Happy St. Patrick's Day

I love St. Patrick's Day in all its drunken revelry as much as I love the hoards of inebriated Santas roaming the streets during the annual delightful day drinking event, SantaCon.

I know now based on the Facebook updates of my peers, my opinion is not the one that is widely held.

Apparently most if not all of my middle aged friends want to avoid the trains, the streets and everywhere else that the youth of America might be puking while celebrating. I get it. I hear you. But still. There's something to me completely endearing about young people who might otherwise have nothing in common finding just that in these celebrations of questionable merit.

And for that reason, I'll always love St. Patrick's Day and SantaCon. Even if no one else does.

As for me, I was home making Leprechaun pudding for my children, because that's how I roll these days. As may or may not come as a surprise, it did not turn out as planned.

You can find out all about how (not) to make Leprechaun pudding at my home-away-from-home, CraftFail.

How to make your kid a special Hanukkah school lunch

I admit that I am one of *those* moms always making completely ridiculous over-done lunches for my kids to bring to school.

And what better occasion for a super special lunch than Hanukkah? I especially like to make my kids a lunch for the days they are at school on Hanukkah as I feel this time of year can be hard on kids who aren't celebrating Christmas. So don't worry kids, this Hanukkah lunch is totally as good as, possibly even better, than this whole Santa thing your friends keep tormenting mentioning to you!

So if you want to make an amazing school lunch for your kids on Hanukkah this year (which starts Tuesday night, December 16 and ends Wednesday, December 24), here are some ideas!

The Hanukkah lunch in a PlanetBox lunchbox:

I have a dreidel cookie cutter, which I used to cut out a dreidel shape from the sandwich and a piece of cheese, which I put on top of the dreidel bread from the sandwich.  I also added a fun Hanukkah coloring book, some gelt, and a little bag of apple crisps.

I also made a similar lunch in a traditional lunchbox, where every item was wrapped like a present, even the juice pouch. I even added a Hanukkah gift tag.

Really anything will work from adding a few decorative dreidels to throwing in a few pieces of gelt. If you have some blue and silver ribbon, add that too and your Hanukkah lunch is ready to go!

Happy Hanukkah!

My Mom's Recipe for the World's Best Passover Macaroons

For Passover, my family always has macaroons. This is the traditional dessert for many celebrating the holiday,as these tasty cookies do not require flour, which is forbidden over the eight day festival.


This year, my mom brought her recipe as well as the four required ingredients, to my house and made these easy, and delicious, cookies with her delighted granddaughters. They were the best macaroons I had ever eaten, so Grandma kindly gave us her “secret” recipe so we could make them again.

Here’s the recipe:



P.S. My mom’s secret recipe is actually Mark Bittman’s Ultimate Minimalist Macaroons. But shhh, don’t tell her I know the truth.

Springerle - Valentine's Day Cookies with WOW

Do you want to be the THAT mom at the class Valentine's Day party?

Of course you do.

Then bring these cookies:

I'm actually not that mom. But my mom is, so she made these cookies for us.

If you also want to make them, here's how:

• Purchase a heart shaped cookie mold here.
• Follow the recipe for Perfection Springerle Cookies here. (Or the gluten-free recipe here.)
• Enjoy for months to come! Seriously - these cookies stay good for 2-3 months.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Easy Halloween Breakfast Ideas

Looking for fun and easy Halloween breakfast ideas?

I have some!

Make fun vampire bagels for Halloween!

These Halloween Vampire Bagels are made with Skittles and plastic fangs:

And this version is made with dried cranberries, dripping blood optional:

And if you don't want bagels, there's always Halloween vampire doughnuts:

 

Happy Halloween!

Thank you to Lovezilla's No Effort Halloween Treat for the inspiration.

Perfect Valentine's Day Treats for the Classroom - Gluten and Nut Free!

Valentine's Day is next week, which means I'm not thinking about what wonderful thing my beloved will be getting me, no I'm thinking about what I'm going to make for the class party at my kid's school.

 

Luckily, right as I was trying to figure out what I could bring, an email appeared from Kings Food Markets with two great options for the classroom, Gluten and Nut Free Rice Crispy Treats and Gluten and Nut Free Lemon Ginger Crisp.  Substitute dairy-free margarine for the butter, and the lactose-intolerant kids can enjoy as well.

 

Thanks to Kings Food Markets for allowing me to reprint these yummy Valentine's Day recipes!

 

Gluten and Nut Free Rice Crispy Treats

Makes 12 two inch squares

1 10 oz box of Gluten-Free Brown Rice Crisp Cereal (Use the entire box.)

