The Resolution

Can you believe today is the last day of January? I know I can't. This month flew on by I swear. In the begin of the new year, the family and I (and by that I mean me) decided to reduce the amount of sweet and tasty (also know as high fat, high calorie)goodies in the house in an effort to eat healthy. And also to lose this fat I carry around that I can no longer call baby fat since my youngest is going to be 4 this year. Now my kiddos all have a major sweet tooth, just like their momma, so I decided to try and make a snack for them that satisfied both the sweet and healthier eating. I give you chocolate covered frozen bananas.

You can make bigger sizes of frozen bananas, I just chose to make slices for easy little pick them up snacks. I have also seen these guys done by spreading some peanut butter on top of the banana, freezing and then covering in chocolate. All I did here was freeze the banana for about 10 minutes just to make it easier to dip. While they were in the freezer, I melted some chocolate, and then using a spoon and a dipping fork, I covered the banana slice. Easy peasy right!?

I used the dipping fork to remove the banana from it's chocolate bath, tapping the fork on the side of the bowl to remove any extra chocolate.

I placed the covered slices on a cookie tray lined with wax paper. At this point you could sprinkle some nuts or jimmies to fancy the slices up. Then back in the freezer they go until the chocolate is set or you are ready to eat them.

The ones with the sprinkles were for the kids, the plain ones were for my husband and myself. :)

The Artist

This past weekend, we had a birthday party for my middle child, Mackenzie. It is so hard to believe that my little girl is five, but sure enough, in three days she will be exactly that. This year, we went with an artist theme. Mackenzie loves to draws, can spend hours doing it and is even in charge of the art area at school (probably because she is always there).

Here is Miss Kenzie's cake. It was pretty easy to make the art palette and I'm happy with how the cake turned out. As requested by the birthday girl, it was a chocolate cake with strawberry icing. The cake even had some fresh strawberries in one of the layers.

The idea for this cake came from pinterest. I really like the tubes of paint here and it even gave me a chance to break out my silver edible dust.

The picture was added because after the invitations were made and sent, Mackenzie informed me that she wanted a pink and purple cheetah party. So this was my compromise.

The birthday girl throughly enjoyed her special cake. :)