Not All That Glitters is Gold

While hitting the Christmas clearance sales the other day, Sweet Terror came up to me holding this ginormous lollipop. Her eyes were big and shiny as she guardedly asked, "Mommy, can I have this?" I could tell she was too experienced to hope much, and I almost said no right away, but then I looked at the price, calculated the clearance discount, and thought, "Why not?" I said yes, and the joy that flooded that little girl's face was well worth the 25 cents and any inevitable cavities.

To everyone we encountered in the store she would proudly show her lollipop, declaring that her mom was going to buy it for her. Each time she asked me to buy a toy that she saw in the store all I had to do was remind her that she was getting a lollipop and she would smile and say, "Oh, right. I love my lollipop." She obediently waited till we returned home and ate our lunch, even eating every carrot on her plate, until it was finally time to open the luscious confectionery swirl of joy. Upon sinking her teeth into the top arch, she reeled back, spit a little and said, "Mom, it tastes like play-dough. Yucky play-dough." (Is there a yummy kind?)

Thinking it might just be a bit old I told her to give it a few more licks, you know, to get past that first wrapper scented layer of candy. She tried but could only manage one more lick before declaring that she no longer wanted it. "I'm sorry you don't like it, sweety, go ahead and throw it away."

Later that day I went in the kitchen and found her lollipop sitting on the counter. I picked it up to see why it was so yucky. It smelled more like perfume than candy, and then I noticed the tag:

Sweet Shop Fun Soap

I guess we got suckered. And I will be less likely to tell my kids to retry things they say they don't like in the future.

My Bark Is Worse Than My Bite

An Ordinary Mom wanted me to post about my peppermint bark. I feel a little silly because I consider almond bark to be a cheater candy. All you do is melt the stuff, stir something in, and then spread it around on wax paper. But even with all that cheating I can still manage to mess it up. I made some this morning so I could photograph it for this post. I'm tired, lazy, and it ended up looking like peppermint poo. Ah well. If you make it when you are tired and don't give a hoot it might look like this, but if you take just a little time and care, artfully drizzling it with dark chocolate, it will look beautiful.

Only 3 ingredients. You can use any brand of white chocolate/vanilla bark.

Smash up some candy canes. A Hammer really is the best for this. I tried using the bottom of a heavy glass and it took FOREVER! The hammer finished the job in less than a minute (and it makes you look cool to your kids).

When peeling candy canes I can't stand peeling the hook part, so I don't. I just leave them on the counter and they magically disappear so I'm not wasting anything with my laziness.

I used too many candy canes so this didn't spread as thin as I like it to. But it will taste great.

I didn't drizzle the chocolate so it just looks like you-know-what. Still tastes great.

Stick in freezer and break into pieces when fully set. Seriously, people, it took me ten times longer to blog about this than it did to make it. And you could really stir anything into this "chocolate" bark. Check out all these variations: Almond Bark Recipes

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Don't forget to make chocolate covered pretzels! You can also dip plastic spoons into the bark then dip them into the crushed candy canes and you have yummy hot chocolate stir spoons.

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Enjoy! I'm off to sit on a heater vent to get warm.

Whine-Free Egg Hunt

For great winter and holiday ideas check out the participating posts at Scribbit's Winter Bazaar.

"Mooooom, Cookie is getting all the eggs and she won't give any to me."

"Cookie, you are only supposed to find the ones that aren't on the ground."

"I know mom, but he keeps walking right past them."

"Pablo, that was an easy egg, you are supposed to leave those for Sweet Terror to pick up."

"But, mooooom, she's not even looking. She is just sitting over there eating jelly beans."

Sweet Terror, after eating her jelly beans, screams in an ear splitting shriek as Monster Man snatches an egg right by her foot.

"Monster Man!"

"Sooooory. Here, Sweet Terror."

She grabs the egg and promptly sits down to eat its contents. Then Monster Man start complaining that she didn't say, "Thank you."

My eyes have rolled so many times at this point that they hurt. I need a whistle and referee shirt to play this game. Two years ago, after getting so disgusted with my children and the whole Easter Egg Hunt drama that I almost canceled Easter, I had an idea. This idea has completely changed our egg hunts and have made for a fun, peaceful hunt. What is my miracle trick? Color coded Easter egg hunt. We buy several bags of the colored plastic Easter eggs and fill each color with an equal amount of candy and little things like chapstick, a wind-up toy, etc. Now, each kid gets assigned a color

Cookie=Purple

Pablo=Blue

Monster Man=Green

Sweet Terror=Pink

Mom=Yellow

Dad=Orange (or whatever color is left)

