Army Party

My little man is SIX! Six. I wanted him to be five for just a bit longer. Birthdays sure are happy-sad events for me. 

We celebrated with an Army party.  It was bound to happen - we almost had one last year. But I'm so pleased Little One changed his mind about it, because this year we could be outdoors (Pretoria has a summer rainfall) and the landscape was perfect for all the outdoor activities.

At 14h00 on Saturday afternoon, 13 little soldiers descended upon our home, all dressed up with their firearms. :)

The afternoon looked something like this...

"Report for Duty" followed by an "Obstacle course/Basic training". A simple course where the boys were divided into two teams. They had to carry certain items through the course, which involved climbing, crawling and hopping over rocks. The teams were timed and the fastest team won the challenge. The items carried were half-filled water bottles (the big ones), a rope and a cardboard box with pretend supplies. 

Then we had "Search and Rescue", where the soldiers had to look for army guys that were missing in action - small plastic army men that I hid in the field.

Then it was "Mess Hall", when we sang to the birthday boy and also handed out party packets. The awesome tank cake was baked by Little One's very special teacher.

The last activity of the day was "Target Practice". We purchased a very inexpensive BB gun and my husband, who played Sergeant Major for the afternoon, oversaw this one closely. We printed out sufficient targets so that each soldier could take home his target with him. A nice keepsake of how well he shot on the day.

A great target to print out can be found here. 

After that it was free play! 

Another fun idea was to make and fly paper aeroplanes, 

but we just didn't get around to it.

 An easy to make sweet for the party were these Marshmallow Treats. 

Ingredients:

30 grams - butter or margarine

60 grams - marshmallows  

70 grams - Rice Crispies (I used Coco Pops)

Melt the butter in a saucepan.

Add the marshmallows and stir over a low heat until melted. 

Remove from the heat, add the Rice Crispies and mix together until well coated.

Press into a tray and cut when cool OR put the mixture into cupcake holders.

That's it!

Another birthday and party over. Big One has had eleven parties (he didn't have one this year) and Little One six - seventeen parties! - wonder if that makes me a party pro?

Think it makes me a good Mommy ;). 

Till next time.

Fun with Dinosaurs {A Dinosaur Tea Party}

(Source: Charlie Brown's 'Cyclopedia, Volume 3) 

(Whoops! In the last post I shared a lot of photographs of the Small Dinosaur World we made, but forgot to put in the most important photo - the one showing the whole small world, in it's entirety. I've gone back and added it in, if you want to go and check it out.) 

To bring this awesome theme to a close, what could be better than a dinosaur tea party with real yummy fossil dinosaur cookies.

The recipe I used is for roll-into-balls-and-squash-down-with-a-fork-cookies. The original recipe called for brown sugar, but as I didn't have any, I  used white sugar instead.

Basic recipe

225 grams / 1/2 lb. butter

125ml. / 1/2 a cup of sugar (white or brown)

1 egg yolk

500ml. / 2 cups of flour (I used cake flour)

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg yolk and beat further. Fold in the flour and then using your hands knead into a dough. The texture is quite crumbly, but keep kneading until you have a nice dough. Roll the dough into small balls about 1.5/2cm across in size. Use a fork to flatten them or invite in a friendly dinosaur to stomp on them for you. :)

Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 8 to 10 minutes.

These cookies are better the day after I think. They become more crunchy.

Adapted Gluten free/Casein free Cookies

225 grams / 1/2 lb.dairy free margarine (I used Blossom Light)

125ml. / 1/2 a cup of sugar (white or brown)

1 egg yolk

625ml. / 2 and a half cups of flour (I used Glutagon GF Cake flour)

The texture of this dough is very different to the basic recipe. It is not crumbly at all; rather quite sticky, which is why I added the extra flour. My oldest, the eater of these, gave them a big thumbs up. This is definitely one of the better GF/CF  biscuits I've made over the years. 

We needed a special serving plate for our dinosaur cookies, so using this amazing inspiration from Three Little Monkey's Studio blog, I made this T-Rex dish from a paper plate. It's an easy alternative to the melamine plate that Gretchen used.

To end off all the dinosaur fun, here are three really nice dinosaur links:

Some more DIY dinosaur eggs (these are so cool)

DIY plastic dinosaur bookends

A girl's dino birthday party (with free printables)

If you are a South African reader, I do hope you enjoy these last few days of Winter holidays.

Till next time.

PS. Sharing this at The Weekly Kids Co-Op. 

Wheat free/Egg free Crunchies

Do you have one of those recipe files? Those big thick stuffed ones...that can't even close? You go somewhere, eat something delicious and ask the hostess for the recipe. I mean, you have to have that recipe. Then you get home and you file it safely away in that nice big recipe file, for one day when you 're going to remake that awesome yummy thing...mmm, only one day never comes. Well, today I made one of those recipes :).

Recipe:

Place the following ingredients in a pot and heat and stir on the stove.

4 oz of marge (115 grams)
2 tbsp of syrup
1 tsp of bicarb

Add the bicarb when the margarine has melted.

Add one cup of sugar to the melted mixture, keeping it on the stove for a little while longer.

Remove from the stove and add the following:

1 cup of flour (I used Orgran Gluten Free Plain Flour)
2 cups of oats
1 cup of coconut (If you can, try to buy unsulphured coconut)
1 tsp of ginger

Spread it on a greased tray. This part is a little tricky.

Bake in the oven at 140°C for 10 minutes (approximately).

Yum Yum...enjoy! 

The easiest yummiest Sponge Cake

Do you have special dietary requirements in your family? We do and to complicate things somewhat, my boys are sensitive to different things. Trying to accomodate both of them is near impossible, so sometimes it means baking two different versions. Oh, I just need to add - the Kitchen and me - we have a rather strained relationship. So, I try to get in and out as quickly as possible :). 

One of the all time favourites in our home is this particular sponge cake. I have baked it many many times and everyone who has tasted it has loved it. (Either that, or I have seriously polite friends).

The best part for me - it's quick and easy.

Original Recipe:

175 grams self-raising flour

175 grams castor sugar

175 grams margarine 

3 eggs

5ml vanilla essence

To make this gluten and casein free, I substitute the flour with Orgran self-raising flour, and the margarine with Blossom Lite (dairy free) margarine.

Oven set to 180°C

Cream the sugar and the marge.

Beat in one egg at a time till smooth.

Add vanilla essence

Add the flour, folding it in with a spoon.

I use a small round non-stick cake pan and spray it with Spray And Cook (contains Soy lecithin)

Cooking time depends on your oven, but approximately 25 minutes to half an hour.

To ice:

Icing sugar

Add boiling water until you have correct consistency

If you want to, you can add a drop of almond essence to make a marzipan flavoured icing

Sprinkles (optional)

Or you could ice with cocoa icing - icing sugar with some cocoa added.

Recently I decided to start baking the cake without the margarine (to make it soya free too) and substituted the margarine with 175 ml of canola oil. It's a bit drier, but  it still works. 

PS. Recipes as you know are often passed along hand to hand, so I unfortunately don't know the original source of this one.

Enjoy!

PS. For my American readers, icing sugar is called confectioners or powdered sugar in the US (I think) :).  

PS. Sharing this at
Weekend Wrap Up Party @ tatertots and jello