My Little Pony: Mother's Day Edition

I spent my Mother's Day weekend this year at "Equestria LA" which is the local convention for "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" fans. For those not in the know my sons ae Bronies which is what you call boys who like the MLP:FIM ponies. Girls like the ponies too. Some refer to them as "Pegasisters", I just prefer to be called an interested party and leave it at that.
But seriously, I spent the weekend with my sons at this convention and actually had a really good time despite the fact that I was one of the few at the convention old enough to remember when JFK was our president. Honestly, I didn't really feel out of place though. The MLP bunch is a very welcoming group of people and they embrace all who share their interest in all things pony. And it wasn't just the Brony and Pegasister crowd, there were plenty of little girls from the target demographic attending with their moms and dads in tow. In fact, we ran into a lovely daddy-daughter duo. The daughter was about 4 years old and dressed as Pinkie Pie and Dad decked was out in a Pinkie Pie t-shirt to match! Gotta respect a man who will do that to support his little girl's pony love!

Mitch wearing his ears, horn and wings. 

Matt hanging out in the lobby.

"Shirtless" Discord dancing for us during the Cosplay Fashion Show. 

He was the hit of the convention for the ladies!

More from the Cosplay Fashion Show

Matt and his friend after the Cosplay Fashion Show.

Assorted Convention Attendees coming out of the fashion show

Another picture of the attendees.

The Vendor Hall-they had an amazing assortment of MLP merchandise

nearly all of it hand crafted. 

Some of the hand-crafted plush ponies they had for sale. 

One of the friendliest gals at the convention!

I sat in on a number of panels including the voice actor panels and the Pony Music Video contest as well as the wonderful Cosplay Fashion Show. Best of all, I got to spend quality time with my sons having fun and they WERE NOT embarrassed to be hanging out with their Mom! I'm looking forward to Equestira LA 2014, in fact, I'm looking into having a table at the vendor hall and selling my own hand-crafted pony merch!

Cookie Baking Day with Chef Mitch

The other day my son Mitch came to me with an idea for a cookie, a Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookie. I was intrigued by this idea and decided that we needed to give it a try, mostly because of my family's shared belief that bacon goes with everything. And who doesn't love a Chocolate Chip Cookie!

We hit up our local Target store, not so much because we grocery shop there, but because my daughter had a job interview there and I figured Mitch and I could shop while she had her interview. The whole kill 2 birds with one stone kind of thing. She got the job, by-the-way!

So we came home armed with Bacon and Chocolate CHUNKS. Mitch saw the chunks next to the chips and decided it was time to go big or go home in the chocolate arena. Have I mentioned lately how much I like this kid!?

Okay so I started this recipe by cooking off some diced bacon:

Then I gathered the necessary ingredients to make the Toll House Cookie recipe from the back of the Chocolate CHUNKS bag. And yes, I forgot to put the Vanilla Extract out on the counter before I started, but it was in the cookies, I promise:

Then Mitch and I got busy mixing up the cookie dough. He's getting pretty good at using the KitchenAid!

Here is the dough with the bacon added:

I used my handy dandy cookie scoop and made some nice dough balls on the parchment lined pan. Mitch normally does this part, but today I took over the scooping duty-he has grip strength issues and the scoop was being uncooperative. 

The baked cookies fresh from the oven. You can see the little bacon bit right on the top of this one:

I let them cool a bit then put two on a plate and took them to Mitch, who was spending his baking/cooling time playing on the PS3:

The cookie delivery:

Of course Mitch would never eat cookies on Mom's brand new sofa so he moved over to the dining table for the tasting of his new cookie creation:

Mitch proclaims the Bacon Chocolate Chunk Cookie to be delicious!!!

If you decide you want to try these at home, I just took the Toll House Cookie recipe off the bag and added cooked bacon. Not rocket science. My thoughts on the cookie- It needed more bacon. No, seriously, it was good but could have used more bacon flavor. I looked at quite a few recipes online for this cookie-and yes, there are many. Some called for Maple flavoring, some for bourbon and one even had some of the rendered bacon fat added into the dough but I thought our first try at this should be taking an existing recipe and just adding the bacon and seeing if it was even edible.  I also think they'd be delicious with some candied pecans, because I love candied pecans!

So there we have it, a successful cookie baking day with my favorite young Chef!

Happy Friday Everyone! Have a Wonderful Weekend!!

New Adventures in Homeschooling

Time to brag a little bit on my youngest kid. For the newbies to my blog, he's 15, has Autism and has been homeschooled for 5 years. He is the self-proclaimed "Autism Boy", but we call him Mitch.


We started something new in homeschooling last month-Mitch is now working fully independently. I write out the assignments for the day in an assignment book and he logs into his online programs and completes his work on his own, checking each assignment off as he completes it. He's actually doing more work AND he's getting better grades!

This all came about because it seemed that every time I went to find him so we could start a lesson he was either busy doing something or he wasn't in the mood at the moment. Autism, as you may know, can be a moody beast on occasion. So I asked Mitch one day if I could just write down the assignments on a piece of paper and give them to him to do. It was a pure "fly by the seat of my pants" experiment based on frustration and exasperation and I really wasn't expecting it to work. I figured by dinner time I'd be having to prod him to get his assignments done or have to add them to the next days work because he didn't or wouldn't do them. But, to my surprise, he had them all completed by 2pm and he did very well on them!

So here is how my little experiment gone right goes: I hand him his assignment book at 9am (okay, 9ish, and some days it's 10ish, we're super relaxed about starting time) and the work is due by dinner (okay, dinnerish), that way he has all day to work on it. For assignments not done online (there are only a few), he just comes to get me when he's ready to start them. I've also added a daily neighborhood walk to his assignment sheet-also done on his timing...although the other day when it was 97° outside he picked 3pm for his walk and we were both sweating like dogs when we got home. (Oh-wait, idea: I should add a space on his assignment sheet for him to check the daily weather!-moment of brilliance right there folks!) So, now there is no more whining, fussing, fighting or waiting for Mommy to finish an online Scrabble match to get our schoolwork done. The new system coupled with focusing on only ONE subject per day has really helped Mitch retain more information and has improved his desire to be educated. Being able to super customize our teaching and learning styles to our individual needs is something that just can't be done in a public school setting. I'm so glad I stopped trying to put my "square pegs" into the school district's "round holes" when I started homeschooling my young'uns 8 years ago. Best "made in anger" decision I ever made!