The Sweet Taste of Summer I Watermelons Cookies Galore

We just passed the summer solstice yesterday and it is officially summer! With school on the verge of being “out” no matter the district, sweet reminders of summer are everywhere! And it was with summer on our minds that we created yet another end-of-year-gift for our favorite educators!

Check out these “Happy Summer” Message Cookies paired with Mini Watermelon Slices! We’re especially proud of our layered rind and perfect (in our opinion), “watermelon red”

IMG_4695IMG_4685IMG_4684Here’s how the watermelons came to life:

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All packaged up! Aren’t these cute teacher or hostess gifts?

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What do you think? Has summer arrived?

 

Day 5 of “A Very Jewish Summer” | Ceviche and Champagne from BisStyle

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As our blogging event concludes, we travel today to the Holy Land and visit Meir at http://www.bisstyle.net/ who has dedicated the blog to group we would call in the States: “foodies”! The blog is so fun and captivating, his photographs of the food he both creates and captures from local restaurants are a treat in and of themselves – everything looks so good and delicious – one of our favorite posts was entitled (translated), “Time to Learn Chocolate” … enough said, so we clicked through and found a delightful post with photographs surrounding a visit he made to the French chocolatier, Valrhona, like we said, delicious!

Thanks for stopping by to visit us for “A Very Jewish Summer”. We hope you will continue to stop by all of the blogs we’ve shared this week. Here is a wrap up of the summer fun!

Day 1: Evoking Childhood Shabbat Memories…Prehistoric Style from Yenta Mamas

Day 2: Shabbat Style: Alfresco Orange from Chai and Home

Day 3: Camp Care Packages With Love from Made by Mamaleh

Day 4: Portobello Burgers with Sundried Tomato Aioli from Busy in Brooklyn

Day 5: Ceviche and Champagne from BisStyle

Day 4 of “A Very Jewish Summer” | Busy in Brooklyn’s Portobello Mushroom Burger

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For those following our blogging party, do yourself a favor and click though to Chanie’s blog, Busy in Brooklyn, http://www.busyinbrooklyn.com/ … trust us, you won’t be sorry, you’ll enjoy her recipes, step-by-step instructions and beyond beautiful photographs of her creations. Each recipe looks better than the next (3-Cheese Broccoli Pull-Apart Buns, Speculoos Pancakes and Blueberry Frozen Yogurt Bites, and those were just the first three), needless to say, we already have plenty “bookmarked” to try in the Yenta Mamas kitchen!

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A Very Jewish Summer

Yenta Mamas is proud to participate in the first inaugural A Very Jewish Summer! Five bloggers from the United States and Israel are getting together to present stylish and clever ideas to inspire your summer. Each day from Monday, June 17 to Friday, June 21 a new post will be published by one of the bloggers on the topic of summertime, Jewish crafts, kosher food, and entertaining style. The blog roster features the leading emerging Jewish blogs today.

This year’s roster includes:

Sign up at YentaMamas.com to receive the posts via e-mail.

Day 3 of “A Very Jewish Summer” | Camp Care Packages with Love

 

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As our week of blogging for “A Very Jewish Summer” continues, please click though to Made by Mamaleh (http://madebymamaleh.com/), where Gaby creates a modern Jewish home, “one project at a time”! She’ll show you to put together the perfect camp care package! Her blog is fun and delightful, showcasing the homemade and how everything comes together. Her greeting cards are adorable! Enjoy her post and by all means, let her know what you think after you’ve visited her site!

Here’s a peak at some of the goodies to include!

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A Very Jewish Summer

Yenta Mamas is proud to participate in the first inaugural A Very Jewish Summer! Five bloggers from the United States and Israel are getting together to present stylish and clever ideas to inspire your summer. Each day from Monday, June 17 to Friday, June 21 a new post will be published by one of the bloggers on the topic of summertime, Jewish crafts, kosher food, and entertaining style. The blog roster features the leading emerging Jewish blogs today.

This year’s roster includes:

Sign up at YentaMamas.com to receive the posts via e-mail.

Day 2 of “A Very Jewish Summer” | Shabbat Style: Alfresco Orange

JewSum_8327Remember, our blogging party continues today with Dena, our fearless organizer from Chai and Home (http://www.chaiandhome.com/). On her blog, Dena’s mission is to showcase the beauty of Jewish traditions and lifestyle, and boy does she deliver … it’s a beautiful blog with so many creative ideas, all with a Jewish viewpoint! Some of our favorites from her recent posts are “5 Gift Ideas for Jewish Grads”, “Missoni Sukkah Inspiration” and basically every post related to “Bubbe’s Bargains”! Dena is very clever and crafty and we know you will enjoy her blog immensely.

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A Very Jewish Summer

Yenta Mamas is proud to participate in the first inaugural A Very Jewish Summer! Five bloggers from the United States and Israel are getting together to present stylish and clever ideas to inspire your summer. Each day from Monday, June 17 to Friday, June 21 a new post will be published by one of the bloggers on the topic of summertime, Jewish crafts, kosher food, and entertaining style. The blog roster features the leading emerging Jewish blogs today.

