Fun with Bennie the Bean

 Bennie the Bean in a cornfield

Want to have some fun with your kids this summer?

It's the Year of Soybeans at the Indiana State Fair and to celebrate Indiana soybean farmers are hosting a fun photo contest this summer.

Check out Bennie the Bean on Facebook and download your own "Flat Bennie." Then take him with you to your favorite summer destination, snap a photo with him and upload it on the contest site! The first contest runs until June 27 and then the fun starts! You get your family and friends to vote on your photo to win.

The prize is an iPad and tickets to the fair! There is even a second contest that starts in July!

I took Bennie with me and the nephews when we went to the Indianapolis Zoo recently.

Can you tell by the last photo that someone was a bit grumpy?

To learn more about soybeans, visit the Indiana State Fair's Year of Soybeans page or Indiana Soybean Alliance's website.

Linking up to Pinke Post.

For full disclosure, I work for Indiana soybean farmers and the Year of Soybeans is a project that I'm working to plan so I'm really excited about it and want to share it with everyone I know. That's why I did this post. If you have questions about soybeans and how they are grown in Indiana, let me know and I'll be glad to answer them (or get you an answer from someone who know more than I do).

Cream Cheese Candy

I'm not a candy maker. If I am baking, I tend to make cookies, muffins or cakes (from a box).

So as I'm making my way through Gooseberry Patch's Christmas Kitchens cookbook for my Real Farmwives (and Friends) of America in the Kitchen experience, I decided to stretch myself.

For my sixth recipe, I made Cream Cheese Candy. It just has three ingredients, though one of them is 2 POUNDS of powdered sugar!

This recipe is from a lady in southern Indiana, so I am excited to be featuring a recipe from a fellow Hoosier!

Not sure this is how the candy is supposed to look like...I struggle with new recipes when there are not photos but they tasted good so even if the pieces aren't picture perfect, it's OK.

I think these would be great on a Christmas treats table.

If you try this recipe and your candy turns out differently, be sure to let me know (share a photo).

Just a note...I only have a hand mixer and this was a challenge for it!

I'm over halfway done with my In the Kitchen project. Just four more recipes to share before I give away a copy of this cookbook! Yeah.

Special thanks to Gooseberry Patch for providing me with this great cookbook to try and share with you. If you would like to purchase this or other cookbooks, please visit their store. If you would like to see other great recipes, check outwww.realfarmwivesofamerica.com.




 

Dirt Pudding for my Farmer Dad

After church this morning, I asked my dad what dessert he'd like for our Father's Day celebration.

He said Dirt Pudding.

This confused me a bit because that's NOT a dessert our family makes...ever.

But, hey, it's his day so I said OK and headed to the store for some milk, Oreos and vanilla pudding! Luckily, Walgreens has the small packs of Oreos on sale for 99 cents this week and I had a coupon for $1 off two packages. SCORE!

Then I headed home to jump on the Internet to find the recipe. I found a recipe for Dirt Cake I on allrecipes.com that looked good. Then I read the comments and found some suggestions on tweak it a bit so I took those, as well as made some of my own.

Before I got started, I had to crush the Oreos...unfortunately I don't have a full-size food processor but my mini one did the job just fine.

It took a bit longer but my mini-processor is much easier to store than the full-size ones!

Here's the final product. I added a small John Deere tractor in honor of my dad. If I had some green icing or green food coloring, it would have been fun to add a "field" to the top as well...maybe next year.

I think he enjoyed it, as did the rest of the family! So I'm sharing the recipe on here so others can enjoy it (and so I have it if I ever want to make it again).

Here's the recipe...

Dirt Pudding/Cake
3 T. butter/margarine, softened (I may have used 4 T. since I had a half stick in the fridge.)
1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened
2 (3.5 oz.) packages instant pudding mix
3 1/2 c. milk
2 (12 oz.) container frozen whipped topping, thawed (I used 1 1/2 containers because I NEEDED to eat the rest with a spoon right after I finished making this.)
32 oz. chocolate sandwich cookies with creme filling, chopped very fine in food processor (white cream will disappear)

Mix butter and cream cheese in bowl. In a large bowl, combine milk and pudding mix with a whisk. Then add the whipped topping. Combine pudding mixture and cream mixture together.

Layer in a trifle bowl (or a flower pot or other pretty dish), starting with cookies then cream mixture. Repeat layers. Chill until ready to serve.

If you put it into a flower pot, you can add an artificial flower or gummy worms or plastic trowel.

Celebrating Dad

To the best Dad (and Papaw) ever...

I love you!

Happy Flip Flops Day

I saw on Twitter that it's National Flip Flops Day! So I decided to celebrate.




I got these cute flip flops at the J. Crew outlet last week. Excuse the poor pedicure...I'm due for one, along with a haircut...maybe someday.

Source: notonthehighstreet.com via Megan on Pinterest

And I fell in love with these but they are more than I should spend (and on sale in Europe), right?

Need Some Hair-spiraton

My hair is getting really long.

Well, not this long...

Source: google.com via Megan on Pinterest

This is partly that I've decided to try and grow it out past my shoulders and partly because I haven't had time to make a hair appointment!

As it continues to grow, I'm having a hard time deciding what to do with it each morning. Unfortunately, more mornings than not I throw it up in a big clip or ponytail.

Not only does this get boring, it also tends to give me a headache by the end of the day.

And my standard "sunglasses on the top of my head" look is getting tiresome!

Luckily, one of my fav bloggers - Blonde Ambition - decided to do a tutorial on how to get the "tousled curls" look earlier this week. Here are some of her muses...

Source: blondeambitionblog.com via Megan on Pinterest

I'm totally trying her technique and soon. 

Once I have the tousled curls figured out, I'm going to try and do some of these...

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Source: hair.becomegorgeous.com via Megan on Pinterest

Source: thealternativebride.blogspot.com via Megan on Pinterest

I'm pretty sure I need my own hair stylist for this one but I sooo want to know how to look like this - at least my hair!

Source: beauty-hair-styles.com via Megan on Pinterest

Wednesday Smiles

I needed a pick-me-up this morning...

Because it's raining.

Because it started to rain before I made my Starbucks run.

Because I have an afternoon event for work that is outside (rain or shine) and there's a 60 percent of thunderstorms all day.

So here are some things that have made me smile this week...maybe even laugh out loud.

I love the caption that someone put on this one...

"Oh no they are trapped. Someone help!"

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Source: imgfave.lg1x8z.simplecdn.net via Megan on Pinterest