Ideas for Halloween Candy
Parenthacks has another good post about using up leftover Halloween candy. My personal favorite is chopping it up and mixing it into ice cream. yum yum!
Rice Krispie Treats, Fun for Everyone
It was cool and rainy this weekend, the kind of days that call out for cookies. I decided to make Rice Krispie Treats. The Boy helped and I realized that making these tasty treats has great potential to be a fun, fairly inexpensive activity.
I haven’t tried the generic brand of Rice Krispies (Crisp Rice?), but I assume it wouldn’t be that much different than the Kellogg’s brand. And I always just buy the cheapest brand of marshmallow, especially if I am making the treats within a few days. Other than that, all you need is butter or margarine and perhaps some food coloring or other little ‘extras.’
Melting the butter and marshmallows needs to be closely supervised. We don’t want burned fingers or hands. Make sure you use a large pot so that it is easy to stir in the cereal after everything is melted. Once you have stirred in the cereal, it is easy for a young child to help press the treats into the greased pan or shape them.
I’m sure the ideas are endless, but you could add some food coloring to the marshmallow/butter concoction as it is melting. Add red and shape the treats into hearts for Valentine’s Day. Add green and shape into shamrocks for St. Patty’s Day. Add orange and make ‘carrots’ for Easter. I could go on. Shaping the treats is fun. Just remember to butter/grease your hands really well. Or use greased saran wrap to shape the treats. Add M&Ms or other candies before they cool to decorate. My favorite has been the carrot-shaped treats with green sour worm ‘tops.’
The Boy is not a fan of chocolate. (He doesn’t get it from me!) So these are a fun treat for him to help make and eat. If you wrap each square or shape in saran, they do last a few days, but of course, I think they are best when eaten right out of the pan!
Spatulatta
I recently came across a fun website, Spatulatta: Cooking 4 Kids Online. The site has short videos of kids cooking in the kitchen. It is definitely something to use when The Boy gets a little older. For now, it is a good reminder that early exposure to kitchen activities can be a great thing for kids. The Boy gets to do little things already, like, cracking eggs, stirring, cutting out and frosting cookies and ‘washing’ dishes. That last one is actually more like playing with soapy water and utensils in the sink.
Quiet Book
Last spring I undertook the most ambitious craft project that I have ever done. I remembered from my childhood having a cloth activity book and decided that that would be just the thing for The Boy’s second birthday gift. I don’t know if my memory serves me correctly and if, indeed, my mother made my activity book. My mom is gone now and my own book hasn’t been seen for probably 20 years. But I thought that it would be ‘fun’ to make the book for The Boy. Little did I know that ‘fun’ would be two weeks worth of a huge project all over the dining room table and several nearly sleepless nights.
A friend had made her son a cloth activity book a few years before and still had the pattern, so she lent it to me. The project was definitely more expensive than I had anticipated. I did, however, learn a lot and I have many supplies left over for future crazy projects.
The material was fairly expensive. I bought pre-quilted material for the cover and duck cloth for the inside pages. I used fabric scraps and buttons from around the house, but I did end up buying velcro, zippers, shoelaces, snaps and some other sewing materials. Oh, and heat-bond hemming material. Did I mention that I don’t have a sewing machine? (And don’t want one - that just opens up a whole new world of crafts that I don’t have time or space for.)
The heat-bonding took the longest. I had to heat-bond each page and most of the activities onto each page. I ended up using some heavy duty textile adhesive for the thicker pieces. All in all, if I ever attempt another one, I think I’ll spend a week with my mother-in-law and use her sewing machine.
However, if you know how to follow directions and like big craft projects, this might just be the thing for you. The book turned out beautifully and The Boy loves to play with it. I even got brave toward the end and changed a couple of the pages to suit us a little better.
There are many store-bought cloth activity books out there, but having the hand-made book really makes it more special to us. In the future, I can tell The Boy the stories behind many of the fabric scraps used in the book.
Happy Crafting!
Steak and Lobster on the Cheap?
GetRichSlowly.org has an article on how to eat at a nicer restaurant without blowing out your budget. One of my favorites is below.
