snacks

Pretzel Chocolate Snacks

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I found this snack idea on Pinterest, and it actually looked like the original picture when we finished making them! These little bites are easy and taste delicious. They have that perfect salty and sweet combination. We are eating them so fast, they may not make it to our neighborhood 4th of July party (which is the reason I made them in the first place).

The Ingredients: Snyder’s Snaps Pretzels (the ones that look like a tic tac toe board), Hershey Kisses, M&Ms (plain and/or peanut)

The Directions: Line up pretzels on a cookie sheet. Put one Hershey kiss on each pretzel. Bake at 275 degrees for ~3 minutes. Take out of the oven and immediately smush M&M into the top. Refrigerate to re-harden the Hershey kiss.

Variations: Whatever holiday, smush the coordinating colored M&M. Halloween– orange. Christmas– red and green. Valentine’s Day– pink, red, and white. St. Patrick’s Day– green. You get the idea.

** I had a student give me a bag of these little morsels at Christmas.  He (and by “he” I mean the mom) made them to look like Rudolph.  I know they used the mini traditional shaped pretzel and a red mini M&M for the nose.  I ate them before I thought to pay attention to the construction.  If anyone has made the reindeer version, please let me know the details!

Teddy Bear Picnic Birthday Party

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I saw a bag of mini Stauffer’s original animal crackers on the impulse buy rack while waiting to check out at Office Depot several weeks before my daughter’s second birthday. That sighting sparked the idea for the teddy bear picnic where we could serve all mini food to our guests (human or fuzzy).

The Invitation: I used a local stationer, The Party Basket, in New Orleans for this one. The invitation included a little poem that told our guests, “A favorite teddy bear is a welcome guest to make (name’s) birthday the beary best!” Everyone RSVP’d to “Mama Bear”.

The Location: We hosted the party at the playground at our local park.

The Picnic Baskets: I located the baskets at Michael’s. I shopped at a fabric store for bright fabrics, which I cut into squares. My mom found colorful plastic tea sets that came in clear backpacks at a discount store. One tea set served four, so we divided up the complete sets.  Each picnic basket contained dishes to serve two guests– the child and his/her stuffed animal friend.

The Food: I made bear shaped tea sandwiches using a teddy bear cookie cutter. Each guest had one turkey sandwich and one ham and cheese sandwich in my favorite clear cellophane bags from Michael’s. I packaged mini Goldfish and the mini animal crackers in bags too and closed all the bags with stickers. We also included mini boxes of raisins and served small juice boxes. My daughter was going through an Elmo phase at the time, so the juice boxes, stickers, paper napkins, and the cake toppers were Elmo-themed. This mixed well with the fun colors in the tea sets.

The Picnic: We found brightly colored tablecloths in the sale bin at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and spread those out near the playground. There was room for our friends to set out the food from their picnic baskets and eat with teddy bears, dolls, and other party guests.

The Cake: Since we were serving all mini items, we purchased a small cake for the birthday girl (they call them “smash cakes” in some places), and the guests ate cupcakes.

The Party Favors: Guests took home their picnic basket with the plastic tea sets.

Hello Kitty Birthday Party

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I tend to get a little over excited when planning parties for my children but when my daughter asked about having a Hello Kitty birthday, I was particularly giddy. Hello Kitty is all about crafts and cooking! I actually had to scale back from the original plan to have “shops” in the backyard where guests would go for individual activities (see the carnival booth plans at Mr. McGroovy’s).

The Invitations: Finestationery.com did not have what I needed for this party, so I ordered invitations through Tiny Prints. The cards were purrr-fectly wonderful.

The Crafts: We had several stations set up on low tables under one of those big tailgate tents in the backyard. Children could make giant tissue paper flowers. We folded several layers of colorful tissue accordion style then wrapped a pipe cleaner tightly around the middle. The kids pulled the tissue layers apart to create the flower. We also photocopied a Hello Kitty picture on cardstock. We then hole punched around the edge of the picture and tied a piece of long yarn to one hole. The guests could lace the string (like those nursery school lacing cards) and/or color the picture of Hello Kitty.

