Healthy Snacks take 2

Feeding my kids healthy foods is important to me. I know for myself, that I notice a huge difference in how much energy I have, how often I get sick, my mood, even my monthly, when I am eating healthy vs. when I am not. I can't think of a better gift to give my kids than a diet that promotes wellness and well-being. Imagine being able to curb the kids's crabbies, just by cutting out the junk food and replacing it with whole grains and fruits! But like most other moms, I have a really hard time getting my kids to eat food that is good for them (having a junk food loving hubby does NOT help!) and I know that forcing them to eat foods they don't like will only create life-long aversions to the foods I'm wanting them to eat. So, when I come across a healthy recipe that my kids will eat, I snatch it up and file it away. I'll share them here too!

Fruit Leather, by Georgia Pellegrini (found here: Fruit Leather)

Some Fruit (the recipe said 2 cups. I used a lbs. of strawberries + 3 apples)
Some water (I just did a tiny bit to keep the fruit from scorching in the bottom of the pan)
Some lemon juice (take it easy on this, I used half a lemon and got some pretty tart fruit leather!)
Some sugar (I prefer to use Agave Nectar as a sweetener, since the fruit leather will get stuck in teeth and sugar tends to go right through tooth enamel)

Put the cut up fruit bits into a saucepan and add the bit of water and lemon juice. Let it steep for a little while until it's mushy, and then pulp it in a blender. Line a cookie sheet with plastic wrap and brush it with a bit of oil. Pour your fruit pulp into it and smooth it all out. Bake it in a low temp oven (170 F) for several hours. It took mine about six hours, but I'm supposing it depends on how thickly you poured your pulp. I cut it up and when it was cooled, placed the squares into a ziploc baggie. Very yummy!

Black Bean Brownies (Found Here: Black Bean Brownies)

A friend recommended these to me just last week, an boy, are these just my thing! They're really delicious, just a tad softer than traditional brownies and I think I may add a bit less oil or omit the oil altogether the next time I make them. Which will probably be tomorrow. I'd make them tonight, but it's Halloween. :p I made a double batch and my kids ate the whole pan in less than 3 hours. Even my Adam, who exclaims vehemently how much he hates beans, demanded a second after inhaling the first. I will not bore you with a rant about how exquisitely perfect beans are as a superfood, but the more I can get into my kids, the better!

1 can black beans (or 1 2/3 cup cooked dry beans), drained and rinsed
3/4 Sugar
3 Eggs
3 tbs Canola Oil (or other oil)
1/4 c. Dutch Processed Cocoa Powder (I used Hershey's)
1/2 tsp. Baking Powder
half pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup soy and dairy free chocolate chips (I just used semisweet)
1.2 cup chopped pecans

Blend the following ingredients very well: black beans, sugar, eggs, oil, cocoa, vanilla, salt, baking powder. Gently fold in chocolate chips and pecan pieces. Pour into a greased 8″ x 8″ pan and bake at 350 degrees F for about 30 minutes. Let cool a bit before cutting.

Don't tell the kids what's in them and they'll never know!

Homemade granola bars (pictured above). This is my recipe, but you can find other variations all over. My kids love these!

2 cups rolled oats
2 cups rice crispies cereal
1 cup smashed up pretzels
1/4 cup sunflower seeds or nuts (FYI, pumpkin seeds make great granola fodder!)
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup agave nectar
1/2 cup peanut butter
3/4 cup chocolate chips

In a mixing bowl, combine oats, rice cereal, pretzels, toasted seeds, honey, and agave nectar, until the dry ingredients are coated well. Spread on a cookie large sheet and bake for 5 minutes at 375F. Give it a toss, and bake for another 5 minutes. Return to the bowl, and add peanut butter. Place back on the cookie tray and flatten out to about a half an inch thick . Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top and press them in. Let sit for a couple of hours until set up. Cut into bars and enjoy. :)

Little Yogi's

         Being a creative mother isn't always about the making of things, it's about being creative in all manner of parenthood. Like getting my kids to eat healthy. And exercise. I think it's really important to teach kids fitness early in life, so that it seems like a perfectly normal activity. Like brushing our teeth and reading. It's just something we do everyday.
Yoga is one of my very favorite things to do. I love how it works and stretches my muscles and the tingly relaxed feeling I have afterwards - not to mention killer flexibility. I've been practicing yoga in my home for several years now, and I find it helps tremendously with my joint discomfort as well promoting calmness and mental clarity.
Doing yoga with my kids just feels like a very natural order of things, but I also find other ways to exercise them. And of course, at their age they don't need too much encouragement to get up and run. Check out Karlie doing the downward dog. Very limber!
If you're not sure how to go about practicing yoga with your child, I highly recommend this dvd by Wai Lana, called "Little Yogi's". Any Wai Lana dvd is good, and she's easy on beginners if you're just starting out.

