farewell 2011.....

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it was a great one!

Wishing everyone an amazing New Year's and an upcoming year of health and happiness!

Storyboard above was made using a FREE template I found here. I love the idea of making one of these each year with our favourite pictures from the past year. I used the 12x12 template and added my favourite pictures in photoshop. LOVE it!

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fun food friday: the countdown to 2012

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Let the countdown to 2012 begin! With New Year's Eve being tomorrow, I figured I would make a little New Year's lunch for the kids. I love the way it turned out. Bright, colourful and cute. The kids were yelling "Happy New Year" the whole time they were eating it, lol. Here's how I made this lunch:

The clock is a ham and cheese sandwich with the cheese on top. I cut it out using my wilton comfort grip circle cutter. I used chocolate jimmie sprinkles, carrots, and a big sprinkle for the clock face. They also had a silicone triangle of yogurt with colourful sprinkles and some chocolate covered sunflower seed confetti. Cute!



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new portraits

Pin It I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. We had a fabulous one here and the kids are thoroughly exhausted from a very busy past few days. I think we'll be doing a lot of relaxing today!! Here's some pictures I took of the kids this month. I wanted new pictures to send out in our Christmas cards and I also needed to take Camden's 3-year pictures. I actually got so many great ones of both the kiddos, I had a hard time deciding which ones I wanted framed. Daddy did Cam's hair and I can't believe how my little guy looks like a little man! I just love the way they turned out and here is how I have them framed in my house:





You can see them bigger on Flickr if you're having a hard time seeing them. I can't post them any bigger on this blog.

LOVE these kids!

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Merry Christmas

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makin' cookies for Santa

Pin It Yesterday the kiddos and I made a huge batch of sugar cookies. We picked out all our favourite Christmas cookie cutters, all our favourite decorations and the kiddies had a blast decorating their cookies. We probably decorated cookies for at least a couple hours. Kirsten really enjoyed herself, but Cam lost interest after about half an hour. Mom had to step in and help finish decorating the cookies. Here's some pics and the recipe we used. * Please ignore the less than stellar photos - it gets dark here at about 4:00 and I had to use my speedlight which I obviously have not quite mastered yet, lol. I love natural light photography and hate my speedlight! Or maybe my speedlight hates me!*





The end result - do you think they liked the icing eyes, lol!



And a couple of mine:



And here's the recipe we used - it was really easy and tasty and made a HUGE amount of cookies:

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1.In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2.Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3.Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

Recipe from allrecipes.com



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fun food friday: Joy to the World

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Ironically, this lunch was so not a joy to make! I thought it would be a great idea to have a string of Christmas lights at the top of this lunch for decoration, but it turned out to be a huge pain to make. The licorice lace wouldn't bend how I wanted it and the sunflower seeds kept sliding around the plate. It would have worked much better on a flat plate. I still love the end result though. Bright, colourful, and Christmasy. Here's how I made this lunch:

JOY letters are cheese quesadillas on spinach and plain tortillas. I've been making my quesadillas lately on my panini press using the flat grill plates and I love it. There's no flipping because it grills both sides at the same time, so no mess. The letters are placed on top of silicone cups of blackberries, baby carrots and sliced bananas. There is also a licorice lace string of lights with chocolate covered sunflower seeds.



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Happy 3rd Birthday Camden!!!

Pin It Happy Birthday little man. Today is Camden's 3rd birthday and I can't believe it. He's grown so much over the last year, it's amazing. Camden is such a sweet little boy. He's a little shy, stubborn, and knows exactly what he wants, but he's also the cuddliest guy I know. He'll never pass up an opportunity to get and give cuddles and share his love. He's really smart. The boy plays games on the iPad better than me, lol. It truly is amazing to watch. He loves playing with his big sister, loves EVERYTHING cars, and loves reading his bedtime stories. Happy birthday little man. We love you so much and you've brought so much joy to our lives. We had an awesome monster party for Cam on the weekend and it was so much fun. Here's some of the pictures of my little guy's big day:



Here's his birthday invitation with my personal info erased out for the web. I made the card myself in photoshop and bought the clip art from Etsy here. Too cute!



Here's a few pics of his party. We had monster grins. I purchased them on Etsy here , printed them, cut them out and taped a straw to the back. You'll see below that all the party guests had fun with them! For the favors for the little ones we had adopt a monster with ugly dolls and I made some monster play doh. We had monster OJ bottles, and monster cupcakes.







The kids had some picture fun before the party with some monster candy teeth. I had them leftover from the cupcakes. They're so funny.



Here's the cupcakes. Not the most professional looking, but fun nonetheless. Most of the inspiration for these cupcakes were found in my Martha Stewart Cupcake book found here - Martha Stewart's Cupcakes: 175 Inspired Ideas for Everyone's Favorite Treat LOVE this book. So many fabulous ideas.





I found an awesome idea for the adopt a monster here . The kiddos absolutely adored it and it was a great alternative to candy filled loot bags. This time of year it seems the kids get enough candy! Now I can't knit, so I bought each of them an ugly doll and we drew names out of a hat so the "adoption" was fair.





To go along with their adopt a monsters, I also made the kiddos a can of monster play doh. I just took a can of regular play doh, wrapped cardstock around it and used cardstock to make the faces. It was pretty easy and a hit with the kiddos.



