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My Little Pony Birthday Party Drive-By
My daughter adores My Little Pony and requested a pony party for her third birthday. Due to the current pandemic, we opted for a birthday drive-by. We celebrated with rainbows, sprinkles, and lots of homemade fun. Decorations: When decorating, I always start with free clip art and coloring pages and what we already have around the house. I projected images of the Mane 6 to make… Oversized Coloring Posters I buy white poster board in packs of 10 from Walmart. They cost around three dollars for ten. I use a black Sharpie to quickly trace a projected image then I go back and slowly trace over the lines again to…
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Zombies Don’t Eat Veggies Math and Crafts
It’s finally October and only a few weeks away until one of our most favorite holidays. We have been getting into the spirit lately with activities inspired by one of our favorite books, Zombies Don’t Eat Veggies, written and illustrated by the creative husband and wife team of Megan and Jorge Lacera. It is a delightful story about a zombie named Mo, who to his parents’ horror… prefers vegetables to traditional zombie cuisine. My kids absolutely love this sweet tale of a family learning to accept their differences. They also adore the fun illustrations, appreciating the Laceras’ depiction of the not-so-scary side of zombies. We made zombies clothespin puppets and…
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The Best Chocolate Cupcakes EVER
Happy National Coffee Day! Today, I wanted to share with you my go to recipe for chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting. It takes only 30 minutes to make two dozen and tastes like what dreams are made of. The secret ingredient is… coffee of course. The cake is a doctored cake mix recipe from Kakeladi’s Original WASC cake. This is the base for most of the cakes I bake. I have tried all kinds of cake recipes through the years, some from the box, some totally from scratch, but found that this recipe resulted in the best taste and texture. This cake also can be made ahead of time (I…
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Singing to Your Baby
This morning, little pumpkin was eating banana baby yogurt and out of the blue, said “nana.” I didn’t tell her what flavor yogurt she would be dining on and none of her siblings were talking about bananas for her to repeat. Though it isn’t a new word for her, it was a magical moment that showed us she truly understood what the word banana meant and as a bonus, she was able to discriminate its taste. She has definitely been experiencing a vocabulary explosion lately. Other new words in just this week, include coffee, bear, and poo-poo. What do all these words have in common? As you may have guessed,…
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Respiratory Tree Tees and Periodic Table Paper Bag Puppets
We have been completely indoors for a week now due to hazardous air quality from nearby wildfires. The kids have really missed their usual outdoor play. Fortunately, the air quality has been improving… slowly. We took advantage of this unique opportunity to talk about the elements in our air and what makes our current air so bad. I explained about carbon monoxide and particulate matter and the dangers in breathing too much of these things and we crafted. Specifically I made respiratory tree tees for them and we made periodic table paper bag puppets together. I made a simple drawing of our airways in pencil, outlined the final picture with…
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DIY Coloring Pennant Banner
Recently, we celebrated DH’s birthday. The kids usually enjoy helping me to decorate and to create something special for him. This year, we made a custom pennant banner together. I created a template, printed it out, and the kids went to town with their crayons and oil pastels. They love using oil pastels as the colors are so vibrant and they were all very proud to see their work on display. Attached is the free template which includes all the letters of the alphabet as well as numbers 0-9 that you can use to customize any birthday or celebration for that matter. This printable really has so many options and…
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Labor Day
Happy Labor Day! I hope everyone has enjoyed their long weekend thus far. Our family is having a small casual barbecue with simple foods (my husband’s beef barbecue, corn on the cob, and watermelon). I also usually like to create a few printables for the kids to help them remember why we celebrate each holiday and to also get them excited for the unique occasion. This year, I made a labor day mini-book, a few labor day coloring pages, cut outs to construct popsicle stick workers, and in response to my son’s request… some writing pages with community helper vehicles. These are all free to download here for personal, single…
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Kindergarten Sight Words
My daughter started Kindergarten this week and she was so excited despite all the changes due to COVID. We attended a drive by to meet her teacher from a safe distance and she received some new learning materials for the year. Among her items were a list of sixty sight words. Yesterday we practiced writing them on rocks and then hid them for her to find with her siblings. She always loves a good competition. I also created a set of unicorn flash cards to help her learn her sight words. I went ahead and made a dinosaur set too in case some of her peers weren’t as much into…
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Spaghetti with Meat Sauce
This is my daughter’s favorite dish and one that our family enjoys at least three times a month. I used to make homemade spaghetti sauce very complicated with tons of diced vegetables and herbs but there were too many competing flavors. I also used to use stewed tomatoes which my kids kept on picking out. I have since simplified my recipe into something everyone loves. Ingredients: 1 pound ground beef 1/2 pound ground sausage 28 oz can Italian crushed tomatoes 28 oz can tomato sauce 2 Tbsp brown sugar 1 Tbsp dried basil salt to taste olive oil 1 pound spaghetti noodles fresh basil parmesan cheese Directions: Brown ground beef…
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Simple Beef Stew
Sometimes the best foods are made when you don’t have all the ingredients you are used to and you have to improvise. That is how I came to this wonderful and easy recipe! I have made beef stew countless times with beef broth, onion soup mix, and a can of cream of mushroom soup. However, one day, I had none of these items but I had a great cut of beef chuck, fresh carrots, potatoes, celery, and Worcestershire sauce, and this new favorite recipe with way less processed ingredients was born. Ingredients: 3 pounds beef chuck (cubed) 6 carrots (peeled and sliced) 1 onion (diced) 8 potatoes (peeled and diced)…
