Fairy House Workshop (Siobhan)

~Fairy Houses~

This past week I took the kids to a fairy house workshop at our local library. They had so much fun making their houses!

First they made their 'fairies.' They pushed tissue paper up through the middle of a thick clothespin for wings. They used a twisted pipe cleaner for arms and then added hair and drew on their faces. Brandan gave his fairy an acorn hat 😉

First they taped two plates together and taped a two liter bottle in the center of the plates. Then they covered the bottle with some construction paper and taped on a door and some windows.

Next they decorated a paper plate that had a circle cut out of its center. They cut small ridges around the circle and pushed it down on top of their bottle to make a roof.

Brandan's favorite part was the gluing! They spread some glue on top of the bottle and covered it with tissue paper.

The final step was to add bark, grass, mushrooms, shredded paper, and any other decorations of their choice to make their houses look like fairies decorated them!

A huge thank you to our library for hosting this fun workshop!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day 2017! (Siobhan)

~Happy Saint Patrick's Day~

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone! I know this post is a little late, but hopefully it will give you some good recipe/craft ideas for next year 😉 We had a lot of fun making yummy treats and learning about Saint Patrick through some fun activities.

First we learned about Saint Patrick. I just found a brief summary of his life online. Brandan and Shaila did a coloring page while they listened, and Connor filled out a crossword puzzle which had questions about Saint Patrick's life.

Click here to print out the Saint Patrick's Day crossword puzzle

Click here to print out the Complete the Leprechaun coloring page

Next I had the kids glue tissue paper squares onto a shamrock template to make a mosaic.

The kids' favorite Saint Patrick's Day craft is this leaping leprechaun. I printed and cut out the printable, and they colored it and put it together with brads.

Click here to print out the Leaping Leprechaun printable

Our last craft was this Heart Shamrock. We made the hearts out of green construction paper and stapled them together. You can click here to see our Valentine's Day Heart Chain tutorial. It shows you how to make the hearts. They are so easy and are a lot of fun to make!

(Baxter took advantage of the fact that I was distracted with the crafts to unload Mom's spice cabinet!)

I didn't get great pictures of the food, but it tasted delicious! For lunch we had a homemade 'green' pizza, with pesto, artichokes, sundried tomatoes, and asiago cheese.

 For dinner we had corned beef, cabbage soup, and homemade honey wheat bread.

Click here for our Rustic Irish Cabbage and Potato Soup recipe printable

Click here for our Slow Cooker Dijon Corned Beef recipe printable

Click here for our Simple Honey Whole Wheat Bread recipe printable

Click here for our Shamrock Shake recipe printable

Click here for our Classic Mint Chocolate Brownies recipe printable

We had shamrock shakes on Friday, and on Sunday I made some mint chocolate brownies (photo courtesy of Sally's Baking) which we served with mint chip icecream. Both are wonderful Saint Patrick's Day desserts!
Click here to see our 2014 Saint Patrick's Day post
Click here to see our 2015 Saint Patrick's Day post
Click here to follow my 'Kids DIY and Crafts' board on Pinterest

Family Car Stickers (Siobhan)

~Car Stickers~

This past weekend Ethan and I made family car stickers to go on the back of our truck. They were a LOT of work, but we love how they came out. We incorporated each of our interests/hobbies into the stickers. Here are some pictures...

 Siobhan (cake decorating), Mom (running), and Dad (engineering)

 Aidan (baseball) and Ethan (animals)

 Brandan (always active!), Shaila (reading), and Connor (soccer)

Baxter and Cade

Crepe Bar: Recipes and Fixings (Siobhan)

~Crepe Bar~

For Ethan and Grandma Z's birthday, we always do an annual birthday brunch. This year Mom decided to do a crepe bar with lots of incredible toppings. We made regular and gluten-free crepes. Unfortunately my pictures didn't come out, but I still wanted to share the recipes and toppings!

Crepes Recipes

For our regular crepes, we used this recipe from Epicurious. The crepes were delicious!

*Click here for our crepes recipe printable

For our gluten-free crepes, we used this recipe from Food.com.

*Click here for our gluten-free crepes recipe printable

Toppings and Combos

Toppings are essential for good crepes! The more toppings you have to choose from, the better! Below I've listed some of our favorite crepe combos and topping ideas.

