Saturday, March 31, 2012

Fun snacks, new picks!

Two snacks for hot lunch day.  I made them both the same.





I LOVE these new picks. I just think they are darling. After the missing letter O pick I went online and ordered some new lunch accessories. It felt like Christmas morning when they arrived. Hopefully the new goodies will inspire a bunch of new ideas :) I finally picked up the newer lunchpunch set with the sweets - cake, cupcake, ice cream cones etc. Could have used them earlier in the month for the birthday lunches!! Now I am totally prepared for the next birthday.

Friday, March 30, 2012

Butterflies x2

These are for Rose & Amy. Heidi was sick :(


Amy's lunch
honeydew melon, clementine, apple slices, craisins
carrot sticks & cucumbers with PB for dipping
Ham butterfly sandwich

Rose's lunch
Everything is the same as Amy's except she doesn't have peanut butter :)

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Baby goat!

The children had the opportunity to see a baby goat soon after it was born. We haven't made it to a real working farm yet as part of our family fin list, but this is a start. The baby goat was very friendly and kept coming right over to them and let them pat him (or her! I don't really know) under the fence.

  

 It was a bit like herding cats to get a photo as they were enthralled with the goats. I sort of got them to look in my general direction for a split second! haha.

The baby goat was running after it's mother. They couldn't believe how fast it could run so soon after being born. It was feeding time and it's Mom was running to the feed bin with the kid in tow!

Bunny lunch

This was for Rose.

clementine, strawberries
honeydew melon, lemon wafer cookie
Annie's bunny shaped cheddar crackers
Bunny sandwich - (ham or cheese I can't recall!)

Easy, Peasy Lemon Squeezy!

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Painting Pottery

A family member had a pottery painting birthday party last month. The girls enjoyed this as expected but I was very sad to learn the the pottery painting studio was closing as the owner had some serious health issues.  I was glad that we had the opportunity to go right before it closed! Painting pottery is on our Family Fun List. It was a great way to spend an afternoon - especially with cake included ;)


Daddy started out giving Heidi a little assistance but as soon as she realised that Rose was holding her own piece, she had to follow suit.



Lots of concentrating faces in these photos!

The staff put all of the painted pieces in the kiln and we got them back several days later. Here's their finished work. I think they did a great job!

Rose's Puppy, Heidi's Kitty, and Amy's heart coaster

Amy's Birthday lunch

Yup - my two eldest children have birthdays really close together. It works out pretty nicely for now since we have been having joint birthday parties without any complaints! (I'll post some photos from their Barbie birthday party shortly)
This was Amy's lunch on her birthday.
clementine, strawberries, Annie's buttery crackers
honeydew melon & a pair of balloon grapes, mini square lemon wafer cookie
#6 sandwich - ham. She specifically asked me to colour it like that :)
I couldn't find my large number 6 cutter so I tried a freehand 6. Not the neatest but clearly a number 6. I made the circle cutout into a balloon as once I cut it out the sandwich seemed a little skimpy. She ate all of her lunch but said it was plenty so that's good news. She specifically asked me to colour it with the food writers, so I obliged. I wish I had planned ahead and ordered some "happy birthday" cupcake toppers to use as picks. Those would have gone over well. Next time ;)

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Collage box

I saw this idea on pinterest a bunch of times and just HAD to make my own! My girls love to make their own little art projects and collages so I new this would go over well. It was really easy to do since I already had all of our favourite collage materials in a larger art bin. Previously, it was kind of cumbersome to get out each item from its storage container and then pack away at the end. This mini assortment is really just perfect to pull out any time the girls feel creative. The container has a hinged lid with divided sections and was purchased at the hardware store.

I included coloured pasta (ziti and elbows), feathers, mixed dried beans, large poms, chenille stems, scraps of coloured paper, foam shapes, sequins, small and mini poms, googly eyes and assorted button shapes.



