2.17.2017

The Year of Color {Pink} Edition

February is filled with all things love, and hearts, and red, and PINK! So, this month's Year of Color was devoted to pink!
I knew instantly where I wanted to head to snap a few photos with my babes this month. It wasn't even a question, I had to get to this spot.
If you saw the Wall Crawl - LA Love post a couple days ago I hinted at this wall, but I wanted to wait to share it today.
After Scott so kindly snapped a few pics of the kids and me I was able to convince him to jump in some shots as well. After seeing Scott with the kids, I think he should make cameos more often!

Marcus asked to try his hand at taking photos, so I passed the camera over and he started snapping away.  Marcus took the last picture of Scott, Julia, and me. Minus Scott's impeccable ability to spice up a photo, Marcus did a pretty good job!
The infamous pink Pall Smith wall can be found at 8221 Melrose Avenue.
After the pink photo op I did a little digging to read, bake, experiment, and craft with pink as our primary influence.

READ
Thanks to Julia's growing library, we had Pinkalicious on hand. I was initially worried Marcus would find the story "too girly," but he thoroughly enjoyed reading all about pink cupcakes.

BAKE
When I stumbled upon strawberry chocolate chip cookies I knew we had a winner. Not only was the recipe so easy Marcus could help whip them up, they were also mighty tasty. I had two little ones who couldn't have agreed more.
Recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction
Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 box strawberry cake mix
1 tsp baking powder
2 large eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 and 1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
In large bowl, mix together cake mix and baking powder. Set aside. In a smaller bowl, whisk eggs, oil and vanilla by hand. Add egg mixture to cake mixture and stir to form dough. Stir vigorously until all of the pockets of dry cake mix are gone. Gently mix in chocolate chips.
Drop rounded balls of dough (about 2 Tbsp) onto prepared baking sheet. Make sure balls of dough are taller than they are wide.
Bake for 10 minutes. Do not let the cookies get brown. Allow to cool on baking sheet for 3 minutes - they will be very soft at first. As they cool, tops may settle down. Transfer to wire rack to cool completely.  

EXPERIMENT
Pink flubber! Remember that gak, flubber stuff that was cool circa 1990? It was right there along side the silly putty and what not. Well, we attempted a super easy recipe and made our own.
Marcus helped with about 80% of the creation of the flubber. Julia tried several times to eat the flubber, and failed miserably with each attempt. The entertainment of the flubber lasted about as long as it took to make the stuff, but it was fun to see it all come together and try make bodily noises with it in a shot glass (just a heads up, we were not able to successfully make one single fart noise).
Flubber
1/2 cup white glue
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup hot water
1/2 tsp Borax
Food coloring (we used 6 drops of red)
Mix 1/2 cup glue and 1/4 cup cornstarch in a glass bowl. Add food coloring and mix again.
In a separate bowl, mix 1/4 cup hot water and 1/2 tsp Borax until it is dissolved. 
Add it to the glue mixture and stir again.
Get your hands in there to mix and work the flubber until it is no longer sticky.

CRAFT
This one was super simple, fast and easy, as any paint craft should be when it involves an 18-month old.
I know you wipe some away, but these prints were made to stay.
So keep them forever, a treasure they will be.
A special, "I love you."
For you, from me.
I had Marcus use a lighter pink to create the large heart with his hand prints. Once that was dried I wrangled Julia up and used a darker pink to create the smudgy mess in the middle using her hand prints. Once everything was dry I added the little saying to the bottom of the prints and mailed them off to the grandparents for Valentine's Day! Nothing too fancy, but full of sentiment and love.

Phew! That wraps up February's PINK prompt! If you've joined in the fun this month be sure to drop your link below so we can see how pink has inspired you.

Next month the color prompt is GREEN. We'll be linking up on Friday, March 17 - St. Patrick's Day!



Flubber source: Paper Tape & Pins
Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cookie source: Sally's Baking Addiction

16 comments:

  1. Marcus did great with that photo! He's a natural :)

    You live by the best walls!

    Those chocolate chip cookies look amazing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. OMGeeeeee...those pictures of you and your family, they are probably the cutest thing I've ever seen! Gorgeous!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I haven't heard about flubber in forever! I use to love that stuff. Totally going to make this with my older kids! And that saying with the heart craft, so so sweet!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I LOVE LOVE LOVE that you went to the pink wall! AND that Marcus took a picture of you, Scott and Julia that is actually super good!!! AND that Scott made an appearance. I like his silliness! He needs to make an appearance in more wall photo shoots!
    Also, those cookies sound AMAZING. I may need to try them!

    ReplyDelete
  5. These may be my favorite pictures of you all!! So much fun! And pink! Cant forget about that. Gak used to be everything, ha! I had an orange one and those noises were so funny. Oh man, not another cookie recipe to try out ;)

    ReplyDelete
  6. The pictures are amazing. Your husband is a cutie! And the cookies look SO good.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I kinda love Scott. And I kinda really love that last picture on the pink wall. Julia & Scott's faces! Love love love.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I love everything you did for this month, you are the epitome of #momgoals for sure! I'm so glad you were able to get Scott in the pictures with you too, they turned out so fun!

    ReplyDelete
  9. When I grow up I want to be a mom just like you. Ha! Seriously though! I made those cookies for V-Day too but used white choc. chips instead.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Flubber is fun, I made it with the big boys but def need to make some w/ Tate now! I love that picture of Scott and kids where his foot is up - looks like a really good tug from Marcus! One of Tate's favorite books is Pinkalicious ABC's - if I say the letter he knows the rest of the line! I like that Marcus is manly enough for a 'girl book' too! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  11. I love Julia's expressions in all the photos!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Julia's face with the flubber cracks me up!!! I love the pink wall, too!

    ReplyDelete
  13. How fun! That wall is the perfect backdrop and I love your photos!!! Your cookies look delicious and I love the craft. My girls love Pinkalicious and all of my kids love to make Flubber. Such a fun post this month!

    ReplyDelete
  14. The picture Marcus snapped of the 3 of you is pretty great, never would've guessed a little one took it! Julia's face in the last flubber picture is too much! She is such a doll��

    ReplyDelete
  15. Seriously another amazing wall!! Can I hire you to find some around KS for me? ;) And I love the photos with you and the kids! Adorable!

    ReplyDelete