The weather in Phoenix has been pretty nice lately!  Sorry all of you snowed in people, but this is the time of year that we're glad to live in the desert.  Alicia and her family were here for a little less than a week and she helped me do some gardening.  We took a trip to Dollar Tree and while looking for things for the garden, we found something to keep the kids entertained out in the nice weather!  

     Dollar Tree has adorable Fairy Garden figures in many styles.  I let my granddaughter pick out some of the pieces.  At $1.25 a piece it was a real bargain! Another nice thing is that many of the packages have multiple figures.  Here are some link to some of the choices:

     When we brought the figures home,  My granddaughter found the stump that she wanted to use to make her fairy garden on.  I also scavenged my craft supplies and found her some odds and ends to embellish her fairyland with.  Her brother joined in the fun as well.  They gathered rocks from the yard and grass to spruce things up.  Their creations turned out so cute! 

     I picked out our fairy pieces in the store, but you can order the entire set of your choice from Dollar Tree online as well.  As far as I can tell, the price online is still $1 per piece instead of the store price of $1.25!  If you have them shipped to the store, you can get free shipping! 
     These little fairy pieces will be a great way to entertain kids in the backyard while the weather is springlike!  

     I grew up living out in the country.  It was so great.  I wish my kids could have had that lifestyle in some ways.  For one thing, I knew where my food came from.  We gardened and raised chickens and sheep.  We sold corn 12 ears for a $1.00 on the side of the road.  We sold eggs for 50 cents per dozen.  Our family didn't have cows, but our neighbors did and we were often the recipients of delicious fresh milk.  My mom would skim off the cream and we would pass the container around shaking it to make butter, just like the pioneers.  That was some delicious butter. 

    Lately, I've seen some ideas for making flavored butters as gifts to enjoy with various crackers and breads.  Most of those recipes used butter purchased in the store, softened with herbs, etc. added to it.  That seems nice.  But, to me, if you are going to "make" a homemade gift, then it should really be homemade!  Butter is super easy to make and you don't have to shake the cream forever to turn it into butter!  I mean, that can be a lot of fun as a family activity to teach your kids how butter used to be churned.  But, with modern technology, like a stand mixer, making butter happens much more quickly! 
    Here are the steps to make your own butter: 
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    I then decided to make one of my little bowls of butter into a flavored butter.  I knew that Honey Cinnamon would go fast around here.  But, you can flavor your butter in a savory way as well.  
​     To make the Honey Cinnamon Butter, I put the butter back into a larger bowl to mix in the ingredients and continued to squeeze out buttermilk (without adding it to the jar of course) as I mixed it.  Here is the recipe:

     I'm not going to pretend that this butter is less expensive than store bought butter because it is much more expensive to make.  But, it does tasted so good and fresh!  Also, as a gift, it is just a little extra effort that will be appreciated.  Or, if you just happen to have a chance to get some fresh cream from a friend with a cow, then making your own butter will be very cost effective!   Plus, these kinds of projects are so good to do with kids so that they can learn where their food actually comes from. 

    After packaging the butter and making the Honey Cinnamon Butter, I got onto Avery.com and used some of their cute stock ideas and customized and printed some labels for everything.  This will be especially important to do when making flavored butter gifts. 

     Have you made butter with your kids? They will get a kick out of it!  Here is the link to the Lit'l Bowls by Tupperware.  I also found them on Amazon.  (See Below)
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           It is Martin Luther King Weekend.  It is always great to have this long weekend after throwing ourselves back into reality when the holidays are over.  This weekend always stirs up memories of one of our family traditions from when our kids were young.  If there was snow in Flagstaff, AZ, we would always go up and play in it on MLK Day.  

      We would often go to a park in the middle of town, just down from the Lowell Observatory, The kids would play in the snow, and behind the park was a steep hill that we could all slide down for a really long distance! Some people even skied down it!  I guess people were getting hurt there or something, because now that hill has barricades to keep you from sliding down it.  It was fun while it lasted.  We found other places to go sledding after that.  
        I know that some of you just need to open your front door to "go to the snow".  But, here in Phoenix, we have to drive a couple of hours to get to it.  This was a highly anticipated outing for our family.  We would pull out our tub of sundry snow clothes and  mittens  and see what fit whom that year and what we needed to find as far as  boots, scarves and  beanies.  We had some misfit outfits, but when you only go to the snow once a year, you don't invest in chic. Since we were going after Christmas, we could usually find some good clearance  items at the sporting good stores.
          After a couple of hours of playing, everyone would be cold and worn out. We would pile back into the car, change into dry socks and pants and whatever if necessary, and head home.  But, one of the things everyone looked forward to the most was stopping at a restaurant on the way out of town and getting a mug of hot chocolate, piled high with whipped cream.  

        This was the kind of tradition that has stories that we tell and retell and laugh about.  Sometimes other families went with us and added to the fun, but usually it was just us. 

          Many people have expressed surprise and curiosity when we have told them about our MLK Day tradition.  Some of them have adopted our tradition or created a similar one of their own.  I love that!
            My roommate from college, Debbie, told me that her family never had traditional Thanksgiving Dinner.  Her family always went skiing on Thanksgiving and ate turkey sandwiches!  What a great memory!
              Does your family have any a little bit off the wall traditions that are not the norm for everyone else?  I would love to hear about them!  
                 Now that our kids are grown and we don't do the MLK Day tradition anymore, I don't really miss going up to the cold and all of the prep work, I have gotten a little too old for the sledding.  ( The last time we went it took my husband and I a month to recover!)  But, I cherish the memories and I still love a good cup of hot cocoa!  Maybe that is what inspired us to come up with Hot Cocoa Bombs!  
               

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     In my last post, I shared my first experience making yogurt.  One of the great things about making yogurt is that you can use it for so many things.  One of the things that I wanted to do first was to make cream cheese from the yogurt and make a cheesecake.  Just like making the yogurt, turning it into a cream cheese substitute is very easy. 
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     The first thing that you have to do is drain the yogurt until it is much thicker than the yogurt that you would normally eat.  Since I needed about 2 cups of cream cheese for my cheesecake, I measured out about 2.5 cups of yogurt into a clean flour sack towel and put it into a strainer sitting over a bowl.  The bowl will catch the extra whey that will drain out.  Leave the yogurt to drain in the refrigerator over night.   You could also use your regular yogurt strainer. I didn't because my yogurt amount was so small that I could take up less room in my fridge by using a smaller bowl and strainer. 
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     When your yogurt is finished draining, it will look like this.   Next you use it just like cream cheese and make your recipe as you normally would.  

     I decided to make a Lemon Blackberry Cheesecake by baking the lemon cheesecake base and then topping it with a stabilized blackberry whipped cream. I used lemon oil and lemon zest to flavor the lemon cream cheese base.  It came out pretty awesome.   Here is the recipe: 

Lemon Blackberry Yogurt Cheesecake

     There will be more yogurt product recipes to come, so come back and see! 

Here are some other cheesecake recipes you will enjoy:

• No-Bake Blueberry Cheesecake
• Vegan Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bites
• Pumpkin Pecan Cheesecake
• No-Bake Blackberry Cheesecake
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