Take food home. An excellent way to stretch your restaurant dollar is to actually plan to take home leftovers. Kris and I have done this for years, yet I don’t know how wide-spread the practice is. If you do this, keep it in mind when browsing the menu; some foods keep and reheat much better than others.
Plus it will save a little of your waistline if you don’t eat those huge plates of foods that are served in most places.
Storing Leftovers
My compost pile loves our veggie and fruit scraps, but I hate to throw away food that we should have eaten. Honestly, it feels like I’m just throwing money right into the garbage bin. Gomestic has some good tips on how to properly store food so that it lasts longer.
I’ll admit that I have a hard time eating leftovers for days. I often freeze a portion of our meals so that I can bring it out a week or two later and it seems like new. I label almost everything that goes into the freezer so that I can use things in a timely fashion. I also rotate leftovers in the fridge so that the first thing in there works out to be the first thing used up.
Spending Too Much on the Grocery Budget?
We’ve been overspending on our grocery budget lately, so I was surfing around, looking for some inspiration. Get Rich Slowly has an article about (one person) eating on $15 per week. It has some good tips: eat up all your leftovers, eat in-season produce, and avoid junk food and pre-cooked food. I also found the Hillbilly Housewife’s $45 emergency menu for 4-6 people for one week.
I am determined to be better about planning my meals for the week and only grocery shopping 1-2 times per week. For me, that is the key. If I go every day (and without a list), I tend to spend more and buy impulse items that we really don’t need.
Treasure Maps
Older kids (or adults!) might have fun with this website. TroveMaps is a collection of ‘treasure maps’ for you to follow. The program uses googlemaps and each treasure map has clues for you to follow. Scroll and click on various locations to see cool and interesting places on earth. You can also create your own treasure map.
Easy to Make Energy Bar - Logan Bread
My dad loved the outdoors and we always took at least one backpacking trip and many camping trips during the summer. He was a teacher, so we had all summer long to go on family trips. One of our favorite backpacking foods was Logan Bread (named for Mt. Logan in the Yukon). This dense, delicious bread that we ate for breakfast kept us full all morning, even while hiking!
Recently, The Man asked for some sort of snack to take to work that would be similar to a protein bar and I decided to resurrect the Logan Bread of my youth. Sadly, dad no longer has the recipe, but I managed to find a good one at Allrecipes.com.
You can substitute different types of dried fruit for the raisins and I generally use chopped walnuts instead of sunflower seeds. You can also substitute 1/2 to 1 cup of soy flour for some of the whole wheat and white flour to add protein. The Boy loves this bread, as do The Man and I. I bake it once every two weeks or so, cut it into bars and keep them in the fridge or freezer.
This has been a yummy, inexpensive substitute for protein bars for The Man and a tasty way to start the day for all of us!
Games to Play in the Car
A ParentHacks post about playing “I Spy” in the car made me think of our most recent car trip. It was just a three-hour jaunt to my hometown for the weekend, but still, a significant amount of time in the car for The Boy.
We played a fair bit of “I Spy.” We particularly love to spy tractors, trucks, buses and trains.
Counting is another fun game. Several times during the trip, we counted the trees along the road or yellow trucks or stoplights.
For long car trips I pack books that I have nearly memorized. He can get them out and I can ‘read’ to him from the front while he follows along. Books on tape/cd might be a better way to roll with this as he gets older.
The Boy doesn’t love to sing himself, but does love to hear Mommy sing songs. Especially silly, made-up songs about whatever topic he picks. He hasn’t noticed or maybe he doesn’t care that they are usually all sung to the tunes of “Twinkle, Twinkle” or “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
Other car trip tips:
Pack snacks and water that are within easy reach of you or your kids. Depending on their ages, you may want to plan specially timed snack stops. If you are traveling with your spouse or another adult, then it may be easier to have someone else hand out snacks and activities.
Plan regular stops to break up the time in the car. We have found that even a quick bathroom/stretch your legs stop every 1 1/2 to 2 hours really helps!
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