8 tablespoons butter (1 stick)

1 10 oz package of marshmallows

1 tsp Gluten Free Vanilla Extract

Procedure:

Grease a 13 x 9 inch pan

 

1.   Melt butter over low heat in a large pan.

2.   Add marshmallows to melted butter and stir over low heat until melted. Remove pan from heat. Stir in vanilla extract.

3.   Stir in rice cereal and gently coat cereal with marshmallow mixture.

4.  Pour rice mixture into prepared pan. With buttered fingers press the mixture flat.

5.   When cool and set, cut into 12 squares.

Gluten and Nut Free Lemon Ginger Crisp

Makes 20 large cookies

12 tbls unsalted butter, room temperature

1 1/2 cups granulated cane sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp lemon extract

2 cups gluten-free all purpose flour mix with xanthan gum

1/2 tsp gluten-free baking powder

1 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp salt

grated zest of 1 lemon

2 oz minced crystallized ginger

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 375°

 

1.Combine softened butter and sugar in a mixing bowl. Cream with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add egg and lemon extract. Beat until combined.

2. In a separate bowl, combine gluten-free all purpose flour, gluten-free baking powder, ground ginger, salt and grated lemon zest. Whisk to thoroughly combine.

3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Beat on slow and use a spatula to scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl. When the mixture is combined, gradually add the minced ginger to the cookie dough and blend until combined.

4.Make 2 tablespoon balls out of dough for giant cookies. Place no more than 6 on large ungreased cookie sheets. If they are placed too close together they will bake together! If you prefer smaller cookies make 1 tablespoon balls out of dough and place no more than 6 on large cookie sheet.

5. Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until the cookies are set and the edges are golden brown. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for at least five minutes before removing with a large spatula to a cooling rack.

 

Do you have other favorite Valentine's Day ideas for classroom parties? Last year I made heart-shaped strawberries, but this year I'll try one of these new recipes from Kings!

 

I was not compensated for this post.

 

For lots more, visit Valentine's Day Ideas on Pinterest.

 

World's Best Homemade Hot Chocolate

I've been obsessing over making homemade hot chocolate lately - and why not? With three little kids and winter weather, pretty much every day is a hot chocolate day around here. I've even gotten a little creative with our recipes.

After a lot of tries here in our Random Handprints test kitchen, here are our top three picks for the world's best homemade hot chocolate:

1. Nutella Hot Chocolate. This is a little time/effort intensive, but worth it if your kids are Nutella fans like mine are. All you need to do is heat milk in a pan on the stove, and stir in 2 tablespoons of Nutella per cup, until it dissolves. Amazing.

3. Authentic Mexican Hot Chocolate - made with fair-trade Taza chocolate, the recipe is on their website. Another one that involves some time dissolving chocolate on the stove, but so worth it for the yummy results.

2. Jacques Torres Hot Chocolate - ready to mix-and-go, and as the tagline on the tin reads "Better than you can remember." And it so is.

Do you have a favorite way to make hot chocolate? Share, please!

31 Days of Halloween: Day 3 - Easy Halloween Recipe for Witch Hat Cookies

Halloween Recipe: How to Make Easy Witch Hat Cookies

I spend a lot of time trying to avoid processed foods, except of course for when I don't.

Sometimes the cute factor + the easy factor makes me just want to make something with my kids that has no nutritional value.

Like these Halloween Witch Hat Cookies.

I'm sure I saw them on Pinterest last year, but now I can't find the legit source, as this year the cookies are pinned around with spammy sources.

Here's the recipe for:

Easy Halloween Witch Hat Cookies:

Ingredients:
- 1 Box Keebler Fudge Stripe Cookies
- I Bag Hershey's Kisses
- 1 Tube Icing (we used orange)
- Sprinkles (optional)

Directions:
1. Attach one Hershey kiss to the top of one fudge stripe cookie (stripes facing down) with the icing.
2. Put your now complete witch hat on a cookie sheet or other flat surface to dry.

3. Decorate with icing to your Halloween heart's delight. Optional: add sprinkles.

My kids had tons of fun making these, and I think they would be cute for a Halloween party - it's easy enough to make a lot of them especially if you have eager helpers who want to decorate, as evidenced here:

What are your favorite Halloween recipes? Please share in the comments below!

And for a bit of Halloween humor, read Halloween, you have betrayed us. Because if sticking a celery stick in an orange and calling it a Halloween "treat" isn't a betrayal I don't know what it.

