What Can We Make?

 Chocolate Chip Granola Bars (or in our case White Chocolate Craisin Granola Bars)
I'm a big fan of  weelicious.com. Her food is very healthy, even easier to make, and very kid friendly. When I was making baby food for the girls I loved trying many of the puree combinations she posted. I love having a snack item to make with the girls and then have it to snack on all week. ( Coconut Apple Carrot Muffins are awesome too!)  I try to have the girls cook as much as they can with me; even if they are just standing at the sink making their own pretend "soup" I love having them help. Norah loves stirring and helping empty the measuring cups into the bowl and Stella just loves doing whatever her big sister is doing. It's not always the cleanest,  most time efficient, or most practical but they seem to enjoy it and I love the memories we are making. I can always clean the floors later, right?
When I found this recipe for these homemade granola bars I knew I wanted to try them. I had all the ingredients without having to go to the store minus the chocolate chips so instead I tried them with leftover Crasins and white chocolate chips. Yum! Just watch them while they are baking because they can overcook very quickly. I'd suggest checking them at 20 minutes. I think mine were in about 35 minutes and they were golden brown on top. When I was trying to cut them into bars some areas were still pretty crumbly and fell apart - so on top of little granola bars for the girls I also have a container with granola pieces for our yogurt. I wish I knew what the secret was to have them stay together - next time I"ll play around with the time a little more. The combinations you could put in them are endless and you could use whatever you have on hand. I wonder how fresh diced apple and cinnamon would be?

Somehow mixing turned into emptying the silverware drawer...

The floor after our adventure in cooking...it's impossible to cook with those girls and not get anything on the floor.

Chocolate Chip Granola Bars

4 Cups Old Fashioned Oats

1/4 Cup Whole Wheat Flour

1/2 Cup Shredded Unsweetened Coconut

1/3 Cup Brown Sugar

1 Cup Chocolate Chips* ( I did 1/2 C Craisins and 1/2 C white chocolate chips)

1/2 Tsp Kosher Salt

1/2 Cup Canola Oil

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

1/2 Cup Honey

 Preheat oven to 325 F. Combine the first 6 ingredients in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the 

remaining ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients over the oat mixture and stir to combine. Place granola mixture

 on a parchment lined baking sheet and shape into a rectangle, about 13 x 9 x 1 inch thick.

Bake for 40 minutes. Allow to cool for 10 minutes then cut into 3 x 1 inch bars.**

* You can substitute raisins or other dried fruit for the chocolate chips.
** Individually wrapped, the bars will remain fresh for several weeks.

Get Moving!

  Here's a few ideas to get your kiddos moving this week - you'll probably be right there moving with them too!

* Play some fun music (Christmas?) and when you pause the music they have to freeze until you press play again. Be silly, change the music style often and encourage them to dance slow, fast, high, low... This activity is good for working on their listening and following directions and to gets them to burn off some energy. 

* Sun Salutation: Norah and I have done yoga poses together a few times, but never an entire series of poses in a row. When she would have her head down (on the floor basically) and in a pike position I"d always call out, "Downward Facing Dog" and now she calls that out when she finds herself in the pose. The benefits of yoga are numerous. While I am not a consistent Yogi (is that what it's called?) I love how I feel after a class both physically and mentally.   The Sun Salutation is a series of yoga poses that if you take a yoga class you are likely to see. I taught it in my PE classes multiple times and a yoga unit always got a great response; I'm not sure if that's because they got to lay around in the dark listening to mellow music at the end or they actually liked the workout. I've been wanting to try this for awhile and am going to do it this week in the mornings with her and see if it could become part of our morning routine. I've posted a video of the sequence of poses and I like how she incorporated counting with the poses - you'll be working on yoga and counting! The picture below is pretty self explanatory - start at the top and work your way around the circle. In my searching I found the website, www.funkidsyoga.com and it looks like a pretty neat website with tons of ideas on poses to do with kids. I think I'll be finding more to use from that site!

