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Galaxy Hot Chocolate in Galaxy Mugs!
I’m about to blog Bug’s amazing, 11th-birthday, galaxy-themed party but I have a few galaxy things I want to share first individually and I’m thinking a bunch of posts is better than one crazy long one. Or maybe not. Who knows.
First up is Galaxy Hot Chocolate in galaxy-painted mugs. Amazing right? I was inspired by this super-over-loaded sugar-blitzed-unicorn hot chocolate. (Thank you Plumeriacat for the heads up on that one!) We tried to visit the store that makes these. They are local but the line was out the door and around the corner so we made do with our imagination.
Basically, we made hot chocolate in a crock pot using this recipe. This was a great idea because it could sit on the counter slowly-warming for two hours without me having to worry about it. We tried to add purple food coloring to the mix to make it more majestic but the coloring didn’t stick. The brown of the cocoa was too powerful. I think I could have made it with white chocolate but I’m not a fan of white chocolate. (blech!) In the end, the hot chocolate was a light purple-brown color but that didn’t really matter because Bug’s birthday party was outside at night and you couldn’t really see the hot chocolate under layers and layers of whipped cream anyway. We topped the towering whipped cream with these sprinkles which are so so so so cool, by the way. Totally worth splurging on. I wish I had made some homemade star marshmallows and bought a whipped cream dispenser and maybe colored the whipped cream lavender but I had to cut my losses by that point. You can’t do everything all the time I’ve learned.
What I heard at the party was that the hot chocolate was DELICIOUS! “Like a candy bar melted in a cup!” said Annalie. I wish I would have doubled the recipe though because we ran out! Every kid got one cup but they would have gone back for more if there had been any. I also poured it into a thermos dispenser so that the kids could serve themselves without slopping sticky hot chocolate all over the place with a ladle. This worked well until the pump got sticky and refused to pump anymore. Now that I understand how the pump works I could easily clean the seal and get it working again but out in the dark, during the party I had no such wisdom. So we popped the top off the thermos and poured it the old fashioned way for the last two kids waiting.
Now you are probably wondering how we made the galaxy mugs. It’s not a perfect craft but it was pretty fun.
First, we bought a bunch of cheap, dark gray mugs from Ikea. I would have preferred black but no such cups existed in my price range. Gray was fine. Then I bought special made-for-glass enamel paint. There are a lot of porcelain paints that you can buy online but unfortunately I had a deadline and couldn’t wait for the premium brands to get to me in the mail. I had to sort it out at Michaels, my worst favorite place in the world, but I was lucky and found the one friendly employee who let me in on some folk art secrets. If there is a wine glass symbol on the lid you can paint this on glass! Who knew! Probably everyone. But this really helped me. The cool thing about this particular paint is that you can bake it on and it holds up to regular hand-washing. I wouldn’t trust a dishwasher (though they say you can) but it can take quite a few washings. I tested.
So where was I? Right, paint. After you are sure you have food-safe, non-toxic, made-for-glass-and-ceramic paint, you begin the process. First clean any fingerprints or sticker residue off the mug with rubbing alcohol. Then smudge on some black paint with a foamy sponge. I even used my fingers and it seemed to work well too. Then dab on some lighter colors like purple or teal, but use the colors sparingly. Smudge and smear and squint your eyes so that if everything is blurry your smudges sort of remind you of a nebula. This part is tricky and you will convince yourself that it all looks like crap but don’t worry! This is part of the process and when you add the white splatter stars it will all come together! Just trust me.
Smudge, smudge, smudge and then! Load up a toothbrush (one that you don’t care about obviously) with white enamel paint and gently flick on some stars. I don’t have a magic method to this. You want small atmospheric white dots and not big oblong splatters so you’ll have to experiment with how you flick the toothbrush and distance you flick paint from the mug a bit until you get it just right. If you don’t get it just right, don’t worry. Just tell everyone the splatters with tails are comets. Like I said it’s not a perfect craft. But it’s fun!
It’s spacey, right? No? Squint more.
After we smudged our way through eleven galaxies, we painted each guest’s name on the other side of the mug so we could use the mugs as party favors and table name place markers at the same time. Then we popped the mugs (all together on a cookies sheet) into a cold oven and heated it up to 350. We baked them for 30 minutes and then turned the oven off and let them cool. I actually just left the mugs in the oven overnight because I wasn’t going to bake anything that night anyway and took them out the next morning. It’s important not to check on the mugs when they are cooling or take them out of the oven because if the ceramic cools down too fast the cups can crack. Better to be safe than sorry.
