Everyday Live Happy

School is just around the corner - actually it starts in 2 days for us - and with that comes a question. What's for lunch? I don't know what your kids like, but at our house we have one that eats school lunch everyday and one that only eats it occasionally. And at my job I only get a 1/2 hour lunch break. That's not enough time to grab something from somewhere and still have time to eat it. That means making a home lunch most days for both my daughter and me. Luckily she can make her own lunch, but that still leaves the question of what to eat. Honestly you can only eat so many sandwiches and there aren't always a lot of options. What to do. So I did what I usually do when I have a question, I went to Pinterest. Again. I spent quite a bit of time on Pinterest today looking at home lunch ideas. There are TONS of them! Literally so many ideas. It can get overwhelming looking at so many different ideas. Because they can't just post one idea, you have to go to their b...

My daughter has been begging me to try a treat that she had at day camp last month. She had told me all about these mini banana cream pies. There was no recipe but she explained it pretty well. She told me that we needed to buy a sugar cookie mix and some banana pudding. Okay that's easy enough. Right? Well today we decided to find out. My daughter was pretty specific about what needed to be done, so I stepped back and let her go for it. We used the Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie Mix in the large pouch. She made the cookies following the directions for cut out cookies. After the dough was made, we needed to put it in a mini muffin tin of course. It took a minute to figure out which scoop gave us the right amount of dough in the cup. We didn't want so much that they didn't keep their shape, but we also didn't want any part of the cookie too thin. The amount we used was a little bit more than our small scoop. She gently pushed the cookie dough into the grea...

If you don't know what a pizza puff is then you should find out. Kids love these mini muffin sized pizza puffs. (Husbands do too.) We found this recipe a while back and made them a few times. We would then freeze them in small freezer bags. Then the kids could pull them out and pack them in their lunch box. They would stay cold because they were frozen, but they have thawed by lunch time. Fill a little container with pizza sauce and they would be set for a yummy lunch that is different then a PB&J standby. This recipe is simple enough that my daughter can make it by herself. She decided that she wanted these for dinner. I'm always up for someone else making dinner and so I thought that it was a great idea. (Funny how kids think that we are letting them do something great when it's their idea and think it's a chore that they complain about if it's our idea.) So I stepped out of the way and let her go. I saw them make this on a local TV show calle...

Today I asked my daughter what she wanted to do for Thinking Thursday. Usually it's more of a science type day, but she said that she was "thinking" about making lemon donuts. Mini donuts to be exact. After chuckling I said "okay." So we went to Pinterest in search of a recipe. Well we went to my Cinnamon Rolls, Breads and Donuts  board. We found one that looked simple from Made to Be a Momma  and decided to try that one. It used a lemon cake mix in the recipe. I had the mix so we got to work. A few years ago I got one of my favorite kitchen tools. It's a mini donut maker by Bella. Think waffle iron that has seven mini donut shapes inside. It cooks them very quickly (literally in about 2 minutes!) and they come out great. Which is always a necessity. It made so many donuts! It's good that we like them! They do get a little darker on the bottom than they do on the top. So when it was time to glaze them we usually put the darker side ...

Oreos. We love these cookies at my house. A stack of Oreos with a glass of milk is one of my kids favorite treats. Oh who am I kidding? That's one of my husband's and my favorite treats too. What's not to like about two chocolate cookies with frosting in the middle? What could you do to improve upon that? Well they have tried lots of ways to expand the Oreo. There are different frostings - mint, strawberry, cake batter,chocolate, peppermint and more. They have covered them in fudge. They even made a vanilla Oreo cookie. The Oreo section at the store just gets bigger. The other day I saw firework Oreos. They have pop rocks in the frosting! We have a favorite Oreo treat at our house. They are called Oreo Balls and they are "little balls of heaven!" (That is an actual quote from someone after eating one of these yummy treats at luncheon I was asked to bring a dessert to.) We don't have them a lot so that makes them even more special when we do have them. They a...

We love cookies at our house! Chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, chocolate crinkle cookies, peanut butter cookies! Our favorite cookies though are applesauce cookies. It has always been a hit at our house with my husband, my kids and all the neighborhood kids at our house. They aren't picture perfect cookies, but they are simple and yummy. This week I walked my daughter through the recipe and let her make them herself. She read the recipe. She measured out the ingredients. She also put them on the pan, put the pan in the oven and set the timer. She did a great job. She still doesn't like to take things out of the oven so she left that part to me. When we were done our entire family started eating them. Luckily it makes a lot so I still had some left to take a picture of them. (Like I said, they are not very pretty cookies, but they are really good!) Here's our yummy recipe Applesauce Chocolate Chip Cookies      1/2 cup margarine, softened (has to be margari...

At my house my kids love pizza. I think that most other households agree. It makes for a fast, easy, cheap meal. Especially when you are on the run to any of the activities that your kids do. Usually an easy kids pleaser. At our house my kids favorite kind of pizza is homemade pizza. We hadn't had it in a while and since today was "Tasty Tuesday" we decided to make it. A few years ago a friend of mine gave me her very versatile bread recipe. You can can do pretty much anything with the basic bread recipe. Besides regular bread you can make cinnamon bread, mozzarella sticks, rolls and more. Our favorite way to have it is as a pizza crust. We like it because it gives a thick crust. The nice thing about it is that we don't have to let it rise. We mix up the dough, knead it a little and then split the dough in half. Enough for two large cookie sheet (jelly roll pans) worth. Tonight my daughter wanted to make pepperoni pizzas. We rolled the dough into a large rectangle...

At our house we like to bake. Well maybe I should say that I like to bake and so that's what I tend to teach my kids to do. We usually make a "treat" once or twice a week. What ever we make does not last long at all. It's usually gone within a day or so. We often share it with others - especially my kids' friends when they are at my house. We like being able to do that. I asked my daughter (S) what she wanted to make. She didn't even have to think about it. Brownies. Now I will say this, usually when we bake we make things from scratch. I even have an amazing brownie recipe from my mom. It's all of our favorite kind of brownies. However, they take quite a bit of time. So when we are just looking for quick brownies I actually reach for a mix. I like Betty Crocker's Fudge Brownie mix Quick and easy. We do like to "dress" it up some though. After the batter is spread in the pan, we put our own spin on the treat. We usually sprinkle some kind o...

Something about summers says smoothies to us. I don't know why because they really are good anytime of the year and I usually use frozen fruit anyway. But my daughter has been begging to make smoothies. So we did. We only had lemon yogurt and she really wanted to have a kiwi drink. So she made an interesting smoothie mixture but it was good. Here's her recipe for Banana Kiwi Lemon Smoothies. Banana Kiwi Lemon Smoothies Ice cubes Container of lemon yogurt 1 kiwi sliced into pieces 1 banana cut into pieces Splash of milk Put all items into a blender and then mix until well blended. She drank a glass full through a straw of course. Then she put the leftover smoothie mixture into Popsicle forms. We always do that when we make smoothies. That way we don't waste any and we have a healthy summer treat for another day. Not a bad idea, right? Those smoothies were okay but here's the recipe for my favorite kind. Berry Smoothies Ice cubes Container of vanilla yo...