Now, not only does this guarantee that everyone gets an equal amount of eggs, and that no one gets an egg unfairly snatched from them, but it also makes the whole hiding thing a lot easier for the Easter Bunny and more fun for the kids too. Depending on the age of the child, certain colored eggs get hid at different difficulty levels. Sweet Terror's pink eggs are just thrown on the grass in plain site, and not even that far from each other, while Cookie's get hid up in trees and under things and are in every far reaching corner of our lot. I like to put special things in DSSH's eggs and hide them throughout the house, with a difficult clue in each egg to help him find the next one. DSSH loves me and so he just puts my eggs in a basket on the table so that I can eat them while taking pictures of everyone else. =)

I gotta tell ya, this has made Egg Hunts with toddlers SOOOOOO nice. Tune in tomorrow and I will tell you how I get the kids to pick up the hard boiled eggs too (Yes, my kids are so spoiled that they refuse to pick up the real "yucky" eggs so they have more time to find the candy filled ones).

Dirty Chocolate

I don't like chocolate. I know, I know, how un-womanly of me. I can't explain it but straight chocolate tastes like dirt to me. I can occasionally enjoy a really good, smooth, Swiss chocolate or a small nibble of a flavorful extra dark chocolate but really I'd just rather have a bowl of ice cream. That said, one of my all time favorite gifts of the year is my custom box of Sees Candy Chocolates. The term chocolate is used lightly, though, as there is very little chocolate in my box. I'm telling you ladies, this is the best way to go. Because I custom pick each "chocolate" I am guaranteed a perfect piece every time. No more gagging over those nasty cherry and raisin chocolates. No boring old buttercreams that taste like goopy sugar cubes. And I have to say that Sees Candy is not only very reasonably priced, it is GOOD. I've been given many a fancy chocolate in my time (I think from people trying to convince me to like chocolate). I've had chocolates with gold leaf, chocolates with little edible flowers on them, chocolates that cost as much as a new pair of boots, and I've never enjoyed any of them as much as I enjoy this precious box of edible bliss. Here is some eyecandy for you to drool over:





Cashew Brittle












Almond Square

Key Lime Truffle








Lemon Truffle








California Brittle

P-Nut Crunch (Think Peanut Butter Cup for adults only)







Raspberry Cream








Raspberry Truffle






Vanilla Nut Caramel




Drooling yet? Want a custom box all your own? I'm going to be daring and try my first ever give-away. Here are the rules:
1. Write a post about your favorite food experience.
2. Put a link in that post to this post.
3. Leave me a comment or send me an email at (littlemissadvice at gmail dot com) with a link to your post.
4. Deadline is February 28.
5. On February 29 I will have Cookie pick her favorite post (So please keep it G-rated) and I will announce the winner on March 1st.
6. The winner will get a gift certificate to Sees Candy in the amount of $15.

P.S. I'm going to be out of town without internet for quite awhile so please don't think I'm ignoring you if I don't comment or respond to emails for a bit.

Halloween Candy

I wake up this morning, pick up 5 candy wrappers and toss them in the garbage, go look in the Living Room and find 3 unwrapped, prelicked, lollipops in my carpet, go to put breakfast on the table and scrub off the taffy that had hardened on the surface overnight. I don't know why there is a half eaten peanut butter cup on the bathroom counter; I don't ask any questions, just throw it away. As I sweep up bits of candy and wrapper I discover that all parts of a Snickers bar will sweep up except the nougat part. I brush my teeth twice because just the thought of how much candy I ate last night gives me the heeby jeebies. I walk up to the buckets of candy; 4 buckets=LOTS of candy. Shhhhh, the kids are still sleeping and I'm thinking up ways to toss the sugar without inciting a mutiny. Then, suddenly, I start taking a closer look at this "bounty of the buckets". Do you moms realize what I have on my hands here? I have an unlimited supply of baking confectioneries. I take out all the little bags of M&Ms, Kissables, the Hershey bars, and anything else that is purely chocolate and stick them in a big bag for chocolate chip cookies. I take all the Reeses Pieces, peanut butter cups, Mr Goodbars, and all things peanutty and put them in a big bag for peanut butter cookies. I take all the Snickers and Babyruths and put them in a big bag to melt down for yummy popcorn balls. I fill another big bag with Butterfingers, Crunch bars, and Kit-Kats because they make great ice cream toppings and milk shake stir-ins. I put all the non filled lollipops and Jolley Ranchers in a big bag for making stained glass candy windows for Christmas candy houses. Ooooo, Christmas candy houses could also use swirly lollipops, Smarties, Sugar Babies, licorice, Dots, Sweet Tarts, and anything else colorful. And then I'm thinking, in my candy induced delirium, "Watch out Martha Stewart 'cause here comes the Handy-Halloween-Candy-Creations-Mommy-Monster". This is when I realize I need to go back to bed and sleep off the rest of my candy high.