I also made up a little supply basket for the girls to easily share and contain their tools.  This isn't the best picture as I took it during the art process! I included patterned and regular scissors, gel glue, glue stick glue, neon pencil crayons, stencils, fine point markers for the stencils, gel FX markers, metallic crayons and mini craft punches and a mini embosser. They have regular crayons, pencil crayons and markers in separate large containers that are always out for colouring -- this basket has special supplies. The tray hiding behind the supply basket is mostly assorted paper and collage shapes.


I didn't want to make three similar collage boxes for each child so I devised a little system using muffin tins. I gave each child a 6 cup muffin tin and let them choose collage materials from the new art box to place in their muffin tins. I then closed up the collage box and put it aside while they worked. This was to avoid any jostling/spills/can't reach scenarios that would go along with sharing the box. While they aren't totally unsupervised with their art materials I do really give them a lot of free art time and do not hover. They just love creating any art projects and will spend quite a long time working with these kinds of materials. If anyone wanted refills for the muffin tins they could help themselves  -- one at a time!


I usually give them each a tray to work on when we are using lots of little pieces. It keeps things mostly contained and defines their workspace visually.

Heidi concentrating on squeezing her glue!


The gel FX markers were new and Amy was excited to try them all!

Rose made a pretty seahorse collage. She was very proud of it. She asked me to take a picture of her with it on my phone to post on facebook for everyone to see :)


Clean up was very easy. Anything left in their muffin tins was easy to put back into its compartment for next time. It really wasn't mixed up too much especially compared to if we had used an undivided container for each child or left the bits and bobs loose on the tray. The misc supplies went back in the basket, trays away, wipe off the table and done!

I am very glad I tried this idea. The art materials have been brought out with increased frequency as it's a no hassle set up and clean up.

Simple butterfly sandwich

All three girls had the same exact lunch. As I was running late I only took one photo.

Heidi's lunch
plum slices, strawberries, honeydew and blue berries,
goldfish, Earth's Best letter H cookie,
butterfly cheese sandwich with fruit leather and jumbo sprinkles for decoration

You can't easily tell from the photo but I still cut her sandwich in half as she likes smaller sandwiches most days. Then I put the fruit leather over the division to make it look more like a whole butterfly instead of two halves.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Rose's Birthday lunch

Rose is FOUR - I can't believe it. Here's the lunch that I packed on her birthday.


oreos from the 100 calorie snack packs, string cheese,
strawberries, green grapes
4 candle shaped cheese sandwiches

Lunch making was a bit of a disaster as suddenly I couldn't find ANY letter O picks and I wanted to spell her name. I was staring at a pile of picks trying to think up something else to spell on her candles and absentmindedly said oh I'll spell four.  She says to me - Mom if you found the O to spell four then you can just spell my name. Well I hadn't actually found the O so we went with plain candles instead! And since when does Rose know how to spell the word four?  Unfortunately, this letter O fiasco cost me a little time so the rest of the lunch didn't get all of the bells and whistles I had wanted. She was still THRILLED with it so no worries.

I did immediately go online once the children had left for school to order some more alphabet picks. Guess what? A few days later I found the O. Doh! Can't hurt to have some extra letters though. We are down to one letter O from 3 alphabet sets. It's not the only missing picks either -  I just don't know where they end up? They're probably hanging out with our lost socks!!

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Thematic Thursday

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Elephants - a new cutter

These were Rose & Heidi's lunches from the same day that I made Amy's read a thon lunch.  Notice the similarities :)


Rose's lunch
granola bites, clementine, carrots, ants on a log, PB dip for her carrots (like Amy!) 
honeydew melon and blueberries
elephant sandwiches

Heidi's lunch
granola bites, blueberries, honeydew & clementines
carrots sticks ants on a log, elephant sandiwches

The sandwiches are made using a new cutter that I bought from People's Pharmacy. It's the munchkin brand and cuts out two elephants at once on one slice of bread. They also had a 2 penguin sandwich cutter and I bought that one too. I can't remember the price but it was very reasonable. I made the sandwiches and then punched out the shapes - it worked very well! Dare I say it -- better than one of my faves, the lunch punch... :0 possibly because there is less detail.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Read-a-thon lunch

One of Amy's lunches during the school's two week read a thon. One of the other children in her class has words in her lunch everyday (or almost everyday - I'm not really sure!). I think that's a great idea. So today's lunch is a book sandwich with the word READ.

granola bites, clementine, honeydew melon, carrot sticks, ants on a log with craisins
smidge of PB as she likes to dip her carrots in peanut butter
likely a ham sandwich but I can't remember!

