Boba Fett Pizza and Darth Vader Brownies

I'm woefully behind on blog postings. I have photos upon photos taunting me to publish them with black and white words surrounding them on this blog but alas that part of blogging takes time I've not been giving it. Many things seem out of place to post after such a long time and give me more hesitation. Then last night I had an epiphany that I shouldn't care! I should just share. If it's a Christmas post in July so be it. After all don't we often find blogs and scroll through them out of time? And with the beauty that is Pinterest we can now pin those things we want to recall in the proper season. Are you a Pinterest addict? I'm in love. You can see my pins here and if you need an invitation to join the fun send me a message.

So without further ado I'll get the ball rolling with the Star Wars Day, May the Fourth Be with You! This one seems mildly appropriate to post today since my city is a buzz with DragonCon this weekend. I first became aware of Star Wars day only last year thanks to facebook.

In 2010 I  whipped up a Han Solo in white chocolate carbonite, three Yoda colored vanilla lollipops and a large Darth Vader shaped rice crispy treat. Darth isn't chocolate rice crispies. He's the regular with added food coloring for the dark lord. This year I couldn't repeat my goodies so I decide to use my Vader pan to make brownies!

But not any brownies, Double Choclate Oreo Brownies! If we're going on the dark side we need to go all the way. I gathered the above ingredients and got cracking.

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The Wizarding Week of Harry Potter

My oldest son loves Harry Potter. This is him decked out in his Quidditch robe at Dragon*Con last year. He's loved Harry since he was barely two years old. His early affection can be blamed on HBO's constant running of The Sorcerer's Stone. It captivated him. We took him to see The Chamber of Secrets in the theater and it may very well have been his first movie theater experience. When Hagrid returns to the dining room cheers in the final scene my little boy stood up and cried because he knew the movie was ending.

Fast forward five years when Thing One is 8 years old he began reading the Harry Potter books. He had never seen any movies beyond those first two in all the years between. When he began the books his Harry Pottter love was reborn with an unquenching thirst. He voraciously read the books from the library. And soon wanted to own them all. 

Here he is with one of his favorite birthday presents on his ninth birthday, the remaining six books he could keep. Once he had completed reading the series we rented the Prisoner of Azkabam through the Half-Blood Prince for him to watch. He already knew disappointment from a book converted to film but was satisfied with the adaptation of Harry Potter.

The second Harry Potter Thing One ever saw in a movie theater was the first he actually remembers: The Deathly Hallows, Part One. He was over joyed and immediately a year long conversation began about seeing the final film. And during this year his Harry Potter love manifested in new ways.


His closet shrine for instance.

With a shelf dedicated to all thing Harry Potter.

His painted pumpkin for last Halloween was an homage to Harry Potter.

His Halloween costume last year even came with a request to cut his shaggy locks shorter and spray his hair dark.

And more recently our Museum of Natural History hosted a Wizards and Witches Weekend and he committed again to a costume as a Hogwarts student.

So as the date grew close for the end of Harry Potter in cinema we discussed the idea of a Harry Potter viewing party complete with Harry Potter snacks. I made a grave error in this discussion forgetting each film is approximately two and a half hours long. No one would come to a party to watch over 21 hours of videos. Oy! How would I tell my dear boy his party could not happen? Then I had another idea I pitched first to my man. A Wizarding Week of Harry Potter! We'd determine what day his father would be taking him to see the new movie then count back seven days and show one movie and serve one themed snack per day. My man was on board and I presented it to Thing One. He was sold!

Well, today is the day my man takes my biggest little man to see the end of Harry Potter. I imagine this may be a tad bitttersweet for him but I'm glad to have wrapped the event around some fabulous memories. Here's how his Wizarding Week went....

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Star Wars Rice Crispy Treats

Thing One had Rice Krispies for breakfast this morning. The sight of the box made Thing Two about bounce off the floor with the idea to make rice crispy treats...shaped like the Millennium Falcon and TIE Fighter. Thing Two would be the one with the Star Wars bedroom and Death Star birthday cake, in case you hadn't connected the dots.

He then promptly ran to the cabinet and retrieved this lovely box my man gave me for Christmas.

Inside it has Millennium Falcon and TIE Fighter sandwich cutters. I heart it but...

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Ham Solo in CandyBaronite

I'm a fifteen year vegetarian married to a bacon loving omnivore. This doesn't cause conflict since he genuinely loves eating good vegetarian meals and I also indulge the meat beast within him from occasion. One such occasion of indulgence bore Ham Solo in CandyBaronite!

I was initially just considering dipping bacon in chocolate to make Christmas goodies.

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Tony Stark and Abby Sciuto Halloween Fun

This weekend we had some early Halloween fun. My man and I had double Halloween parties on Saturday night and Sunday we took the kiddos to Boo at the Zoo. For the Halloween parties my husband thought it'd be fun to go as Iron Man. Since he's grown his hair out and sports a goatee I thought Tony Stark would be better. Plus I'd seen this instructable earlier in the year on how to make an inexpensive arc reactor and I'd been wanting to make it.

 One strand of battery powered LED lights and a 3" styrofoam disc. Total cost: $7.27

I cut the disc in half so it could be as thin as possible, then poked small holes where I wanted the lights to go.