* My last movement idea for this week is just a simple ball toss. Find different sized balls you already have already the house (rolled up socks work just fine too!) then find different sized bowls, hula  hoops, boxes (anything to toss the balls into) and spread them around the room making some closer and farther away from where you'll toss from. To make it easier you'll want bigger items -- boxes, laundry baskets etc., to make it harder you'll want smaller - bowls, cups, etc. You could also use masking tape and tape it in a circle shape on the floor and they could try to toss the ball into the circle. Then let them go to town trying to toss the ball into the bowls/boxes etc. You can work on underhand toss or let them try to throw overhand. Wait until all the balls have been tossed before sending them out to collect and try again. 

Activities that involve throwing a ball improve children's coordination, body movement and gross motor skills but they'll just think they are having fun!

What's for Dinner?

I don't know about you but I feel like all I've been doing is eating! This week I'm going to go for light and simple meals to compensate for all the yummy eating we did over Thanksgiving and the days following.

On the menu this week:
Pan Seared Shrimp, Broccoli Orzo, and a Spinach Salad
Crock Pot Minestrone Soup, French Bread
Balsamic Chicken with Roasted Vegetables

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed time spent with family and friends.

Feel Good Friday.

Well said words from one of my all time favorite books, The Help by Katheryn Stockett. 

These are good words to tell ourselves or someone we love - our children especially. I teared up when Aibileen would say these words to the sweet little girl she cared for and in the movie it was even more powerful. If you haven't read this book please add it to your list. It is a "feel good" book and I always know I love a book when I'm sad  it's over. And, if reading isn't your thing the movie is really, really good -- not as good as the book (they never are) but one of the better book to movies I've seen.

What Can We Make?

In true Thanksgiving fashion here are two turkey crafts you can do with your little ones this week.

Toilet Paper Roll Turkey
This is  a cute little turkey made with whom ever hands yous choose to use. I was able to do one with Norah's hands and one with Stella's hands. As I'm typing this I was thinking it might be cute to do one with one of each family member's hands.  When we did it we didn't have the googly eyes so black marker did the trick. The link above will take you to step by step directions if you need them.

Thanksgiving Printables
The above link will take you to a great set of Thanksgiving worksheets geared for 3-6 year olds. Looking through them there are some great pages for kids to color, trace, count, etc. They are a little old for Norah but she'll have a ball coloring them and might be into the tracing. I will for sure be printing a few of the pages out for the girls and my nephew to color if they need something to do on Thanksgiving.

Happy crafting with your kids and Happy Thanksgiving!

Get Moving

Get Moving Monday will have 2-3 ideas for you to use throughout the week to get your kids, yourself or your family all moving and off the couch! Some weeks will strictly be for your children and other weeks will focus on workouts you could do at home while they are napping or between commercials while you watch your favorite TV show. I have an 18 month old and a 3 year old so the kids activities will be geared towards that age group, but there should be ways to make things easier/harder for older and younger kids.

I'm a planner. I like to have my week planned out on Sunday with meals, crafts and activities to do with the girls. Does this happen every week? Heck no. But it's always fun when it does and I'm making a more conscious effort to try. Just like when I was teaching and would have my lesson plan for the week I feel more productive at home when I have a plan as well. I could never find a website where they were all in one place each week so I'm doing that part for you. Monday's I will post"Get Moving" and Wednesday's I will post "What Can We Make" where there will be 2-3 themed crafts you could do.

Walk with Egg Carton Nature Box

I found the idea for this egg carton nature box off of Pinterest (where else?) I can't remember the exact site but I knew it would be a hit and easy to do.

I spray painted an egg carton white and then we painted the holes rainbow colors and let them dry. I had Norah help me do polka dots on the outside of the box to add some more color. Now you have the perfect vessel to talk about colors, matching, and whatever other discussions will happen while you are outside exploring. Bundle up the kiddos and take off outside and look for things that match each color and put them in the appropriate spot in the egg carton. With two of each color it actually works great for two kids because they can each have a side. If they were older and competitive you could make it a game who could fill it up the fastest by leaving the egg carton in one spot and they have to run back with their colored item to fill up their side.

Some of the colors are harder to find so you just get creative (a small piece of blue plastic? perfect!) This time of year there are so many beautiful red, orange, and yellow leaves where we are living that you should be able to find everything easily. If you don't live where you can just go out your door and do this then take them to a park or somewhere else were you  can get out and walk and let your kids get a little dirty picking stuff up and exploring the big, beautiful world around them. I was having issues importing my pictures so I wasn't able to show my "after" picture with the egg carton full of our goodies we found, but they really got into trying to fill each space and Norah was very observant to the colors around her while we were outside.

