The Mexican Two Step

This one is easy and WEIRD. Tonight I was wanting something sweet and different for dessert and thought back to an episode of Top Chef when they made a Mexican inspired dessert.

Miss Olivia LOVES to draw on those legs, and she said her baby, cat baby had to be in the next blog. So here is your 15 minutes cat baby!

Back to the dessert. This one is BEYOND easy. Just make any box of chocolate pudding and add chili powder and cinnamon. No measurements, this is strictly according to how much your taste tells you.

So why the Mexican Two Step? When I told my husband what I was making he said 'I'm not eating THAT. It'll give me the Mexican two step!' 


Excluding old fuddy duddy, daddy. I love that these two kids are willing to take a walk on the weird side every now and again.






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Summer Series: My fantastical romp with ZIPPERS!

Zippers, zippers, and zippers!

Right now we are penny pinching. Today a local church was having a hot dog and rummage sale. Since the church is only a 10 minute walk from our home, I walked all three baby badgers over to have lunch and support the church.

I was not wanting to buy anything except the hot dogs when a bag caught my eye. It was filled with at least a hundred zippers of every color. I really needed ONE zipper so I asked how much, the kind woman said one DOLLAR for the WHOLE bag! My crafting brain almost seized on me, SOLD!

I could not believe the deal I found. At that point I was on such a craft high I over looked my onry toddler Cody stuffing hot dog (including sauce) into his shorts pocket. There is something about a fresh craft find that makes everything OK.

So as I sat at the park while the kids got even MORE dirty I thought about the endless projects. I decided to challenge myself. I am going to do a summer series where I make several tutorials using these fabulous zippers.

I hope to get started this weekend on the first zipper tutorial and I will keep doing the zipper blogs until summer ends or I run out of zippers. 

Now I need to mention my model for this blog. This is Uncle Harvey. Uncle Harvey has been my cat for the last 12 years. I had him before my husband and kids. He is a fat cat who is currently retired and HATING it. He was a outdoor cat in his younger days who enjoyed fighting and catching mice. Sadly Uncle Harvey got into a pretty major fight with a dog last year and he is now retired from the outdoors. That is why he always looks a little annoyed.

Special thanks to my zipper model: Uncle Harvey!

Stay tuned for some awesome zipper fun!

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Cooling off in the heat by freezing a lizard and rat: toddler fun!

Yea! Back to blogging, so let's just dive in. In Kentucky it has been HOT, so I came up with a quick, easy, and for us poor folks: FREE project. 

Go in your kids room and find some silly plastic toys. I found these two lurking at the bottom of the toy box.

Grab two cheap plastic containers. We had these  down in a drawer. I thought about using an old baby wipe box, either way I'd pick something you wouldn't mind if it cracked in the freezer.

Now, in the words of Olivia 'Drown that rat!'

The lizard pictures seemed sad, like the animal lover in me wanted to save him. 

Now pop those puppies in the freezer 6-8 hours.  

They had been good toys.

Now the fun part, run hot water over the plastic cup and pop that puppy out. On this day is was 95 degrees and we welcomed our fun game.

We imagined that the rat and lizard was trapped in the ice age, and we had to save them!

I am just in LOVE with this pretty little girl and her princess hair.

My red headed stranger took the task of rescuing the lizard. 

After an HOUR of cooling off with this free, fun toy we busted them loose using the smashing method. 

FREEDOM!

I think this summer is going to be HOT so I hope all of you stay safe, keep cool, and have FUN this summer. 

Special thanks to the poor lizard and rat who sacrificed themselves for this fun.

And even more special thanks to the two toddlers who inspire me, challenge me, and who have stole my creative heart; Olivia and Cody.

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Poor Badger is partying hard at these awesome places:

It's a Hodgepodge Life

The Frugal Girls

The Shabby Chic Cottage

Thrifty Decorating

Tatertots and Jello

Creation Corner

It's FUN to craft!

The 36th Avenue.

Simply Designing

Little Lucy Lu

Smile Monsters

Fingerprints on the Fridge

Sisters of the Wild West

Reasons to Skip the Housework

Where are those darn badgers?!?!?!

Oh how I've missed my blog! Us badgers have just recently moved a whooping 3 miles from our old homestead. Moving a whole home while the hubby works 9 hours a night and 3 kids ages 3, 2, and 5 months old is quite the adventure.  






We have spent this week living like a band of gypsy's. Sleeping on a air mattress, meals that include bologna, bananas, and bagels (not pregnant I SWEAR!), and all around chaos has put my crafting to a grinding stop. For some reason no one shares my opinion that the craft stuff should be unpacked first. 






So this week I thought I would take this time to introduce my 3 baby badgers. These 3 kids make crafting fun and easy!

We have been spending these first few days enjoying the cool rain on these HOT days.

This is Miss Olivia, the oldest badger. At 3 years old she still can rock an awesome spandex neon colored bathing suit with a side pony tail and awesome band-aid like any 80s rad chick.

She also has enough spunk for a whole herd of little girls. A girl with a korker bow and a stick is a recipe for trouble.