                                                                Wai Lana's Little Yogis

Sweater Tights

About a year ago, my husband inherited a bunch of "Old Man" type sweaters from his father. They're not his style, but we don't really like throwing things out around here, I figured they could be of some use. I've had my eye on this one for a while now, to turn into leggings for the little miss. This morning, she woke up cold, and it was clear that she needs warmer pj's than her old cotton knit capris. Grandpa's sweater to the rescue!











You need: 1 Grandpa Sweater
                 1 pair of old paints to be recycled *(must have elastic going all the way around)
                 Scissors
                 Sewing machine or needle and thread. Hand stitching would be neater if you have the time, but the girl was cold and I only had a few minutes.

Lay your sweater on a flat surface and place the pants on the bottom edge. I don't have it all the way at the edge in this photo, but you need it there. You're going to eyeball about an inch wide on each side of the pants, measure if you like, mark it with chalk if you want, I just winged it.

I turned it around in the pic, but you'll want to cut straight down the side of the pants, all the way to the shoulders. The shoulder seams of the sweater will be the toes of your tights, and the ribbing at the bottom of the sweater will be the waistband of the tights.
Flip around the sweater and cut out a V, which includes the collar. You want to taper a little, but not too much. You can take off more fabric later, but you can't put it back, so cut cautiously. You may want to measure the diameter of your kids legs too. I didn't and I've made my daughter enough clothes to guess the width of her little chicken legs. :)

Rather than having a seam allowance, I sewed right along the edges of the sweater, leaving only about a quarter inch. I then zigzagged over that quarter inch to clean up the edges and further secure that seam.

I cut the band of elastic off of the pants I picked to recycle (I will turn the rest of the pants into doll clothes), and without bothering to remove the fabric, I sewed it onto the inside of the waistband of the tights using a zigzag stitch on the top and the bottom.

I rounded off the toes and trimmed off the corners. Later today, I will get some fabric paints and paint some dots onto the bottom of the feet to make them nonskid.

She loves her little tights and they will do for wearing to bed or wearing under skirts in the winter.  Daddy just bought her a pair of Hello Kitty boots that are a tad too big, these will go perfectly. They don't only have to be for girls, either. Make them as pj's for your boys and don't call them tights! They can make long underwear too, and if your child is taller than mine (or you want to have them wear these with shoes), just cut off the toes and hem them.

After School Snacks

My husband and I have extremely different views when it comes to snacks for our kids. He was raised on Little Debbie, Hostess Cupcakes and Donettes. They never hurt him, so he doesn't see the harm. Anytime we go shopping together, it never fails. He picks up the box of Swiss Rolls, I huff and roll my eyes and assert the fact that I never buy those. He shrugs and puts them in the cart. Later that day when I see him eating said "trash", I assert that he is not eating real food. The ingredients list on the box reads like a chemistry experiment. There are few recognizable things near the top and then a laundry list of chemicals. On top of the preservatives and ingredients that seem to have very little purpose that I can surmise, are the artificial colors and flavors. They have to insert more chemicals to trick people into thinking that the thing are eating is food. But enough on my rant. They taste good to him and it would be depriving our children to not provide one of the basic staples of American Childhood. Ugh. He buys the junk food, I provide the more wholesome snacks, and after the first day when the snack-cakes and prepackaged cookies are all gone, they switch to mom's standbys. Which, incidentally, cost a fraction of the price and last the whole week.  One of the pulls of prepackaged snacks being availability, portability and personalization, I am big on making snacks that have the same. For these apple pies, you can wrap them individually in waxed paper and freeze them. They microwave to piping hot in about two and a half minutes in my nuker, and the kids can have steaming hot apple pies whenever they want them.



Filling:       6 apples, pealed and cubed (I prefer red)
                1/2 cup flour
                1/2 cup granulated sugar
                1/2 cup brown sugar
                1 tbsp cinnamon

Mix the flour, sugars and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl, toss in the apple cubes and stir to coat.

Pie Crust: 3 1/2 cups of flour
                1 tsp salt
                1 cup of vegetable shortening or lard
                Some water

          I rarely measure, so these are approximate measurements. Mix the flour and the salt, then fork in the lard or cut it in with a pastry cutter or two butter knives. Just break down the chunks of shortening to pea sized bits. Then slowly add the water. Some people use a fork for mixing, I just get in there with my hands and stop adding water when the mixture sticks slightly to my fingers but pulls off easily. Flour the counter and roll out half of your dough. Divide it up into twelve squares and line each muffin cup. Use a fork or knife to pierce the bottom of each pie crust. Fill it up with filling, making sure you round it up nicely, then roll out the second half of pie crust.

