Amazon has introduced 5 all new members of their family! There are some pretty exciting options. I’m really loving the Kindle Fire HD Kids Edition! That’s pretty exciting! Click on them below to find out more info!
Thank a Police Officer Day – 9/20/14
Thank a Police Officer Day is coming up on 9/20/2014. If you’re looking for a fun and easy project, check out our instructions for Police Officer Appreciation Week Goodie Bags. They were a huge hit with my husband’s department!
Avocado Eggrolls with Sweet and Tangy Dipping Sauce
Ever since I first tried an avocado egg roll, I’ve been hooked. They can be really pricey at the restaurants so we try to only order them on special occasions. The other day while we were in Aldi, they had some super ripe avocados for only $.39! We decided to see if we could make our own avocado eggrolls. I have a super husband that loves experimenting so he gave it a whirl. He even created a sweet and tangy dipping sauce for the egg rolls! For starters, you’ll want to cut open your avocados and slice and scoop out the goodness. If you haven’t worked with avocados before, there is a big seed in the middle. You’ll want to score around the outside of the avocado and then open it. Scoop out the seed and slice the avocado, not slicing through the skin. Then scoop out the avocado with a spoon.
You will want to do this to 4 of the avocados and then lightly salt. The 5th, you will scoop out and mash into a bowl. With the mashed avocado, you will add in some salt, lime juice, minced garlic, and cilantro. Stir it all up to make the base for your avocado egg roll. To make the egg rolls, you will lay one egg roll wrapper flat on a plate and add a spoon of the mashed avocado mixture. Add a couple slices of avocado on top. Next take your finger and dip it in a bowl of water. Run your finger along the outside edges of the egg roll. This helps the egg roll stick together. Then fold the sides in and roll up. Gently place the wrapped egg roll in hot oil to fry. Let cook 2-3 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oil and place on paper towels to cool. Repeat until egg rolls are filled and fried. Next up, mix up your dipping sauce. My husband had envisioned a sweet and tangy sauce. I thought he was crazy at first with the ingredients he was mixing together, but it worked beautifully! It’s a mixture of ketchup, cumin, orange marmalade, vinegar and a touch of salt. Don’t knock it until you try it!
- 1 package egg roll wrappers
- 5 avocados
- sea salt
- 1/2 lime
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1/2 tablespoon cilantro
- 1/3 cup ketchup
- 1/3 cup orange marmalade
- 1 tablespoon vinegar
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Remove the seed from the avocados and slice 4. Lightly salt.
- Mash the 5th avocado in a bowl and add the juice from 1/2 lime, garlic, cilantro, and salt to taste. Stir to combine.
- On a egg roll wrapper, spread 1 spoonful of the mashed avocado mixture and add a couple slices of avocado on top.
- Dip your finger in water and run it along the outside edge of the egg roll wrapper.
- Fold in edges and roll up.
- Place egg roll in hot oil and cook for 2-3 minutes or until golden brown.
- Remove from oil and place on paper towels to drain.
- Continue until out of avocado mixture.
- For sauce, mix remaining 5 ingredients until well combined. Pour into a bowl for dipping.
Cut the egg rolls in half and enjoy! Even my kids loved these!
SIMPLE Service Project – Collect Snack Foods to Donate
When Champions for Kids contacted me recently and their newest Simple Service project, I was really excited to help out. Champions for Kids makes it simple to give children in local communities the resources they need to thrive. Helping others does not have to come in large doses. Champions for Kids seeks to ignite generational change by fostering a ‘habit of giving’ among youth and parents in America.
Did you know that 16 million American children live in poverty? Many of these kids don’t have reliable access to the nutritious snacks that help them thrive and succeed both academically and socially. Throughout the month of August, Champions for Kids is partnering with Dole to encourage community projects across the country benefiting children in need. Called SIMPLE Service Projects, the idea is to host or organize an event to collect snack foods that you would then donate to a local organization that serves children in need, such as a food pantry, after-school program or daycare center.
