Elmo's (pretzel) crayons

As I mentioned before, I LOVE planning birthday parties and can spend hours looking for ideas online. The idea for J's 2nd birthday party came from Our Best Bites shortly after we celebrated his first birthday. I saw these edible crayons and immediately fell in love with them; I knew I wanted to make them, just needed an excuse. 

I settled on a Crayola theme for his birthday a couple of months ago and had been planning on using a combination of red, yellow, green and blue for all his other decorations. J loves Elmo and while watching Elmo's World one day I got the idea to tie Elmo and the Crayola theme together, since one of Elmo's favorite things is crayons!

I found a lot of cool ideas on Pinterest, but the hit of the party was definitely the crayons! While I originally found them on Our Best Bites, a quick search took me to a post by nickwilljack with clear instructions and a PDF file of the crayon wrappers. I didn't want to buy a huge pack of colored paper, so I just had copies made at Staples of the different colors I needed.

I used my trusty paper cutter to cut the labels and decided on using honey wheat pretzels so I wouldn't have to cut the pretzel rods. I personally would've preferred the salty-sweet combination of the regular pretzel rods, but my guests didn't seem to mind and really enjoyed this combination 


I started by melting the different colored Candy Melts in the microwave. To avoid ugly white splotches on your candy, add a couple of fresh candy discs to your melted chocolate and stir (something to do with melting them at high temperature) or melt them using the stove-top method. Dip one end of the pretzel in the melted candy and swirl it around. Dip the other end and place the pretzel on any flat surface covered in wax paper. Let them dry before moving on to the next step.

Cut a piece of clear tape (about an inch and a half) and place it at the end of the wrapper, making sure that only half of it is on the paper, lengthwise. Roll wrapper over pretzel and secure with the half of the tape that's off the paper.

While making these was a bit time-consuming, once I started doing it and figured out a system it really wasn't difficult to do. Seeing how much everybody loved them definitely made them worth the effort!

Crockpot Beef and Broccoli

(Originally written for Real Housewives of Northern Virginia blog)

I have always considered myself to be technologically savvy and up-to-date with most trends. It really was surprising that my love affair with Pinterest took some time to develop; it progressed slowly and developed similarly to the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s 5 stages of grief (can you tell I have a background in Psychology?). There was: 

•  Denial – What is Pinterest and what is so great about it? Me join Pinterest? No way. I love Facebook and don’t need anything else in my life.
• Anger – Why didn’t I start using Pinterest before my last party? It would’ve been so much better!
• Bargaining – If only I had tried that recipe I found on Pinterest instead of making up my own…
• Depression – All these people on Pinterest have such great lives and they can do EVERYTHING! They cook, they bake, they tackle DIY home projects, they spend time with their kids. I feel so inadequate!
• Acceptance – I cannot attempt to recreate everything I pin (I spend WAY too much time on Pinterest and there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do everything I wish I could), but I vow to at least try some of them out. 

I recently  finally decided to get off my butt try some of my pins out. I do not consider myself a professional “pinner; ” I am not a chef or incredibly crafty and my time-management skills are more than questionable. The way I see it is, more than likely, most of Pinterest users are like me. So here I am, just trying to make my life easier (and hopefully yours), one pin at a time!

Which brings me to this, my first “I pinned it!” post. A couple of weeks ago I found a Crockpot Beef and Broccoli recipe that I’ve been dying to try. The weather is finally turning, and while I wasn’t exactly wishing for another tornado watch/warning, this rainy day is perfect for a Crockpot meal! 

I’m relatively new to slow-cooking and I haven’t found many recipes that I really like, so while I was hoping this would be THE Crockpot meal to change my mind, my expectations weren’t high. This recipe is from BS Recipes. I read all the comments before I decided to make this and asked my butcher for a cut of meat that wouldn’t shred after being in the Crockpot all day. He suggested a shoulder roast, which is what I ended up using. I made some small changes, but for the most part stuck to the directions. My 5-year-old gave it two thumbs up and my husband ate two bowls of it! Here’s the original recipe:

Ingredients

1 pound boneless beef chuck roast, sliced 

into thin strips (I used about 1 ¾ pounds of the shoulder roast)
1 cup beef consomme
1/2 cup soy sauce (I used low sodium)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons sauce from the crock pot after being cooked
Fresh broccoli florets
Hot cooked rice (we’re brown rice lovers, so that’s what I used)

Directions
 
1. Place beef in a Crockpot.
2. In a small bowl, combine consommé, soy sauce, brown sugar, oil, and garlic. Pour over beef. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. (Mine was done in 4)
3. In a cup, stir cornstarch and sauce form the crock pot until smooth. Add to crock pot. Stir well to combine. (I used cold water instead of sauce)
4. Add broccoli to the crock pot. Stir to combine.
5. Cover and cook an additional 30 minutes on high (the sauce has to boil for it to thicken)*.
6. Serve over hot cooked rice.

* I transferred everything to the stove and boiled until sauce thickened. Add more cornstarch if needed.