When The Going Gets Tough

Life is Good: God's Got This

Perfect Gifts for Teachers

Life is Good: it's the weekend!

Wow. What a week. It felt like it had a couple of extra days in there! If I'm going to get extra days, I would like them to be on the weekend, please! We had special celebrations for our read-athon that wrapped up (I won't be sad to have one less thing to do and stop logging in to that website.), teacher conferences, a houseguest, and our third grader's teacher's birthday.

As the room mother for both our 5- and 8-year old's class, I feel like I am constantly asking parents for donations and that feels icky. I want to help the school out, but I also hate making families feel pressured. We appreciate the teachers so much and want to give them gifts that are useful, memorable, show our appreciate, and are things that they like. 

For Christmas, we took donations from class families and gave the teachers VISA gift cards. I put them inside of a little bag and tied it with a pretty ribbon and a special Christmas ornament. A note thanking them for the important work they do finished it up. I feel like this works well. Instead of 20 families giving a small gift to the teachers, they got one pretty big gift that they can then choose how to spend. 

For our Little Kid's teacher's birthday, I suggested that we have each child draw a picture of the teacher and sign it and we could bind them all together into a book. One of the other room mothers offered to take on the project. She ended up taking photos of each piece of art and loaded it into Walgreens.com to make an inexpensive book from there. I've also seen great books like this from shutterfly.com and mixbook.com.

Here's the drawing that our Little Kid did of his teacher. I think it looks a lot like her! (And a little bit like a Cubist painting?)

For our Big Kid's teacher, the other room mother asked a local florist, Excelsior Florist, to make a little bouquet of flowers for the teacher's desk. They did an amazing job with lots of springy bright colors and even some butterflies. It looked great. We had each student sign a card and we also asked each child to give a descriptive word about the teacher which I then used to create a word cloud, also known as a wordle. I work on a Macbook Pro, so I found it a bit difficult to use some of the word cloud sites, though there are lots of them. I did a search on google to find a site that worked well with Macs. Even then, I had problems with a couple of sites not saving my files, etc. I ended up going with tagxedo. It has lots of shape options and color choices. You can also choose to have a word used once or repeated. I chose to repeat so that the entire shape was filled up. I tried it out a few times before I got the final one. 

I used a color scheme called "Quiet Morning". I really liked the shades of blue. I also thought it was hysterical to use a color group with this name knowing that it was going in a room of (LOUD) third graders!

Here's the (almost) final:

I picked a more pronounced-looking heart and for the final, added the words, "From your third graders 2017" and also "Happy birthday". His teacher seemed to like the gesture and the kids were so excited about it!

I did have one big snafu with this site. It prints out with a border and a copyright. I wanted to print this out at 50% so that the frame (this one from Michael's) was not gigantic and more of just a little memento. I ended up having to print it out, use some correction fluid (that still make that stuff!?!), and then make a copy of that. It wasn't perfect, which really bothered me since it was a gift, but in the end, it worked. And it was something I could do for under $25 and not ask the class families for a donation. 

And now the week is done, it's Saturday. Time for pancakes and board games and batting practice even though it's a bit cold still outside. Time for puppet shows and little boys running the house giggling. Life is good. 

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Valentine's Day treats for kids with allergies

Life is Good: chocolate is love

Thanks to my mom, one of my love languages is food. She learned it from her mom and so on. Every special occasion, since I an remember, has been marked by a cake that was decorated to look like a hamburger or a pizza or even the big bad wolf & the three pigs (and don't forget their houses of straw, sticks, and bricks). If it isn't a cake, it's cookies in the shape of ice cream cones or baseball bats & hats, or Ninja Turtles. Or it's homemade caramels or toffee or decadent chocolate fudge. Oh, it is a wonder we don't all weigh 500, 000 pounds!

So it isn't surprising that food is one of my love languages. And though I find Valentine's Day to be a bit silly, (Shouldn't we show our love for one another EVERY day?) I do like making it a wee bit special for our kiddos. Today, I marked chocolate-covered strawberries off of the list (for surprises in their lunch bags tomorrow) and a new, healthier version of a crunch bar heart.

