A Bit of Tomfoolery

Garret & Ella "helped" me with April Fool's dinner preparations. 

Yeah, so April Fool's day sort of snuck up on me and I hadn't made any plans for it whatsoever. Then I overheard my oldest boys talking to each other the night before, giddy with excitement and anticipating having dessert for dinner and dinner for desert as we had done in years past. Umm....

Well, it's a good thing that I almost had everything on hand necessary to make TV dinner cupcakes (except the corn flakes for the chicken, but Honey Bunches of Oats were an okay substitute.  And, yes.  We often have large assortments of candies like fruit flavored Tootsie Rolls at our house). 

I only had one small package of Jell-O, so I could only make trick drinks for the three boys.  Then I tried to use food color in water to create the same color for Jason and I.  It was a little lame. 

I misplaced the meatloaf recipe my sister had given me for the year before, so I resorted to trying the one on the box of the Lipton onion soup mix because it seem like it would be dry enough to form into a cake to be "frosted" with mashed potatoes. I was right. It was dry. It didn't taste very good to me, so dinner was a bit of a flop. But, hey! The kids were satisfied that the tradition continued, even if nobody ate very much. I think we resorted to satisfying our hunger with bowls of cold cereal later on that evening.

At least this year I set the bar pretty low.  I can certainly outdo myself come next April....that is, if I don't completely forget again!

This post authored by Amber

Fooled Ya!

We try to discourage silly pranks at our house on April Fool's Day (you know the ones like, "Mom, look over there!  There's a car going by....April Fool's!).  Of course the boys' version of trickery is pretty harmless, but it is obnoxious to listen to for the entirety of a day. 

I don't ever want the day to slip by without a few edible pranks, however, so we had dessert for dinner and dinner for dessert. It's a tradition we started last year because I really wanted to try out some recipes from my brand new Hello, Cupcake! book.  I wanted to mix things up a bit and do a different cupcake this year. I thought the Chinese take-out concept was hilarious.  I added the element of a meatloaf cake that was "frosted" with mashed potatoes (that's a tradition of my sister's). 

The kids knew something was a little off when they saw the food and cupcakes, but no one suspected that their drink was actually red jell-o.  I think they were just so excited that we were having something other than water to drink.  They worked so hard to suck liquid through their straws; I wished I had gotten it on video.  Well, maybe they'll forget and I can catch it next year.  Or maybe not.  Either way, we sure had fun acting (and eating) like a bunch of fools!

Dessert for Dinner

Dinner for Dessert

This post authored by Amber