paint cut paste

here’s a festive treat to try – peppermint bark popcorn!

all you need is:

• a bag of microwave popcorn
• peppermint bark
• candy canes

just pop the popcorn and put it in a large bowl. then melt your peppermint bark in a double boiler. okay, ours looks weird because the peppermint bark we had in the cabinet was both white and dark chocolate with crushed candy canes in it. ideally, if you wanted to make this look wintry and lovely, you’d get the white chocolate peppermint bark. you can add some peppermint extract if you want it mintier.

then crush a candy cane or two (or 4 mini candy canes, which is what we did) in your food processor. quick, easy, and LOUD.

sprinkle the crushed candy canes onto your popcorn, then pour on the melted peppermint bark. then stir it until it’s evenly coated.

lay it out on wax paper to dry.

pardon the gross photos - nighttime creation, once again. grr, winter.

then enjooooy it by your tree with a little nog and some great holiday specials on tv (which is just what we did.) or you could serve it at a holiday party for those near and dear.

you could even package this up in cute tins to make for a great holiday gift!

this isn’t a new idea or an art project, nor is it rocket science. it’s just something i happened to pin and then actually do last week (woah, a follow-through on a pin!?!) and it made N say, “this is the BEST dessert ever!” (really?!) i just froze bananas after making them a little fancier. yep, that’s it. imprintables offered a pinworthy photo of their version, giving a nod to the red thread.

a couple years ago, i introduced N to one of my breakfast favs of having thin slices of frozen bananas in cereal. the milk freezes around each slice making it extra yum. since i knew she loved frozen bananas, i figured i’d put a stick in it and dabble on a tad of chocolate and sugary goodness and try to pass it off as dessert.

all i had laying around were these short (half-sized) popsicle sticks, but i figured they’d do. i sliced a banana into about 5 pieces. i dipped just the flat end  of each piece into a little chocolate syrup and then some nonpareil sprinkles.

left handed dessert-making while right handed iphone photo taking. you bloggers know the drill. woah, i need a manicure!

i put them onto a plate covered in plastic wrap and froze them. i took them out of the freezer about 10 minutes before we were ready to eat them so they’d soften a wee bit. when i served them for dessert, N was PSYCHED! my husband thought frozen banana tasted like a pudding pop of sorts. score! everyone feels like they’re eating ice cream, but it’s a fruit serving (with a smidge of chocolate this time.)

i just had to share the simple sweetness with you all.

okay, so who among us hasn’t repinned this okra stamping tip junkie pin yet?

idea from newhouseproject.com featured on tip junkie

i pinned it a while back, and like most of my pins, considered it collected among zillions of ideas i may never get to. until tonight when i was cutting up okra — one of N’s absolute favorite foods of all time!

when i cut the tops off, i put them aside in a bowl. then gathered up some random scrap paper, squirted out two paint colors of N’s choosing, and let her have at it while our homemade gluten free pizza baked in the oven.

i probably could have cut the okra to have smoother, flatter surfaces. i probably could have picked out the seeds to make cleaner prints. i probably could have added a medium to my paints to thin them out. but i did not because i was frying okra. and that’s okay.

okra really is so cool looking.

the prints turned out kinda cool regardless of my jagged cutting and haphazardly thrown together while okra burns in the oil on stove art project.

a few days later. we made them into thank you notes and a birthday card.

we’ll likely try again another day with less of a time crunch and more planning. regardless, the fried okra was delish!

N came up with this idea while at whole foods on friday. while in the produce section, she said, “let’s make veggie art!” i asked what she meant, and she said she wanted to “build a bird out of fruits and veggies when we get home.” um, okay.

i remembered having this play with your food book waaay back in the day, and we have done our share of food-related art posts here, but i was just psyched that this was fully her imagination and doing. when we unpacked the groceries, she picked some items she’d make a bird out of.

she instructed me to cut the tip off the carrot for a beak and to slice some thin carrot slices for legs. then she asked for toothpicks.

i had to help her push the sharp toothpicks into some of the harder produce, like the bird’s sweet potato body, but she was able to do most of it.

apple head + carrot beak + sweet potato body + raisin eyes + carrot legs + banana wings = brilliant bird!

then we ate the bird with our lunch — it’s the only way we vegetarians are gonna get any poultry!

(hen shirt is total coinkidink)

it is a 4th of july weekend tradition in my family to make homemade ice cream. this dates back to my early memories of a huge tub of ice and rock salt and a crank on our back porch as a kid. these days, it’s a lot easier!

not only do we now have fancy ice cream makers for such endeavors (like how we made our lavender honey ice cream creation last summer – yum!) but these days there are ice cream makers that kids can operate. yep, the ice cream ball. have you seen this thing?

it rocks! all we had to do was put ice and rock salt (or sea salt, which we used) into the outside chamber and ice cream ingredients into the inside chamber, play, and eat! N chose vanilla for her ice cream flavor (she’s a simple lady) so we gathered our ingredients.

