Crock pot butternut squash soup

This afternoon I threw together a slow cook butternut squash soup recipe that I found on Pinterest. It was incredibly easy to put together. My 4-year-old helped me put it all together so I did not follow the recipe exactly as written, but it still came out great.

Soup Recipe

Recipe changes:

• I didn't like the idea of adding half and half to the soup so I used almond milk instead.
• I also used coconut oil instead of butter.
• The directions want you to add only half of the chicken broth in the beginning and hold off on the half and half until the end. I did not see this direction because I was trying to help my son and we put everything in at once. 
• I also add a drizzle of real maple syrup to each bowl.

It's a nice clean soup that I plan on having with my lunch most of this week. 

Enjoy!

Creative Birthday Cooking

As a working mom I always promised myself that I would do two things for my children, make their Halloween costumes and create fun treats for their birthdays and other holidays. In the middle of October my oldest son turned 4. We had a handful of birthday celebrations (one for friends, one for my family, one for at preschool, and one for my husband's family), which means I had to (wanted to) create 4 different treats.

He wanted a superhero theme for his birthday party with his friends. For this party I made a gluten free funfetti cake with Spider-Man decor.  I found a great tutorial on Pinterest on how to easily recreate pictures that made this creation super simple.
Cake decorating instructions.

For his birthday party with my family he wanted monster whoopee pies, so I created gluten free monster whoopee pies. 

His school treat did not need to be gluten free so I made pudding graveyards. The original recipe called for pre-made pudding cups, but buying 30 of those would be pricey so I bought 2 packages of chocolate pudding and small clear plastic cups to cut the price.

Graveyard pudding cup recipe

For the final birthday party I was caked out so I made candy corn cheesecake mousse. It was simple and delicious. (The recipe called for cool whip and I'm not a fan, so I used heavy whipping cream instead.)

Candy corn cheesecake mousse

The celebrating and creating was fun while it lasted, but I'm glad I'm done birthday celebrations for now. Instead I'll be working on fun holiday creations!