Carrot Cupcakes

 

These carrot cupcakes are so delicious and a great treat for the Easter weekend coming up. 

I started out using one of our favorite recipes Carrot Patch Cupcakes from Meal Makeover Moms.   I usually follow their directions to a tea because I find the recipes always turn out great but because I was craving (reminder 30 weeks pregnant!) a carrot cake I decided to use all white flour this time so I would get the true cake I was craving. 

I had made some of these delicious cinnamon buns the other day and made a large batch of cream cheese frosting in the fridge so I used a little more of that up and then I was also craving toasted coconut after reading about these Easter cupcakes so I decided to toast up some coconut; the first attempt didn't go well and I ended up with burnt coconut but the second try turned out a lot better.   After the first try I was a little worried about letting it go too long so it didn't get the nice toasted color I was going for but it still tasted delicious. 

Micah was excited to come home to these on the counter!   The kids also love them, but I do think they like the frosting the best! 

Flax Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

This recipe is one of my favourites to make!!!  Who doesn't love the mix of chocolate and oatmeal together.  Also the addition of flax seed give its an extra special flavour that make these cookies hard to resist. 

Here is the recipe. 

1/2 cup margarine
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/4 cup ground flax seed
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 -3/4 cup chocolate chips

 Cream margarine and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Add egg, vanilla and beat well.  Mix together flour, oatmeal, flax, salt, baking powder, baking soda and stir into cream mixture.  Add Chocolate chips and mix until blended.

Bake for 10 minutes at 350

Hope you enjoy as much as we do!

Snow Paint

I have had this fun project in my drafts since March break but didn't think with that 34 degree weather last week that I was going to get to share the fun with you readers!!  Guess I was wrong when we woke up this morning with a dusting of snow on the ground.  

Here is some snow paint!  This gave the kids something fun to do outside for a long long time.  I simple took some containers and filled them up with water and food coloring.  Then I let the kids take them outside to paint the snow.

 

Hopefully this will be our last chance to do "snow" activities as I am ready for the spring weather. 

Baking with kids

I have been learning to let go of my fast pace get everything done quickly mode to allow for special times with my children.  I have some really great role models who have taught me that we don't need to get the job done perfectly but by allowing our kids to join us makes for great teachable moments with them and helps them to learn and understand that helping around the house is fun.    I have also found that it helps give them a sense of purpose as well cause they know you enjoy their company and appreciate their help. 

Baking with kids is just one example.  Of course it can be messy and crazy but I figured after watching an episode of 19 kids and counting and they had a lot more kids in the kitchen that I could handle 6 kids baking with me.  So here we are enjoying one of the March break days with my nieces and nephews. 

After the two oldest read the instructions on the box of cake mix and put them all together the younger ones got to decorate them for the supper dessert.  I did make 1 rule for them it was as long as I didn't see anyone licking the frosting as they were decorating I would give them 3 minutes at the end to having a "clean up" party where they got to eat the left over frosting and sprinkles off the table.  It worked out awesome.  They cleaned up all the extras so fast and I didn't have to worry about licked fingers on all the cupcakes. 

Of course with kids there are bound to be spills here is just one of the big ones that happened.  And of course it was my son who was trying to eat them all up before mommy cleaned them up. 

I love seeing the creativity of all the different designs they made on their cup cakes.  I wish I would have got a shot of the after cupcakes but of course I was too busy helping the kids clean up before supper.

Truffula Trees

 

 

Here is a project we worked on last week.  It was so much fun doing this craft with the kids since there were lots of steps it did take a couple of days before we had our finished product. 

I am sure you have now all heard of the book The Lorax.  Well I  had never heard of it before but was at Costco shopping and saw it there and decided it would be a great new book for our book shelf.  We came home and right away Daddy read it to the kids.  Eben loved it and asked several times to have it read again and again.   So later that week I decided we should try to make Truffula trees together. I search the internet to see how I could dye cotton balls and came across this step by step tutorial. 

We had 4 different colors.  Purple, yellow, orange and pink.  We used this time as our school time.  I would ask Eben to get 4 cotton balls then call out the color I wanted him to dip it in.  

When he finished one he would put it on the paper towel.  

Its cool how all the colors make a tie dye piece of art. 

Then I stuck the balls onto toothpicks and pocked them into this Styrofoam ball for them to dry out over night. 

The next day we painted the sticks (or the Truffula trucks) yellow. 

To make the trees stand up in a vase I decided to dye the rice green to make it look like grass.  So I mixed 1/2 cup of rice with 1/4 cup of vinegar and a few drops of food coloring.  You leave it in the jar for about 10 minutes. 

Then you lay the rice out onto a piece of paper towel to allow to dry. 

I don't have any pictures of the next step but when the cotton balls were all dry I pulled them apart a little bit to make them look fluffy.  Then I put a glue dot on either side of the top of the Popsicle stick and put two cotton balls (of the same color) onto the sticks.  If the cotton balls weren't sticking together I put a glue dot in between them as well.

And here are the two cuties with the finished product.

Jaelyn ready to grab a Truffula tree...Eben says she's taking the trees!  Jaelyn don't be the Once-ler.

Hopscotch

What a joy this has been in our house!  I have loved having hopscotch down the hall way.  Its like every time you go that way you just can't help yourself to jump your way down the hall. 

So here is how you can make one for yourself.  I first saw the pin on pinterest and it comes from this site More! Than Scrap.  I did change ours around a little bit so I will give you the details on how I made this fun activity.

Instead of using vinyal I decided that masking tape would work just as well and because my little guy is only 4 I decided to do smaller squares to make it easier for him.  So here are the supplies I used.  