N stirred everything together in a bowl to pour into the ball. (hers is purple, of course.)

then we ventured out into the yard to roll the ball back and forth to each other for 20 minutes. this was a fun time of singing “big rock candy mountain” and “red red robin.”

we also played “i’m going on a picnic and i’m going to bring…” while going through the alphabet. i still remember the sequence: apple, blueberry, cat, dalmation, egg, flower, gummy bear, horse, ice cream (of course!), janice (from electric mayhem), kite, love, mom, newt, octopus… etc. you get the picture. once we had the ABCs all loaded up for our picnic, we went inside to see if the ice cream had solidified, and it had!

the edges were quite frozen, whereas some of the ice cream in the center of the chamber was still a little soft-serve-ish. didn’t matter. we served up some into our bowls, and also put some in tuperware to bring over to our neighbor, who was curiously watching us roll the ball back and forth.

deeeelish! happy 4th of july to all and happy two year blog-iversary to paintcutpaste.com yesterday! (this treat was even better than having a gluten-free birthday cake!)

happy summer solstice! the solstices are special to me, as my birthday is the winter solstice and our wedding anniversary is the summer solstice (on the years when solstices fall on the 21st.) so this (legitimately HOT day in the bay area – whoo hoo!) first day of summer was a day of celebration and fun for us!

during N’s “summer camp” in the morning, my husband and i had a breakfast anniversary date to celebrate our eight years of marriage. (as a gift, i gave him some redstone meadery juniper honey wine from boulder for old times’ sake – we lived there for 3 years, during which time we got married, and so enjoyed this mead!)

table 8 for 8 years! (that card is in the shape of INFINITY by the way

after camp was over, we hit the kiddie pool in the backyard! i’ve been obsessed with making lemon juice ice cubes that i saw on one of my favorite blogs, salt & chocolate. what a simple idea and yummy for summertime water, lemonade, tea, and arnold palmers. i bought a bag of organic lemons (i’m not one of the lucky ones with fruit trees in my yard) and N helped me wash them…

then with lemon squeezing…

i froze them in ice cube trays for later… (note: this bag yielded 2 cups of lemon juice, and i added about a cup of filtered water to it to fill 2 ice cube trays.)

…which made me think about making sun tea! what a perfect day to let the strong summer sunshine do its thang brewing some delicious tea!

as all of this was going on, N grabbed a paintbrush from her play shed and randomly began water-painting on her little (freecycled) picnic table and on some driftwood.

N also made “nature soup”

we noticed that the mama bird who made a (pimped) nest in our play shed had three more babies, and she was teaching them to fly today, which we got to witness firsthand! here’s a baby bird standing on the ledge of our shed shelf… which he did for HOURS while watching mama flit around inside the shed.

look at that little cutie!

we had a beautiful day together, soaking in the rays — and, of course, blocking the harmful ones with mad amounts of sunblock. we finished the day with a yummy glass of lemon-iced sun tea.

and an adorable homemade (and sounded out) half-birthday sign from my favorite little artist.

happy summer! happy soltice! happy half-birthday to me! and happy 8 year anniversary to my special sweetheart!

today is N’s 4th birthday – happy birthday to my sweet little artist! last weekend, per her request, we had a rainbow art birthday party. i was THRILLED at her choice of party themes, as i, myself, had a rainbow birthday party for my fifth birthday – the same year i coerced my parents into painting a rainbow on my bedroom wall and getting me rainbow sheets, while blasting “the rainbow connection” 24/7. anyway, i thought i’d share a few (well, quite a few) images from our party preparations and the party itself.

we created waldorf kite paper rainbow stars for window decorations for the party, using garden mama’s tutorial. N loved doing this, and now has them in her bedroom windows. (if these composite images seem too small to see details, click on them to open the larger version.)

another item we made for the party is a rainbow striped picture frame. i got a large, inexpensive, lightweight wooden frame at ikea, and we painted it so that it could be a prop in a “photo booth” area at the party, where i hung rainbow fabric as a backdrop and let the kids hold up the frame. a huge hit!

N and i also created shrinky dink nametag pendents for the guest’s gift bags. N had a great time decorating each kid’s nametag with colors or a theme that she knew they’d love. the nametags are necklaces that each child can wear on rainbow yarn.

the gift bags were filled with rainbowy fun toys and art materials, including some homemade snowflake (winter bday) rainbow crayons that we made like the heart ones from last valentine’s day. (you can see them in the post just before this one.)

for the party, we provided light snacks and cake, as it was between lunch and dinner, and we had 20 kids (plus parents) there! as a surprise to N, i created two different rainbow cakes. the first was a 7 layer ode-to-ROY.G.BIV cake, ordered properly according to the chakras, of course. i saw the idea on one charming party.

it turned out to be so awesome inside!

i made a second rainbow cake, which was a psychedelic swirly rainbow cake, just two layers. i saw this idea on omnomicon, but i did *not* make her sprite/weight watchers version. i just followed the cake box recipe.

on both, i kept the icing simple and just made cream cheese icing (1 8oz package of cream cheese, 1 stick of butter, and 1 lb powdered sugar, a little vanilla.) i had to triple that recipe for these 2 cakes. my talented baker friend over at bliss bakery created a dozen gluten-free, vegan rainbow cupcakes for our guests with dietary restrictions.

in addition to some good ol’ pirate booty, i made a rainbow layered fruit salad. i left out the candy – cake offers enough sugar!

since it was a rainbow ART party, of course we had a few art stations. one was a place where kids could create watercolor initial paintings, like N did when she was two years old in this post.

we also had a model magic table, with the primary colors of model magic, along with white. the kids had fun with this modeling medium, and it’s not at all messy!

we also had a table where i rolled out a large doodle roll sheet of paper and offered a couple buckets of crayons so the kids could work on a mural together.

we found that playsilks make for beautiful window decor…

and helped to warm up the entry area. (p.s. – this isn’t our home. it’s my friend’s condo’s clubhouse room.)

the kids had a ton of fun… and let’s be real. there was more running than art-making at the art party.

the birthday girl had the most fun of all!