Smores

May is halfway done which should mean that Spring is here even if it is not really warm yet. The snow is melting, the grass is getting green, tulips are poking through the dirt in my flowerbeds and the leaves are starting to come out on the trees.

I love all these signs of Spring and to lots of people Spring means that camping season has started or is starting soon. I do not camp. It is no fun for me to sleep on the ground in a tent - just not my thing. You want to take me camping in an RV, with a kitchen, a bathroom and a real bed, I am all over that, otherwise count me out.

One thing I do love is a campfire. We loved food cooked over a fire and toasted marshmallows .... YUM!!!! Smores are one of my favorite things to make over a fire.

 It is still too cold for me to enjoy sitting outside by the fire but I REALLY wanted some Smores, so we tried a little experiment with the oven. Much to our delight, they turned out!!!! Not as spectacular as the ones made with marshmallows straight from an outside campfire but still pretty darn good!

Ingredients:
Marshmallows (1 per Smore)
Chocolate covered digestive cookies (2 per Smore)

Directions:
Place a chocolate covered digestive cookie, chocolate side up on a baking sheet

Put one marshmallow on top of each cookie.

Place in the oven under the broiler until the marshmallows get bubbly (Approx 2-3 minutes)

Put the second cookie, chocolate side down, on top of the bubbly marshmallow.

Squeeze it down a little to squish the marshmallow and get the chocolate melty.

ENJOY!!!!!

Mother's Day Craft - Handprint Flower

Mother's day is coming up and my daughter wanted to make something special to give to her Grandma and her Great-Grandma. She wanted to let them know all the reasons she loved them.

Children's hand prints are so precious. They are like little snapshots of how big they were at that moment in time. The hand prints on this flower were very carefully traced and cut out by my 6 year old as she sang songs and chatted to me about how much her Grandmother's would LOVE the special surprise that she was making them.

Supplies:
Construction Paper
Markers
Picture you can cut around (Of the child or the child and the grandma)
Scissors
Glue

Directions:
Cut the picture out in a circle and made a little "frame" to go around it.We glued them together and left them to dry while we made the petals.

Make the petals.
My daughter traced as many hand petals as she needed to go around the outside of the framed picture and then glued them to the back of the picture. She spent a lot of time deciding which hand petal would go where and just how they would be placed.

Cut a stem and a little leaf or two out of green construction paper. Glue them to the bottom of the flower, just behind the hands.

Use the markers to write out all the reasons that your child loves whoever the flower is for. The stem says "I love my Great-Grandma because" (obviously change out the descriptor for whoever it is for) and the reasons they love them are written on all the petals.

Let the glue dry and then gift the flowers on Mother's Day!!!!

Banana Bread Mini Loaves

We used this recipe to make large loaves of banana bread for about a year before I received a new mini loaf pan for a gift. We pulled it out on one of our weekly baking days and a new favourite was born!

The recipe makes very delicious large loaves of banana bread as well if you prefer that size.

One batch makes 8 mini loaves using our new pan. The loaves are light and delicious and just the right size for lunch or a snack. We takes them in our lunches, serve then for dessert and for snack time, or sometimes even use them to make french toast for breakfast.

The recipe is available on Robin Hood's website.

Project of the Month - April 2013

I am trying something new again this month, crocheting!!!

My grandmother tried to teach me for years and I never caught on. I am still interested in learning but she is no longer here to teach me, so I am trying to teach myself.

I picked a basic dish cloth pattern that does not look too hard and I hope that my project actually looks like it is supposed to when I am done.

Before picture:

Paper Bag Puppet Monsters

We are waiting for spring here - or at least the warmer spring-like days where we can be outside playing in the sunshine while we splash in the puddles made by the melting snow. Unfortunately, it is still winter in Alberta and we still have some cold  days to get past.

We were feeling crafty and decided to make some Paper Bag Monsters. They were really easy to make and we had lots of fun with them afterwards too!

Supplies:
Paper Bag
Markers or Crayons
Glue
Colored Paper
Scissors

We colored our monsters and cut out arms, eyes and a tongue from colored paper and glued them on.

Once the glue dried we put on a puppet show!!!!! It was the perfect craft for a chilly day!!

Flower Pot Cupcakes

This recipe came from the Kraft Canada e-mail newsletter that I subscribe to, Flower Pot Cupcakes.

We wanted something fun that kids would like to take to my daughter's class and these cupcakes were a big hit! Everyone loved them.

They were easy to make and we had a lot of fun assembling them. I would absolutely make these again for a fun treat.

You can find the recipe and instructions here on the Kraft Canada website.

Caribbean Pork 'N Rice

Here is another delicious recipe from Kraft Canada. This one came from a 2008 What's Cooking magazine that I received in the mail.

I have almost the whole collection and refer to them often when I am looking for new recipes to try and old favourites to make. We added this recipe into our meal plan one week and the only thing that we needed to buy was the pork tenderloin. I bought it when it was on sale so this was a fairly economical meal for our family.

We had it for supper one night and then had the leftovers again the next night. Even my daughter, who normally only likes plain white rice, liked it. Next time we may freeze the leftovers for a night when we are too busy to cook.

You can find the recipe here on the Kraft Canada website.

Project of the Month - February 2013

I wanted an easier project this month that my daughter could help me with.We made a trip to Michaels and did a little wandering through the store until we found something that caught our eye.

Here are the supplies that we picked up. All the supplies were on sale the day we were there. It cost us approximately $15 for everything to make both kinds of barrettes.

We used a glue gun, a pair of scissors and some small pliers to make these cool barrettes!

The pinwheel ones with the butterflies are for my daughter. We used hot glue to glue the clips to the backs and the butterflies to the center of the ribbon pinwheels.

The beaded barrettes are for me and I made a set to give as a gift. I glued the set of beads, strung on a nylon string, directly to the barrette.

They all turned out really great and my daughter and I had a wonderful time doing these quick and easy projects together.

Recycled Crayons

These are a great idea for Valentine's Day. We made them for my daughter to take to class and all the kids loved them too!

We used a combination of the tutorials from The Long Thread and from Make and Takes as well as some trial and error of our own.

My daughter had a great time breaking up the old crayons and dividing them among the different spaces in the silicone pan we bought. It was really easy to pop the cooled crayons out of the silicone pan and it was pretty easy to clean up afterwards too. We did put the pan on a cookie sheet so it was easy to get in and out of the oven because the silicone was bendy.

They were a hit with both teachers and kids and we would absolutely make these again.

Banana Bran Muffins

This is one of our “Go-To” recipes when we want to make muffins. It may just be our favourite. We make them plain, with chocolate chips, dried cranberries or fresh berries too if we have them. You can also add nuts but due to allergy concerns I don’t cook or bake with nuts. It is a great way to use up any overripe bananas. The recipe makes a very light, moist and delicious muffin.

It is a great recipe to use when cooking with kids too. My daughter helped with pouring the ingredients, stirring and tasting the finished product.

We got the recipe from Allrecipes. com


Click on the link to get the whole recipe Banana Bran Muffins

Project of the Month - January 2013

Happy New Year!

I hope that everyone had a good time ringing in the New Year.

Winter is in full swing here and it is COLD! We have our extra blankets on the bed and our flannel pajamas out to keep us warm.

Every year I make my daughter new flannel pajamas. This year I picked out 2 very cool flannels: superheros and froggies.

Here is the before:

And here is the after, 2 pairs of super cute, cuddly and warm flannel pajamas.