Roadtrip Ready: Travel Snack Boxes

Welcome to day one of my new series Roadtrip Ready! I am so excited to share all of my fun roadtrip ideas, and few of my friends' great ideas as well. Today I am sharing a fun idea inspired by a project I saw on Pinterest. The idea behind these travel snack boxes is that each kid gets a box full of snacks at the beginning of the your trip. They get to eat the snacks any way they want...all at once or spread out through the day...but when it's gone, it's gone! It's a great idea, but I took it one step further by adding a fun chalkboard to the top. Now it's entertainment and snack in one!

I started with these divided boxes that I picked up at Ikea for about $4 each. You can find similar boxes at the hardware store or the craft store. 

I added a piece of chalkboard vinyl to the top of the boxes. I was careful not to cover up the places on top where the boxes stack on top of each other...that way they are easier to store when not in use.

Then I cut the boys' names out with  my Silhouette and added the names to the top of the boxes.

Henry got blue, Grant got green, but Eli ended up with yellow because I didn't have any orange vinyl. 

The great thing about these boxes is that you can fill them up with anything you want. That means they can be way more healthy {and a lot cheaper} than all those gas station snacks! I added a bottle of water and a yogurt in the large compartment. To keep things cool longer, you can freeze both of these. Then I filled up the boys' boxes with a variety of snacks: blueberries, carrots, almonds, Oreos, animal crackers, and pretzels. The possibilities are endless!

And when the kiddos start chanting "I'm bored" all you have to do is hand them a piece of chalk! That should keep them busy for about ten minutes a while:)

What kind of snacks do you like to take on roadtrips?

Linking up here..

Tatertots and Jello

Serenity Now

Someday Crafts

Skip to my Lou

April Recap Via Instagram

Road trip to Atlanta

 Yummy food at the Varsity

 Homemade marshmallows for Easter

 Assembling Ikea furniture for the Airstream

 Map covered table in progress

 BBQ at the Shed!

 Listening to the Easter Story at the egg hunt

 Easter eggs

 Ice cream for Henry's 8th birthday

 Eating grilled corn in the back yard

 Homemade Mint Cookies and Cream ice cream

 Fabric covered roller shades in the boys' room in the Airstream

 Eli covered in dirt from playing outside

 Bowling ball cupcakes for Henry's party

 Silly boys on the way to the bowling alley

 STRIKE!

 Birthday cake

 I started reading the Hunger Games....so good!

 My new bike

 Eli and his pillow fort

 Early morning P90X workout

 A tractor plowing a field near our house

 Going for a bike ride

 A week full of field trips

 Phoebe recovering from surgery

 Book #2

 Field trip to the movies

 Eli's first dentist visit

 Henry putting together one of his birthday presents

 More fabric covered roller shades in the Airstream

 Phoebe getting a little fresh air

 Back to the walking track to get in {better} shape before our trip!

Strawberry Tallcake

Jason's birthday was last week. We really don't make a big deal about our birthdays anymore. It seems like once you have kids, their birthdays are fun and your birthdays just mean you are getting older:) Even though we don't do much, I do always make some kind of special cake for my hubby. I've made some fun cakes for my hubby over the years, like a Krispy Kreme donut cake and an Oreo cake {which I apparently didn't blog about}. But this year he wanted something different...something from our past that we both loved: Strawberry Tallcake! Do any of you remember this SUPER delicious treat that they had on the menu at Ruby Tuesdays a few years ago. It must have been really popular when Jason and I were dating and in college, because I remember a ton of times that we went and order just a Strawberry Tallcake with two spoons as a special treat. 

The recipe to make this Strawberry Tallcake is a little complicated. It was kind of a lot of work, but it was so worth it! Basically it's sponge cake layered with a strawberry mouse then topped with strawberry syrup, ice cream, and whipped cream. Getting to the assembling and layering part takes quite a few steps....BUT this cake seriously tasted just like the Strawberry Tallcakes that Ruby Tuesday used to bring to our table in a huge glass goblet.

I found the recipe HERE.

Sponge cake:
5 eggs, separated
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cold water
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups AP flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cream of tartar


1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Beat the egg yolks until they are creamy and lighter yellow. Add in the sugar and blend well. Add water and vanilla mix until combined.
3. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt and add it to the yolk mixture. Mix well until the batter is smooth. In a separate bowl, beat the egg white until smooth, then add the cream of tartar. Continue beating until the egg whites are stiff and form peaks. Fold the egg whites into the batter and mix slowly until well combined. 
4. Pour the batter into an ungreased 17X11 cookie sheet and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until the top of the cake is a light brown color. 

