Posted on

Teen Gift Ideas

*This post contains sponsored content and affiliate links*

For me, August is the month of Birthdays. Throw in some Back to School and end of Summer stuff and it’s just pure insanity! So, in honor of having my first official teenager this year, I put together a fun gift guide for my Girl.

Soo’AE

Skincare is super important for every teen girl. And what better way to kick off her teen beauty routine than with these awesome natural, vegan, cruelty-free, eco-friendly products from Soo’AE!

The face wash, face cream, and face masks are gentle and made with clean & green ingredients. So, they’re good for my daughter’s skin and good for the environment as well. I especially love that the masks are 95% natural!

We had a fun at home spa night with the masks and enjoyed hanging out with each other for a little while.

Spooky America

My kids LOVE ghost stories! Just as much as they love s’mores around a campfire.  And while I have no issues with them hearing / reading ghost stories, I do my best to make sure that these stories are age appropriate for them.

My daughter doesn’t know yet that there are 32 of these books and not just 2 – as soon as she figures that out, her Christmas list will be 30 books long…

My girls actually swiped these the minute they arrived and I had to go hunt them down just to photograph them (while the girls supervised so I didn’t “loose” any in my bedroom).

They told me that the stories aren’t really scary, but they’re very fun. And they want more of them. They’re also unwilling to let me borrow their books because they’re afraid I’ll keep them for myself!

These are definitely on my “need to buy the whole series” list!

Hogwarts Cookbook for Kids

I may or may not have been more excited about this cookbook than my daughter was. Though, my kids have been all about Harry Potter this summer! They had a friend at summer camp ask them about it and they all realized that they’ve never seen it.

So, our Summer family movie nights were all about Harry Potter. She was super excited about her new cookbook and has handed me a grocery shopping list a mile long!

So far, we’ve tried one of the sandwich recipes and everyone was thrilled with it.

 

Fidgets

My daughter was given an Amazon gift card for her birthday and guess what she rushed to buy? Fidgets! I had not idea that these things could come in this many different shapes, but there really is a lot of variety here.

And these days, when in doubt, a fidget for someone’s Birthday is the way to go!

Posted on

Meringue Ghosts

ghosts

For a fun and delicious Halloween treat, try these cute little ghost meringues.

I just love meringues! For starters, most people with any kind of food allergy can eat these. They’re remarkably popular items anywhere I serve them, for this very reason. There’s no nuts, gluten, or dairy. Unless someone has an egg allergy you’re probably safe serving these to anyone.

I also like to whip up a batch whenever I have egg whites left over from another baking project. If I make pudding, pudding only needs egg yokes so I’ll save the whites and make meringues next, for an easy treat.

Meringue Ghosts

3 egg whites – room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cream of tartar

Heat oven to 250 F.

I prefer to use a stand mixer for these because beating up these egg whites takes a LOT of beating!

Beat egg whites, vanilla, and cream of tartar until soft peaks form.

Gradually add in sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Pipe meringue batter onto the pan. I just put my batter in a ziploc bag and cut a small hole in the end. Pipe out a bunch of ghosts. You can put them pretty close together because they do not expand while cooking so you can fit a lot on one pan.

Place cookies in preheated oven and cook for 1 hour. Turn off oven and let set in the oven for 2 more hours. (this is so you get crunchy meringues).

Use a food-safe marker to draw on eyes and a mouth.