Teddy Bear Picnic Food

Special announcement: I was quoted in an article at Ballooning Nest Eggs. Please go check it out!! I'm so excited!

Well we hosted our Teddy Bear Picnic the other day. It was so much fun. The idea came to me when we went to one at a local museum, and I was not very impressed. It was too large, loud and chaotic for the kids to focus. Hazel enjoyed visiting the museum but really did not enjoy the picnic. So I told her we would have our own. We did. We e-mailed some invitations and two of her friends were able to come (three if you count the three-month-old sibling). I made teddy bear ears for all the kids and the moms. The tutorial for them can be found here. I have to admit that one of the other moms and I were the only ones who wore them the whole time. Hazel and I spent a lot of time preparing for it. We made some sugar cookies in bear shapes. We used a mix. Then left them for the kids to decorate. Hazel had a bit of fun with the frosting and decorations. She always overdoes it!

We also made some bear paw cookies. We were going to use bear claw cookies, but I found this easy recipe on Disney Family and I liked that they actually looked like the bear paws. Since the two friends coming are allergic to nuts I had to find something to replace the almond slices. We used freeze-dried banana slices that I cut. It worked and it gave a nice taste to the cookies. Aren't they cute?

We also served some food we could buy that were teddy bear shaped. We used Teddy Grahams and gummy bears. It is not easy to find gummy bears that have no nuts or were not prepared where nuts were. I ended up with some without any, but they were prepared on the same equipment so the friend who is deathly allergic could not eat the gummy bears. 

Our final food was a fruit arrangement. We love Edible Arrangements, but I do not like their prices. My mother-in-law often buys these to bring to Hazel's party. I have kept all the containers and sticks, so we reused the small one. We used our cookie cutters to cut teddy bear watermelon and cantaloupe (Hazel did this with the slices I cut). Hazel also put the berries on the sticks. She also chopped the banana for me and put the slices on sticks. We then froze them and dipped them in chocolate like we saw at Sharing Saturday from School Time Snippets (we just put them on sticks as well). I also dipped some strawberries in chocolate. The only problem we had was that it melted a bit outside, but it was enjoyed by everyone!

I should also add that I asked everyone to bring their own lunch and let them know we would provide the dessert and drinks. With everyone's food allergies and what they eat, I figured this was easier. Tomorrow I will share some of the games, etc. we played. And now I will start planning our next mini-party with a butterfly theme. I hope you are enjoying your week! Happy Family Times is still open if you would like to share your family together time this week and inspire all of us to have more time with our families!