Dirt - Pudding Dessert

This past week I received a request asking for the recipe to the pudding dessert I served at my kids' birthday parties. My daughter was on Spring Break this week and I have no lunches to share, so I thought it would be the perfect time to share the "DIRT" recipe.

DIRT - pudding dessert

Adapted from KraftRecipes.com

2 cups cold milk

1- 4 serving size package of chocolate instant pudding

1 - 8 oz. tub Cool Whip, thawed

3/4 -1 package of Oreo cookies, finely crushed

gummy worms or fruit snacks (optional)

1. Crush the Oreos in a food processor, or by hand in a ziploc bag.

2. In a large bowl beat the milk and pudding with a wire whisk, until well blended.

3. Allow the pudding mixture to stand for 5 minutes.

4. Fold the Cool Whip into the pudding mixture.

5. Layer the crushed Oreos and pudding mixture in a bowl, or individual cups.

6. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

7. Garnish with gummy worms or fruit snacks, if desired.

 For my son's Ninja Turtle party I made a 1.5 batch the recipe and layered it in an 8" diameter round truffle bowl.

To make 1.5 times the batch the measurements are:

3 cups cold milk

1- 6 serving size package of chocolate instant pudding

1.5 - 8 oz. tub Cool Whip, thawed

1 package of Oreo cookies, finely crushed

For my daughter's Little Miss Sunshine and Lalaloopsy parties, I layered the DIRT in a large bowl and decorated it with flowers and gummies.

For the Little Miss Sunshine party I made a single batch.

For the Lalaloopsy party I made a 1.5 batch.

TIP: I wrap the stem of the flowers in GLAD Press'n Seal before placing them in the "DIRT".

 I'll Be Linking Up At Some Of These Parties!

How To Make A Pull-String Pinata From A Regular Pinata - Ninja Turtle Style

My kids love having pinatas at their parties. I however, am not very fond of the idea of a bunch of preschoolers swinging a stick around inside my house. This is why I like to turn regular pinatas into pull-string pinatas. It is actually very easy, and can be done to any pinata.

Supplies

Pinata
Ribbon
Scissors
Tape 
Exacto Knife or Box Cutter
Stick Glue
Matching Tissue Paper (optional)

Method

1. Carefully remove anything that can be used to cover the ribbon locations. (If you don't have anything to remove move on to Step 2.)

2. Using a box cutter, carefully cut 3 sides of a rectangle in the bottom of the pinata, to create a little "door". You want to make the opening big enough for what you are filling your pinata with to come out, but you do not want it to be so large that the pressure of the filling pushes the door open.

3. Cut your ribbon in to pieces that are 2-3 feet in length. You want them long enough so that the kids will be able to reach them when the pinata is hung. Try to make the pieces similar length. You can make as many or as few ribbons as you'd like, I did 2 for each child attending the party.

4. Make a small slit in the center of the "door", and place one piece of the ribbon through the hole. Tie a knot in the ribbon, on the inside of the "door", and tape the ribbon down. (If you are filling your pinata through the "door", fill it now. If you are filling it through a premade hole in the top you can fill it whenever you like.)

5. Close the "door", and randomly tape the rest of the ribbons on and around the door. Use tiny pieces of tape; so that the ribbons will rip off easily, and so you can easily disguise which ribbon is the one that will open the pinata.

6. Cover the "door" opening and ribbon ends with pieces of matching tissue paper.
OR
If you removed anything in step 1 you can replace it now. I cut tiny slits in the brown piece I replaced, so that the ribbons would drop through. Then I glued the brown piece down around the edges.

Your pinata is now ready to P-A-R-T-Y!


To turn the turtle pinata into a Ninja Turtle, I first carefully removed the eyes. Then I glued a piece of crape paper around the turtles head and knotted it in the back. Next I glued the eyes back on over the crape paper, and attached a piece of black electrical tape for a mouth. 

This was a cheap and super simple solution to my problem of not finding a Ninja Turtle pinata on the market.

If you would like to see more from my son's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party, check out these posts.
The Decorations {Part 1}
The Food {Part 2}
The Favors {Part 3}



 I'll Be Linking Up At Some Of These Parties!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Party {Part 3 The Favors}

Last week I shared the decorations and food for my son's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Party. Today I am going to show you what I did for the favors.