Masking tape

3 pieces of 8 * 8 card stock

In the center of the hall way I started off with 1 piece of paper and then placed 2 pieces on top of that one to start to get the outline.  I used the tape and taped around the paper so to try to make prefect squares.  When I had done those three I moved on to the 4,5 and 6 and then finished off with the 7,8,9 and 10.    It really didn't take me to too long to do maybe 20-30 minutes and that was including making all the numbers out of the masking tape as well. 

When Eben woke up and noticed the creation he yelled out "HEY....who painted the floor!!"  After I explained to him he was more then happy to try it out and play.  He was trying to teach is little sister how to play as well but that didn't work out for him the way he had hoped! 

Pin it Thursday

What a delicious treat I have for you guys this week. 

When I first saw these on pinterest it took everything in me not to jump up and make them right away because they looked so good.  So I patiently waited until the next night (which was Friday and Friday around here is family games night) to test these out.  Let me just say they should have a warning along with them like BET YOU JUST CAN'T EAT ONE!!!!!   That's right these puppies are so delicious that by the end of the night the batch was gone.  Luckily Micah and I were having friends over the next night to play one of our new board games that we got (Settlers for anyone who has played it its so much fun!) so I made up another batch and we enjoyed those as well.

The original pin is from thirty hand made days you can jump over to her site to get the recipe and the step by step on how to make this yummy treat.  Also if you are looking for some sweet treats to try out here is my sweet treat board. 

So let me know what you have been pinning!

Spring Banner

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So I finally decided to get into the banner action and make one for our spring time decor.  We are going to be painting the house late spring early summer so until then I need to think of creative ways to make it look pretty.  So why not jump on the banner wagon and try one out.

It was super easy to make.  I simply used coordinating spring colored scrap book card stock, my cricut, double sided tape, string and ink for doing the edges. 

So with my cricut I used George basic shapes to cut out 41/2 diamonds.  Because I have the small cricut I was only able to do 6 at a time. When the diamonds where finished cutting I folded them in half to make the triangle shape.  Then I brought the bucket of triangles out to my working area along with the embroidery floss I was using to hang my banner on. With my hubby's help we put the floss up and then I added all the triangle pieces (once they were inked with chocolate chip brown ink) and used the double sided tape to keep them shut. 

Now when we first moved here the blind in the kitchen was blue and my hubby changed that for me and put up this awesome white one.  

The only problem that occcured during this switch was these two big holes that were left from the old blue blind.  In the above picture you can see I put up some hearts on either side of the window to help cover the hole but what was I going to do with the banner.

Then I got a brillant idea that actually came from Micah's cousin.  When she makes the pom poms she actually only makes them one sided so that she can stick them onto a wall instead of hang them from the ceiling.  So I ran down to the dollar store to pick up some white confetti colored tissue paper and made mini pom poms for either side of the banner.   To make them mini I used 6 pieces of tissue paper and folded them up like you usually would.  Then I found the middle and cut it in half.  So one regular size pom pom made two mini ones for me. Then you pull all the tissue paper out in front instead of making it into a nice round ball. 

And ta-da!!!  Here is our new spring decor that hangs over our beautiful kitchen window.

So what kind of spring decorations do you put up??

School time

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School time does not have to be a big complicated ordeal especially for a 4 year old.  So here is one easy thing that we call Mix Up.  What I do is take out some magnetic letters (on this day we did numbers as well) and put them onto a cookie sheet.  They are usually all scrambled up and I ask Eben to first make the alphabet to get him use to putting all the letters in order.  Then if he still feels up to it we put together some words.  This is a great activity to do well I am preparing lunch or supper.  

What are some "school time" activities that you do with your kids?

Framing printables

It is March break around here and we have so many fun activities planned.  Unfortunately I won't be able to share them for a little bit cause our computer is in the shop which means no downloading my photos to show you readers.  But don't worry I will be back when the computer is fixed sharing with you lots of fun activities you can do with your little ones. 

But I will share with you a frugal decorating tip that I LOVE!!  Its framing printables.  

I found this printable over here at eighteen 25 and I just fell in love with it.  So I printed it off (or I got my mom to cause our printer isn't hooked up) and put it into a nice frame to hang in our kitchen!  They also have different color schemes you can choose from which is so nice.  

Here is another example of a printable I framed for LOVE day.  

This pretty pink printable (pictured below) was one I did last year for valentines day and put it on our mantal.  I didn't have a coloured printer so I just printed a black printable onto pink card stock. 

This is my newest printable that I found over at Family Bees.  I LOVE it.  So its printed and now I am looking for just the right mat and frame to put it in.  I find I really like how they look in a bigger frame with a mat so I want this one to be just right so I can hang it up in the kitchen where the pink valentines one is.  Also I am working on replacing my heart garland with a banner so hopefully I will get my craft room organized enough to find my sewing machine so I can work on these projects. 

If you have made a banner let me know how you did it or where you found the instructions!  Or you can even post a picture over at Kate's Kitchen on facebook.

Pin it Thursday

Here is a pin that we LOVED.  These noddles were so easy to make and they tasted awesome!  The original pin comes from Just Another Day in Paradise blog.  

Some things I really liked about this recipe were I had all the ingredients in my cupboards, it was a vegetarian meal,  it was fast to make, the flavor was amazing and the directions were easy to follow.  It definitely gets a 10 star pin from me. 

This recipe is now on the meal plan rotation with 5 stars!!!

So what have you been pinning and making? Please share whats on your board.

You can follow me on pinterest here!