Snowman Ice Cream

As winter storms finish moving through part of the country, I thought I would share a snowman ice cream activity my Baby Bear loved. The ice cream recipe is my own, but the snowman idea is from Pinterest. To make the ice cream, I threw two frozen bananas (peel before freezing), some milk, a few ice cubes, and a little sugar into the blender. All of this was to taste. While trying to get yours to just the right consistency and taste, remember this: more milk makes the ice cream thinner but easier to blend, more ice makes it a little thicker but chunkier, more sugar make it sweeter but less healthy, and more banana makes it thicker. You could also try using coconut milk instead of regular milk for a tropical flavor. Once the ice cream was done and dished out, I quickly added a marshmallow for the head, mini chocolate chips for the face and buttons, and a cherry for the hat (Baby Bear doesn't like maraschino cherries, so his just got a small splotch of red frosting). This ice cream melts a little quicker than the store-bought stuff, so don't get too picky over the decorations! ;) Finally, enjoy!

Marshmallow Snowmen

This past week in my hometown it has snowed regularly and schools have been cancelled due to very low temperatures. First of all, let me just say I am thankful I no longer deal with such a harsh winter. Second of all, when it is too cold to go outside to play in the snow, you can still do some fun snow-themed activities indoors. Or, if you live somewhere that's hardly seen a winter this year, like me, you can pretend there is snow outside and make a not-so-cold snowman out of marshmallows.

For each snowman, Baby Bear and I used 3 large white marshmallows, two ice cream cone marshmallows (mini-marshmallows would have been fine too, but this is what we had on hand), black decorating gel, Ding Dongs cut into quarters, and toothpicks to hold the marshmallows together (pretzel sticks would have been much better so the whole thing was edible, but again, this is what we had on hand).

Baby Bear helped add the arms and draw some of the faces/buttons.

He LOVED his marshmallow snowmen!

Under Construction

My blog will be under construction for at least a week as I try to reload all the pictures lost in a Picasa picture mishap. It appears that this will have to be done one blog post at a time, and as I have over 200 posts, most of which are missing pictures, this could take a while. Thank you for your patience! :)