Cooking Category
Easy Recipe for Refreshing Banana Nutella Pops
Fun Friday calls for an easy, fun, yummy recipe you can make with your kids!
What you need:
- 3 Bananas
- 1/2 cup Nutella
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp of cocoa powder
- Few dollops of cool whip (optional)
- Paper cups
- Plastic spoon handles (break off the spoon handle but be careful of jagged edges) or popsicle sticks
What to do:
- Blend the 3 bananas in a food processor or blender until creamy. It’s ok to have a few lumps though.
- Add the vanilla, cocoa powder, nutella and blend well
- Add cool whip and blend again
- Pour into paper cups. This will make 4 larger pops or 8 smaller ones
- Insert plastic spoon or popsicle stick
- Freeze
- Peel the paper and enjoy!
Rainbow Crafts and Fruit Recipes for Kids
Enjoy a rainbow party with your kids with these easy crafts and recipes. You can decorate your party room with all different color balloons or have your kids finger paint rainbows on large pieces of paper. Rainbow crafts and recipes are a great way for children to learn the colors of the rainbows!
- Fun fruit rainbow cake recipe
- Rainbow rice sandbox
Celebrate Oscar the Grouch’s Birthday with Your Kids
Today is Oscar the Grouch’s birthday! While Oscar may not be the happiest character on Sesame Street, he has a lot to teach our children.
- How to recycle.
- How to keep things clean by picking up trash.
- How being grouchy effects other people.
Oscar has his own page on the Sesame Street website, where you can find games, activities and more to help teach your children about recycling, etc.
You can also celebrate his birthday with this refreshing, easy summer pie. We added green grapes & green apple slices to make it extra green for Oscar. You can buy green paper plates and napkins at the Dollar Store to add to your green grouchy birthday party! 
Happy Birthday to Oscar – the loveable Grouch!
Healthy Eating Tips & Motherhood
Jillian Michaels known for her hardcore fitness tactics on the Biggest Loser, is getting in touch with her softer side now that she is a mom. After a long adoption process she brought home her daughter from Haiti and in the same week her partner, Heidi Rhoades, gave birth to their son.
Speaking of Biggest Loser Moms, we are loving these tips from The Mommy Diet by Alison Sweeney. She suggests using plain Greek yogurt in dishes instead of butter or cream. It still gives the dish lots of flavor, but without the calories!
- Use plain yogurt instead of cream in creamy pasta dishes. You will save up to 300 calories per portion.
- Use plain yogurt instead of cream and butter in mashed potatoes and on a baked potato. You will save up to 350 calories.
- Use plain yogurt instead of mayonnaise in dips and cold sauces. It will save you 340 calories!
For more tips, recipes, workout plans and more be sure to pick up your copy of The Mommy Diet today!
5 Tips on Being A Green Eco – Friendly Family
Being an eco-friendly family may seem like a daunting task, but with these 5 simple tips your family can help take care of our earth and make it a better place!
- Grow your own garden – Growing your own vegetables is a healthy way to care for your family, the earth & your bank account! Tomatoes, summer squash and herbs are some of the easiest vegetables to grow. Your kids will love being able to watch their garden grow and eat their hard work! If you live in the city with no room for a garden, support your local community garden or community market!
- Clean up – Pick up litter. Get your kids in the habit of picking up cans, plastic bags, etc. that people throw on the ground. Put on disposable gloves & go on a garbage hunt in your neighborhood to pick up litter others have left behind.
- Say goodbye to chemicals – Cleaners are packed with chemicals that are harmful to your family and the environment. Trade in your chemical cleaners for eco-friendly versions (we love the products at Eco Store USA & found they clean better than chemical cleaners!) or use homemade cleaners like our grandparents did years ago – vinegar, oils, lemons, baking soda, etc.
- Go paperless – Pay bills online to cut back paper waste and ask companies not to send you catalogs via mail. You can keep up with savings from companies by signing up for emails, liking their Facebook page or following them on Twitter.
- Recycle, reduce and reuse – Take a look around your house & cut back on unnecessary things, see what you can recycle and start to reuse things. Start with one seemingly small thing & keep adding one more thing every week. You will be amazed how quickly your house and your family become green! We love the Freecycle site to help recycle, reduce and reuse.
Each of us can do something to make our lives and the world a better place. Anne Frank, a girl wise beyond her years said it well, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” We don’t have to wait. Let’s start today to make our world a better place!
What tips do you have for becoming a more green family?
Spring Bird Nests Treats for Kids
Robins, Cardinals and Chickadees are singing away so why not have some spring inspired treats for your kids? Rice Krispies has a fun recipe for bird nests. Our Kolcraft Kids has so much fun making them. We talked about Mommy birds and how their babies hatch from eggs. We talked about their favorite birds and why they liked them. We all had so much fun cooking up a recipe together and learning about birds!
For a little healthier spin on these yummy treats, we substituted brown rice puff cereal (found at any health food store)for Rice Krispies and coconut oil for butter. Instead of M&M’s for the eggs we used dried cranberries, nuts and raisins.
