Family Weekend

This weekend our son celebrated his first communion. All the children looked adorable in their white communion dresses and suits. We were having a little get-together after the ceremony so it was time to get in gear and tidy the house (and then some).

It feels great being able to accomplish a chunk of my"To Do" list in a 3-day weekend. Aside for the regular cleaning, there was the decorating and prep. No time to waste so I jumped right in starting with a trip to the craft store to pick up some silk flowers.

My first task was to create a new flower arrangement for the hall bathroom (I never did replace the poinsettias from Christmas). Before actually assembling the arrangement, I had to paint this galvanized can to match the bathroom. Here is what it looked like before painting:

Here is it after painting, along with the flowers I choose to use. While the colors are really fallish, the actual flowers bloom in spring so I thought it was worked well. The woody twigs included really add to this arrangement and pull it all together. Trust me, it took some time to figure out what to use to fill in the gaps so it all looked full. Painting that bucket really made a difference.

Here's a close-up.

Now that the arrangement was created, it was time to move on to some food goodies for the get-together. Dessert was the only thing I had to created. We opted to order trays for the main meal from our local Portabella's (BIG YUM) to save time.

Originally a cake was in the making, but after stumbling across a Pillsbury quick recipe magazine I opted for a Strawberry/Kiwi Tart. It's been beautiful outside for the past few weeks and I thought this dessert would be light and great to enjoy outside.

I discovered a trick for cutting the kiwi for this dessert. Very thinly sliced kiwi were required. After skinning them and trying to hold them to cut I found it to be very, VERY messy. It wasn't until I cut the 4th kiwi that I discovered I could hold the fruit secure but not peeling off all that skin. The knots on either end of the kiwi are strong and if you just peel it back and hold it then you can get a firm grip. To scoop the skin away from the kiwi, just insert a spoon inside between skin and fruit and slide it around. The skin will loosen, then you just peel back in sections.

Images below to help you out.

Here is the outcome. It was D-elicious!

For those of you who would like to try this on your own. The recipe is simply 1 cup sour cream, 1 cup vanilla yogurt and 1 small box of vanilla pudding. Mix together and distribute. Pie crust is the Pillsbury. The only thing I didn't have was the tart tray for making this but it worked out find. Here I used my cheesecake spring form. You'll want something that you can release the bottom out of.

Have a great day!

Melanie