Unforgettable Childhood

So it is the last week of school for my girls. We are headed out of town on vacation Thursday evening. Everyone has appointments for haircuts. My oldest daughter has basketball camp after school and a piano recital on Wednesday.

And I decided that this would be a great week to host my Mommy and Me tea with Gigi.

Doesn’t this look like loads of fun. Today we are busy baking and planning and decorating for a morning of make believe.

My living room is filled with suitcases. . .

But I am enjoying the chaos. We are making memories in the midst of it all. No matter what we try to do to keep our excitement at bay, our thoughts keep drifting to this.

I know that some call me crazy, but I think it is all part of being a mom. It may be a crazy week but we are making memories that we will never forget.

Sorry I haven’t posted much lately, but I am busy making a drawbridge for our make believe castle.

I wanted to take some time to share some links with you today. I have found so many fun things to do with my girls this Easter season. Here are a few of our favorites.

Resurrection Buns

Sarah at Real Life Blog made these on her MomTV show a few weeks ago. We had to try them at home. I let the girls do all of the work so some of our rolls burst open, but we still learned the lesson through the ones that stayed shut.

Earlier this week I found these Smores in a Jar over at Roots & Wings Co. We didn’t put ours in a jar, but we did make them.

The Peeps faces disappear, but they are still cute and so yummy!

Roots & Wings Co. has a lot of other ideas, too. I love their site.

I am off to boil our eggs so we can dye them today before we head to Grandma’s House. I am sitting here looking out the window and it is snowing. Yes, snowing! Hopefully it will stop soon and we can get to Grandma’s House.

Our newest Easter treat creation was Bird’s Nests. These were another super easy treat. Not quite as much fun to make for the girls because the hot stove was involved so they couldn’t help as much as they would have liked.

The only ingredients you need are 2 cups of marshmallows, 1/4 cup of butter, 4 cups of Chow Mein Noodles and whatever you would like to fill your nests with.

First you melt the marshmallows and butter.

Then you mix in the Chow Mein Noodles until they are fully covered.

Butter your fingers and press the noodles into 12 muffin cups.

Place them in the fridge for 10 minutes to set.

Add goodies to your nest. I have seen these with Jelly Beans. We like to use Robin’s Eggs (Malted Milk Balls). This time we also made a few birds out of Twinkies, Lemon Slices and a little Decorator’s Gel and White Frosting.

Here is our finished product.

Stay tuned next week for more Easter fun.

I am linking to the Girl Creative’s Just Something I Whipped Up!

We are starting to gear up for Easter at our house. Today we tried a new recipe that has been in my recipe box for years, Peanut Butter Eggs. They really were easy to make and they were very yummy. Ours are already gone. . .

Here are the ingredients.

6 T butter softened

1/4 cup creamy peanut butter

1/4 cup marshmallow creme

1 3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar

3/4 pound milk chocolate candy coating, chopped

2 tsp shortening

Colored Sprinkles

My Little Helper

In a small mixing bowl, cream the butter, peanut butter and marshmallow creme until smooth. Gradually beat in sugar. Drop by the tablespoon onto waxed paper lined baking sheet (we made ours a little bigger than that). Form into egg shapes and freeze 10 minutes.

My recipe says to melt candy coating and shortening until smooth in the microwave. I don’t ever use my microwave to melt chocolate, I do it the old fashioned way.

Dip eggs into candy coating; allow excess to drip off. Return to baking sheet, immediately decorate with candy decorations. Let stand until set. (See the word immediately, they really mean that. I started dipping like crazy and forgot to sprinkle half of them. Then they were already set and didn’t get sprinkles)

I am glad I took pictures right away because they were gone by bedtime.

Stay tuned for more Easter fun at Unforgettable Childhood.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

This morning the girls woke up to this note. . .

They went on a hunt for Leprechaun’s Gold (yes. . .I spelled Leprechaun wrong in the note, but they didn’t notice)

Treasure Found.

Last night we made Rainbow Cupcakes for the girls to share at school today. I first saw these cupcakes at The Idea Room. Thanks for the great idea Amy. She got the recipe here.

You mix up the batter and split it into different bowls. You just need to decide how many colors to use. We decided to do four.

Here is the finished product. Yum!

Do you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with your kids?

Thursday we continued to celebrate Read Across America and Dr. Seuss’ Birthday with a Poetry Party.

We started by reading a few classic nursery rhymes. Then I read the girls Eugene Field’s Wynken Blynken and Nod Poem from my American Poems book. This book belonged to my Great Grandmother. The publish date is 1905. The girls thought that was really cool.

Of course we had to move on to two of my favorites, Jack Prelutsky and Shel Silverstein. After we had read a variety of poems we were ready to create our own. Each of the girls had a pencil in hand and a new notebook.

We started with Shape Poems. It took the girls a little thinking before they decided what shapes they were going to use. Taylor decided to write about Roller Coasters. She wrote her poetry in the shape of a roller coaster. Here is her poem:

Roller Coasters, Roller Coasters! Go Up, go down, around, upside down. Roller Coasters, Roller Coasters! Something you cannot beat! Make sure you don’t go on them right after you eat!

We moved on the Name Poems. This is always fun. Even Nadia joined in the fun.
Nice

Angel

Diva

Ice Cream Eater

Adorable

The girls finished their fun with Rhyming Poems. It was interesting to see what words that they came up with in their rhymes. For some reason Peru ended up in almost all of their poems.

Our snack today was Dr. Seuss Hats.

We started out melting White Chocolate Chips in a double broiler.

The only other ingredients were Oreos, Big Marshmallows and Frosting. Cover each oreo with melted white chocolate and place a marshmallow on top.

Place in freezer for a few minutes to set the chocolate. Pipe on red frosting lines for the hat.

Another day of Dr. Seuss fun is done. Today we finish off our week with Illustration Stations.

Our Seuss-filled week continued on Wednesday with the topic of writing. My girls love to write. I have never seen kids get so excited about empty notebooks and new pencils.

We started our activities with letter writing. We talked about how people email and text and they don’t send handwritten letters very much anymore. I gave each of them a notebook and envelopes to encourage them to write letters. I was thinking they would write to a grandparent or cousin. When I asked my daughter and her friend Calico who they were writing to, they said each other. . .

I wondered how Nadia would do today since the only thing she really knows how to write is her name. She still had fun. She drew a picture to put in her envelope.

Our second activity was decorating Composition books. I gave them each a new comp book and they went crazy with my scrapbook paper.

I didn’t think I would ever get the spray adhesive off of my fingers, but they really turned out cute. This would be a great gift for some of their friends, their very own Personalized Journals.

Today is our Poetry Party. We will be looking at different types of poetry and creating our own. This has been a great week for all of us. The best part. . .the tv hasn’t been on. Next week we talked about working on a play.