This year’s roster includes:

Sign up at YentaMamas.com to receive the posts via e-mail.

“A Very Jewish Summer” I Evoking Childhood Shabbat Memories, Prehistoric Cookie Style!

Welcome “A Very Jewish Summer”, a weeklong blogging event celebrating Jewish traditions, with a summer flair! We’re excited to kick off this event with a post related to celebrating Shabbat with young children in the home.

The idea for this post began a few weeks ago when we baked some dinosaur cookies for a birthday party for a four year old that goes to the temple preschool with Elaine’s youngest.

Now, usually when we bake – we chat, we kibitz, we kvell and commiserate – and as we made these adorable prehistoric treats, we thought about that “Dinosaur Shabbat Song” … the one with an origin so difficult to find … the one Shabbat song that most preschoolers learn, with it’s catchy tune and lyrics (and impossible correlation to Shabbat)!

So as we decorated these tasty treats we talked about our Shabbat traditions, our joy in celebrating the week on Friday evenings, whether it be at home or the Family Service at our temple … we also joked around about putting kippot on a couple of these guys for this post!

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If you’re not familiar with the song, we’ve posted the lyrics below and a link to Linda Arnold’s cover of the song, “There’s a Dinosaur Knocking”, where you can listen to a sample for free!

Lyrics:

There’s a dinosaur

Knockin’ at my door

Knockin’ 1-2-3

There’s a dinosaur

Knockin’ at my door and he wants to spend

Shabbat with me

Well, he wants to light the candles

He wants to drink the wine

And he wants to eat the Challah

‘Cause it always tastes so fine

To listen to a sample of the song click here.

How do you celebrate Shabbat and make it fun and relaxing for your children? We’d love to hear from you, so please don’t be a stranger and make sure to check out the amazing posts by our amazing co-bloggers starting tomorrow with our new friend Dena’s post at Chai and Home, http://www.chaiandhome.com/!

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A Very Jewish Summer

Yenta Mamas is proud to participate in the first inaugural A Very Jewish Summer! Five bloggers from the United States and Israel are getting together to present stylish and clever ideas to inspire your summer. Each day from Monday, June 17 to Friday, June 21 a new post will be published by one of the bloggers on the topic of summertime, Jewish crafts, kosher food, and entertaining style. The blog roster features the leading emerging Jewish blogs today.

This year’s roster includes:

Sign up at YentaMamas.com to receive the posts via e-mail.

Is Your Dad Groovy? I Happy Father’s Day Cookies!


Sometimes we have small amounts of icing colors left over … most of the time we combine them and make a really rich black (which is difficult to make from bright white icing), but this week inspiration struck for tie-dye t-shirts when we saw the bright array of colors in front of us.

With that, we decided to make these fun Father’s Day combinations for our dads and husbands – colorful sunglasses, “Groovy Dad” message cookies, flower power cookies – and of course, tie-dye t-shirts!

So, what do you think? Is your dad or husband groovy enough?

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Congrats UCLA Grads! I Special Nod to the Women’s Water Polo Team Captain

In honor of a special graduate from UCLA (http://www.uclabruins.com/sports/w-wpolo/) we made this gift – Message Cookies, Confetti and Streamers and Water Polo Balls – funny enough, just last year we made a similar gift for a high school student who was headed to join the UCLA Men’s Water Polo Team (see them here)!

As excited as we were to make this gift, we were even more excited about our UCLA Bruins Bear replicas! For this fluffy version of the mascot, we used a large teddy bear cookie cutter and trimmed his body away, then, after matching the school’s colors, Elaine carefully added all of the fun details … and for now, he’s at the top of our list of our current favorite cookie!

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Abracadabra…It’s A Magic Theme Party | Magic Hat & Bunny Cookies

Who doesn’t love an adorable white bunny being pulled from a hat? We thought long and hard about what to make for a magic themed party.  It’s hard to come up with something other than playing cards and the good old bunny out of a hat!

Do you believe in magic? Well, we do, especially when we’re able to (successfully) repurpose a cookie cutter  and use it for multiple shapes!  Here’s what we used…a giant bunny cutter (Note: We used this cutter one other time to make grapes. You can check it out here)

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Then we hand cut the hat:

photo-1Next we had to decide on a color scheme. Now, generally a top hat is black, but we don’t like how it turns the kids’ mouths black. We opted for a gray hat to avoid the black faces at the party.  Here is how the fluffy bunny came to life:

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All in all, we loved how cute they turned out, what do you think … are they magical enough? Hope your have some magical summer plans!

The Gift of Song | Choir Cookies

What do you give someone who has taught your children to harmonize for years?

A choir, of course! (And in our case, an edible one)!

Our many thanks goes to Judy for her hard work and dedication to the harmony of the youth singers at our temple and beyond!

Don’t you just love these gals?

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Shabbat Shalom!