From the category archives:

In the Kitchen

Simple Holiday Traditions

~ making birdseed pine cones ~

~ decorating graham cracker candy houses with cousins ~

~ cutting lots and lots of paper snowflakes ~

~ making (and eating!) Holiday Pretzel Treats ~

I was feeling a little badly that we haven’t done many of the “new” Christmas crafts or activities that I had planned this year – but, of [...]

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Reindeer Cookies

I was browsing through some old Christmas photos (look at little 3-year-old Natalie!) and found some pictures of these cute reindeer cookies we made.  This was obviously a time in my life prior to blogging, because I didn’t even take a dozen close-ups of the finished cookies!  They are simple, though – I think you’ll [...]

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Kid-Made Centerpieces

Meet our new centerpiece basket:

The girls enjoy creating little table centerpieces for dinner each night.  They are so proud of their lovely creations!  After a few days of trying to meet their requests for vases, fabric, bowls, etc. during dinner prep, I decided to put a bunch of goodies in basket.  I went around the [...]

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Whoooo Wants a Snack?

Natalie found this cute recipe in her recent Your Big Backyard magazine and got right to work making it for a snack.

Natalie adapted the recipe a bit – she used chocolate chips for the eye centers and the brow line.  Also, an apple slice was used for the beak instead of the cheese – Natalie [...]

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Lazy Summer Lunches

This post could have been called ‘Encouraging Independence in the Kitchen’ or ‘Lunches Young Kids Can Make,’ but let’s be honest – I am simply feeling lazy about fixing lunches now that summer vacation has hit our house! Here are some ideas that are working for us, and many of them do have the [...]

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Nutrition Fun for Kids

March is National Nutrition Month! This is a great time to spend some extra time cooking healthy foods with your little ones. One of our plans for the month of March is to choose a new fruit or vegetable from the grocery store each week and try it – Natalie has had her eye [...]

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Roll-a-Snack

When the pantry starts to fill-up with various odd and ends of crackers, cereal, raisins, etc., we like to dump it all together into a yummy snack mix.  Sometimes, we even make it into a game – a little math with your snack!

I call it Roll-a-Snack.  All you need are various snacks (nuts, dried fruit, [...]

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Chocolate Letters

Last night I experimented with making chocolate letters in the Letter Ice silicone molds.  They turned out so cute!  I just used milk chocolate chips, which I melted in the microwave.  I filled the molds almost to the top, then topped them off with some festive sprinkles.  I let them set-up in the fridge for [...]

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Gingerbread Playdough

Our advent calendar activity yesterday was making holiday playdough.  We decided to try making gingerbread playdough.  So easy and smells soooo good!

We used our standard homemade playdough recipe.  Instead of adding food coloring, we stirred some spices into the flour before adding it to the pot.  We used ginger, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. [...]

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Cheerio Marshmallow Treats

I had never tried making Rice Krispie Treats with any cereal other than Rice Krispies, even though the Confetti Squares on Martha Stewart’s site had caught my eye many times.  The girls were asking to make some treats the other day, and all we had were Cheerios and marshmallows.  A yummy afternoon treat paired with [...]

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