peanut butter cup surprise cookies

These cookie cups are  so EASY and pretty fast to make, I found them on a really fun blog I love to check out called Picky Palate. I found that it’s a really fun recipe to have your kids help out with, they’ll have a blast making them with you, not to mention eating all the leftover candy. The peanut butter cookie dough consists of  only 3 ingredients. It doesn't get any better than Reeses Peanut Butter Cups tucked inside warm peanut butter cookie dough!  This is a very pretty cookie cup when finished and one that would be really fun to take to a Halloween party or a Fall Festival.  Enjoy!!!

Peanut Butter Cup Surprise Cookies

*I think it is better to double this recipe since you have to buy all the stuff anyway.  Also, since I sell Pampered Chef I use a lot of our stuff like the mini muffin pan and the small scoop for the first half of the recipe.  

1 Cup creamy peanut butter
1 Cup sugar
1 egg
12 mini Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, unwrapped
36 mini marshmallows
1 Cup semi sweet chocolate chips
2-3 Tablespoons heavy cream
1/4 Cup mini M&M's

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place peanut butter, sugar and egg into a large bowl and mix until well combined. Scoop dough evenly into a 12 count mini cheesecake pan or mini muffin pan. Cook for 13-15 minutes until almost done. Remove from oven and press a peanut butter cup into the center of each cookie until flush with cookie top. Top each cookie with 3 mini marshmallows and return to oven for 2-3 more minutes or until marshmallows are puffed. Remove and set aside to cool for 10 minutes.

2. Place chocolate chips into a microwave safe bowl and microwave in 30 second intervals until melted smooth. Stir in 2-3 Tablespoons heavy cream until silky and smooth. You can return back to microwave for 15 seconds to get a thinner consistency. Spoon chocolate over top of puffed marshmallows and sprinkle with mini M&M's.  Yummy the day after you make them.

Yield: 12 cookie cups

Bye Bye Stratus : (

The day has come to send off the Dodge Status with little fanfare.  Perhaps a tear and a snicker at all the memories.  For those of you that don't know, we tend to keep our cars for a while and have had a great run with the Stratus (since 1998).  Not a flashy car, no, it's rather plain.  I remember buying her at a dealership after my Toyota Corolla took a sudden electrical systems dive and would not recover without significant investment on my part.  So I pushed the Corolla from the Toyota service department to the car lot across the street, said my goodbye's, and saddled up to the Stratus.

Oh Stratus, you have endured your fair share of trials over these 10 years.   Who would have thought you would have been desired by so many?  Twice you have been stolen from us, only to have you returned.  You have been a victim of a few small accidents: a crash spun into your sweeping hood and bumper, and some jerk backed into your door in a parking lot ( not to mention and few scrapes and dings here and there).  The countless goldfish crackers and water spills you took in stride and have survived it all, a more loyal companion we could not have found for the past  145,000 miles.  But it's time to move on. 

So we celebrate the passing of one car to the purchase of another.  This is our new Highlander (new to us anyway).  We got it this weekend (through an auction) and we are liking it so far.  It's nothing fancy, and by all accounts should provide safe and reliable travel for a few years. It's super clean (thanks to The Car Cleaners), has super low miles and seems to run well.  Most importantly, it has a fuel efficient engine and should get us around 25mpg. 

So, we have a new ride.  But it comes at a cost...the poor Stratus.  I vow to find you a new home.   Hello Craigslist!

UPDATE! She is sold and onto a new home. A little sad actually.

enviroblox

Most people that know my mom knows she is the QVC queen.  We get these packages at our door and wonder what are we going to get this time.  Well the other day we got these things called EnviroBlox, I was thinking they looked interesting, but way

messy so I put them in my closet for another day.  Well today was the day to test them out and they were actually really cool.  So I figured I better tell you all about them in case you come across them and ask yourself do they really work, should I get them, will my kids like them…??? The answer to all of the above is YES!  

These neat little blocks are biodegradable, environmentally friendly blocks.  Basically they come in a bunch of different colors and they look like foam peanuts.  How they work are by getting the ends wet with a little sponge that comes with them and then you push the two ends together and walla they stick together, like magic.  There is no glue or mess, it’s great.  If you get them totally wet or run them under water they completely dissolve.  

My kids and Aubrey had a blast with these cool blocks for about an hour today.  It was a very easy, mess free craft that is good for the environment.  Oh and when I want to get rid of them I can run them under the water and they are gone so the kids can’t find them in the trash and pull them out to save them. (like they like to do with the stupid McDonald toys I like to try to get rid of every once and a while)  Yeppie.  I’d give EnviroBlox 4 stars.

scarrrrrrryyyyyyyy

Our Cooper is a chicken little.  He is so darn funny with what scares him all of a sudden.  The other day he came running into my room as fast as he could and jumped into my lap (I was working on the computer) and he practically crawled up my face yelling, “scarrrrryyyyy  leaves, scarrrryyyyyy leaves”  I was thinking what the heck is he talking about.  I know he is scared of leaves in the swimming pool, but we're inside so I tried to set him down and he was literally clinging to me with all his might.  So I asked him what was scaring him and he pointed to our fake plant that sits in our room and has been there since we moved into our house forever ago.  I couldn’t believe it, he is so silly.  So it took about 20 minutes for me to finally convince him that they were fake and that he could touch them and that they had been there since he was born.  He was finally okay, but he still kind of runs really fast past them as not to let them touch him at all.  (Colby and I joked that maybe we should put it in front of our door at night so he won’t come into our room in the middle of the night.)  The crazy thing is that since he has been scared of the leaves he hasn't come into our room at night.  Yeppie, thanks you leaves!

a cool treat

My Mother-in-law sent us a magazine subscription to Highlights (the magazine for kids) and Brielle and Cooper love to read it and make the recipes in it.  Last month was Monkey Muffins and this month was a recipe called “A Cool Treat” (basically Frozen Bananas).  It was way easy and way yummy.  If you are looking for a fun after school snack that your kids will love and can help you do, make these with them, they will love you for it.  Hopefully they will love you anyway, but maybe with these fun snacks they’ll love you even more.  

Frozen Bananas “A Cool Treat”

1.    Peel 2 bananas.  Cut them in half and push as stick into the cut ends.  Put them in the freezer on wax paper for 30 minutes.
2.    Mix together 1 cup of chocolate chips (we used half chocolate and half butterscotch chips cause that is what I had) and 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil.  Put mixture in microwave for 30 seconds or until the chocolate melts.
3.    Dip the bananas in the chocolate.  Put them back on the wax paper and in the freezer for 30 minutes.  Then enjoy.