Recipes Category
Easy Summer Fruit Recipe for Kids
Summer is the perfect time to have fun with fruit! Your kids will love making their own fruit palm trees with this easy recipe!
What you need:
- Banana
- Grapes
- Tangerines
- Knife (adult use only)
What to do:
- Wash grapes.
- Cut banana in half. Put halves on plate “curving” away from each other.
- Peel tangerine and pull apart sections. (Kiwis are also great for this). Arrange at top of banana like palm leaves.
- Cut grapes in half and arrange at base of “palm tree”.
- Enjoy!
Refreshing Easy To Make Raspberry and Banana Torte Recipe
Farmers markets abound with fresh fruit. You can have a fun day going to your local farmer’s market with your kids and teaching them about growing fruit and vegetables. Ask questions of the local farmers, they are more than happy to explain things to your children. Once home you can make this yummy torte together.
What you need:
- Angel food cake
- Fresh raspberries
- Banana sliced round
- Cool Whip (or make your own whip cream. It’s as easy as freezing your mixing beaters & beating heavy cream on high setting)
- Banana flavored instant pudding (we also like it with vanilla!)
- Milk
What to do:
- Cut angel food cake into 3 or 4 small layers (horizontally)
- Mix pudding with some milk so it has constancy of gravy
- Fold in Cool Whip
- Lay down angel food cake
- Add layer of pudding/Cool Whip mix
- Add raspberries and bananas (this is fun for kids to do)
- Repeat until finished with top layer.
- Top with remaining pudding/Cool Whip mix
- Garnish with raspberries and bananas
- Chill
- Enjoy!
What is your favorite summertime dessert?
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!
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!
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?
Easy Rainbow Crafts and Recipes for Kids
It may be cold and gloomy out, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have rainbows and fun indoors! We had a lot of fun with our Kolcraft Kids as we had an indoor rainbow day complete with rainbow crafts, food and fun!
Rainbow Crafts
Indoor Rainbow Rice Sandbox
Rice after it has had food coloring added
What you need:
- Rice
- Vinegar
- Food coloring
- Aluminum foil
- Containers
- Cookie sheet
What to do:
- Put 1.5 cups of rice in each container
- Add 1 – 2 tbsp of vinegar to each container
- Add a few drops of food coloring
- Shake, shake & shake the containers some more to fully coat the rice in food coloring
- Put aluminum foil on the cookie sheet
- Place rice on cookie sheet & put in oven at 150º for 10- 15 minutes
- Take out, place in large, wide container that isn’t too deep & let your kids have fun in their indoor “sandbox”!
Rainbow rice ready to dry in the oven
You can also put black, white & red beans in a container and have “bean sand”.
Other fun rainbow crafts, recipes and ideas that we did with our Kolcraft Kids ranging from 6 months to 7 years old!
- Rainbow finger painting – put hands in non-toxic finger paint, and place hand prints in semi-circle forming a rainbow. Alternate colors to make a rainbow. We love this as a keepsake of our child’s hand-prints.
- Rainbow crayons – this easy craft, recycles old crayons into rainbow crayons!
- Rainbow fruit cake – this yummy treat is a tasty way to teach your child about the rainbow.
- Rainbow outfits – let your child pick out his/her clothes for the day. We can guarantee it will be a rainbow sensation outfit.
Enjoy your rainbow filled day!
Kid – Friendly Sandwich Recipe
Your picky eater will enjoy this take on sandwiches. It’s easy to make and your children can have fun creating their sandwiches with you!
What you will need:
- Bread cut into cubes
- Cubed cheese
- Baby jerkins pickles
- Cherry tomatoes
- Deli meat cubed
- Other vegetables cubed
- Skewers
What to do:
- Cut ingredients into cubes
- Put in bowls & arrange in an “assembly line”
- Give your child a skewer
- Let them create their sandwich on a stick. They don’t have to put the bread on the outside – let their creativity take over!