Again, cut it into twelve squares, top each pie. Make sure you do not have a "muffin top" hanging over the side of your little pies. Use your fingers to gently push the sides of the pies into each cup. Otherwise, it will be difficult to get them out without breaking off the tops. Take a fork and prick the tops of each pie. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on how brown you want your crust. They're not pretty, but they're not for company either. Just something to throw together on a weekday afternoon.

Decorative Storage Boxes

I first made these boxes about ten years ago when I was in desperate need for storage and only had leftover moving boxes and some tape. Urrrrgly. I realized last week that all of the assorted trinkets I plan to get the girl for Christmas this year are going to wind up mixed up in her toy box or scattered all over the house. While making the boxes, I decided that I can now spend the next few weeks until Christmas, slowly filling them up with things made or inexpensively bought. One box, for instance, will hold a collection of beads that will be both made and glass beads, as well as some beading string and wire. Another will hold doll clothes I am going to make out of my fabric remnants. Another will hold coloring books and crayons and various art supplies. And I'm sure Daddy will want to buy a few things for his princess as well.

              Once filled (and once we put up our tree) they will serve as gift boxes. No need for wrapping paper. No more disaster of a living room with scraps of wrapping paper, tape and bows for Mom to clean before prepping the Christmas ham. I win! I win four times because each child will be getting their own assortment of boxes (can you add free?) under the tree this year, which will give them all desperately needed storage in the new year.

Materials: Assorted boxes, or pieces of Corrugated Cardboard.
                Masking Tape
                Paste
                Cheap Paintbrush
                Different kinds of papers
                Embellishments
                White Craft Paper (only if you want to line them).
                Craft Paint

                Elmer's Glue (for gluing on large things).

For papers, I just found stuff around the house. You can also use torn fabrics, so long as they don't have any stretch to them. Silks and flannels work nicely. Here I used a brown paper grocery bag, a book (desecration, I know, but it's an awful book and already missing several pages), tissue paper, gift wrap, and I wound up using white crafting paper also.

My embellishments were things I found in my yard. Rose petals, Marigolds, even a weedy flower. Craft paint also works well to decorate after the paste dries.

Now I just used things around my house, but those who scrapbook can tell you that the scrapbooking isle of your local craft store has an amazing assortment of beautiful papers, ribbons, buttons and all of the glue-on stickable things you can imagine to make your boxes fit any decor. Also, I just used some old cardboard we had in the garage. If you want, you can do this with your old shoe boxes to save time. Just make sure you use corrugated cardboard on the sides of round boxes.

The first thing I did was make the boxes. It was easy, I just cut out the pieces for the top and the bottom, and strips for the side. It is important, you want the lid a little bigger around than the box. Half a centimeter, roughly. Don't worry if your box looks beat up like mine does, you're gonna cover the ugly up.
Next, make your paste. I prefer paste to glue because it's cheaper and rinses or wipes off easily. I'm going to get it all over my fingers, so I like to keep a sink full of water ready to rinse off in. The recipe for paste is very simple. 1 part flour to 4 parts water, put it in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

A brown paper grocery bag, painted with two colors of craft paint (one white and one purple), then spattered with silver makes a nice effect.

When you tear the paper into pieces, you get a rough brown edge to them. I used this for the heart shaped box and glued some marigold petals to the top of the lid.

  Pages of a book go nicely with the rose petals, but I had a hard time getting the petals to stick with the paste. Probably would have been easier if I had waited for the box to dry, then glued them on with Elmers glue. This book had some nice "Old Hollywood" looking pictures in it that would have been very glamorous. I have saved them for later, the would be perfect for a dress up box. I also thought that printing off some old family photos in a sepia tone would look nice with this, for a family heirloom box.

The tissue paper box was a lot of fun. After tearing the pieces up I smeared paste all over the top and pressed it into the pile. Next, I glued each little piece on one at a time, making sure to bunch them and make them stick up. It made me think of a pinata, and I think I have an idea for Adam's next birthday party!

You can find decorations just about anywhere, I got these little pink flowers from the back yard and glued them on with Elmers.

A simple stamp cut from a potato and some craft paint also can also dress up your box.

Although I'm skipping this part, lining the boxes is very easy with white craft paper and a little bit of Elmers glue. I don't recommend paste for that, too messy!

Once the boxes dry, they are very sturdy and will hold of for several years (I attest!) to your kids beating them, kicking them, stepping on them and all sorts of abuse.