Cream Cheese and Butter in a medium sized bowl using an electric mixer until creamy.

2. Add vanilla extract and mix well.

3. Add half the apricot preserves until well mixed. Add half the powdered sugar and mix well, alternate between the preserves and the powdered sugar until the frosting is at a good spreading consistency,

I piped the icing on using a piping bag with no tip, sprinkled with some dried apricots and topped with an orange Wilton icing flower.

Bath time fun!

Boys do not like baths.  Mine are much too busy to be bothered by this "horror."  They like zombies but clean water - no thanks!!!

I had to come up with a way to get my 5 year back in the bath... without fighting.  The older 2 have a 30 second or 30 minute shower.  The youngest says, "No one will play with me in the bath... I will be all alone." Then he runs away or cries.

So I came up with 2 extra fun bath times to make it less torture for both of us.

1. Glow in the Dark Bath

Pour a bath... add bubbles, add glow sticks... and turn out the lights.  He was in there for over an hour.  Even his brothers went in to check out the fun.

2.  Bath paint

Shaving cream and food coloring.  Just add one or two drops of food coloring to the shaving cream.  You can finger paint or use a small brush.  It washes right off the tub and the kids.  S had to get his hands dirty too as it looked like a lot of fun.

Mission accomplished.  Now I just have to have a neverending supply of glow sticks and shaving cream.  B even wakes up in the morning now and asks for a "special bath."

Glow in the dark summer party

It was awesome!!!!

It took a lot of planning, a lot of research, a photography lesson from the amazing Jonah Greenman, and an energy drink but it was AMAZING.

The kids arrived around 8 pm.  It did not get dark until closer to 10 pm but they did not care.  

Everyone had to wear glow necklaces and bracelets to make sure we knew where everyone was and there were no accidents.  Some kids chose to wear a lot more than the required 2.  All good.  We bought lots at the dollar store.

We bought LED lighted balloons to hang in the trees.

Glow in the dark cups

These were made by taking a Red Solo Cup, putting a glow bracelet in the bottom, and then putting a clear cup on top of the glow stick.  We just gave the kids sprite to drink.

We found glow in the dark straws at the dollar store.

We used plastic wine glasses upside down with LED lights underneath for cupcake stands.

We put glow sticks in the bottom of the cooler to light it up. Hard to see the lights when it was full... but it was cool.

We broke open a glow stick and added it to bubbles.  It looked cool as a decoration but did NOT make good glow in the dark bubbles.  Oh well.  Not everything works like you hope.

We threaded bracelet glow sticks through wiffle balls.  You can use these for golf or baseball.

We added the baton style glow sticks to 2 L bottles of water for bowling.

We taped glow sticks to hula hoops

We made ring toss game by taking a box and putting a large paper towel roll through the center.  I painted it with glow in the dark paint.  For the rings we put 2 glow bracelets together.

We got LED balls at the dollar store.

We got LED finger lights at the dollar store.  If you reflected the finger lights through the LED balls they made really cool designs.

The kids REALLY liked the finger lights.  I should have bought more.  Even the teenage helpers liked them!

We put glow sticks in beach balls. You need about 5 in each beach ball unless it is super dark.

To top off all the festivities we gave everyone sparklers and told them to run wild.  It was awesome.  Truly awesome.