To make the bags for the favors I made freehand patterns of the head and eye wrap. Then I traced them on card stock, cut them out and glued them to the bags. I used the same eyes that I used on the balloons and lanterns seen here.  I drew on the mouths and wrote on the names of all the kids attending the party with a Sharpie.

 Each favor bag contained a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coloring book, a 24pk of crayons, some candy, a toy skateboard, an eye wrap, and some toxic ooze.

To make the Toxic Ooze I purchased tiny tubs of glitter putty from Party City. Then I printed out "Toxic Ooze" on Avery 8160 labels.

I wrapped one label around the side of the tub, and cut another label for the lid of the tub.

I made the eye wraps from T shirts, size XL. I purchased the T shirts at ACMoore. 

 I cut 3" strips off the T shirts, so you end up with a big band of fabric. Then I cut the band so you just have one really long piece of material.

Next I folded the piece of material in half longways, and then in half again. Now you should have 4 layers of fabric overlapping.  I cut a half circle from arrow to arrow on the picture above. That will give you 2 eye holes. Then all you have to do is tie it on.

Update If you would like to see more from my son's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party, check out these posts.
The Decorations {Part 1}
The Food {Part 2}
How to Make a Pull-String Pinata
 I'll Be Linking Up At Some Of These Parties!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Party {Part 2 The Food}

On Monday, I shared the decorations to my son's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Party with you. Today I am going to talk about the food we had.

For lunch we had pizza, a Ninja Turtles favorite! Our sides were pasta salad, potato salad, veggies & dip, and chips & dip.

That is the boring stuff. Let's move on to what is really important....DESSERTS!!!

THE CAKE

For the cake I stacked three 10" round yellow cakes, and decorated them with the same butter cream icing I used on my Cookie Dough Cupcakes. You can find the recipe here. I used Wilton tip 2A to decorate the sides of the cake, and tip #5 for the top of the cake. The turtles are made from fondant, but I piped on their eyes on with the same icing I used for the cake.

THE CUPCAKES

The cupcakes were a chocolate cake with the same butter cream icing as the cake. I used an Ateco tip 869  to decorate them. The cupcake wrappers were colors of the Ninja Turtles' eye wraps.

THE BROWNIES

The "Sewer Lids" were brownies that I cut out with a circle cookie cutter, and drizzled with melted Wilton Light Candy Cocoa Melts*.

 THE DIRT 

The "Sewer Dirt" was a pudding dessert that my kids love, and it was also the first thing to get eaten.

THE JELLO

The "Toxic Ooze" was melon Jell-O.

THE COOKIES

For the cookie bar we had sugar cookies, butter cream icing, mini gummie bears, M&Ms, and a selection of sprinkles.

As usual there were plenty of leftovers, and everyone got to take home some goodies to enjoy the next day!


Update If you would like to see more from my son's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party, check out these posts.
The Decorations {Part 1}
The Favors {Part 3} 
How to Make a Pull-String Pinata

*Affiliate Links.

 I'll Be Linking Up At Some Of These Parties!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Party {Part 1 The Decorations}

My kids tend to pick out difficult birthday themes. By difficult I mean every time they choose a birthday theme there are no "products" to be found. My daughter has picked Little Miss Sunshine (part 1 & part 2) and Lalaloopsy for her past two birthdays. My son picked Phineas and Ferb, and Dr. Seuss for his past two birthdays. For my son's parties was lucky enough to find some clearance Phineas and Ferb products, and some Dr. Seuss back-to-school products that help me. The worst part is that within a year the major party stores picked up the themes, and started making tons of party products for them. So watch out next year Ninja Turtles birthday products will be everywhere!!!

To make the balloons I tied crepe paper around the inflated balloons. Then I used stick glue to attach the eyes, and drew on mouths with a Sharpie. The eyes are made of white and black card stock.

I used "Ninja Turtle" Lanterns for table decorations and set them randomly around the house.

I made these the same way I made the balloons. I tied crepe paper around the lanterns. Then I used stick glue to attach the eyes.

I found the green lanterns in 3 packs at Party City. They are each 9.5" in diameter.

For the pinata I bought a turtle pinata from Party City. I removed the eyes, glued on a piece of crepe paper, and replaced the eyes. I also added a mouth made of black electrical tape.

In a future post I will give you detailed instructions on how I turned it into a pull-string pinata.

Update If you would like to see more from my son's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party, check out these posts.
The Food {Part 2}
The Favors {Part 3} 
How to Make a Pull-String Pinata

 I'll Be Linking Up At Some Of These Parties!

