heart fruit cups

As Room Coordinator I get to plan lots of fun for the class parties! It's a bit of a stressful job with coordinating and planning, but usually only for the week leading up to the party. And, I have been blessed with some willing and able parents who volunteer to bring things in or come and help out! I shared about my "love juice" water bottles last week that each of the kids received at the party, but for another part of the snack I decided on fruit cups! I wanted the snack to be healthy because I knew the kids would be getting plenty of treats and candy they could take home and eat. They didn't need to be on an extra sugar high! I'm sure the parents appreciated this a little more than the kids might have. ;)

I was making fruit cups for 26 kids, so I had to get speedy with my cutting or I would be in the kitchen all day long, so I got out my Pampered Chef Egg Slicer and cut away on the strawberries. It was SO QUICK!! I always forget I have this handy kitchen tool for strawberries!

Just like that...perfectly sliced strawberries!

And, what's a fruit salad on Valentine's Day without some heart-shaped fruit?!

Top it off with a little extra sweetness with some whipped topping...

It made my day when one of the kids shouted, "Hey, there's heart shaped fruit in here!" Oh, good...they did notice!

candy-coated pretzels

A week or so ago, the kids and I decided to make an easy little snack idea!

I had some of these "Melt 'n Mouth" vanilla-flavored candy pieces leftover from Christmas baking, so I thought I would use them up by covering some pretzels.

{Melt in microwave 30 seconds until easy to stir and smooth.}

Line some pretzels on a sheet of waxed paper.
Next time, I'll be sure to put the waxed paper on a cookie sheet first.

Let the kids drizzle the melted candy over the pretzels.
If I do this again, I though about putting the melted chocolate in my Pampered Chef frosting tube for an easier way to drizzle.

They don't have to look pretty to eat them!

Place waxed paper on cookie sheet and put in freezer for 5-10 minutes.

And enjoy!

to inspire and be inspired

I'm super excited to share that I was featured on two different sites lately. There's just something about someone wanting to share your creations with others. That's why I love this blogging thing so much because I get so inspired by others that I am thrilled that every now and then I get to be the one to inspire someone else!
How cool is that!?

I love ABC and 123 because they have such great resources, especially preschool-aged activities which is right where I'm at with my kids, especially Mikayla. Plus, the two "powerhouses" behind this site...Katie 1 & Katie 2 are such creative and fun ladies! They both have personal blogs that are also super inspiring. You really should check out all three of these sites!

Last Friday, I was featured there with this Easter Bunny Snack.
{more details here}

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I was also just featured yesterday on Tip Junkie!!



Tip Junkie has been sharing a lot lately about showers (which you MUST go and check out if you are planning a shower anytime soon!). The baby shower I co-hosted for a friend was featured...again! First on Creative Parties & Showers and now Tip Junkie! I want to make sure my friend Andrea is getting most of the credit for this one since she is the one who actually created the goodies that everyone is oohing and aahing over!

I'm so doing this for Mikayla's birthday party, by the way!

Some of my other ideas featured in the past on Tip Junkie include:

Picture Baby Shower Favor
Simple & Personalized Birthday Gift Tags

bunny snacks

It's that time of the week again...time to share something fun and kid friendly! Go check out I Blame My Mother for some motivating ideas to do with your kids!

Disclaimer: This is NOT my idea. I'm just good at replicating. There's no way I could make this stuff up! I did, however, adapt it to work for my 3-year old and the kind of ingredients we happened to have on hand. If you want to see the original idea from KABOOSE, check it out HERE.

Easter Bunny Cracker Treats

We're always up for a fun snack around our house! I ran across this idea and thought this would be so much fun and easy to make! So, we decided to give it a whirl...

I adapted the ingredients a bit since we didn't have some of them on hand. The ingredients that you would need are small slivers of carrots (whiskers), pretzel sticks broken in halves (ears), cheese stick circles (cheeks), raisins torn into smaller pieces (eyes), Craisins torn into smaller pieces (nose), cream cheese, and round crackers

Of course, the ingredients all fit perfectly in a muffin tin!!