One local organization that is dear to us is called Food 2 Kids Athens with the Northeast Georgia Food Bank. Food 2 Kids provides food for local children to take home Friday after school to last them through the weekend until they are back at school for breakfast Monday morning. Each month through the year, they focus on collecting one specific food item so they can build up their supply for the children through the year. August and September are peanut butter, October is ravioli (pop top cans), November is juice boxes, and December is granola bars. Everything has to be easily opened by a small child.
It’s easy to organize your own food drive! Simply gather your friends and family together and ask that everyone brings a few snacks for the food bank. You can host a family fun day! When everyone pitches in, you can gather a bunch! Figure out what organizations near you need help and what items they need. Then donate the items you have gathered. Lastly, share your project at championsforkids.org/share
We recently hosted an event and it was easy getting our guests to bring snacks to gather for the food bank! They all thought it was a great idea and it was simple to do! Now we just need to drop it off at the food bank next week!
If you’re looking for ideas of snacks to donate, Dole offers a number of terrific, portable and nutritious snacks perfect for game day, including Dole Fruit Bowls and Dole Fruit Squish’ems.
- Dole Fruit Squish’ems squeezable fruit pouches are a delicious and nutritious snack that is just a fun squeeze away. Fruit Squish’ems gives parents an easy way to get more fruit/healthy snacks into their kids’ diets. Each pouch contains 1 Full Serving of All Natural Fruit that has 60 calories and contains 20% daily value of vitamin C. Dole Fruit Squish’ems is made with Fresh Apples only from the USA and have no High Fructose Corn Syrup or any artificial flavors.
- Dole Fruit Bowls come in many varieties, including fruit in 100% juice, fruit packed in gel, or fruit with no sugar added. Dole offers lots of choices, such as pineapple, tropical fruit, pears, peaches, apples and more, so there is something for every taste.
Another way to participate is to visit your participating Walmart store between August 4 – August 18 and look for the purple product display and donation bin. Choose back-to-school snacks such as Dole Fruit Squish’ems and Fruit Bowls and donate them right inside the store to help children in your local community!
I participated in this program on behalf of Champions for Kids and The Motherhood. All opinions are my own.
How to be Intentional Saving for Your Children’s Future
We have 4 kids. It’s hard to save for their future and keep up with the present. We have come up with an idea that works great for our family and I thought it would be perfect to share with the rest of you. This is what we do with our children to be intentional on helping them save for the future.
First up, you need to create a bank account for your child. Each one of our children have a savings account that we opened shortly after their birth. Whenever anyone gives you a cash gift for baby, put it in the bank account. I suggest finding a credit union to create the account. Wherever you decide, be sure and ask tons of questions and make sure there are no fees associated with the account and that they understand it is for a minor.
Next, start planning. With our kids, we found it difficult to make sure we were being intentional about putting money in their accounts. What we have decided is to put a deposit in on their birthday and give according to their age times 10. For example, my middle daughter just turned 5. We put $50 in her account on her birthday. My oldest is turning 11 next week. We will put $110 in her account then. By the time they are 18, they will have $1,710 in their account just from their birthday gifts from mom and dad. That doesn’t count all the money gifts from relatives or what they want to deposit from their future earnings or their jobs done. It’s easier to teach them to save when they have been saving their entire life.
Speaking of birthdays, suggest to family or really good friends that you would like your child to receive money toward their savings instead of gifts. Use your discretion on this one as some family members and friends may be offended by this thought. We’ve explained to our family that our kids get gifts from their friends and we’d rather them save for their future and they understand that. There is certainly no shortage of toys around here or around any child that I’ve seen.
Make going to the bank a fun adventure so that the kids are excited to see the teller take their money and give them a receipt. Show your children how much they have saved and talk about how they are building savings for the future! Talk about their dream house, car, or college. Perhaps even saving for their future family. We tell our kids how we wished we had saved up more and how great it is that they already have more savings than we did when we got married. Plus at some banks, they get a lollipop, so that makes the trip worth it 🙂
Do you have any more tips to add? How does your family save for your children’s future?
How to Have a Fun Disney’s Frozen Birthday Party on a Budget
We love birthday parties. I always like to make sure my kids have a great special day without completely breaking our budget! Last weekend my middle daughter turned 5 and she requested a Frozen birthday party
For starters, I shopped high and low looking for Frozen party supplies. There are some on Amazon, but I found them the cheapest at my local Dollar General store and even balloons at Dollar Tree. Score! I decorated the table using a tablecloth I bought after Christmas this past year on clearance. Then I started planning out party food.