***Crepe Combos***

Eggs Benedict Crepe (crepe topped with canadian bacon, asparagus, and hollandaise sauce)

Fresh Fruit Crepe (crepe topped with fresh whipped cream, raspberry mousse, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries)

Caramel Apple Crepe (crepe topped with spiced apple pie filling, drizzled with a little caramel sauce)

***Crepe Toppings***

Fresh berries (we used strawberries, blueberries and raspberries)

Yogurt

Fresh Whipped Cream (sweetened with a little sugar)

Raspberry Mousse (we didn't have time to make our own raspberry mousse, so we used whipped raspberry yogurt)

Lemon Curd

Jam

Maple Syrup

Chocolate Mousse

Caramel Sauce

Apple Pie Filling (Mom added some spices to ours, and it was so good!)

Cherry Pie Filling

Canadian Bacon

Asparagus

Hollandaise Sauce

Those are all the toppings we had at our crepe bar, but here are some more ideas that we would love to try...

Cream Cheese Filling

Hot Fudge

Soft Cheeses

Fresh Herbs

Sauteed Mushrooms

Spinach

Caramelized Onions

Chicken

Pulled Pork

Sweet or savory, crepes are so much fun to put together! Happy crepe-making! :)

Robin Hood Hat Tutorial (Siobhan)

~Robin Hood Hat Tutorial~

It's halfway through February, and for us that means last minute DI projects in preparation for our tournament in March. I've worked on some of the costumes, and I made a hat for our Robin Hood character. I looked up a tutorial online, but it was pretty confusing and I decided to make my own. Here is the tutorial I put together!

Supplies

Green Felt or Flannel

Thread

Pins 

Sewing Machine

Red Feather

*Recommended: 1/4 inch foot

First, you need a template.

(Click here to print out the Robin Hood hat template)

*Note: We don't have a printer that can print out 11x17 patterns, so I just printed the pattern on multiple pages.

 First, trace the hat on some green felt. Repeat, so that you have both sides of the hat.

 Pin the two sides together. Sew along the top of the hat. It is marked for you on the template, but the above picture shows you where you need to sew.

I used a 1/4 inch foot on my sewing machine to get an accurate seam. If you don't have one, you can also mark the 1/4 inch line on your machine with some tape.

 Next I tucked up the bottom edge of the hat (this is the trickiest part to show in pictures!) so that it had about a 1/2 inch seam. I sewed this with a regular foot.

After I finished my hem, I tucked the bottom of the hat up so it had a nice finished look to it. I sewed along the hem in a couple of spots so that the tuck would stay in place.

I added the feather to the hat at an angle, and I sewed back and forth along the hem where I stuck it in. It stayed put very nicely, and it gave the hat a great finished look.

I hope this tutorial was helpful! Stay tuned for more DI posts soon.

Click here to see some more DI posts.

Christmas Gift Ideas 2015 (Siobhan)

~Christmas Gift Ideas~

Our family loves making homemade Christmas gifts! Now that the 2015 Christmas season is over, I wanted to share with you the Christmas gifts we made. These would make great gifts for Christmas 2016! 

 We used these adorable Snowman Gift Bags for our smaller Christmas gifts.

For the kids' Sunday School teachers, we put together bags with some packs of our favorite chai tea, dark hot chocolate, a lemon biscotti, an ornament, and a card from the kids.

I made these Christmas ornaments to hang on the front of the bag. They were very simple to make. I used different types of ribbon and Christmas fabric.

Another gift we gave was Lemoncello with some homemade biscotti. 

Mom made and bottled the Lemoncello, which is an Italian Liqueur.

 Click here to print out the Lemoncello labels.

Click here to see the Lemoncello bottles.

I made dark chocolate peppermint and lemon white chocolate biscotti.

Click here to see the Dark Chocolate Peppermint Biscotti recipe post.

Click here to print out the Biscotti labels.

 Our final gift ideas are these cake pops. I made dark chocolate and peppermint red velvet cake pops.

Click here to see my Christmas Cake Pop tutorial.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Click here to see last year's Christmas Gift Ideas post.