Send a Lego Star Wars Holiday E-Card for Free!

December 9, 2011 Leave a Comment

Lego Star Wars is working with the Marine Toys for Tots in a great Christmas promotion.  Go to Lego Star Wars and choose one of the three Lego movie e-cards to send to your friend.  For every e-card you send out, a LEGO toy will be donated to the Toys for Tots program, up to ONE Million toys!  As of this writing, already 331,725 toys have been donated!

What are you waiting for?  It is totally free and will put a smile on that Star Wars fan in your life.  Plus you get to see Yoda in a Santa suit.  Need I say more?!?  Check it out here!

Full Disclosure: No one told me to write this.  I saw it on SwagGrabber and shared it with Miss M and now I have shared it with you!

Filed Under: Christmas, Lego, Star_Wars, Toys_for_Tots

Star Wars Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting: A Recipe

October 20, 2011 Leave a Comment

This past weekend, I made Miss M her Star Wars cupcakes as she requested for her 7th birthday.  The cupcakes themselves were from a box.  Duncan Hines Devil’s Food Cake Mix, to be precise.  So that was easy enough.

Then came the frosting.  I have never made it by hand before.  I knew I wanted chocolate but it also had to require items that I already had on hand.  Oh, yeah, it also had to be super easy.  I did a search on my beloved pinterest and found it.  The one.  The best chocolate buttercream frosting that I have ever tasted.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting Recipe
as adapted from Savory Sweet Life
The Good Stuff:

  • 1 cup (2 sticks!) unsalted butter (softened but not melted)
  • 3 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
  • 1/2 cup cocoa powder
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 4 tablespoons heavy cream (or whole milk)

Where the Magic Happens:
  1. Cream butter for a few minutes in mixer using paddle attachment on medium speed.  Turn off mixer.
  2. Sift all of the confectioners sugar and cocoa powder into the mixing bowl.  (I sifted before I measured).
  3. Turn mixer to lowest speed and add sugar and cocoa powder and mix until both are fully absorbed by the butter.
  4. Increase mixer to medium speed and add vanilla extract and cream/milk and beat for 3 minutes or so.
  5. Does it look alright?  If so, you have made frosting!  If it needs to be thinned out, add 1 tablespoon of milk at a time.  If the frosting needs to be more stiff, add a little more sugar.
Star Wars Stencils
Miss M really wanted something to do with Star Wars on her cupcakes.  Again, on pinterest, I searched “Star Wars cupcakes” and came up with this product that Williams Sonoma makes.
For about ten bucks, you get four stencils of Darth Vader, Yoda, Storm Trooper and the Logo itself.  The stencils are quite easy to use.  You simply place them on top of the cupcake and sift some powdered sugar, cinnamon, etc over the stencil.
Here are some helpful tips:
  • make sure you refrigerate your frosted cupcakes overnight or a suitable length of time so that the frosting will not automatically absorb your design.
  • if you are traveling with your cupcakes, do the decorating once you get to your destination.  This is what we did and it took a whole five minutes for us to decorate about 24 cupcakes.  Quick and Easy.

Overall, I was quite pleased on how the cupcakes turned out this year.  We had some leftovers but they have since been eaten up.  If that isn’t a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is.

Filed Under: birthday, cupcakes, food, frosting, Miss M, Recipes, Star_Wars

I have a confession

April 12, 2011 1 Comment

Despite my blog’s title, Queen of the Snot PRINCESSES, my six year old does not like princesses.  So what do I do?  Should I drop the princesses and just call it, Queen of the Snot?  I’m not so sure about that.

When I started this blog, Miss M. was all about the princesses.  If you go back and look at her “Musings” she would have me write story after story after story about those gosh darn ladies in waiting.  Then this past summer we moved.  Suddenly princesses weren’t the be all to end all.  Something new had moved with us..

Star Wars.  This girl is CRAZY for Star Wars.  She loves everything and knows everything about the story and can tell you what happened in each movie.  The funny thing?  She has never seen the movies and doesn’t really want to.  She knows everything she knows from the fine pages of a book.  Love that!  She can argue with you the minute details of who was in what scene in which movie solely based on what she has read or listened to.

What about C?  She is still too little to start getting on the princess bandwagon and I am not one to put her on that particular cart.  I have a feeling that if her sister continues down this path of Star Wars admiration then C has little to no chance of not joining big sis.  Take in point two things that recently occurred.  One, C was looking at one of Miss M’s Star Wars books that shows all the characters from the movies.  C sees a picture of the Ewoks.  She starts kissing them.  The other thing that happened was during a recent trip to Target.  We went down the kids bedding aisle and saw some Star Wars stuff.  C sees a pillow in the shape of the famous little guy that we all loved but were kinda scared of (or was that just me?) and says…Yoda.  J and I looked at each other and just shook our heads….

Perhaps a better name for this blog would be Queen of the Jedi???

Don’t forget to enter my latest giveaway here.  It ends this Thursday!  Thank you!
Filed Under: blog_name, confession, Star_Wars