We set our party time as 2-4pm so it wouldnt be meal time and we could save on that aspect of not having to feed a whole meal to her friends. We went with a great layout of snacks.
Foods included:
- Ice Crystals (Cotton Candy Rock Candy Crystals)
- Melted Olaf (Greek Yogurt with candy corn, mini chocolate chips, and melted chocolate in shapes of twigs)
- Snowballs (powdered doughnut holes) – forgot to grab a photo of these!
- Cheesy Snowballs (cheeseballs)
- Olaf Cheese Sticks
- Sven’s Carrots (baby carrots)
- Iced Pretzels (yogurt covered pretzels)
- Snowman Building Station – includes big and small marshmallows, pretzel sticks for arms, chocolate chips for eyes or buttons, and candy corn nose.
Games:
For games, we kept it simple.
- Pin the Nose on Olaf – I simply attempted to draw Olaf on poster board and drew a carrot for each kid to tape on Olaf. The kids loved this game!
- Race to Build a Snowman – I separated the kids into teams and they wrapped up a member of their team in toilet paper to look like a snowman and then taped a nose on. Fastest team wins!
- Freeze Dance – Play Disney’s Frozen Soundtrack and then stop it periodically for the kids to “FREEZE” in place.
- Character Visit: Then we had some special guests stop by our party. Local readers, let me know if you need their contact info. They totally kept in character and did a fantastic job with the kids! Plus they were very affordable! This totally made the party incredible!
For the cake, we used a Castle Wilton Cake Pan and my husband decorated it to look like Elsa’s Ice Castle.
It was a wonderful party and we stayed under budget! I can’t find the receipts, but it was under $50 for all the food and cake and about $20 in decorations. After paying for our special guests, we came in under $110 for a party with 12 of my daughter’s friends. We didn’t give out goody bags, but instead let every child pick a Frozen coloring page that I printed to take home with them. The kids were happy with that.
20 Toddler Meal & Snack Ideas
Is your toddler a picky eater and you’re tired of feeding them the same thing over and over again? Consider checking out these 20 toddler meal and snack ideas.
Breakfast
- Smoothies – These are the perfect breakfast food or snack ideas for any toddler. You can also make it for yourself, which is a double win.
- Fruit Filled Pancakes –If your toddler is tired of regular pancakes, try filling the pancakes with something like fruit. You can put blueberries, strawberries, or any other fruit you like. It might take some time to find out which fruit your toddler prefers though.
- Muffins- Muffins are fairly simple to make and you can make a variety of them for your toddler. Consider freezing some so you can just pull it our when you’re ready.
- Scrambled Eggs- Making eggs for your toddler is so easy, but when you scramble them you’re making it easier for them to eat. You can add cheese or veggies to the eggs, to make them even tastier.
- Fruit Filled Jello- Why not? If you can’t find anything else for your toddler to eat for breakfast, try fruit filled Jello.
Lunch
- Butter Pasta – Does your child have a hard time eating things like sauce? Try making simple buttered pasta for them.
- Homemade Mac & Cheese + Turkey Dogs – You can make your toddler’s favorite meal a little healthier. Try making homemade mac and cheese plus using turkey dogs.
- Diced Chicken – It’s so easy to make hotdogs, but consider making diced chicken for your little one. You can stick a chicken in the crock pot and then cut up little pieces. Serve with boiled carrots and fresh fruit.
- Peanut Butter & Jelly Crackers – If your want to give your child a really easy lunch idea, then peanut butter & jelly crackers is awesome. This is one lunch idea that they will get a little messy with, but it’s worth it.
- Mini Burritos – Adults love burritos, so why wouldn’t a toddler? You can fill them with cheese and meat and zap them in the microwave or bake them in the oven.
Dinner
Chicken Salad – Anything you can put on cracker or a slice of whole wheat bread is an awesome idea. Just make sure your chicken salad is really chopped up.
