I was inspired by Annie, on her blog Annie at Home, to try making ricotta cheese with the kids. Silas thought the idea of making our own cheese was fascinating, so away we went!  It honestly is SO simple, I can’t believe we didn’t try this sooner. It took a total of 5mins. No Joke.

My Kids Make ricotta cheese, and yours can too! See how easy it really is:

Organic yogurt + Organic milk = Organic ricotta cheese! YUM

Here is the recipe we used to make the ricotta.  After snacking on cheese and crackers, we used the rest of the ricotta to make vegetarian panini’s. Oh. My. Goodness.

~Thanks for the great idea Annie!!!

The summer is winding down, and although I love Fall, I will miss the barefoot days of summer.

~Hope your day is filled with bare feet and lots of swinging.

Have you seen all these cool wall decals lately? They’ve been around for a while now, but I feel like I see them more and more now in the stores. They are basically big stickers used to decorate your walls.  There’s butterflies and soccer balls, there’s Hannah Montana and lots of Sports teams, flowers and clouds, and the list goes on.  I had been looking for some good Construction Vehicle decals a year or so ago and was disappointed with the selection so that is when I decided to just make my own.  I ended up making a road with a bunch of construction vehicles driving along it ( for Silas’ room).  All of this to say that I have a tiny bit of experience with wall decals. So, it wasn’t totally crazy when I suggested that we make a gigantic Empire State Building wall decal for Silas’ room.

Silas has been fascinated with the Empire State Building for a while now. For his bday he asked if we could go to NYC to see all the “big buildings” and especially the Empire State Building. Since our trip, he has been talking about the Empire State Building a lot, so it struck me as a good idea to make him a wall sized building.  To make the decal we drew an Empire State Building on white contact paper. Drew in a zillion teensy windows, peeled away the paper and then stuck it to his wall. It was really fun and Silas loves laying in his bed and looking at  it. (The only drawback, he says,  is that there aren’t spot lights shining on it at night,  so he really cant see it once it gets dark in his room. Maybe we will work on that next. haha)

My Kids Make an Empire State Building Wall Decal, and yours can too! Check out the pictures to see how to make one (or make anything you like):

A true tourist. Dont you love how he’s taking a picture of himself in front of it? I swear we didn’t tell him to do that!

~Do you have any wall decal ideas for your own house? Do tell…..

Today we have a guest baker…drum roll…..its Curtis (aka: daddy).  In honor of my birthday, Silas said that he wanted to make me my birthday cake (and then volunteered Curtis to help him).  Together they made me a chocolate raspberry cheesecake. Y-U-M.   I did help a little, but mostly the boys of the house baked this themselves.   It tasted just as good as it looks.

My Kids Make a chocolate raspberry cheesecake, and yours can too! See the pics to see how it turned out!

~Update:

RECIPE adapted from here.

• First off, we used low fat cream cheese. Lets just get that out of the way.
• Instead of vanilla extract, we used raspberry extract (in both the cheesecake and the chocolate topping).
• For the chocolate topping,we  used 1/4c whipping cream, 3/4c chocolate chips and raspberry extract
• We put the chocolate topping on about 30mins before we were going to eat it, covered it with raspberries, and then put it back in the fridge.
• 30mins later, we ate!

I take both my kids grocery shopping with me. Some days I consider going at night, alone, so that I can actually focus more on my shopping list and less on “Can we get that?”

Today, when we went grocery shopping I had a new plan that would allow me to focus on the list, have fun with my kids, and be a bit educational along the way.   Before we left, I had Silas make his own shopping list.   I told him a handful of the  items that were on my grocery list and then he drew pictures of those items.  Then, together, we worked on writing the names of each item below its corresponding picture.   It was actually a lot of fun and Silas really enjoyed making his list.  He was excited to go to the store and even more excited to find his items.  It was almost like a scavenger hunt for him.

I highly recommend this. It was fun to make the list, he had a lot of fun finding his items, and he had fun working on his Alphabet/Spelling. All in All… A Success!

My Kids Make a grocery shopping list, and yours can too! See the pictures for more ideas:

(yes, yes. He is running to find the cereal on his list)

~Do you have any little shoppers? Have a shopping list you want to share with us?  Send your pics of your kid’s shopping lists.

Our family recently went on vacation to the beach. It was fun playing in the sand and splashing in the waves. Everyone had a great time.  Due to this recent vacation, it came as no surprise that both Silas and I were excited to learn about a recipe called “Sandy Beach”.  It was with minds full of happy memories that we wondered what this fun sounding dessert could be.

“Sandy Beach” is a dessert created by Jodie Fitz who runs the Price Chopper Kids Cooking Club.   This is a simple, fun dessert that everyone enjoyed.

My Kids Make Sandy Beach, and yours can too! See how easy it is:

We decided to have a “roasted dinner” night. We made a campfire and then roasted all the things we were going to eat. Can you guess what we made?

For dinner we roasted……….

And then for dessert we roasted…….

(and of course made Smore’s)

It was the perfect ending to a fun summer day.  Roasted dinner was a big hit.

We have zucchini growing in our garden, and one of my favorite things to do with zucchini is…..make zucchini bread! YUM.  Silas recently got a few silicone mini bundt pans (thanks mom!) and he has been wanting to try them out, so he opted for baking our zucchini bread in these. The rest of the batter we poured into mini loaf pans.

My Kids Make Zucchini bread, and yours can too! Watch and see how it comes together:

RECIPE:

• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2C white sugar (I have also tried with 1/2 white sugar and 1/2 brown sugar)
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1C oil (can use 1/2 oil and 1/2 applesauce)
• 3C grated zucchini (squeeze your grated zucchini to get out excess water before adding)
• 1tsp salt
• 1/4tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 tsp cinnamon
• 3C flour (I use 1/2 whole wheat and 1/2 all-purpose)

Preheat over to 350°.

Beat eggs. Add sugar, vanilla and oil and mix well. Add zucchini to mixture.

Combine salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and flour. Add to egg mixture. Mix well.

Pour into greased pans. This recipe will make 2 regular sized loafs.

Bake: (about 60min for loaf, 25min for muffins)

~Enjoy

The garden has really been taking off lately and we have been picking something every day. It is fantastic.   There is already talk about next year’s garden and all the wonderful things we can grow.  We have some baking to do with some of our garden goodies.  Keep your eye out for upcoming posts!

Do you have a garden? Send me a picture of your family picking veggies!!!

Rainy day blues? Dig those umbrella’s out of the closet and then head outside for some puddle fun.