Then on the day of the party we set each person’s mug at their place at the table. Everyone loved taking home a mug. Of course, I had to mad-dash hand wash everyone’s sticky mug while they were playing games in the other room but I didn’t mind because by that point I needed some peace and quite in the kitchen for a few minutes anyway. I’m one of those weirdos who finds doing chores soothing and kids screaming about Pusheen not so much.
All in all, it was really fun and I’d definitely recommend this hot chocolate and making a galaxy mug to anyone planning a galaxy party. I’m not sure everyone needs more mugs in their house (we don’t!) but that’s their problem, right? Heh.
Next up: Galaxy Pancakes!
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Chinese Night
We have dinner parties now and then because you know, we’re grown-ups and stuff and I can actually cook now so it’s fun to have friends over and show off.
I remember when I used to have parties like this I would always make sure my mom was coming and she would cook. I’d do everything else up to the nines because of my party-planning sickness but leave all the cooking to my mom who would be sweaty and exhausted and taken advantage of.
Well, guess what? I don’t have to do that anymore! I actually focus more on cooking and less on having the right decorations and the right playlist of theme-related music, the right costumes etc etc…which is huge because I used to waste a lot of unnecessary time and energy on the minutia of a dinner party and drive everyone crazy.
I still drive everyone crazy but they have a lot more patience when they are rewarded with tasty food.
It all started with my tablescape job. I wanted to create a tablescape around this old Japanese rice urn I bought at a thrift store ages ago. I love this dish. It is perfect for rice or taking food to a potluck. It’s heavy and sturdy and it comes with a lid! And it looks cool which is the most important thing if you are me. Of course I thought it was a Chinese urn when I started out but quickly figured out it was Japanese when I googled it and it showed up here. But I made Chinese food and not Japanese food because I am no good with raw fish. Sushi is way out of my league.
As usual, I was in too much of a hurry actually cooking to take pictures along the way. I’m frustrated with myself too because making these pot stickers is super photogenic (as you’ve probably seen in my Instagram feed) but add guests and taking pictures sort becomes secondary.
Payam humored (the crazy) me and drove me to a Chinese market so I could pick up a free newspaper as my table cloth. I know it’s kind of weird and maybe dirty seeming but I thought it was cool in a gritty, urban way. It brought the theme to the table and you can’t beat the price. Of course in the beginning I had visions of red raw silk but the newspaper turned out to be way more economical and less stain-attracting.
Then when we were out picking up drinks at Bev Mo I found these buddha beers. They had to jump in our cart if not for drinking then for the possibility of becoming the cutest vases ever!!! They were perfect and even actually tasted decent, said the beer-drinking guests who are not me. It was fun. Everything came together and we had a great time.
And that’s pretty much it if I leave out the part where I was super emotional the day before and almost cancelled the whole event before it even happened. Heh.
I’ve figured out that this is my typical mode of operation. I like to plan things, big things! But then if I perceive even the slightest hint of failure I blow everything out of proportion and cancel the whole shebang in a heaping pile of ugly crying. It’s terrible. I kept this trait from Payam for the longest time but it has come out with a vengeance and now he knows the real me.
Sigh.
BUT! I am learning this about myself and Payam has been so encouraging. This time instead of cancelling in a huff like usual I decided to just go through the motions and make it happen. I took my failures head on. I was prepared for people to come to my event and be polite but secretly wish they weren’t there and leave as soon as it was acceptable. I was prepared for my food to be cold and untouched. I was even prepared for my newspaper tablecloth to be made fun of. I was prepared to vow to never do another party again unless people got down on their hands and knees and begged me to. That was my attitude.
You know what? I’ve written this post before. I’ve been in this learning curve so many times!! If I learn anything in my lifetime it is this: If you put out the effort, you will be rewarded. This is my new mantra. Every time I put out the effort as a hostess I always am so glad I did.
Nothing else but effort matters. It doesn’t matter if food burns or you forget to make a salad or a dessert. It doesn’t matter if you forgot to clean the cat box or put out new clean guest towels or your sink had cat prints in it. It doesn’t matter if you have put on a few pounds in the last year and you aren’t the slim, sleek hostess you want to be. It just doesn’t matter! Nothing matters except putting out the effort. That’s what people want. That’s what people appreciate.
Everyone who came to our dinner party had such a great time. I had such a great time! Usually I’m a stress case and I can’t sit down and talk but I did this time! We all talked for hours. We ate, we laughed, the kids played minecraft….Nobody made excuses to leave early. All the food got eaten (well, if you don’t count the potstickers that got eaten as a midnight snack by someone I won’t name.) and everyone was happy. I was so happy.
I guess that means I’m not vowing to never throw another dinner party again. In fact, I might already be plotting my next one. It might even be an exact repeat of this one except with cucumber vinegar salad AND a dessert this time. Heh!