Strawberry Mousse and Syrup:
10 oz package of frozen strawberries in syrup
1 3/4 cups of water
3 oz. package of strawberry Jell-O
1 cup of heavy cream

1. Defrost the frozen strawberries and pour the entire package, including syrup, into a blender and puree for 10 to 15 seconds until smooth. Combine  puree with 1 1/2 cups of the water in a small saucepan over medium heat. When the strawberry mixture comes to a boil, add the entire package of Jell-O, stir to dissolve, and remove the pan from the heat to cool. When the strawberry mixture has cooled to room temperature, divide it in half into two medium bowls.
2. Beat the whipping cream until it is thick and forms peaks. Fold the cream into one of the bowls of the strawberry mixture until well combined. This is your strawberry mousse. Cover and chill. To the other bowl, add the remaining 1/4 cup of water. This is the strawberry syrup. Cover and chill this mixture as well.

After the cake has cooled and the mousse and syrup have been chilled, you are ready to started assembling your Strawberry Tallcake. Divide the cake into three even pieces. Put down the first cake section, cover it with half of the mousse mixture. Add another cake section and cover it with the rest of the mousse mixture. Top the whole thing off with the last section of cake. {You could also make these individual sized by cutting small circles of cake and layering them with the mousse.} The layered cake can be refrigerated for a few days until you are ready to serve the cake. To serve, cut a piece of cake and place it in a bowl or large goblet. Top it with a couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream, a drizzle of the strawberry syrup, and a good squirt of whipped cream.
{Recipe adapted from recipecircus.com}

Roadtrip Ready Blog Series

As most of you know, we are heading out on a big roadtrip in a few weeks. I have a ton of projects {besides the Airstream} that I am working on in preparation for our trip. So I decided it might be fun to put all of my ideas {and a few guests posts too} into a blog series. I'm calling this fun new series "Roadtrip Ready" and for the whole month of May I will be posting great tips, crafts, and recipes that will help you get ready for a roadtrip. 

I'm still looking for a few more guest posts, so if you have any blog posts {new or old} that you think would be a great addition to the series, send me an email and we can work something out!

Check back next Tuesday {May 1st} to see the first post in the series! It is going to be a fun one! 
CLICK HERE TO SEE ALL THE POSTS IN THE SERIES!

Doggy Drama

Back in January I introduced you to our new puppy Phoebe.

I also admitted that I'm really not a dog person, but I wanted the boys to have a pet so we brought home a cute little puppy for them. Since then Phoebe has been a great pup for the boys. Other than chewing up a few things here and there and barking at the wind at 10 o'clock at night, she really has been the perfect little puppy.
But since yesterday, Phoebe the puppy has been stressing me out! Something happened to her Sunday afternoon. We still aren't quite sure what. Possibly she got hit by a car, or maybe she got kicked by our neighbors' horse, or maybe a bigger dog attacked her. We're not sure how, but Phoebe got hurt and not just a little hurt apparently.
Jason took her to the vet in our little community first thing Monday morning. They did an exam and an x-ray of her back legs, which seemed to be the major problem. They didn't find anything serious and said that maybe she has sprained something. They let Jason bring her home with instructions to keep her in the house and confined for about two weeks to give her sprain a chance to heal. So after paying $300 in fees, he brought her home, gave her some food and water, and put her in her little doggy cage.
When I got home from school with the boys, I noticed that she seemed worse than she had that morning. I think Jason thought she was just tried or hurting, but I knew something wasn't right. She ate a little bit, went out to do her business, and then laid down. I brought her back in so I didn't have to worry about her running around and hurting herself more, but after a while I noticed she wasn't breathing right. We let her out thinking maybe some of the medicines had given her an upset stomach. She walked around for a while, and looked like maybe she was trying to vomit. Then she laid down in the edge of the flower bed and didn't really move...she was just really laboring to breath.
So at 7:45 last night Jason took her over to an emergency clinic about 20 minutes away. They examined her ans said she was obviously in pain and that she was really dehydrated. They ended up putting in an iv and then keeping her to run a bunch of tests. Jason was told they would call back within the hour with the results and let us know what they found.
We stayed up for a while waiting on a call back, and when we hadn't heard anything around 10:00 we called over to check on her. The doctor called us back about 30 minutes later and said that from the x-ray they did it looked like she had probably been hit by a car. Her diaphragm had a tear in it and it looked like she was bleeding internally. The tear and the bleeding was making it hard for her to breath which is why she was in so much pain. The doctor said they really needed to go ahead and do surgery to repair the tear right then, because she was just getting worse and worse.
Without know just how much doggy surgery was going to cost, we told her to go ahead with it. As much as I'm not a dog person, I really couldn't bare the thought of her hurting like that, and I knew the boys would be so heartbroken if she didn't come home. They did the surgery, and called about a little while later to say that things had gone pretty well. We went to bed last night hoping and praying that she would be fine through the night.
We are up and going this morning. The boys have asked where Phoebe is and all I've told them is that she is at the doctor still. I don't want to tell them about all the details until we get an update on her. I'm hoping that we get a call with an update soon this morning. I've never been through this kind of thing with a dog, and I'm really not sure what to expect over the next few weeks. How does a dog recover from surgery? Especially an outside dog that is used to running around wild!
Anyway, for now I am stressed and we are waiting.
Hopefully, we'll have good new soon. In the meantime, I'm wondering just how much emergency surgery on a dog costs!