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!!!!