Perfectly Shaped Burgers - Easy as Pie

Living on the lake, we get lots of visitors in the spring, summer and fall.  When people come to visit, they don't want to spend time inside preparing and eating meals if the weather is nice.  They would much rather be outside.  That is why we grill more often than not when the temperatures start to rise.

We grill everything that we can.  Hot dogs, hamburgers, brats, chicken, steak, potatoes, corn, pizza . . .  (If you have a good recipe for something grilled, then please share.  We'd love to try it!)  I do have to admit that my least favorite thing to grill is a hamburger.  The reason that I don't like to grill them is that they are too hard to form.  Too often my burgers are too fat in the middle.  That means that either the edges will be burnt or the middle won't be done enough for my liking.

So, I promised the girls that we could grill tonight for dinner before softball practice.  Pumpkin wants a hot dog and Peanut wants a hamburger.  I've spent part of this afternoon preparing for dinner.  I chopped the lettuce for the salad, made some potato salad (thanks for the instructions Mom!), made iced tea for myself, and decided to form the burgers.

While I was procrastinating, I decided to search how to make a hamburger.  I thought I'd run across some new combination of seasonings that would make an amazing burger that I'd have to try.  Instead, I came across another blogger who posted that she forms her burgers using lids.  LIDS!!!  Why didn't I think of that?  So, I grabbed my meat, plastic wrap, and lids of two different sizes and I formed burgers -  perfectly shaped, even in thickness, gorgeous burgers.   Now I can't wait for the kids to get home so we can grill them!  I'll let you know how they turn out. . .

Question:  Did everyone already know about this?  If so, why didn't anyone tell me???

A (Late) Valentine's Day Wrap Up

February has absolutely flown by for us, even with an extra day!  While I realize that Valentine's Day was two weeks ago, I hadn't found time to share all the fun projects we were working on with you before now.  So, this post will be short, but jam packed with some of the projects that we really enjoyed.  Maybe you can use some of them next year with your munchkins.  :o)

Hearty Hot Dogs -

Who knew that hot dogs could inspire the thought of love?  I sure didn't, until I saw this fun food project that we did with Peanut's class.

With a hot dog cut on the diagonal, a triangular piece of cheese, and a fun party toothpick (found at a local party store, but if you plan better than I did you can pick them up for less at Oriental Trading), we were able to make hot dogs into Cupid's arrow hearts. How fun!

For those of you that don't like hot dogs (my kids refuse to eat them . . . not that that is a bad thing), you can also use soft pretzel sticks for the same effect. I found some plain sticks without cheese or anything inside by Hanover Foods in the frozen food department at WalMart. They were only $1.79 for 16 of them.

As for Valentines, we made them again. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough rose stems for the Hershey's Kiss roses to have Peanut make any extra, so I don't have a picture. (We were not as prepared as we usually are for Valentine's Day due to my extended bout with pneumonia.) However, they did turn out cute. The local florist actually had rose stems for candy roses, so it was an easy project. Two Kisses were stacked bottom to bottom, covered in cellophane, and attached to the stem with some pretty red ribbon. Cute!

Pumpkin saw the iPod Valentines on the FamilyFun website and decided that those would be her project. They also turned out great!

This one is missing an ear bud. I suspect that Doc may have gotten into it before I was able to take the picture. Either way, you get the idea. We didn't cover our peanut butter cups with foil because Pumpkin preferred that they were red. Also, she wanted to use colorful yarn rather than white. On the back, she attached a label that had a picture of a guitar and said, "You rock!". While some of the kids in her Kindergarten class didn't know what these were, they were a hit with the adults that received them, and Pumpkin LOVED them (which is the most important thing of all!).