Amy and Rose read (or were read to) over 300 minutes each during the read a thon and they raised $85 each for new books for the school.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Dr Seuss's birthday snacks

Amy's snack
Cat in the hat's marshmallow hat, honeydew melon,
green egg, goldfish (from cat in the hat)

Rose's snack
The same as Amy's except she has the two children from cat in the hat for picks :)
I didn't have enough S picks to spell Seuss twice!

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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Puppies x3

Everyone wanted a puppy lunch :) It was a busy morning and it was time to go grocery shopping so there was a good variety in each one as we only had a little bit of this and a little bit of that in the fridge! I like days like this actually, as it's nice to use up the odds and ends  - the last clementine, the last few blueberries, the end of the strawberries :)

Amy's puppy lunch
diced peaches, strawberries, granola bites, cheez its
clementine, honeydew melon, strawberry wafer square,
ham sandwich with fruit leather puppy

Rose's lunch
diced peaches, strawberries, blueberries, honeydew melon
strawberry wafer, granola bar, cheez its
ham sandwich and cheese puppy topper

Heidi's lunch
diced peaches, strawberries, clementine, honeydew melon
strawberry wafer dquare, granola bar, cheez its
cheese sandwich with cheese puppy topper


Our Fairy Garden

This is another activity that was on our family fun list - plant a fairy garden.
This is the very beginning of the task. The girls were eager to start planting and although we had made many little embellishments already, we had not yet painted our fairy house. so we used the unpainted to one to help keep the spot!

 We had planned on using one container but as the designs progressed we ended up with three small planters for our fairy garden.

Amy proud of her work laying out our blue gravel river and small pond.


This is the fairy sink, toadstool seat and mussel shell bath.
That was one HUGE mussel!

Rose & Heidi watering the garden.

still watering...


The first two planters in their spot.  We couldn't find any little fencing to purchase here, so I made that one with balsa wood and mini craft sticks. It didn't really hold up well as the girls have been constantly tending to their fairy garden and re arranging it!

Here's our current fairy garden with all three planters -- it's in need of a little grown-up  tending now! I'm sure there have been many fairy visitors :)

Amy thought we should leave a treasure box of items that the
fairies might want to borrow :)

The fairy house is painted and glittered, and the girls added a little fairies welcome shell sign. The blue glitter from our looking glass faded - it's still pretty as a silver looking glass.


This one has become a bit overgrown. I think we'll give it a little love this weekend!





Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Valentine's Day snacks


School was out on Valentine's Day (mid-term break) so the Friday before,  on hot lunch day, I sent these snacks  for Amy & Rose.

Rose's
cheerios, strawberry hearts, string cheese bits, raspberries & blueberries


Amy's
string cheese bits, grapes, cheerios, strawberry hearts

Kid's cookies

Well that was an unplanned blogging break! Life was busy and blogging went to the bottom of the list. Good news is that I have some fun things to blog about :) First up will be food... progress on the family fun list #103 cook every recipe in a kid's cookbook.
This is actually two recipes. 3 in 1 cookie dough plus Jam Sweetheart cookies. I really liked that these recipes don't make too many so we don't have sweets around the house for days at a time !!

The girls' cookies cooling.

Their sandwich cookies assembled.

It was pretty easy. Bake cookies - half regular hearts, half with mini heart cut outs. Pair them up and spread icing on the plain hearts, add a dollop of jam, top with the cutout heart cookie. Heidi's was the green plate. There are four since my nephew was here and he made one too.