These boy party ideas were also featured on Spaceships and Laser Beams.

Lalaloopsy Birthday Party

This weekend I was looking through some pictures and came across my daughter's 4th birthday party. I figured I would share it in case some of you have little girls that are as crazy for Lalaloopsy as my daughter.

My daughter absolutely adores all the Lalaloopsy dolls. She knows all their names and plays with them everyday. Peanut Bigtop is her favorite doll, she is a circus themed doll with a purple pet elephant. Peanut was the inspiration for my daughters cake. 

One layer of the cake is white cake and the other is chocolate. Both are covered in buttercream icing, it was suppose to mimic her outfit (white and red top, pink belt, orange skirt). 

The accents on the cake are made of fondant. 

Peanut's head is fondant attached to a sugar cookie with icing.

Besides the cake we had plenty of desserts at the party. There were cookie dough cupcakes topped with buttercream icing and fondant flowers and buttons. We also had lemon poppy seed cookies, multi-colored button shaped sugar cookies, and a giant chocolate chip cookie decorated with the Lalaloopsy logo in buttercream. 

We also had 3 different flavors of cakepops, and of course no party is complete without some "Dirt" pudding dessert. The flowers in the "Dirt" were from Micheal's craft store.

I made a small candy bar with Sixlets, candy dots, pixy sticks, and candy necklaces.

The tablecloths and buckets were on clearance from Target at Easter time. I used thread and tied buttons on the buckets handles. The pinwheels are from the dollar store and I glued small buttons in their centers.

I used the same buckets for the favors and used foam shapes, buttons, and pipe cleaners to make name tags for them. The favors were pinwheels (some with gum and some without for the little ones), giant pixy sticks, lollipops, crayons, bubbles, gumdrop prisms, kazoos, and a homemade coloring book. I made the coloring books using coloring pages from One Love Designs on Etsy, cardstock for the covers, and bound them with ribbon.

We had a flower pinata from Party City. I placed a button made out of cardstock in the center of it, to make it more Lalaloopsy-ish.

We also played pin the party hat on Peanut's elephant. I made the elephant and party hats out of cardstock and pompoms. I used blue painters' tape on the back of them, so they were easily removable to play the game. Unfortunately I don't have a great picture of the game hung up, because there is always too much to do party day.

The thank you postcards we gave out were pictures that I had taken and edited, of my daughter for birthday.

I hope this give you some inspiration for a party for a little girl in your life.

Linking Up With:
Tip Junkie
House Of Hepworths
The Shabby Creek Cottage
The Celebration Shoppe

Little Miss Sunshine Party {Part 2 The Food}

Yesterday I shared the decorations to my daughter's Little Miss Sunshine Party with you. Today I am going to talk about the food we had.

For lunch we had burgers, hotdogs, and chicken pull. Our sides were pasta salad, potato salad, ramen noodle salad, veggies & dip, fruit & dip, and chips & dip. 

That is the boring stuff. Let's move on to what is really important....DESSERTS!!!

THE CAKE

The cake was a white cake with butter cream icing. Little Miss Sunshine's hands, nose, and pigtails were made from fondant.

THE CUPCAKES

The cupcakes were a chocolate cake with butter cream icing. I used an Ateco 829 tip to decorate them.

THE JELLO

 We had alcoholic jello lemon wedges for the adults. They were served with sugar and kept to the back of the table out of the reach of little hands. 

For the kids we had lemon jello smiley faces (representing Mr. Happy). I made them using a silicone ice cube tray mold that I had found at TJMaxx.

THE TRUFFLES

We had two different truffles. My favorite were the cake poppers, drizzled with yellow colored white chocolate. We also had lemon poppy seed truffles rolled in powdered sugar. These were a nice contrast to all the sweetness everywhere.

THE REST

The final and perhaps the favorite desserts at my daughter's party were the dirt (a pudding dessert) and the brownie batter dip served with pretzels.

I will be sharing some of the recipes and tips for these desserts with you in future posts, but I want to share this tip with you now.

To keep the dish you are displaying your cake on clean while decorating the cake, stick small pieces of wax paper just slightly under the edge of the cake before icing it.

To remove the wax paper, very slowly run your spatula or knife under the edge of the cake (above the wax paper). While you are sliding your knife, slowly pull the wax paper out. You will be left with a clean dish and clean icing edge.

Linking Up With:
Tip Junkie