I hope you all had a Happy Halloween!!!!

Lizzy

GIRLS NIGHT OUT

Friday was busy and wonderful. The sun kept trying to make up it's mind whether it would stay in it's bathrobe eating ice cream, or put on its makeup and come out and play. I was waiting to see what the sun would do so that I could follow suit. It finally came out and so did I. It was so nice out that I decided to mow the lawn. Note to self: don't let the grass grow long for the Easter Bunny unless the Easter Bunny will mow it for you later. My grass must have been taking steroids this past week because it was a jungle out there. I had to restart the mower at least 12 times, the blades stuck twice, and it was such a tough job it made me run out of gas before I was half done. So, I put the mower away and left a note on the fridge for the Easter Bunny to refill my little gas tank.


My friend Lizzy came over for a visit. Lizzy is handicapped physically, and a bit mentally, is a great gal, but don't you dare get on her bad side =). She rides a motorized wheel chair that isn't able to get in my house, so we sat outside enjoying the sun. The kids were really well behaved and ran around playing, they made forts and beds outside, foraged for themselves in the food department, and left me free to visit with Lizzy. I read a book to Lizzy called Little Britches. My family loves this book and they have been begging me to read it. We were able to read through chapter 2 before Lizzy had to leave. I'm finding it hard to sink my teeth into Little Britches but I think that it is due to Mars Venus Author Syndrome. MVAS happens to me anytime I try to read a Dickens after finishing an Austin. The writers are writing in almost the same english, same time frame, about related subjects, but try to read one right after the other and you get a foul taste in your mouth. I can only relate this to trying to eat a Snickers bar right after eating a Baby Ruth. They are so similar that the slight differences are very distasteful. So it is for me with Little Britches because I've been reading the Little House On The Prairie series. Little Britches is very close to a Little House kind of story but it is written by a man, and Little House is written by a woman. I must distance myself from the Venus before I can fully appreciate the Mars, I guess.

Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers Little House (9 Books, Boxed Set)

Later I picked up Cookie from school, told the kids to let me sit for awhile (Lizzy is fun to have over but it does wear me out) while I watched a movie (part of one at least) and ate my artichoke. Mmmmmmmmmmmm. I LOVE artichokes. I dip them in lemon mayonnaise with garlic salt. I haven't had one for a very long time. Then I remembered one of the reasons why. They take way too long to cook. So, while I wait that excruciatingly long 1/2 hour for it to cook, I start rummaging. Because I'm a good girl and have stopped stocking snackies in order to loose weight, I was having a hard time finding anything to help me wait. Finally, reaching that desperate point, I pull over a chair, climb to my tippy toes, reach waaaaaay past my canning jars, and find my old, hidden, bag of Halloween candy. From this comes my snickers/Baby Ruth experience. Ah, but the artichoke is done after only 10 mini candy bars. Mmmmmmmmmmm I love artichokes.

Daddy is going to be home soon.... HURRY EVERYONE CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN. The kids look at me as if to say "We love you Miss Hannigan", and we all start doing our chores. DSSH comes home and I rush to the shower because I have a HOT date tonight. No, silly, not with DSSH, with the girls. GIRLS NIGHT OUT!!!!! I put on my new "not mom" shirt (meaning it wasn't the first cheap t shirt I could grab at WalMart before the kids started screaming), blow dry my hair, try to put some make up on, kiss the poor DSSH, laugh as I leave the kids behind, jump into the car and quickly change the radio from classical to classic rock, and head to the mall.

Note to self: Don't ever ever ever eat artichokes before going out. I just remembered the other reason I haven't eaten one in so long. They give me internal bubbles. Oh the pain! All that gas was NOT happy to be kept inside me for that long. But we had a fun time, chatting, laughing, eating, and playing with J's sweet new baby girl. B, L, and N were there, and H, if you have a blog you need to send it to me =). After food, we walked around the mall (I haven't walked around the mall with a group of girls in like 14 years) and I actually sat at a makeup stand and had my eyes done. I've never done that before and it was so fun. It started getting late and we all said good bye. I snuck back in the mall to get myself and DSSH some Sees Candy. I bought 3 butterchews for him and 3 cashew roccas for me, and sampled the california brittle. Mmmmmm. L called me on my cell phone (Ok, I'm starting to really like my cell phone now) and asked if I wanted to still hang out some more. I thought, "I should get back home", then I said, "SURE!". We went to Js house and stayed up till 11 playing games and talking.
WHAT A FUN NIGHT!!!!!