What you’ll need
- 1/4 teaspoon water
- 2 to 4 drops green food coloring
- 1/2 cup flaked coconut
- 3 tablespoons butter or margarine
- 1 package (10 oz., about 40) regular marshmallows
OR
- 4 cups miniature marshmallows
- 6 cups Kellogg’s® Rice Krispies® cereal
- Miniature marshmallows
- Jelly beans
- Chocolate eggs
Directions:
- In small bowl stir together water and green food coloring. Add coconut. Stir until coconut is tinted. Spread on baking sheet to dry.
- In large saucepan melt butter over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. Remove from heat.
- Add KELLOGG’S RICE KRISPIES cereal. Stir until well coated.
- Divide warm mixture into sixteen 2 1/2-inch muffin-pan cups coated with cooking spray. Shape mixture into individual cups. Cool. Remove from pans.
- Fill cooled nests with coconut, marshmallows, jelly beans or chocolate eggs. Best if served the same day.
MICROWAVE DIRECTIONS:
Follow step 1 above. In microwave-safe bowl heat butter and marshmallows on HIGH for 3 minutes, stirring after 2 minutes. Stir until smooth. Follow steps 3 thru 5 above. Microwave cooking times may vary.
Note
For best results, use fresh marshmallows.
1 jar (7 oz.) marshmallow crème can be substituted for marshmallows.
Diet, reduced calorie or tub margarine is not recommended.
Store no more than two days at room temperature in airtight container. To freeze unfilled cups, place in single layer on wax paper in airtight container. Freeze for up to 6 weeks. Let stand at room temperature for 15 minutes before filling.
Easy To Make Casseroles for the Busy Mom
It’s 2pm and you haven’t even touched your “to do” list let alone think about what is for dinner. Enter The Best Casserole Cookbook Ever! We love this cookbook that has 500, yes 500, different casseroles. We love that a casserole can be made ahead of time & frozen for those crazy days when you just can’t get around to making dinner. There really is every possible casserole in here from breakfast casseroles to meat to vegetarian to kid casseroles. We give it two thumbs up!
10 Delicious and Fun Recipes for Your Toddler
Our friends at Parenting magazine have easy, fun, healthy recipes that will get your toddler saying, “More please!” Try them out this weekend!
Our favorites:
Find more at Parenting.com
Celebrate Dr Seuss’ Birthday with Your Kids
Today is Dr. Seuss’ birthday and what better way to celebrate than through a party and reading to your child? We have a few ideas for making your Dr. Seuss birthday celebration fun and educational!
Dr. Seuss Party Decorations
- Make Cat in the Hat party hats
- Decorate your wall with trees from the Lorax. Just take this finger paint art craft and make it on poster board.
- Make a Dr. Seuss themed birthday cake. We love these ideas inspired by his books! Be sure to sing happy birthday!
- Have green eggs and ham for breakfast with this easy recipe.
Dr. Seuss Party Activities and Crafts
- Play pin the green eggs and ham on the plate. Simply cut out a plate, green eggs and green ham from construction paper and hang on wall like pin the tail on the donkey.
- Do a Dr. Seuss word search with your children or make your own!
- Have kids sit in a circle, read words from One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish and see how many words they can come up with that rhyme. i.e. – Cat, Fish, Dog, etc.
- Color Dr. Seuss coloring pages and talk about which character is your favorite and why.
- Make bookmarks with Dr. Seuss characters. Encourage your kids to draw their favorite character. It doesn’t have to be perfect!
Make sure you have storytime and read your kids’ favorite Dr. Seuss books. Have fun celebrating the author who has taught thousands of kids how to read!
Storytime with the Lorax
We are very excited that The Lorax is coming to theaters, but nothing can capture imagination like reading Dr. Seuss’ original The Lorax book. We have often talked about the benefits of reading to your children and we love that Target Stores support this.
This Saturday all Target stores across the country are having a Dr Seuss Storytime reading of The Lorax. We applaud Target’s Read Across America program. Reading opens a child’s imagination and you can take that even further with these easy crafts & activities to go with a Lorax celebration. Get ready for a treeriffic (ok a little corny) fun with your kids.
Lorax Tree Art
What you need:
- Cotton balls
- Non-toxic paint
- Pipe Cleaners
- Non-toxic marker
- Non-toxic glue
- Construction Paper
What to do:
- Talk to your children about why trees are important, what they are used for & how important it is to take care of them.
- Have your child put his/her name at the beginning of this sentence on the construction paper, “(child’s name) listens to the trees.”
- Give your child several cotton balls & pipe cleaners cut into various lengths.
- Have them dip a cotton ball in the paint and then swirl it on the paper to form a tuff-top tree like in The Lorax.
- Glue pipe cleaners on paper to form the tree trunk.
Try these fun tree related activities from our friends at National Wildlife Federation to complete your Lorax celebration.
What is your favorite part of The Lorax?
