Springtime Dessert and Coffee Bar

I was craving a little spring!  After a long winter full of snow, we had been teased with a week of nice weather before being pumelled (again) with another 12 inches of snow.  I was getting spring fever and needed a fix of sunshine - quick!





We have a group of friends who get together once a week for dessert and fellowship, and this week everyone was gatherting at our house.  So I went to the store and bought a boquet of spring flowers and decided to go from there.   I decided to bake up some spring into a spring themed coffee and dessert bar for our group of friends. 





I decided to make a no bake lemon cheesecake and serve some fresh fruit, with chocolate dipping sauce, along with a coffee bar to suite everyone's palet.  I made the cheesecake the night before and cut up the fruit while it was setting.



Click here for the Low Carb Lemon Cheesecake Recipe!



The day of the party, (which was a Thursday night when my husband was working late), I fed the children and cleaned up dinner, then covered the table with a yellow table cloth, quickly put the silverware into napkins, rolled them up to look like flowers, then placed them in a centerpiece bowl.  I then melted the chocolate for the fruit dip. 

Click here for the Chocolate Dip Recipe!



 

 

While the chocolate was melting for the dip, I set up the coffee bar.  The coffee bar included 3 coffee flavorings (2 sugar free and 1 regular), as well as homemade whipped cream and chocolate chips to put on top.  I made coffee and hot chocolate and put the flavors on the table and - wha-la - 30 minutes later was ready to entertain.

My guests (all 12 of them), saw the coffee bar and dessert and devoured it -- so quickly that I didn't even have time to take pictures before they started to gobble!  It really was a hit - and easy to do.  Easy enough that I'll definatley do it again! 

The nice thing about this dessert bar was that I didn't need to sacrafice any of my current "food morals" and yet everyone was able to endulge and enjoy.  It was easy to prepare on a week night and required little clean up, too.  It was quick and easy, and neither my heart, nor my thighs, suffered!





Springing In Feet First!

Well, here I am, all "din-spired" and everything.... and I look at my calendar to see when the next holiday is - and there it was, right in front of me -the first day of spring!  Well, for sure I thought that would be a perfect opportunity for our next family dinner party.  Since the first day of spring was on a Sunday, I decided to get my girls involved a little.  Saturday they finger painted.  Conveniently, the finger painting paper we have happens to be placemat size.  So they made the placemats.  Who knew this would be such an exciting activity for them.

This dinner party was far from schmanchy.  In face, the dinner hardly took any time to do.  And the "decorations" (IE:  Placemats and napkins) were a snap.  Of course the girls did the placemats the day before, so I guess that was the biggest time commitment.

I was excited about my themed menu. It was to be a springtime theme.  And healthy, of course.  Well, din-spiration hit, and the next thing I knew I had brainstormed out a cute spring scene for our dinner plates.  Green "grass" (french cut green beans), green "trees" (broccoli), sun (sun shaped cheese cut out with a cookie cutter), butterflies (mandarin oranges with banana bodies), and my favorite part, burgers on the grill!  Well, I really wanted to somehow make a grill with a burger on it for my meal, and I thought and thought forever about how I could do it.  Suddenly, I felt like a genius, as I decided I could use an ice cream cone as a grill and put the burger (and home made low carb bun) on it as part of the grill.  I decided to fill the cone with corn casserole.   

Well, I'll be honest.  As brilliant as the idea seemed when I dreamed it, my grill really did not turn out.   In fact, it was a terrible flop.   At least in my eyes.  Okay, in my husband's eyes, too.  However, my children thought the whole dinner was fabulous, and they loved every second of it. 

Activities included a memory game:  In the springtime, I will....... 
Each person takes a turn coming up with something that they will do in the springtime.  For the next person's turn, they must remember each turn prior to them, in the proper order, then they must add a new idea on to the end.  My girls loved this activity and it was a great way to build memory skills as well as spring time vocabulary.

Well, this dinner party was a lesson to me.  For one, memories were made in spite of my disappointment of the meal.  The girls loved the party and loved the dinner theme.  They didn't even notice that it didn't turn out.

Next, Din-Spiration doesn't have to be complicated or fancy.  Just putting out different napkins and placemats can turn any dinner into a party. 

Let the Din-Spiration Begin!

It's important to me to provide a healthy, safe, stable home, with lots of fun memories and traditions for my children.  The emotionally healthy, safe and stable part is complete through my strong marriage and foundation of faith.   No question that is the best thing I can provide my children.   However, being a second generation full time working mom with 2 toddlers sometimes makes the "create fun memories and traditions" part of my "to do" list, and, to be honest, sometimes falls to the wayside.  Now, the big holidays such as Birthdays, Easter and Christmas are gimmies.  I really don't have a problem with those.  I have lots of things to pull from my own past and traditions that my family gave me to be able to pull from.  However, I want to create fun memories and traditions in our every day life - and this is where my challenge lies.  Not to mention the physically healthy part of this -- in my family, I'm truly going where no woman has ever gone before!

However, with that being said, I have been inspired!  I have a friend who makes every holiday a family party at her house.  She even includes special events, such as the Olympics and the first day of school.  She is a stay at home mom of 5 (!). She creates breakfasts, activities and desserts with these special themes in mind.  I have also been recently turned on to Jamie Schultz's blog This Lunch Rox  (http://thislunchrox.com/).  Jamie makes themed lunches for her kids.  Her lunches are also healthy.  School + Lunch = healthy AND fun???  Who knew this could even be done?!  So inspiring! 

So, with this inspiration, I've decided to up my Mom Game when it comes to dinner during holidays and significant events.  Of course, added to the creative challenge is the healthy challenge!  And it needs to fit into my "full time working mom" life.  But inspiration behold.... it IS possible!  I implemented my first inspirational project on St. Patrick's Day. 

This surprise dinner party featured rainbow veggies (cauliflower) with mashed potato clouds (mashed potatoes made with 2 scoops of unflavored whey protein, cream, and some butter), "gold" a the end of the rainbow (cheese), green eggs and shamrock ham, and a coconut flour rainbow cupcake.   To drink was Shamrock Protein Shake (Click HERE for the recipe).

                      

I also went to the dollar store and bought St. Paddy's Day hats for everyone, made green construction paper place mats, and found some old Mardi Gras beads to put out.  I spent a whole $4.00 on favors and decorations for our dinner party.

For activities, while the girls were at preschool, the leprechauns came and mixed up all kinds of furniture at our house.  They dropped coins along the way.  This was very exciting for the girls to see and of course they loved collecting the coins and putting the money their piggy banks.  (a whole 20 cents!)    We also had a few rainbow color games, as well as dreaming up tales of what those silly leprechauns were doing in our house!

The most exciting part of this for me was the fact that I could still provide a healthy meal for them that was packed with protein and vitamins, with very few processed carbs.  I kept the serving sizes small (something I learned from Jamie's blog This Lunch Rox at http://thislunchrox.com/) and offered a large variety of tastes. To my delight, they ate it ALL!   And really, this was not a difficult or labor intensive meal to make.  I made the cupcakes the night before, but otherwise, the whole thing only took me about 30-45 minutes to put together.    This is definitely a challenge I'm looking forward to rising to the occasion for.  What theme should I do next.....  hmmmm....  I notice Earth Day is coming up in April.....

To get the recipes for this dinner, click here to go to my recipe blog!