Potato Play

Why I'm thinking we have potato stamping in our future:

Peanut Butter Cookies

I had a roll of pillsbury cookie dough in the fridge and it was time to use it, so I got it out & got Talia involved in rolling the cookies and pressing them with a fork.


It's amazing how something so simple to me can be so fun and exciting for her!

Valentine Toast

Frugal Family Fun posted about this Not So Sweet Valentine Treat, and I copied it except for the icing since we didn't have any on hand.

For this picture I just cut the toast with a knife:

but a few days later I saw this at the dollar store:

Candy Cane Cake

We made Chocolate Candy Cane Cake!

Talia was really excited about mixing the cake:

She got to poke holes in the cake with a toothpick before I poured candy cane syrup over it:

Then we dusted it with icing sugar & it was ready to go! You could use the whole recipe for candy cane syrup that we posted about yesterday. It won't make it too minty! (In our opinion! ;)

Candy Cane Syrup

Storybook Woods posted a great Candy Cane Syrup Recipe that I have seen linked to in a few places on the web. It could be used to make Christmas gifts, or Valentine gifts with leftover candycanes from Christmas. We tried it & it's great!

This is all you need:


My little helper:


We learned that if you want to achieve the beautiful pink/red colour that you'll see on Storybook Woods, then you need to use red & white candy canes! lol Ours had green as well, and we got this lovely shade of brownish black ;) Luckily, we had big plans for adding our syrup to hot chocolate and chocolate cake, so it didn't matter!


Note: If you just don't want to make syrup, we learned one year, that if you stir a piece of candy cane into your hot chocolate, you get some delicious minty hot chocolate as well!

Decorating Cookies for Santa

For Christmas this year, a friend of ours gave us a bunch of mini gingerbread men with frosting and sprinkles to decorate them with. What a great gift idea!


I thought we had put off the decorating for too long- Christmas is tomorrow!
But it was actually the perfect opportunity for Talia to "make" cookies for Santa.


She & Ken had fun working on them together.


She sampled some, too :)


And I'm sure Santa will enjoy this treat this evening :)

Salt Dough Ornaments

Yesterday, we made salt dough ornaments & it was a lot of fun!
This morning, we started decorating them.
Here are a couple, on display:


I followed the recipe that Filth Wizardry posted for Salt Dough Ornaments, and we had a great time making a few of our own!
Talia loved the stirring & the kneading :)


We rolled the dough and cut it with cookie cutters. We made holes in them with a straw (for hanging, and for weaving- as seen in the first photo). Then we waited (too long- these things take a couple of hours! :) for them to bake.

Making Chocolate Truffles

While Talia worked on her computer games, I got a truffle recipe started. We worked on another activity (post coming soon on this) and played with Katrina while waiting for the mixture to stiffin in the fridge, and then we worked on rolling the truffles into balls and coating them in cocoa, cinnamon, and icing sugar :)

Here's the recipe if you'd like to try it yourself:

1/2 cup 35% whipping cream

1 tbsp sugar

pinch of salt

10 oz semi-sweet choc. chips

1 cup cocoa for coating (can also use icing sugar, cinnamon, shredded coconut, chopped nuts, etc.)

1. Combine cream, sugar & salt in saucepan over low heat. When bubbles form around edges of pan, turn off heat. Don't boil. Let steep for 5 min.

2. Stir in choc. chips until melted & smooth. Transfer chocolate mixture to container, cover and refrigerate until firm (about 2 hours).

3. Sift cocoa onto a plate. Using cool hands (this is important- we had to keep washing our hands in cool water to keep from making the balls all mucky!), shape chocolate into small balls, roll in cocoa to coat. Transfer to parchment paper-lined baking tray and refrigerate until firm.

Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks, or in the freezer for up to 2 months.

Christmas Preparation

This year I really want to do a lot of Christmas activities with Talia leading up to Christmas. I love Christmas for so many reasons, and I want her to experience the joy of the season. From gift giving and service to decorating & creating the Christmas atmosphere in our home to the true meaning and story of Christmas.

So, I'm starting now to gather ideas for activities to do with her come December.

Ideas I've found surfing just three blogs that I hope to try this year are as follows:

From Chasing Cheerios:

- Jinglebell Bracelets
- Clove oranges

From Filth Wizardry:

- Salt dough ornaments
- newspaper/streamer wreaths
- homemade advent calendar
- tights snowman
- cardboard Christmas trees


Stained glass paper trees from Alphamom

Popsicle stick tree ornaments from A Homeschool Journey

Candy Cane Syrup from Storybook Woods

Pipecleaner/bead Ornaments from Make and Takes

Santa Claus Card from Tutus and Turtles

Sparkly Pinecone Ornaments from Mom in Madison

Reindeer Paperbag from Mommy's Little Helper

I'll be adding more ideas as I come across them!

Now, please, if you're reading this, and you have any ideas (or great blog resources!), please share them in the comments section!

Spaghetti Squash

The other day I spotted some Spaghetti Squash at the grocery store and thought it would be a great opportunity to get my preschooler involved with cooking dinner. It's pretty cool- when it comes out of the oven (and after you scoop the 'guts' out) it looks like this:

Then you take a fork to it and gently scrape against it like this:

And then you have spaghetti-ish squash! It's pretty cool! You can even eat it with spaghetti sauce, like regular spaghetti :)

Unfortunately the day that I tried this, Talia was sick & less interested in participating than I thought she would be. I'll have to try it again another day when she's more in the mood!

Baking A Pumpkin Roll

A couple of evenings ago, we went to our friends' house for dinner and I wanted to bring a pumpkin roll along for dessert. I could see that I wasn't going to get it done on my own because Talia was very energetic and definitely needed something to do.


So, I pulled out her apron, she pulled out the stool, and we got to working together. She loves cracking the eggs herself, so I let her do it. This generally results in some shell in the mix though, so it's good to do the eggs at the beginning to make shell removal a little easier!


I've learned that it's best to forget about making things perfect and just enjoy smiling and laughing about things that go wrong, and use it as an opportunity to teach about problem solving.


This is a great opportunity for me to learn some things too!
Like patience, and letting go of perfection ;)

After helping me with mixing everything, Talia was ready to play while I baked the roll and took care of frosting and rolling it later. It worked out well for both of us. :)