In the past when I've made homemade crunch bars, I melt Enjoy Life chocolate chips and mix them with Rice Krispies cereal in some kind of shaped mold. Last week, I saw a great idea on Instagram from Well Plated. She puffed quinoa and used that as the "crunch". So this morning, I melted my Enjoy Life chocolate chips (from Target) and added puffed red quinoa. I haven't tried it out, but the puffed quinoa itself was AMAZINGGGGGG! Yummy! I am a sucker for quinoa in all forms!

I didn't measure the quinoa or the chocolate. If you want measurements, post a comment here or on Facebook. I poured the quinoa in my cast iron pan and put my heat on low so as not to scorch the quinoa. I knew it was done when I heard quiet "pops" like a super quieter version of popcorn popping. I tried this two ways...A layer of chocolate, a layer of quinoa, and a layer of chocolate over it and then secondly, mixing the quinoa in the melted chocolate and pouring it into the mold. I used cookie cutters and a sandwich cutter as my "molds". I will report back if either worked better.

Happy almost Valentine's Day!

Kombucha

Life is Good: even though I'm thirsty!

I'm all out of my favorite lemonade Kombucha. And so is the grocery store! What ever will I dooooooooo? 

But seriously, I am so obsessed and addicted to this tasty goodness! (And I'm pretty sure my gut is healthier because of it.)

#Boymom

Life is Good: I feel the love

You know it's going to be a good day when your five year old leaves you a love letter before he goes to school.

Eggless Lemon Ricotta Pancakes Egg Free Recipe

Life is Good: when you make time for pancakes!

Our kids would eat pancakes every morning if they could. I've taken to prepping the dry ingredients for my fluffy, eggless pancakes recipe and keeping it in the pantry to make pancake making quicker and easier and more spontaneous. I separate the dry mix into fourths and then I can mix up a quarter of the wet ingredients each time I make their breakfast. 

Every Saturday morning is ruled by The Big Kid's basketball practice. Today, we had a scheduled that allowed time for pancakes. And since our kiddos love anything lemon, I decided to try a new recipe--Lemon Ricotta.

I searched for a vegan recipe instead of substituting the eggs in a regular lemon ricotta recipe. I typically use baking powder & unsweetened applesauce to substitute, but I was afraid it might affect the tartness of the lemons.

I found this recipe through a google search. As it turns out, this blogger is in Minnesota, too! Fun! I adjusted her recipe slightly to fit our family's needs. It worked really well! Here is my version, which makes over three dozen half-dollar pancakes:

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

3 t. baking powder

1 1/2 t. baking soda

3 cups milk (I used whole, organic)

1 1/2 cups ricotta cheese

zest of two lemons

2 tablespoons lemon juice

Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, stir together all dry ingredients and make "a well" in the center. 

2. Pour in the milk.

3. Add ricotta one large spoonful at a time , mixing gently and being careful not to over mix (which will make the batter tough when cooked). 

4. Spray your pan with Pam and make sure that your griddle or pan are good and warm (but not scorching hot) before you drop the batter onto the pan.

5. Use a tablespoon or small ice cream scoop to measure out the pancakes onto the pan. 

6. When bubbles appear on the uncooked (top) of each pancake, it's time to flip it over to the other side.

I served our lemon ricotta pancakes with a dusting of powdered sugar and whipped cream. Because...Saturdays!

Friday Funday

Life is Good: so laugh a little!

Because...Friday!

He's obsessed with this wig. He calls it a hat. And pronounces "hat" like he's British. ??? He even fell asleep wearing this the other day. I tried so hard to snap a good pic of it, but I woke him up in the process! He's just under 26 months old and excelling at being a two-year old! I don't know if it is his nature or if it is that he is the third child, but he truly believes there is nothing he cannot do. And he will do it all...wearing this "hat"!