Family Movie Night: Ponyo

I read lots of reviews before we watched this movie because it seemed a little weird. And it was. But it was clean and the kids liked it!

It is supposed to be a adaptation of the Little Mermaid story and got great reviews for the animation by Hayao Miyazaki. I, personally, thought the animation was pretty basic and the story was a little strange - especially how the Mom left the little boy (only 5 years old) at home during a hurricane because she needed to take care of the elderly at her work and how it almost seemed if the little boy and Ponyo were pledging themselves to get married... at 5 years old. There were a lot of good elements as well.

For treats, I started by turning red plastic cups in to "buckets".

Then, I filled the "buckets" with water (blueberry Jelly Belly jelly beans) and put a fish inside (a chocolate foil fish). I really have to thank our local Enstrom's Candy store which let me in at 6:10, even though they close at 6:00, to by the blue Jelly Belly jelly beans. They also pointed out the colorful fish chocolates (which were much cooler than the Swedish Fish I was planning on).

Family Movie Night: Cool Runnings - in honor of the Winter Olympics

Obviously, I am a little late getting this up...

For our movie night on 2.19.2010, we watched Cool Runnings since it was in the middle of the Winter Olympic games.

I always liked this movie as a kid and was hopeful that my kids would as well. We had a visitor for the movie night this week, our cousin's son. JJ is only 4 so he lost interest very quickly.

I thought I came up with a good idea for treats. I used twinkies, cut out an area on the top and used Dots for the bobsledder's helmets. K-man said I needed something to look like the front "wing" of the bobsled so I made "wings" out of tinfoil and inserted them into the front of the twinkie.

Unfortunately, the kids weren't as thrilled with the treats. K-man doesn't like coconut (this week), V-girl said she "wasn't hungry" (which I thought was very suspect) and JJ took cues from the other two and didn't want his either. At least Mike thought they were good.

I had really wanted to get Rasta hats for the movie night this week but I was unable to find any in town and I didn't have enough time to order them.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

This was one of my favorite movie night in awhile. The movie was really cute and the treats were great. I have to thank Heather Ann Melzer because I stole her idea for the treats (she always has the greatest ideas!).

We started off the night with a spaghetti and meatball dinner and then had spaghetti and meatball cupcakes for dessert!

The cupcakes looked so real that I had to ensure the kids and Mike that they were edible and not spaghetti and meatballs!

Heather got the recipe from the book, "Hello, Cupcake" which is now on my wish list of books. The recipe was simple:

- Vanilla cupcakes in white liners

- Vanilla frosting tinted with 3 drops of yellow food coloring and 1/2 a teaspoon of cocoa powder

- Ferrero Roucher hazelnut chocolates (meatballs)

- Low sugar strawberry preserves (pasta sauce)

- Grated white chocolate (parmesan cheese)

I piped the frosting on from a ziplock bag (I didn't want to dirty frosting tips) to look like spaghetti noodles. I put the chocolates in a bowl, spooned the jelly on them and then mixed it around so they were all covered and them placed the jelly covered chocolates on the "noodles". They turned out great!!