The Cooking: We used heart, butterfly, and tulip cookie cutters and made plain sugar cookies. We set up a table with the cookies, icing, and various sprinkles for a cookie decorating station.

The Scavenger Hunt: Each child received a drawstring bag with clues inside. Since our guests couldn’t read yet, we had slips of paper with pictures of places around the yard. You would pull a picture out of the bag, look for the location in the picture, then go to that place to pick up one treat. When the kids finished, they had filled Hello Kitty’s purse.

The Drawstring Bags: My sister made these for my niece’s spa birthday. She very kindly sewed the whole batch for me. Here is the basic pattern, but our bags had a 6″ square base and the sides were 22″ long and 10″ tall.

The Party Favors: Everyone took home the filled drawstring bags. After completing the scavenger hunt, the bags contained a headband with a red bow hot glued to it, lollipops, Hello Kitty lip gloss, Hello Kitty mirror, Hello Kitty mini notepad, and a few other fun items. All of the party stores and places like Target have a pretty big selection of mini Hello Kitty party favors.

Army Pool Birthday Party

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After we almost melted in the humidity at the previous year’s backyard pirate party (see pirate party post), we decided to change venues.  My son thought a pool party with an army theme would be great.  It worked out well until the afternoon thunderstorms rolled in.  This year, we are definitely planning an indoor event!

The Invitations: I returned to Fine Stationery for an army style invitation.  I ordered blank cards and printed from my home printer.  The wording for these invitations included things like, “Attention Troops” and “You’ve been drafted for (name’s) birthday party” and “Report to (location)”. We used military time (14:00) for the party start time and printed everything with Stencil font.

The Food: Our local grocery store did not have an army birthday cake, but they can do camouflage colors on the icing.  They also were able to create a rocky landscape with candy rocks and trees. We added plastic army men, army tank candles from Party City, and an American flag toothpick.  Each guest received a canteen filled with lemonade that I ordered from Oriental Trading.

The Games: We threw handfuls of plastic army men into the shallow end of the pool for a search and rescue activity.  Kids also had a cannonball/jumping contest off the diving board.  For prizes, each child earned a “dog tag” with their award written on the back. We came up with awards like biggest splash, best dive, best flip, best twist, etc. The dog tags came from Oriental Trading, but Party City had a big selection of army themed favors too.

The Party Favors: Guests took home the canteen, the plastic army men, and a squirt gun.

Dinosaur Dig

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After the success of the “J” week jellybean treat, we decided to send in another themed snack to the nursery school class during “D” week.  We combined some Chex mix recipes and came up with a dinosaur style snack mix.  The idea was to have kids dig for dinosaur bones and dinosaur eggs in the snack mix.

Ingredients

  • 2 c. Corn Chex cereal
  • 2 c. Rice Chex cereal
  • 1 1/2 c. oyster crackers
  • 1/2 c. small pretzel sticks or pretzel snaps
  • 2 c. graham sticks (dinosaur bones) or Stauffer’s original animal crackers (dinosaurs)
  • 6 oz. dried fruit (we liked a combination of dried blueberries, cranberries, and cherries)
  • 1 c. yogurt-covered raisins (dinosaur eggs)
  • 5-6 T. butter, melted
  • 2 T. sugar
  • 2 t. ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 t. ground nutmeg

Directions

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray 13×9 pan with nonstick cooking spray.
  • Place cereals, oyster crackers, pretzels, and graham sticks in a large bowl; mix lightly.
  • Combine butter, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in small bowl; mix well.  Drizzle evenly over cereal mixture.  Toss to coat. **If the mixture is pretty dry, mix another half batch of butter/sugar/spice and add.
  • Spread the coated cereal mixture in an even layer on the pan.
  • Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown, stirring gently halfway through.  Cool completely.  Stir in dried fruit and yogurt-covered raisins.

Variations

  • Instead of graham sticks or animal crackers, you could use mini-dinosaur grahams.  I can’t ever find these at my grocery store, but I think they are out there.
  • For “G” week, you could make Gorilla Grub and substitute the yogurt-covered raisins and dried fruit for plain raisins and dried banana chips.