Butterfly Pretzels

On Monday April 12 we went to the Fredrick Meijer Gardens to see their Butterfly Exhibit. It was AWESOME!!! We had a great day. We went with a huge group of area homeschoolers. Final count was 24 families, 120 people total with 90 of them being kids. We had a great time. If you are in the area you should check them out. They have some great outdoor activities as well as the indoor butterfly exhibit. You can see more about the Butterfly exhibit by visiting their website here!

I'm disappointed to say, I didn't get very many good pictures. I guess keeping track of 5 kids kept me busy lol.. Some of the other friends that went did get some great pictures.

As a follow up to the butterfly field trip, we did a review of sorts at our local group meeting today (Wed.) Some of the kids told us their favorite part of the trip and than we learned about the life cycle of butterflies. We made a butterfly puppet and of course we had to have a butterfly snack. I found this idea online. I LOVE having the Internet to surf lol, I get so many great ideas from it..

My pretzels didn't turn out as nice as the picture, but I didn't hear any complaints so I guess it didn't really matter.. Here is where I got the idea.

Of course, I didn't do things exactly like the recipe, what fun is that?? lol. I used the Candiquik blocks of chocolate and vanilla instead of chips. I tried adding oil to it the first time, but it was TOOOOO thin, so the second batch I left it out and it worked better. The first batch I did I also used the bag like they said, and it melted in the microwave, so after that I melted it in a glass measure cup. I decided after a few times that the bag was pointless as well. SO what worked the best for me, was melting them in a glass dish, and using a spoon to drip it onto the pretzels. It didn't harden up too fast, so I was able to go back and push the pretzels together and fix the antennae. I than went back with a different batch and put a glob on the wings and added the M&M spots.

Of course I couldn't leave Abigail out and since she can't have chocolate or M&M's, I made some a little different for her. I used her chocolate chips (Enjoy life brand), which are dairy and soy free. I just melted it the same way as the Candiquik stuff and spooned it onto her pretzels. Instead of M&M's I used some jelly beans cut in half. It worked well, except that I didn't put them on wax paper and they stuck HARD on the pan. Eventually we got them off, but it was pretty tough lol.

So yes, it was a cute, easy and very YUMMY treat!!