Next up is the red headed stranger himself, Cody!

He loves this stroller and will pretend to push his babies (a ball with a wolf on it) around for hours. But he's cute enough to pull it off.

Like his sister he is over ran with spunky, rowdy energy. We had a blast taking these sticks and launching them into the field.

The youngest badger is Abigail. Abigail enjoyed our play in the rain under the comfy tent we pitched for the upcoming Memorial Day holiday. She looks just like her father and has a joyful, Chris Farley type of humor. Always laughing!

How can you not get inspired by this face?!?!

I really hope to get back to crafting new and exciting things soon. And of course blogging about them!

The support and kindness the craft-blog world has shown me is beyond humbling and touching. I enjoy all the awesome ladies in this great field and I am honored to be amongst such crafty ladies.

So stay tuned...hoping to get the craft lab up and running after our family vacation in 3 weeks. 

In the meantime:

'Mama, just ONE more picture! Then we are done.'

'Ok mama, this is the LAST one!'

They hate my picture addiction but I don't want to miss a single moment with my poor badgers.

Cheesecake Factory Hack: Banana Cream Cheesecake

So who wants to pay almost $50 to buy a yummy banana cream cheesecake online from the Cheesecake Factory?!?! In this economy, I am willing to bet like us there are a few poor badgers out there. So this is the first of what I am hoping are several Cheesecake Factory hacks. I take their awesome, yummy cheesecakes and give YOU the recipe for free!  

Banana Cream Cheesecake

Ingredients:

20 vanilla Oreo cookies

1/4 cup of melted butter

24 oz. of softened cream cheese

2/3 cup of sugar

2 tablespoons of corn starch

3 eggs

3/4 cup of mashed bananas (around 2 bananas)

1/2 cup of whipping cream (NOT whip cream)

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

1 or 2 teaspoons of banana extract (optional, depending on how banana-ish you want it to taste)

caramel (optional- for garnish)

candy pecans (optional- for garnish)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F

2. First process the Oreo cookies in a food processor until they are extra fine. 

3. Melt the butter and mix it with the cookies.

4. Press cookie and butter mixture into a 10 inch spring form pan and place in the fridge to cool.

5. Beat cream cheese until creamy.

6. Slowly add sugar then corn starch into the cream cheese.

7. Add eggs one at a time. Beat the tar out of your batter.

8. Beat in bananas.

9. Beat in whipping cream.

10. Mix in the extracts.

11. Add the mixture to your cookie crust and bake in the oven for ONLY 15 minutes.

12. After 15 minutes are up reduce the heat to 200F and bake for a hour and 15 minutes (75 minutes). It is SOOOO important you decrease the heat to 200F after 15 minutes.

13. Remove the cake and let cool. Then put in the fridge for 6 hours or over night. 

14. Now you can garnish it with some yummy caramel, candy coated pecans, banana slices, or whip cream. Your choice!

Eat and enjoy Poor Badger style! 

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Helping you with heart failure: Bacon cupcake recipe

God bless America and our love of bacon!

I recommend this cupcake for a fun brunch surprise. They are really tasty and you can defiantly taste the bacon and maple. Before you say 'ewww', keep in mind the McGriddle. It is basically a cupcake with sausage in place of icing. 

Ingredients for cupcake:

*9 tablespoons of room temperature butter

*1 tablespoon of bacon drippings that have been put in the fridge to get solid

*2 eggs

*10 tablespoons of brown sugar

*8 table spoons of maple syrup

*2 and 1/2 cups self rising flour

*2 teaspoons of baking soda

*1 teaspoon baking powder

*SMALL pinch of kosher salt

*1/2 cup of milk

*1/2 cup of finely chopped, cooked bacon

Baking the cupcake:

1. Preheat oven to 350F

2.Fry bacon and drain the grease/drippings into a bowl and put into fridge. Go ahead and chop the bacon up for the 1/2 cup that you will need (plus some for a garnish)

3.Beat butter and bacon fat with mixer or by hand until it is creamy and fluffy. 

4. Slowly beat brown sugar and maple syrup into bacon and butter mix.

5.Now beat the eggs one at a time into the mixture.

6.In a separate bowl sift your flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder together.

7.Slowly incorporate your dry mix into the wet. Also slowly add the milk at this point too. 

8. Fold the chopped bacon into the mix. 

9. Taste and add more maple syrup or bacon according to taste. Don't add too much maple syrup because the frosting is VERY sweet and the maple syrup can break up your batter.

10. Put in cup cake liners and bake for 18-22 minutes. After 15 minutes rotate your pan for even baking. Yields around 12 cupcakes.

Maple syrup frosting ingredients:

*8 tablespoons of room temperature butter

*4 tablespoons of maple syrup

*2 cups sifted powdered sugar

1. Beat butter and syrup until creamy

2. Slowly add powdered sugar into mix

3. Spread frosting onto cupcakes and add a few 'bacon sprinkles' from the left over chopped bacon. 

4. Eat. Enjoy. Run 4 miles the next day to erase the abuse you just put your poor heart through.  

Happy eatings from Poor Badger!

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