I had each of our party guests take a picture for this monster grin collage. I put up a piece of aqua coloured photography backdrop paper and each of our guests took a picture with a monster grin of their choice. This is a great party keepsake!



And here's the little man himself! He had so much fun at his monster party. Happy birthday little guy!!!



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ummm, Merry Christmas?

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Not quite sure what to say about this one. Apparently my daughter is quite the cookie decorator. My sweet and innocent little 4-year old daughter made this gingerbread cookie for her daddy at a Christmas party. Ummm, what? Everyone was dying of laughter. What a proud mommy moment, lol. Fortunately she had no idea why everyone was laughing and didn't quite get what she had done at all. Whew. This will be one of those things that will thoroughly embarrass her when she's older. Ahhh, kids.

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Christmas tree craft

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This was just a really fun and simple craft for the kiddos. I cut a tree out for them and they decorated it in just their style. Kirsten's is decorated on every square inch and Cam's, well, let's just say he likes cars more than crafts these days. It's hard to get him to sit still for anything unless it's Lightning McQueen, lol! Here's how we made this craft:



What you'll need:

cardstock - blue, green, brown
scissors
glue
decorations - paint, glitter, pom poms, buttons, snowflakes, etc.

Directions

1. cut a tree shape out of your green cardstock and glue it onto the blue
2. cut a stump out of the brown cardstock and glue it beneath the tree
3. let your kiddos decorate it however they want!



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this week in bento boxes

Pin It This post will be short and sweet this week because I'm busy preparing for my little guy's 3rd birthday party this afternoon. It's going to be awesome. I'll share the pics from his party on his actual birthday (the 22nd). Here's some more Christmas themed bentos:



Here's a little bento for her morning nutrition break. She had a container of fresh raspberries a peeled clementine orange and a container of chocolate cheerios with a gingerbread man cookie that she decorated on top.



This is an adorable little penguin bento for her afternoon nutrition break. She had a turkey sandwich on a bun with a cute little penguin cut out of mozza cheese and decorated with food safe markers. She also had a container of baby carrots and a container of pretzel sticks.



This little red and green bento was for Kirsten's morning nutrition break. She had a double serving of sliced kiwi and raspberries, a container of holiday rice krispies and a container of vanilla yogurt with snowflake sprinkles.



Here's a sweet little reindeer bento for her afternoon nutrition break. She had 2 ham and cheese circle sandwiches on cute little buns. They are decorated with food safe markers and a red m+m for the nose. She also had a container of wheat thin crackers with a rudolph babybel nose and a container of baby carrots.



Here's another gingerbread bento but this one was for her afternoon nutrition break. She had half a chicken sandwich with 2 little gingerbread men cut out of whole wheat tortilla on top. I decorated with little men with my food safe markers. She also had a container of sliced cucumbers and a peeled clementine orange with a pick on top.



And lastly, a little snowman bento for her morning nutrition break. I made 2 snowman picks using 3 mini marshmallows, pretzel sticks, food safe markers and a toothpick. I used these picks for her cantaloupe and kiwi. She also had a container of holiday rice krispies and a container of yogurt.

Here are some of the supplies I used for these lunches:





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fun food friday: snow globe angel

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I had this great idea in my head to make a snow globe lunch and it was going to be fabulous. I hate when the things I make don't quite look like how I had envisioned it. Don't get me wrong, I still think this lunch is really sweet, I'm just not sure if you'd realize it was a snow globe if I didn't tell you. So I'm telling you. It's a snow globe. This lunch was actually pretty simple to make and the kids loved it. Here's how I made it:

Snow globe is made out of a spinach and regular tortilla sandwich filled with ham and cheese. I used a circle cutter to make the snow globe and scissors to cut out the green bottom. The angel is made using lots of my mini bento cutters and it made out of cheese, ham and food safe markers. Sprinkle snowflakes for the snow part of the globe. Mozza cheese snowflakes and blackberries around the plate.



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handprint angel

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And here's yet another handprint Christmas craft. We've been doing lots of these this Christmas! Just Kirsten made this one. Her angel also doesn't have any legs because, well, she didn't want her to have any. Feel free to give your poor angel some legs! I guess Kirsten figured she didn't need any because she can fly! Here's how we made this craft:

What you'll need:

cardstock - whatever shades you want to make your angel
white paint
scissors
glue
googly eyes
sharpie

Directions:

1. cut some angel pieces out of your cardstock - a dress, a head, a halo, some hair

2. glue these pieces to your cardstock

3. paint both of your child's hands white and have them stamp them on the page for the angel's wings

4. glue on 2 googly eyes

5. use your sharpies to draw on the face details



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handprint rudolph

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Here's another handprint craft to add to our collection. We've done so many over the years and I just love them. The kids think these handprint reindeer are adorable and they just love seeing their artwork on display inside the house. Here's how you make this super simple craft:

What you'll need:

cardstock - brown, red, beige/off-white
scissors
glue
googly eyes
brown paint

1. using a piece of brown cardstock, cut out a reindeer's head and 2 ears.
2. glue the head and ears towards the bottom of your beige/off white piece of cardstock
3. using your red cardstock, cut out a nose and glue on your reindeer's face
4. glue on 2 googly eyes
5. dip both of your child's hands in brown paint and have them stamp them at the top of the reindeer's head for the antlers
6. allow to dry





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