Bunny Valentine - Lunch Box Treat

One of the fun things I like to do near the holidays is find little ways to surprise the boys in their lunch boxes. These sweet treats will be headed into their lunch boxes on Tuesday in honor of Valentine's Day.

When I spotted these yummy Annie's bunny grahams at the grocery store the other day they inspired me to create this fun Valentine's Day Lunch Box Treat. 

Christmas Tree Quesadilla

With just a few days to go until Christmas, the energy and anticipation are both on high at our house. I find during these times one of the best things to do is add quick, small bursts of fun into our day to help keep everyone distracted.

A few years ago I came up with these pretty simple Christmas Tree Quesadillas. They are perfect for a fast dinner or lunch in the lead up to Christmas. And they add just a small dose of fun to keep people positive.

Nutella Teddy Bear Snacks

We always love finding fun ways to create snacks. We invented these Nutella Teddy Bear snacks one night after dinner, and they've become a big hit since then.

What's fun about these is they can be used either as a dessert or an after school snack!

20+ Rainbow Recipes For All Times of the Day

A few years ago we discovered Rainbow Pudding Cups, and somehow they have become a St. Patrick's Day tradition for our family, even though they are not at all traditional to the holiday. But we also enjoy making them at other times of the year, because they are just so fun and colorful.

This inspired to search around the web and find even more creative, fun, and colorful Rainbow Recipes. In fact, we've found over 20 of them for you to enjoy and spread across the day!

One Bowl Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

As we've shared before, the boys love muffins. Banana muffins are usually our go-to recipe as we almost always wind up with overripe bananas in the house. I'm always looking for ways to make them a little quicker and easier, which is why I've come up with this one bowl banana chocolate chip muffin recipe. Fast to make and easy to clean up.

When I make these, I always make them in our KitchenAid mixer, which makes the mixing fast and smooth. It had actually been a while since I made some, but we were pretty excited to enjoy a fresh batch this week.

Beach Week (Simple Summer Theme 2)

It's been a couple of weeks now, but we greatly enjoyed our second Simple Summer theme: Beach Week.

Ocean related activities are always some of our favorites! We had a lot of fun earlier this year with Big Brother's Ocean birthday party, so we were able to build off of that with even more fun activities. And even though it will be a while until we see the real ocean, this made us feel like we could almost be there. 

Bug Week (Simple Summer Theme #1)

As I mentioned earlier this week, Big Brother thinks it would be fun if each week of our summer vacation had a "theme." Most of our summer will be spent at home, and I love that he's thinking ahead like this. With extra kiddos here off and on during the summer, it would make our times with them more fun too.

But, I really want our summer to still feel relaxed and flexible, and well, like summer vacation versus summer camp. So, with that in mind I'm trying to honor his theme idea but in a low key way. We'll try, on the days we can, to do at least one simple project, snack, or activity that matches our current theme. Here on the blog I'm calling this "Simple Summer Themes." After the week I'll share a brief round up of different ways we celebrated our theme.

Our First Week: Bug Week

Our first week was "Bug Week," and as it was also our first week of vacation, we definitely tried to keep it simple. But even keeping it simple was still a lot of fun!

Pirate Pinwheels

I had to laugh the other day when I asked Big Brother what he wanted to bring to his preschool end of year potluck, and he wanted to bring a whole bunch of "Pirate Pinwheel" sandwiches.

I laughed, because there are some parts of parenthood that you think out and plan for, but there is a whole lot of parenthood that you do on the fly. And because often, planning or no planning, it can all depend on how you spin it.

Pirate pinwheels is one of those moments for us.

Christmas Fruit Wands

We go to several holiday parties over the course of this month, which can sometimes be hard as our boys can have moments of being picky eaters. It's hard sometimes at a large, busy meal to try and get them to really eat much of anything. So I'm often trying to thing of something I can bring that I know I can get into them easily. The one thing both my kiddos consistently love are fresh fruit and veggies. We like to put a fun spin on the traditional fruit and veggie platters though to match the holiday season.

Last weekend for our first holiday event we tried making Christmas Fruit Wands.

Christmas Fruit Wands

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Last year we had a lot of fun creating our Holiday Veggie Platter for several events. 

This year we know we'll make some of those again, but we also wanted to create something new. 

So we came up with Christmas Fruit Wands. 

"Stuffed Snake" Stromboli (Kids Cook!)

A few years ago we originally made this stromboli for one of our Halloween parties, it quickly became a family favorite for dinner, although we don't always turn it into a snake . . .

As Big Brother has gotten a little older, he can really help with the whole recipe which makes it even more family friendly. 

Happy Hedgehog No Bake Cookies

This month the Virtual Book Club for Kids author is Marcus Pfister. For our monthly read we enjoyed The Happy Hedgehog. We liked the story of the little hedgehog who tries to figure out what he can accomplish in order to make himself happy, and discovers it's really just being himself that brings the greatest happiness.

We decided to follow up our reading by creating Happy Hedgehog cookies!

I wanted to make sure Big Brother could be involved as much as possible, so we made a "no bake" recipe. 

Holiday Veggie Platters

We posted a quick picture of this the other day on our Facebook page, but wanted to extend it into a full post.

Over Thanksgiving week we were inspired by Pinterest to create this "turkey" themed veggie platter for one of our three family Thanksgivings. We love fresh veggies, and love to bring them as a dish to share at different holiday meals. I'm still hopeful that it I eat enough veggie sticks it magically negates the sweet treats we fill up on after the meals. Just kidding, but this is definitely a way to make veggies fun for kids. 

This past weekend we went to our first family Christmas party. Big Brother (who is a veggie lover already) particularly had enjoyed sharing the veggie platter, so it got me thinking about creating a Christmas themed one. Using peppers, cucumbers, and celery I created the tree. Orange and yellow peppers were used to create decorations, and grape tomatoes made the lights. Served with a side of creamy dip, it was a huge hit! 

Big Brother is already planning we'll make another one for his school party this week! 

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