Day 82

Tomorrow is the big birthday party for Hannah (6) and Sarah (4). Since it's July and HOT, it's hard to plan something that won't melt too fast for their snack. I'm also all about convenience, so I've been doing cupcakes since Sarah's first birthday - this makes our fourth year of that. Last year the icing all melted. Yuck. So this year I'm just doing powdered sugar dusted over the top of the vegan cupcakes I made from scratch. We have a couple of vegan kids that are coming, and others that prefer vegan when possible, and one that we invited is vegan by necessity - he gets really sick if he eats anything that has egg or dairy in it. So, vegan cupcakes it is! All the cake mixes seem to have dairy in them, and 99% of them have red dye in them - we also have someone coming who can't have red dye.

That also brings us to the issue of ice cream. Again, the vegan issue. Popsicles? Sure... but then there's the red dye issue again. And the natural ones are SO expensive! So one of my good friends suggested making my own fruit juice popsicles in dixie cups with popsicle sticks. Hope, you are BRILLIANT! Instead of fruit juice though, we made fruit smoothies. With spinach. Yep, we made green smoothie popsicles! Well, they aren't the COLOR green, because they also have blueberries and blackberries in the mix, and that turns it purple, even with spinach in them. But we still call them green smoothies because they have greens in them. Our girls always insist we not forget the spinach when we make smoothies.

Here's our tray of smoothie cups, ready to add popsicle sticks and toss in the freezer!