Friday Food Craft: Hotdogtopus!

I am in the great land of Wisconsin with my two adorable little nieces, and what better thing to do for a food craft than Hotdogtopus, the hot dog octopus! This is a super easy way to make meal time fun for the little ones. Honestly, it's about the only reason I would ever want a hot dog, but the kids love 'em. ALso, you have a lot of serving options, and they are easy enough to make that you can do these special for the kids while you have some more adult fare on your own plate.

You will need:

Hot dogs (I prefer the "bun length" as they give you more room to work with)
a sharp knife
pot of boiling water

See? I said it was easy.

Take each hot dog and cut 2/3 into "legs". Just slice in half, turn slice in half, until you have 8 "legs", these do not have to be perfect by any means. Place your hotdogtopus into a pot of boiling water and watch the legs curl up! If you are like me, you can't eat a plain old boiled hot dog, so I arranged my hotdogtopi on a baking sheet with heads up, resting on their legs to brown a tiny bit and crisp up those legs! Finish by making a little face with toothpick pricks, or a knife. These are great served in a sea of mac 'n cheese, or surrounded by tater tot "coral".

Crafty Weekend

My friend, Olivia, came over today because she wanted to make some painted glasses like I had done in February. Since I can not sit idly by while other people are being crafty, I made these two new glasses. The favorite for me is definitely the squid, only heightened by the fact I used purple and yellow on it which makes it look way more awesome than I could have ever dreamed.

It took me a little while to finish due to all the curves, tentacles and whatnot. Also, I mixed some of the paints into a more varied tonal range this time around. For those wondering, yes these glass paints actually mix quite well. Not often do you get this much versatility out of a 4 dollar paint set. The paints really appear to have almost watercolor like qualities when you look at them through your finished glass. To add the tiny spots to my squid, I used a sewing pin and dipped it into the paint, then lightly tapped it on the glass where I wanted the spots.

This octopus is based on one from the front of a "thank you" note another friend had given me. Believe me, nothing says thank you like a watercolor Octopus (well done, Kim!). I can foresee myself adding to the underwater menagerie again soon, as I am a fan of using all of the brighter colors in my paint set (maybe a nice green and blue sea turtle is in my future?). Another super fun day of crafting was had, to be sure.