Grilled Ham & Cheese – Take some leftover ham and your toddler’s favorite cheese and make grilled ham and cheese. It’s so good and your toddler will love it. If they don’t like ham, then you can make it with turkey or whatever other meat your child likes. If they don’t like meat at all, you can leave it plain.
Spaghetti with Hotdogs – You may have seen this idea on Pinterest and it’s pure genius. Take your spaghetti noodles (uncooked) and put cut up hotdogs on the end. The spaghetti cooks with the hotdogs and everything expands and cooks together. It ends up looking really cool!
Homemade Chicken Tenders – Instead of making the chicken tenders really big, you’ll want to make them almost bite sizes. You can give your toddler a side of their favorite dipping sauce.
Chopped Salad – Toddlers can eat salad too! In fact, the more you introduce this sort of stuff to your toddler the more likely they are to like it later in life. Let them choose what veggies they put on their salad. You might have to do a little “chopping” to help the salad get into bite sized pieces.
Snack Ideas
- Yogurt Parfait (Add plain/vanilla yogurt and you get to add fruit to it as well).
- Granola bar—Make sure it’s soft enough, you can even make these yourself.
- Cut up Fruit- Slice up bananas, apples, fruits, or pears, and let your toddler dig in.
- Cheese- This is like the ultimate snack because it’s filling and fun to eat. You can even put it on little toothpicks to make it even more fun.
- Cheddar Cheese & Crackers—This one is always a hit with the kiddos.
- Apple Slices and Yogurt—Yes, this is as yummy as it sounds.
- Dried Cereal- Whatever kind of dried cereal you have in the house is perfect for a toddler snack.
All of these meal ideas are perfect for the toddler of your household. You’ll never have to worry about what to feed them again because you have this list on hand. What meal ideas would you add?
Our Tubing Adventure in Helen, Georgia
Today was the day we decided to go tubing. Actually, we were supposed to go this past Saturday, but, well, life happened. Here we are about 6 hours post-tubing and I still feel like I’m floating down the river and bumping along rocks.
This was quite the adventure and really went much more smoothly than I had anticipated. We got there just before 11 and headed right out. We decided to take Cool River since that is where we always tubed growing up.
The hardest part was maneuvering through some areas that were really narrow with 2 tubes connected together. I especially didn’t want to dump my 3 year old out in the water, although both little girls were wearing their Puddle Jumpers and the big kids had on life vests. The water level was perfect and we never had to get out and walk.
I am a little sad I wasn’t able to take pictures during this adventure, but my husband brought his cell phone in a ziplock bag and took some. His is a rinky dink old phone, whereas I have an iPhone, so I didn’t want that to be lost forever in the Chattahoochee. It’s also worth noting that they take photos of you on your tubing adventure at Cool River. I really loved the photos they took, but my husband said to pass on purchasing them. We will still have those memories.
The only negative we had was when we got back to our cars. Cool River has a stand with ice cream. Since we were having such a fun day, I decided to let the kids indulge in a sweet treat. I had a couple questions about ingredients (kid with an allergy) and was met with a really rude employee. She refused to be helpful and acted like I was crazy for even asking her a simple question about the product. I asked if she could look on the packaging and tell me what ingredients were in it and she flat out refused. She never even stepped away from the counter or even bothered to check. Just told me no. As I told the kids we would just go to Wendy’s and get frostys instead, her and another employee were mocking me and making a big joke out of it. I promise you I was not being rude, I was simply inquiring about an ingredient list for the ice cream, which they should have either had or been able to get. Or heck, they could have even offered to ask a manager or find someone else to help me. We gave Wendy’s our business instead since it wasn’t worth dealing with them.
Other than that, every encounter was great!
There is a couple things that I learned on this trip.
*When taking a bunch of small children, definitely take an extra adult! We took my husband’s brother with us and he helped out a ton! I was tethered to our 3 year old and my husband was tethered to the almost 5 year old and we had our other 2 older kids just floating along. They would periodically get stuck and he was able to help them and let us focus on our littles.
*Don’t underestimate the power of a good stick! This tubing company had sticks you could rent or purchase to help you along the way. Next time, we will bring a stick from home. They would have been of great use navigating our journey.