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Snakes on a Plain White Carpet!

Last night started normal enough, for our household. My man grabbed the best thrift store find from last week, a full size Optimus Prime helmet with voice changer for only 99¢, and ushered the kids to bed.

Then a few hours later while my man and I were enjoying NCIS and a glass of red wine we heard a scream, followed by our 7yo son running downstairs yelling,

"THERE'S A SNAKE IN BROTHER'S ROOM! HELP HIM!

What!?!

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Boys Tee to Girls Dress

My two oldest are boys, boys with shirts I love. My youngest is my only girl, a girl with a funky fashion sense. I like to get the most out of all the clothes I buy my kids and low and behold I've discovered how to make some of those boy clothes go all the way down the line to my daughter and in a way her inner fashion diva loves. All it requires is taking the best tees the boys have outgrown, finding a yard or so of coordinating fabric and adding a skirt. The boys' best tees become her spunky play dresses.

My oldest in the Dark Side of the Garden shirt two and a half years ago.

It all started with this Darth Vader topiary shirt. I found this amazing, super soft Threadless Tee several years ago at a consignment sale for $2. My oldest son loved it. Then it was passed down to my middle son. But one fateful day he decided to see if scissors would cut cotton. His query resulted in a small nick along the bottom hem. I was sad to see this shirt go before its time.  So I decided it didn't have to go yet. My daughter liked Star Wars...I could do something with this.

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A Death Star Birthday

 We celebrated my middle moppet turning seven this weekend with the feast and cake of his own choosing. I spent the weekend making it happen creating my first ever stacked cake with a Death Star on top along with a buffet of baby back ribs, collard greens, corn, fried okra, mac and cheese, and lima beans. With a BBQ sauce mustache above his gorgeous grin he hugged me and told me it was a beautiful day. Happy Birthday, little man!

Making the Death Star come to life.

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I Like Candy, Part Two: Darth Vader

In my previous post I mentioned the start of my new found curiosity for making candies and chocolates. It was all a lead up to this entry. I needed a reason to make a solid Darth Vader mask out of black chocolate. And I found it. My friend's fortieth birthday. He's a Star Wars fan; he'd appreciate it. I was very excited. I had plans to make Vader from a mix of milk chocolate and Bailey's Irish Cream. I was melting my large amount of chocolate over a double boiler fashioned from a large bowl when my bowl tipped, steam slipped inside the lip of the bowl, and my chocolate seized. I blogged about that mistake and the resulting yummy truffles here. What I didn't mention in the blog entry was in addition to the truffles, before I froze the chocolate seizure, I scooped out more and pressed the Bailey's-chocolate into my Han Solo in Carbonite candy mold. 

All his features didn't turn out perfect since the chocolate wasn't pourable and therefore unable to reach the small voids. However, after a toss in cocoa I thought he was decent enough to take pictures of with toys. And eat. I mean, come on, he's made of milk chocolate and Baileys. I think a dip in a hot cup of coffee would be the perfect way to release Han. 

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I Like Candy, Part One: A Hunger Born

I was going to post about my chocolate creation this past weekend but thought I should do a first post to explain how this whole candy thing started. I've been baking and decorating shaped cakes for years for family and friends. Never for money or request. That makes me nervous as a long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs since I'm self-taught, my only lessons being watching my mom decorate cakes when I was growing up in the eighties. Fast forward to this past February when my super fab next door neighbor asked if I'd bake a cake for her son's fourth birthday party. She said she'd pay. Oh my. I told her I'd do it for just the cost of ingredients and still felt trepidation. The theme was Lego; the design left to me. 

Originally I thought I'd do a giant Lego brick cake. Have you seen them? Basically a sheet cake with cupcakes on top all iced a solid color. Effective but I thought maybe I could do better. I did have a silicone cake mold of a Lego Man I had purchased at Lego Land. Maybe I could use that. I did a test bake in the mold and realized it would not work with cake. Cute as a brownie. But with added buttercream icing, because I do not, will not do fondant, the details would be lost. 

Then an idea occurred to me. CANDY! I'd always seen the bag of Wilton Candy Melts on the cake aisle at Michael's. Maybe I could make a candy man from the mold. And I did. And it was easy. And it was awesome! Then I made candy Lego bricks from a Lego ice cube mold. 

The cake was a big hit. And a candy love was born.

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Making Darth Fairy

It all started with a google search that returned unexpected results, as so many things in my life do. I don't even remember what I was searching for when the picture of a pink princess Vader showed up. But the damage was done. My Princess Fierce saw it...and wanted to be it. We had an old pink dress from Halloween 2008 that I knew could be repurposed to this end so I told her I would make her one for Halloween. But then Princess Fierce did something better. She sparked her own creativity and decided instead of being a Princess Vader she would be...Darth Fairy! And she needed it created before Halloween so she could wear it to our annual viewing of the Dragon*Con parade on Labor Day weekend. 

For three years now we've taken the kiddos downtown the Saturday of Labor Day weekend to watch the Dragon*Con parade. The first year we barely made parade time and the kids were sad they weren't in costume like so many other specators. The next year we arrived sooner with two clone troopers and a fairy in tow. 

Two Clone Troopers on a MARTA Train last year

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