Mothers Day and popcorn!

I had the most awesome Mothers Day ever yesterday! It was just one of those truly perfect days from start to finish that reminded me how much I love my husband and my kids.

I woke up to Shawn and the kids piling presents on the bed! I got my favorite chocolates, sweet cards, a lilac scented candle (my favorite!), beautiful flowers and the popcorn popper that I've been wanting (more on that later). I also got a beautiful rose corsage to wear to church.

At church I got more chocolate and the kids made me super cute cards and trinkets in their classes. In Matthew's class they made the cutest bookmarks that I've ever seen! He also made me a necklace out of candy that I happily wore for a while until I was forced to eat it. :)

After church I got to pick my favorite lunch and then we relaxed for a while and then I got to try out my new popcorn popper!

Ok, so I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but I have this thing with popcorn. I love it. Like seriously love it! I'm a popcorn snob though. Not all popcorn is created equal! I hate microwave popcorn, at our house I usually only eat it air popped. We use our air popper at least once or twice a week, and for some reason it always tastes the best when Shawn makes it. Usually on Sunday afternoons I talk Shawn into making a big bowl of popcorn. He has the exact butter/salt ratio figured out that makes it taste just right.

But I love movie theater popcorn even more than homemade popcorn. Getting popcorn is my favorite part of going to the movie. When I was pregnant with Josh our apartment was right next door to a movie theater and I craved movie theater popcorn. One time Shawn went over there and asked if he could just buy some popcorn. I love that man. :)

As we've been planning our outdoor movie theater one of the things I knew I definitely wanted to do was buy a real movie theater popcorn popper that I could sit on the patio for movie nights. Real movie theater popcorn at home! Yay! I've been researching them and pricing them for months and I know which one I want and I'm going to be buying it soon.

But in the meantime I started wishing that I could make real movie theater popcorn without having to get out a gigantic popcorn machine. The popcorn machine will be great for parties and movie nights when I want to feed a lot of people, but it's kind of overkill for Sunday afternoon popcorn with the family.

So being the Googler that I am, I went to work researching my options and I discovered the Whirley Pop! It's the old fashioned way of making popcorn on the stove and it has a hand crank to stir it as it heats up. What I found after reading many many webpages about popcorn is that with a Whirley Pop and the right ingredients you can make movie theater popcorn on your stove!

So that's what I wanted for Mothers Day and I couldn't wait for Sunday to try it out!

The secret to movie theater popcorn is coconut oil with beta carotene (that's what makes it yellow) and a very fine buttery salt called Flavacol. That's the exact stuff they put in the machines at the theater. You can buy those ingredients at Amazon for pretty cheap.

To make movie theater popcorn in a Whirley pop you put in 2-3 tablespoons of coconut oil, a teaspoon of Flavacol and 1/2 cup of popcorn kernels. Then put the Whirley Pop on the stove, turn the heat on to somewhere between medium and medium high (don't get it too hot or it will burn) and then turn the handcrank for about 4 minutes until it starts popping. When it finishes popping you pour it in the bowl and you have absolutely perfect movie theater popcorn! 

 We excitedly tried it out yesterday afternoon and I'm not kidding when I say that it's exactly like movie theater popcorn. It's perfect! We had so much fun that we made three huge bowls and probably could have fed half the neighborhood, lol.

After we made way too much popcorn we all piled on the couch for family movie time. One of my favorite things is watching movies with my kids that I liked when I was a kid. It's fun to introduce them to things from my childhood. At this point I think we've pretty much gone through most of my childhood favorites that are age appropriate for them and it's getting harder to find new ones to watch, but we found one yesterday that we hadn't watched yet. We watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which was a cheesy movie when I was a kid and is even cheesier now, but the kids liked it and we had a great time.

All day long my kids kept giving me hugs and wishing me a happy Mothers Day and I really appreciated their efforts to be extra sweet. I absolutely adore my kids and love being a mom and yesterday was just such a fun, perfect day with my family. I appreciated the extra effort that Shawn went to to make me feel loved and special. He's always so great with holidays like that and I appreciate it.

Today everyone went back to work and school and I made more popcorn. Yum. :)