Indoor Obstacle Course

This isn't a new invention or something that requires special equipment; sometimes we just need a reminder to use what we have as a way to let kids get energy out and move. I know I'll be using this throughout the coming winter months when we can't get outside to burn off some energy. Will your living room get a little messy? Yes. But they'll have fun and you'll be able to make them use different motor skills to go through whatever kind of course you design. 

• Crawl over pillows (as many as you want)
• Crawl under a chair or a bench 
• Through a tunnel (I bought one at Target awhile ago and it was a great purchase!)
• Tip-Toe Walk on a jump rope (Or a piece of yarn, string or shoelace - just something skinny they could try to walk on).
• Crawl into a big cardboard box (Thank you Amazon for shipping my diapers).

 Just use what you have and think about ways they could use their body to move over, under, through, around or jump, hop, roll, slide. Just by watching them try it you'll probably be inspired for something new to add to it! Have your camera handy too - you never know what you might capture.

Turkey Strut

I had to have something turkey themed for this week. I found this idea just be searching "thanksgiving movement ideas" and it was an answer on Yahoo questions here. Dancing and music are a big hit in our house and I think they'd get a kick out of this. Norah already does something similar with lily pads in her ballet class so I think she'd catch on to the concept pretty quickly. And Stella will just want to follow her big sister so they might end up sharing feet which is fine too.

Use pieces of masking tape to make turkey footprints all over the floor. Start playing music and have kids pretend to be turkeys and strut around the room. When you stop the music, have them find footprints to stand on (try for one child to a footprint) When you start the music again, have the "turkeys" continue strutting about the room. This will be good focus on following directions, sharing, and moving. I might even try to find different music tempos and see if I can have them move slow or fast like the music. If they were older you could also change the way they had to move each time i/e jumping, skipping, crawling, all while still trying to strut like a turkey. 

Remember the goal here is that we want our kids to move! We want them to be comfortable running, skipping, hopping, acting silly (show them how to strut like a turkey yourself and the sillier the better!), exploring and appreciating the world outside of t.v. and all the technology we are bombarded with every day.

What's for Dinner?

I am loving this lazy Sunday afternoon --  football's on, fire is going in the fireplace, cozy rainy weather and dinner is cooking away in the Crock Pot. It was so nice to come home to yummy smells coming from the kitchen after taking family pictures at Bidwell Park this morning.

Over all I was really impressed with all the recipes I tried last week from Skinnytaste. I will continue to look for recipes to try from the website and will be adding  these two to my favorites:  Cilantro Lime Shimp (really easy and fast, great fresh flavor) and the Turkey White Bean Pumpkin Chili (don't let the idea of canned pumpkin turn you off -- it was really hearty and filling and the girls loved it -- Norah ate 2 bowls!).

Meal planning for this week is a little crazy with Thanksgiving and family and friends in town. I'm only going to plan out these two meals and then plan on leftovers and of course the big Turkey Day on Thursday.

I had leftover shrimp from last week and in my recipe searching I realized I already have all of the ingredients for it (love when that happens) so Angel Hair with Shrimp and Asparagus will be on the menu.

I'm also going to make my Mom's Spicy Potato Soup. I love this recipe because it is perfect on a cold fall day and will be easy to put on the stove when we've got company staying here through the weekend. Served with crusty warm French bread and topped with grated Parmesan cheese it is so comforting.

Spicy Potato Soup

1 lb. ground beef (I've never tried turkey but I bet it would be good)

4 C cubed, peeled potatoes

1 small onion, diced

3 8 oz. cans tomato sauce

4 C water

2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 tsp. pepper

1- 1/2 tsp. hot pepper sauce (This is to your taste - if you like it spicy add as much as you'd like!)

Brown meat and drain. Add everything else. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour.

Enjoy!

On a totally different note I have to brag about my brother and his photography!Check him out here!  He's made quite a name for himself along the Central Coast and has even had some pictures published in a surfing magazine.  I'm so impressed with his eye for photography -- he definitely got that from our amazing Dad.