 

Parents Will Love "75 Ways to Have More Fun at Home"

I recently had the chance to review an advance copy of 75 Ways to Have More Fun at Home - a new eBook from Anna Luther (she writes the awesome and funny, and awesomely funny, blog My Life and Kids)

 

In the book, Anna provides seventy-five ideas for having a blast with your kids - at home. That's right, not a single suggestion in the book requires you or your children to get dressed and out the door or to use "indoor voices" amongst the general public. Because, as Anna put it so well:

"Let's be honest - some days, it's a lot easier to just stay home."

 

Ideas in the book include unique ways to celebrate holidays, taking a bike ride in pajamas, and letting the kids watch home movies of them when they were younger. For me personally, I'm all about the section with ideas for cool ways to put the kids to work, with clever suggestions for making it fun for the kids to help with laundry, taking out the trash, and even making mommy's coffee.

 

Anna also shares a genius idea for making a masking tape village in your living room, though of course at our house we would be making our town out of Duck Tape.

 

Reading the book left me inspired to try (almost) all of Anna's ways to make ordinary days special with my kids - 'cause as everyone always says, the days with little kids really do fly by so, so fast.

 

And this mom wants to enjoy them all. Or at least try to - and now I'm off to find some fancy plates for the indoor picnic we'll be having tomorrow afternoon. By candlelight.

75 Ways to Have More Fun at Home is $3.99 and can be purchased at MyLifeandKids.com (PDF file) or at Amazon (Kindle download), $3.99.

Thank you Anna for providing me with an advance copy of the book for review purposes.

Last Lunch of the School Year Means... Nutel-fluff!

Friday was the last day my kids had lunch at school - there's still two more days of school, but they're lunch-free half-days.

So, for the last day of lunch of the school year I let my kids make this: Nutel-fluff.

They've been talking about getting to make this for the last day of lunch all year long, and I'm glad to be able to say Nutel-fluff was just as good as they had hoped it would be.

And I'm guessing Nutel-fluff is going to be sticking around as the annual tradition for the last day of lunch for every school year until the end of time.

Glad I Made It: Strawberry Hearts for Valentine's Day

Every since I made heart shaped fried potatoes last week, I've been heart-ing every food I can.

It's gonna be a rude shock to my Kawaii-loving kids when they have to back to go "regular" food once Valentine's Day is over.

While creating most heart-shaped food is based upon using a heart-shaped cookie cutter, you can make strawberry hearts free-form, since they're already pretty much a natural heart.

All you need to do is slice the strawberries in half, and then use a knife to carve a little v out of the top of the strawberry, and you're done.

Here's how our heart strawberries turned out, the kids enjoyed decorating their plates:

Heart fun for everyone!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day - Celebrate with Fun Cards, Cute Handprint Crafts and Rose Scented Cupcakes!

Valentine's Day will be here in just a few days, which makes this the perfect time for making cards, doing handprint crafts with kids, and eating yummy cupcakes.

I just found a terrific design/kids/all-around-awesome blog Small For Big, which has several options for Valentine's Day cards you can make yourself:

• DIY Toddler Valenine's Cards with ways to take any doodle and make it worthy of mailing to the grandparents
• Monster Valentines you can dowload for free. All you have to do is cut, fold and send.
• And if monsters aren't your thing, there is also the too adorable Poppy Paper Doll, with enough amazing outfits to make Fashion Week proud.

And as always, if you are here from doing an Internet search for Handprint Crafts for Valentines Day, here are the best ones I've seen on my online wanderings:

• Kaboose shows how to make a Valentine Handprint Wall Hanging which is so cute it melts my cold anti-valentine heart. The hearts are made from painting the sides of the child's hands, and then having them press down on the paper with their little fists.

Photo from Kaboose.com

• Crafts-for-all-seasons has a whole tab of Valentine's Day Crafts, including some very sweet Handprint Valentines.  This craft creates the heart with the thumb and second finger of both hands, resulting in a very nice-and-a-little-bit-offbeat-too design.



Photo from Crafts-for-all-Seasons.com

• The Crafty Crow, which is always filled with incredible creations, has a round-up of 10 Valentine Crafts! My favorite is the Heart-in-hand pillow from A Little Great.  You clearly need to be a little great yourself to make this, but the directions are so good, it makes even a not-so-crafty mom like myself think I could pull it off.  And it really would be so, so nice to enjoy all-year-round.

Photo from ALittleGreat.com

And last, if handprint crafts aren't your thing, but baking is, one of my favorite blogs If You Can Make That You Can Make This has an amazing recipe for Rose Scented Cupcakes. We made them with the addition of India Tree Sparkling Sugar, and they were truly a beautiful treat. (Especially when you pair with Rose Pink Champagne for those of us in the over-21 category.)



Photo from Amazon.com


Do you have big plans for Valentine's Day?
However you celebrate, Happy Valentines Day!