Kolcraft Thanksgiving
This week is a week of Thanksgiving joy for Kolcraft. We have some great crafts, recipes, contests and more this week. To kick off our Thanksgiving week, employees from Kolcraft are sharing their favorite family Thanksgiving traditions.
Kolcraft Thanksgiving Traditions
- We go around the table and say one thing we are thankful for this year. We especially love hearing what the littlest one has to say! –Kim
- Early in the morning the kids and dads in our family and our friend’s family take a walk in the woods. –Colleen
- We volunteer at a homeless shelter serving Thanksgiving dinner. It reminds us to be grateful for what we have. –Brent
- We light a candle at our Thanksgiving table in gratitude for the love of family members who are no longer with us. –Michelle
- It’s father son bonding day! We eat too much (guilt free) and watch 3 NFL football games! –Chris
- This Cranberry Salad recipe is one that my husband’s family has handed down for 4 generations. It’s very easy and it tastes good! –Carol
Holiday Cranberry Salad
- 2 cans whole berry cranberry sauce
- 2 apples
- 2 bananas
- 2 oranges
- 2 T. lemon juice
- 2 T. sugar (to taste)
- ½ c. chopped walnuts (if desired)
Slice bananas into lemon juice and mix lightly to keep bananas from turning brown. Peel and section oranges and cut into ½ “ pieces. Core apples and coarsely chop. Stir fruit together and fold in cranberry sauce. Add sugar to taste and stir in nuts if desired. Make one day ahead for best blending of flavors.
This recipe can easily be adjusted up or down. The ratio is 1 to 1 on the cranberries and fruit. Adjust the lemon juice and sugar accordingly.
What are your favorite Thanksgiving Traditions?
Take a Hike with Your Kids and Pack a Healthy Trail Mix
Who knew there is a day devoted to trail mix? We thought that this special day would be the perfect opportunity to get outside with your children and take a hike while eating a healthy trail mix snack!
Tips for planning a hike:
- Pick someplace where you would like to hike/walk with your children. This can be a trail at a nature preserve, a beach or lake, a forest, a meadow,etc.
- Plan a theme for your hike. You can go bird watching, rock hunting , seashell finding, bug discovery, etc. Do some quick online research on your theme before you go so you can identify some of the things you are looking for (i.e. birds in your area, rocks in your area, etc.)
- Bring some water and a healthy trail mix snack. We love these trail mix ideas from the Healthy Kids Snacks website.
What ideas do you have for a healthy hike and snacks for kids?
Fun Peach Party for Children to Celebrate National Peach Month
August is National Peach Month and what better way to celebrate this yummy fruit than to have a fun-filled Peach Party with your kids. You can even invite over their friends for a real peachy event!
What you will need for the party:
- Peaches
- A copy of James and the Giant Peach
What you will need for the craft:
- Tissue paper in orange, yellow and pink
- Non-toxic glue
- Paper plate
- Scraps of brown and green paper
- Scissors (adult use only unless child is able to use safely)
What to do:
Set up an area outside if possible for your peach party. Have a big bowel of washed peaches in the middle of the area where you will hold the peach party. If you want to be really creative you can have several peach dishes for the kids to eat such as:
Read James and the Giant Peach while the children enjoy their peach snacks. Have everyone clean up from eating their juicy peaches and begin the peach craft.
- Tear or cut tissue paper into squares.
- Put glue on a portion of the plate (you don’t want to put it on the whole plate because it may dry by the time your child gets to decorating that side of the plate).
- Put the colored tissue all over the paper plate that has glue on it. Once finished, put more glue on plate & then put down more tissue paper.
- Cut out a small rectangle of brown paper for peach stem.
- Cut out leaves with the green paper.
- Attach stem and leaves to top of peach.
- Leave to dry.
- When the plate is dry trim any rough edges.
Fun Facts about peaches to share with kids:
- Peaches are a fruit that grow on trees.
- Georgia is known as the peach state.
- California, however, provides half the world’s supply of peaches.
- Peaches are believed to be native to China.
- Peaches are a good source of fiber and vitamin C.
Enjoy!
