Red, White and Blue Popcorn

My girls fell in love with this "Jello Popcorn" recipe that we tried out last week.  This week we decided to make some red, white and blue popcorn in honor of Memorial Day.  It's super easy to make and odds are, you have everything in your pantry already.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees

Spray a medium size saucepan, wooden spoon. large mixing bowl and a baking sheet really well with Pam.  (I actually lined my baking sheet with parchment paper before spraying with Pam to make it easier to clean up) 

I popped two bags of popcorn in the microwave and placed it in the large bowl.  (Try to get rid of the unpopped kernels)

In the medium size saucepan, mix all the following well, and over medium-high heat bring to a boil.  Continue to let it boil while stirring it, for about 3 or 4 minutes, till it is nice and thick.

1/2 cup margerine

1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon corn syrup

3 tablespoons water

Jello mix (3oz box)

Pour the Jello mixture onto the popcorn and stir it until the all the popcorn is well coated.  Pour the popcorn onto the Pam coated baking sheet.  Bake it for 20 mins, stirring once halfway through.

Remove from oven and place cookie sheet on a wire cooling rack, or transfer popcorn to another baking sheet lined with foil.  When cool break apart into small pieces.


For the red popcorn, I used strawberry flavored jello, for the blue popcorn I used berry blue.  For the white, I just left the popcorn plain.  If you wanted to go all sweet you could use microwave kettle corn instead.  The Berry Blue Jello was a little bit lighter blue than I had envisioned so I dropped in two drops of food color to darken it a little.

My girls had fun measuring out the ingredients and then bagging it up to give away to their friends!  Think of all the fun colors you can mix up for different holidays!

Mother's Day "Sundaes"

May 3rd, 2011 Activity

Mark off in Faith in God: Service to Others

Tonight was Activity Girls and it was actually my Co-Leaders turn to plan the activity but she called me this morning and said she had Pneumonia.  To top it off, my day was already busy baking treats for some of my kids teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week.  Eek! 

Thankfully I had seen this cute idea for a Mother's Day gift a couple of weeks ago.

I found the bath salts and the scrubby sponges at the dollar store.  The bath salts were a dollar a jar, and each jar made two sundaes. The scrubby's were two for a dollar and came in white and purple.  While at the dollar store I also found some razor's that had cute twirly round handles that kind of looked like straws or maybe the handle of a spoon, and they were five for a dollar.

Next door to the dollar store is a Baskin Robbins and little Ella insisted we stop in for some Cotton Candy ice cream.  While we were in there, I asked if I could buy some of their sundae cups.  They were only 25 cents apiece and saved me having to hunt for them elsewhere.   (I might have indulged in a scoop of ice cream while I was there.  It might have come in a waffle cone.)

The only thing I still needed was something for the "cherry on top."  I thought about using tiny little red tea light candles but they were kind of expensive.  I looked for some red candy but couldn't find anything appealing.  While standing in line at the checkout stand at my grocery store, I saw some Ferrero Roche Chocolates and thought that would make a cute topper.

The rest of the stuff, paper to make the little sundae cards, glue sticks, etc I already had in my scrapbooking stash.

The girls and I had a great time making these cute little gifts.  Because it's Teacher Appreciation Week some of the girls opted to make them for their teachers instead which I thought was a great idea.  We put them in brown paper lunch sacks and tied on the handmade sundae card with some colorful ribbon.  They almost looked good enough to eat!

Easter Baskets and AOF Egg Hunt

April 19th, 2011

Mark off in Faith in God: Articles of Faith

The weather was not very cooperative tonight.  I was sure activities would be cancelled for the night, but they were not.  We had really severe weather warnings and I tried to call the girls and cancel last minute, but could not get a hold of everyone, so we set off for the church.  It hailed almost all the way there.

I was quite surprised how many girls eventually showed up to the church, so even though we started a little late, we went ahead with a lesson.

To start off, we prepared these baskets:

For our next part of the activity, I had two sets of 26 plastic eggs.  I cut up the 13 articles of faith and stuffed them into the eggs along with a piece of candy.  My original plan was to have an Egg Hunt, but the tornado sirens kept going off.  We ended up just dividing into two teams in the hallway.  




Each team took a set of eggs, they split the candy between their team and then had to put the Articles of Faith back together.

 When we had about 10 mins left, I gave them a printed list of the Articles of Faith to help them along a little.  Once we had them all put together, each team took turns reciting them in order.

A New Calling - Activity Girls

Back in October, I was released from my big calling as Primary President.  Primary is the Children's Organization in our church for children ages 18 mos to 11 years old.  Since then my hubby and I had quietly been serving as Ward Missionaries.  (Assisting the missionaries serving full time missions)  Then Chris, got a new calling as President of the Young Men's Organization which meant I couldn't really serve as a ward missionary anymore.  We don't have any full time female missionaries serving in our ward, and the women aren't allowed to go out with the full time male missionaries unless accompanied by another male.  I don't know if any of that made any sense, but basically it's a lot easier for a female serving as a ward missionary to do so with her husband as her companion.

So anyway.  I was released from my calling as ward missionary.  And extended a new calling.  As Co Activity Days Leader.  Activity Days is a program for the 8-11 year old girls in our church. I was pretty excited because my daughter is currently participating in the program.

My first week with the girls, my co leader prepared the lesson.  Since it was close to Easter she brought some cute Easter crafts for them to make.  Cute door hangers and picture frames.

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I look forward to working with these sweet girls, they are so much fun!