*Be helpful! There was an older couple that kept getting stuck. I found out by talking to them that tubing down the Chattahoochee was on their bucket list but it ended up being harder than they anticipated. Several times we were able to help free them from rocks. In turn, several other people helped us as well. You never know when a giant rock will stop your tube!
*Don’t wait so stinkin’ long before going tubing again! Seriously, my kids had never been and I hadn’t been in like 15 years! The kids had a blast and we did too!
Where is your favorite place to go tubing?
What we have been up to….
I know postings have been random this week. We had a very busy week of VBS at our church. I was teaching the 3 year olds, so I came home exhausted most days. We had a great group of kids and had a ton of fun with them. One of the days we even had a “confetti fight”. That was hilarious! We made a huge mess!! All in all, it was so worth the tiredness by being able to teach sweet little kids about Jesus.
Then yesterday, I got the phone call I had been expecting that my sister in law was in labor. We hurried to get my nephews and niece from her and found out that this labor was going much slower than her previous ones. Finally my new nephew was born at 1:16 this morning! It was a long night, but so worth it to see the birth of my precious new nephew. Isn’t he so sweet?
So while my brother and his wife are at the hospital snuggling their new baby, we have had our hands full with 2 extra kids around here. My other nephew went with his papa for the weekend. We went to Sam’s for lunch and it was a little like a three ring circus navigating a buggy and 6 kids plus Grandma through the store. We got so many looks and had people stop and watch us. Several would start counting kids. 1-2-3-4-5-6. Yep, 6 kids. My brother’s kids blend in perfectly with mine and fit right between my kids ages, so it looked like we had been VERY busy 🙂
We are enjoying this sweet time with my nephew and niece and of course enjoying visiting the new baby. Hope you all are having a great weekend!
How to Save Money on your Summer Food Budget
Summer can wreak havoc on your food budget. The kids are home full time, there are BBQs and events and of course, vacations and food to eat on the road. With a little bit of extra work, you can save your food budget this summer with these easy tips!
How to Save Money on your Summer Food Budget
Barter with others. If you have a specific skill such as photography, offer your skills for trade for someone’s garden harvest. You would be amazed how many people are willing to barter, especially in this economy.
Grow some of your own food. If you live in an apartment or somewhere else that doesn’t really allow for gardening, check to see if your area has a community garden. A community garden allows you to buy a plot or volunteer for one and grow your own food on it. You plant it, care for it and harvest it just like if it was on your own property. Even if you have room for a garden, this can be a great way to expand your growing area.
Take advantage of great coupons and sales in the summer. The summer seems to be a great time when lots of coupons are released for food products. You can usually save big on meat, condiments and canned goods and when you do, make sure you stock up for the summer and into the autumn season.
Look for free lunches for community children. If you are on a really tight budget, you may be able to get your children free lunches at area schools through the Summer Lunch Program which is run by the USDA and local governments. Usually, the lunches are free for any school aged children and often held for a couple hours a day at several locations.
Eat a lot of cold lunches. Things like sandwich meat and bread are fairly low cost and you can do a lot with them from cold sandwiches to hot melts and even rollups and Panini’s.
Make use of leftovers. Dinners from previous nights can provide excellent leftovers for lunches and even breakfasts the next day. For instance, if you have steak one night and have leftovers, make an omelet the next day out of it.
Check out local farms in your area. Often times, before harvest, farmers allow the general public to pre-order a certain amount of pounds of their produce. If this expense is too much for you alone either in volume or in price, go in on it with a friend or two and plan to split it equally among everyone.
Ask around. You might be able to get free food this way. It may seem strange, but if you post an ad on Craigslist or join your local chapter of Freecycle and post a “looking for” ad, you can often get free food. This works best in the summer when people have harvests and may have more yield than they can reasonably use and are looking for people to give it away to.
Prepare. If you are going on a trip, avoid a huge food budget by bringing along things like snacks, cold sandwiches, and drinks in a cooler. This will keep you from having to spend as much along the way and avoid putting your budget in the hole.
Check into Co-ops. Our family participates with the Bountiful Baskets co-op. It’s $15 for a huge box of fruits and veggies! Totally worth it!
Do you have any other tips to add? Leave a comment and let us know!
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