Disney Movie Night: Ratatouille

 This was by far my favorite movie night this year!  I kind of went all out, but it was so easy to do.  I knew my picky eaters weren't going to eat real ratatouille so we made a dessert version of it using green and red apple slices baked in the oven with cinnamon and sugar.  Yum!  But, for dinner, we made it more Italian playing off of Linguine's name.  The kids had linguine pasta for dinner and Scott and I had some leftover lasagna I had baked earlier in the week.  

I even set up our chef hats we have for the kids as decor.  I set the table to look like a French restaurant with wine glasses and a candle.  The kids were definitely in awe.  It was so much fun!  We even played French cafe music out of our Alexa.  For dessert, I found the recipe for the baked dessert ratatouille here.  

It turned out so good and was perfect with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a mini palmier cookie!

Now we're ready for Epcot, the France pavillion, and Remy's Ratatouille Adventure!  

Disney Movie Night: The Princess and the Frog

 With Black History Month in full swing back in February and Mardi Gras right around the corner, I knew I wanted the next movie to be The Princess and the Frog.  We kept the dinner part to some very bland "southern foods" since I have some picky eaters at home, but I put my effort into the dessert.  

The "Frogs on Logs" was so much fun and easy!  It's just HoHo's and then Haribo's gummy frogs (which I ordered on Amazon and paid probably way too much for and saw them after the fact at the Dollar Tree by our house).  

I looked all over town to see if any bakeries made Beignets, but I didn't have any luck.  So, I actually found a recipe to DIY that didn't use yeast (I hate working with yeast).  Scott actually helped and we tried our hands in making Beignets that turned out pretty good!

The kids enjoyed the treats and the movie was fantastic!  Feeling a little bit better about Splash Mountain changing...

Disney Movie Night: Wakanda Forever

 Our next movie night featured Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.  The kids and Scott were super excited to see this movie as they are big Marvel fans.  I, on the other hand, was not.  I would have gone with Tangled or another princess movie.  But, nonetheless, I put together an African inspired dinner that I made sure the kids would actually eat and invited our niece over to join us.

"Rhino poop" was just a box of HoHo's, which my kids had never had before and thought they were the greatest things ever.  The Panther Chow was a fancy variation of puppy chow with Oreo cookie pieces broken up and lots of candy.  Here's the recipe. 

And I'm terrible and didn't get any pictures of the kids watching the movie together, but you better believe the Corderoy was brought out and disassembled so the kids could all snuggle on the mattress.  Unfortunately, the movie did not meet my family's expectations and everyone was kind of bummed with how it turned out.  In fact, Evan left mid-movie and watched something else upstairs.  Oh well!  On to another movie the next week...

Disney Movie Night: Finding Nemo

 Our next movie night featured Finding Nemo.  We went back and forth with whether to watch Finding Nemo or Finding Dory and ultimately the boys picked Nemo.  Good choice!  I don't eat seafood, so it made it a little tricky picking a menu, but "Fish are friends; not food", right?!  It kind of felt like a hodgepodge of food put together, but it fit the bill.  

I turned our drink dispenser into Dory and made a blue punch with a recipe I found off the internet that was two things:  Hawaiian Punch Polar Blast and Sprite!

I found some free printables online to make food label cards and signs.  I made a fun snack mix with goldfish and popcorn and certain color M&M's.  It was a fun night!  The kids loved taking the mattress out of the Corderoy bean bag chair so they could snuggle.  It was a great movie night!

Universal Studios Movie Night: The Simpsons Movie

 For our second movie night, we decided to show the kids The Simpsons Movie.  They've only seen bits and pieces of the show so we made sure to give them a little background info about the characters and their personalities so they'd get the humor in the movie.  Here's what the menu looked like:

We grilled burgers as the main course of dinner and made some frozen pretzels.  I stopped at Dunkin' Donuts on the way home from work to pick up some pink frosted donuts with sprinkles.  Those were the only food options I could find on the internet that were themed for The Simpsons.  The rest of our food I served was just me trying to be creative with names of things that I knew my kids would eat.  Like veggies, bags of chips, and popcorn.  

I found some printables on the internet and turned some red solo cups into "Duff" beer cups, which we filled with some pop for the boys.  I think it was a hit!

Universal Studios Movie Night: Jurassic Park

 We kicked off our countdown to our spring break in Orlando and brought back Disney/Universal Movie Nights!  In previous years, I've kept it to desserts and/or treats, but this year I decided to do themed dinners for the majority of the movies.  For Jurassic Park, the original movie, here's what we did:

I made dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets for the kids and grilled some chicken breasts for the adults.  We had hard boiled eggs that had soaked in food coloring after slightly cracking the shells for the "dinosaur eggs".  A veggie plate that was easy to pass off as "herbivore snacks" and fossil cookies that I made using a sugar cookie recipe with dinosaur prints from Sean's T-Rex toy.  The drink was fun - "Clever Girl" from this blog that used lime flavored jello and white grape juice.  

I found some free printables by searching Jurassic Park food labels.  I paid a small amount (I think it was $2) off Etsy for an editable file to make the boys their own ID badges as if they worked at Jurassic Park and we were good to go!  The TV trays were a fun touch for the boys since we never let them eat dinner in front of the TV or in the living room.  I'd say it was a fun way to kickoff our countdown to our next trip to Universal and Disney!