I know this subject has been touched on before by many people, experts, and blogs but I felt it necessary to reiterate the importance of cooking WITH your kids. Why cooking with your kids is important: Cooking with your kids teaches them the importance of eating together as a family Cooking with kids teaches them simple math Cooking with kids teaches them problem solving Cooking with your kids encourages them to try new foods Cooking with your kids give them a sense of accomplishment There are plenty more reasons but those are my favorites! My son and I made pizza together....it doesn't have to be complicated, just creative. We talked about fractions while making the pizza. He doesn't like onions or mushrooms on his pizza so we discussed that two halves of the pizza make one whole. He helped put the ingredients that he wanted on his half and the things I wanted on my half. The best part of the whole time was the conversation...we took time to talk about our day, what … [Read more...]
Fun Stuff Fridays (#14)
Remember when Linkys were all the rage in blogging? They were a great way to find and get to know other bloggers before social media and Pinterest became mainstream. It didn’t hurt that they brought a ton of traffic to your site too. Lindsi and I started our Fun Stuff Fridays linky back in 2011. We kept it going for 20 weeks before it fizzled out (or we got sick of doing it, I’m not sure which happened). It is now soon to be 2017 and at lot of the links in those linkies no longer exist. Plus, I’ve let my link up subscription lapse so you can’t get to them anyway. Instead of deleting the Fun Stuff Fridays posts, however, I have decided to clean them up and make sure our featured links are still valid. After all, on a rare occasion I get traffic from one of these old posts. The linky may be gone but the featured posts are still valid as of December 2016… Welcome to Fun Stuff Fridays. We love seeing what our readers have been up to and cannot wait to share some of our favorites! … [Read more...]
St. Patricks Day Pretzel Treat
This is about one of the easiest treats you can make....and let me say they are awesome, the perfect combination of salty and sweet! Here is what you need: pretzels white chocolate chips green sprinkles wax paper Melt your white chocolate chips in the microwave in 30 second intervals. If you attempt to melt it all at once they will burn (trust me). Toss your pretzels into the melted white chocolate. Remove the pretzels with a fork and tap off the excess. Set them on the wax paper in groups of three (make sure they ARE touching) Sprinkle each clover with green sprinkles and ENJOY! … [Read more...]
Lucky Clover Hats
Here's a simple and fun craft just in time for St. Patrick's Day. Here is what you will need: paper plate marker scissors Draw three hearts and a stem (to make the shape of a clover) Have your child color in the clover (my son insisted on making a yellow one) Once it is cut out they can wear it as a hat! Super simple and fun! Twin Cities Readers: Click HERE to enter to win tickets to the Old Chicago VIP Re-Opening event on Saturday, March 5th at 5:00 pm. … [Read more...]
Magic Leprechaun Pie
Have you heard of magic leprechaun pudding before? It's a great thing for younger kids to eat to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. My girls and I decided to take it one step further and make magic leprechaun pie! This pie was a HUGE hit for the girls to make and it didn't last long in our fridge! It's super simple to make and I hope it's a hit for your family too! To make your own magic leprechaun pie you'll need: Pistachio pudding Cool whip Pie Crust Pistachio nuts (optional) Step 1) This step is completely optional but it does add more to the pie. I'm pretty sure that you can buy already chopped and shelled pistachios but we didn't have those on hand. In our case, we had to shell and crush our pistachio nuts. I think for every one pistachio that went into our Ziploc bags to crush, the girls ate two! We used a meat tenderizing hammer to crush our nuts and obviously the girls thought this was "totally fun!" Step 2) Again, this step is optional. Put the … [Read more...]
Leprechaun Hunt
We went on a Leprechaun hunt the other day. It wasn't anything fancy but they really enjoyed it. It ended up costing me a whopping 99cents! I bought a package of lucky clover stickers at the store a week ago for 99cents and cut them up into separate stickers. I gave each child their own piece of paper to collect the stickers on too. When they went down for a little rest time the sneaky Leprechaun left stickers all over the house, silly little guy! I made sure to tell him that he needed to leave the same amount of stickers for each child (to avoid an argument.) They loved running through the house looking for stickers. Some were pretty easy to find and some were really hard. I actually forgot where they all ended up so the hunt lasted quite a long time. All in all they each collected 6 stickers. I loved listening to their stories along the way. I heard a lot of encouraging each other, a lot of congratulations for finding one and a few "that silly Leprechaun" comments. I think … [Read more...]