Our masterpieces!
It was a bit tricky using the smaller size crackers. The original recipe suggests using water crackers which are a bit larger, but you work with what you got, right?

I was actually a little surprised that Mikayla gobbled these right up. It must have been the cream cheese! I ate two and Mikayla ate two and when they were gone she asked if we could make some more and I said...of course!
Doesn't she look so proud of her work?

So sorry dear bunny...but you were just so tasty!

And hop on over HERE to enter to win something fun!

taste the rainbow

With St. Patrick's Day approaching, I thought it would be fun to do some rainbow activities. Plus, Mikayla has been talking a lot about rainbows, so she was super excited when her momma woke up this morning feeling 100% back to normal and ready to play!

We started off the morning doing a little "old school" painting of the rainbow. I guess that's all my creativity could muster up. I found a rainbow outline here. I copied and pasted it into a regular document and made it to the size I wanted it. Then I let Mikayla get out her paints. Oh, how this girl loves her paints!

We used the correct color order of the rainbow and for those that didn't know (that would be me) the rainbow colors in order are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet (which most just combine the last two colors and call it purple). Just think - ROY G. BIV. Although this really works, does anyone else have a more fun way to remember the colors in order?

I was pretty impressed on how much she stayed within the lines and that the paints didn't go everywhere. To help her recognize colors, I had Mikayla find the color of paint when I told her what colors should go next. Then we continued to review the colors as we went along. For some reason she has the most trouble with yellow (or lellow)?


After the paint dried, I cut out the rainbow and pasted it to blue construction paper. Then I got out my cotton balls and we made big, puffy clouds at the ends. See? Old school.

I think it turned out cute and is now hanging on our refrigerator.
What a work of art!

Later in the day, I decided why not do something else that involves the colors of the rainbow? So, we took a walk to the store (our second one in 2 days) and picked up some fruit to make Rainbow Ribbons. This is a fun food activity I included in this month's MOPS newsletter and thought I would try it out! Both of the kids loved it!

Find assorted fruits that match the colors of the rainbow. We used strawberries for RED, oranges for ORANGE, bananas for YELLOW, grapes for GREEN, blueberries for BLUE, and purple grapes for PURPLE. (I'm a little early for the rainbow theme for Muffin Tin Monday, aren't I?)


This was such the cute activity and good, too! It kind of acted as a lunch for the kids. I was a little nervous at first that Mikayla would poke herself, but she was rather cautious. As we did this together, we continued to review the colors and made sure we went in order.


Austin had a blast eating the fruit...although he didn't care for the banana and oranges, so I made one for him minus the two fruits. He had so much fun taking them off the skewer. He was sitting in my lap, so it was hard to get a good picture of him.

Have a happy Friday!!

Go check out I Blame My Mother for more kid friendly ideas.









And for even MORE ideas, check out Saturday Showcase at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.

silly snacks

In the middle of my recipe & cookbook organizing for The Organizing Junkie's February Round Up, I came across a kids' cookbook I didn't even know I had! We were enjoying a lazy Friday afternoon of a little organizing and playing, and so I decided we should give one of the recipes a try.

One of the cookbooks I found is called Favorite All Time Recipes - Silly Snacks. The recipe that caught my eye was {not so creatively} named...

Cool Sandwich Snacks.

Ingredients Needed:
*graham crackers, cracked in half
*chocolate fudge sauce
*Cool Whip whipped topping, thawed
*sprinkles

Spread the chocolate fudge sauce on one half of the graham crackers.

Spread whipped topping about 1/4-inch thick on remaining 1/2 of the graham crackers.
Press crackers together lightly, making sandwiches.
Roll or lightly press edges in sprinkles.
Freeze for 4 hours or overnight.
After the wait is over...dig in and enjoy!
Austin was a little surprised to find out how cold his bite was.

Now that I have found some fun cookbooks that need to be tested out, I hope to make some more fun snacks in the future!

For more kid friendly ideas, check out I Blame My Mother (a fun, new blog I found!)