3rd Annual Tea Party

This year we celebrated my daughter's 3rd Annual (1/2 Birthday) Tea Party and I must admit that I am getting more and more excited each year to celebrate it with her. Even before I had my beautiful baby girl I knew that I wanted to plan an annual tea party for her since her birthday falls so close to Christmas (Dec. 23rd to be exact), so when the doctor said, "It's a Girl" the party planning began!



This year we celebrated at our home and the theme was Windmills & Butterflies. For an activity, we all decorated wooden butterflies with paint pens and they are now framed and hung in Aliyahs room. 




TIME FOR TEA

 
  
Our tea party menu included:

Egg Salad Sandwiches on Croissants
Spinach Pesto Pasta Salad
Grapes
Raspberry Oreo Truffles
Lemon Mini's

and for dessert: Strawberry Shortcake



For decorations I made several paper windmills out of girly spring paper I found in a booklet at Hobby Lobby. For my windmill tutorial please click HERE.





I'm also BIG TIME into wreaths right now, so I featured two for Aliyah's Party. One I simply used a wire wreath that you can get at any local craft store and then stuffed napkins into it creating a beautiful full and colorful decoration for our tea area. And the other I used a wooden wreath that I added the invitation for her party and a windmill. Came out so cute! (In fact I still have the napkin wreath hanging in the kids play room)




As always, we had such a wonderful time, celebrating with 4 generations over good food, yummy dessert and of course delicious tea!

Can't wait for next year's festivities.

Hey Jaclyn: Baking in High Altitudes

Guess what I cooked up yesterday?!?! Actually, I baked it. Them. Whatever!! I baked chocolate chip cookies with the twins… I know, I know, it doesn’t sound like that big of a deal. But it kind of is considering I live in the desert, at a pretty gosh darn high altitude (almost 6000 feet above sea level)! It took me MONTHS to figure out how to adjust my cooking & baking when we moved here – I had no idea that living at a high altitude would make such a difference to so many things – even boiling water takes longer!



Well, I digress, dear cousin. =) As a mom, chocolate chip cookies are a staple in my baking repertoire but when we moved to this teeny little mining town in New Mexico, I really had a hard time making this one work. I finally found the perfect recipe a couple months ago…. Truly, it’s just the recipe off the back of the Nestle Toll House bag of chocolate chips, following the high altitude adjustments. They turn out perfectly every time! I am hoping that your readers that live in remote high altitude areas, like mine, might find this helpful….





 I also found this article handy; it talks about measurement adjustments for high altitudes in general. =)

Baking In High Altitudes:

http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/detail.aspx?id=18476

http://allrecipes.com/howto/high-altitude-cake-baking/

Book Signing: Zoyo Yogurt

 

Craving some yogurt? Looking for the best gift in the world?! Stop on by Zoyo Yogurt this afternoon for my book signing from 1:00 - 3:00 pm

I'd love to see you!! And Bring your friends by too! Zoyo is located off Chandler and the 10 fwy. Even if you've got my book already I'd love to share a yogurt with you --- maybe you'll remember you 

need a gift for a friend! 

See you this afternoon. 

Hey Jaclyn: Chicken and Ratatouille

Guess what I cooked up the other night??  Chicken & ratatouille pasta! Can you say delicious?!?! 

The twins have been obsessed with the movie “Ratatouille” lately so of course we had to try & make it. I looked up ratatouille on foodnetwork.com & found this recipe for “Round 2 Recipe – Chicken & Ratatouille Pasta”. 

Even though it’s not “traditional” ratatouille, I thought that Gary & the kids would like it better because of the pasta & chicken. Since this is a "Round 2 Recipe", there is another recipe within this one, for a grilled vegetable Panini… then the ratatouille pasta is made from the leftover vegetables. I didn’t do this because it wasn’t a "Round 2 Recipe" for me.  {Jackies note: Great idea by Food Network by the way - adding in additional recipes that you can make with leftover ingredients or meals - good one FN!}

I bought a fresh eggplant, a bag of frozen zucchini & yellow squash (I couldn’t find fresh yellow squash anywhere for some reason!!), canned tomatoes & chopped up a fresh onion. The basil was from the produce section… you know the ones that come in the little plastic boxes? 

That’s a lot of garbleygook I mean, information up there isn’t it?? This recipe was very simple; Vicki helped with most of it… everything except the chopping really.  It was simple, healthy & delicious. It dawned on me when I was chopping up the eggplant that I had never had it before…. & I loved it! It was sweet! {I didn’t know eggplant was sweet. LOL}

For the Chicken & Ratatouille Recipe from Food Network Click HERE, then follow Karen's suggestions. 

This recipe was great with chicken but would also be yummy with crumbled Italian sausage or smoke sausage!

Sonoran Living Live 6/12/12

Once again, this morning I had the wonderful opportunity to be on Live TV. It was such an honor to get a call from one of their booking agents to have us (SUGAR LOCO) featured on their show! (Thanks Susie).



Today's line up on Sonoran Living included desserts from :

Sugar Jam Cookies
sugarjamcookies.com

Chaparral Homemade Ice Cream
www.chaparral-icecream.com

Smart Cookie
www.smartcookieaz.com

Honeymoon Sweets
honeymoonsweets.com

21 Cakes
www.21cakes.com

If you didn't get a chance to view it live here is the link to the segment: http://www.abc15.com/dpp/lifestyle/sonoran_living/Check-out-these-handmade-local-dessert-favorites

And of course - lotsa pictures!!