Nutrition for Kids

September 20, 2012 by 1 Comment

I decided to go to the PTA meeting the other night, since there was a speaker talking about nutrition for kids giving a presentation called “Growing Healthy Kids (in a junk food world).” I am highly interested in nutrition for kids

My Plate 

Proper nutrition for kids

Here is a picture of My Plate and the website where you can get it is Choose My Plate.gov. This replaces the old food pyramid we grew up on with a logical picture of a plate. This gives a much better picture of how your plate should look if you are eating a balanced meal. As you can see half the plate is fruits and veggies and the other half is grains and protein. If you are homeschooling and talking about nutrition for kids with your children this is a wonderful website resource with tons of information, coloring sheets and learning tools about nutrition.

Portion Control & Nutrition for Kids

Know what a portion is and how that relates to your plate for proper nutrition for kids. We tend to give children larger portions than they can really eat. This leads to overeating and not really knowing when they are full. Thus all this leads to childhood obesity. Here is a link for Estimated Daily Calorie Needs for proper nutrition for children of all ages based on gender and activity levels. I was amazed to see the difference between activity level and gender. There is a major difference between all of these factors and should be considered when providing the proper nutrition for kids.

How to Reduce Sugar for Kids

nutrition for kids reduce sugar

One of the things she preached, I mean spoke about frequently offering no or low sugar drinks to your kids. It is amazing to see how much sugar really is in these drinks! Yuck. Some parents were trying to find the best way to do this. One suggestion was to take the full juice and add water to water it down. This will make the juice last twice as long and after a while the kids won’t really notice. We do it all the time at my house. You could also make healthy drinks with real fruit to seem like a treat such as real fruit healthy slushies or healthy smoothies for kids to provide additional nutrition for kids in a fun and healthy way. We make these all the time at my house and they are a huge hit. 

Exercise – My Challenge for You

I know most of us just can’t seem to get up and go work out. The excuse is we don’t have time. Ok that is the excuse, what is the solution? I offer you a simple challenge: After you finish eating go for a small walk after dinner with the whole family. At first make it small for 10 mins. Then slowly increase this 5 minutes each day or over time until you are at 30 min. You will be amazed how much you talk to your kids, since no one is plugged into a device or TV. Now this your technology free time of your day and you are active. After a while this will become your routine. So I challenge you to start your family walk this evening and report to me how easy this is to start.

Filed Under: Kids Tagged With:

The Best Cars Birthday Party Ideas

August 22, 2012 by 4 Comments

Cars Birthday Party Ideas

cars birthday party cake

I can’t believe little face is three years old. It seems only yesterday I brought him home in a little blanket all wrapped up from the hospital. I love and hate that he is now a little boy. For me three is when you are no longer a baby and are a big boy. Three is my favorite age. He likes to play with his toys and his favorite is Disney Cars. He loves the movies, the toys and everything Disney Cars. So the theme for this is Cars Birthday Party!

cars birthday party ideas

I love to throw a birthday party. One of the best ways to throw a birthday party on a budget is to have a theme. Once I had the theme for a cars birthday party, the rest was easy. I was a bit lazy and sent the invitations through evite. I like to include a picture of the birthday child holding something from the theme. This year he held is Tow Mater Pillow Pet and Lighting McQueen car for his photo.

cars birthday party banner

When people walk up into the party I want them to be so excited to rush inside. This really sets the theme for the cars birthday party even before the guests stepped inside the door. The front door was revved up with a Welcome Race Fans sign I printed and taped to a large piece of construction paper. We just finished the floors on the inside, so I was not in a sewing mood. What’s better than sewing, tape! I taped checkered fabric to the sides of my Welcome Race Fan sign. Along the sidewalk to the house I placed little construction cones I found at the soccer store. So far these cones have been all over our house! 

cars birthday party goody bags

Once in the door, the front entry needed some pop of color. The entry was lined with red balloons and black strings to go with the colors of the cars birthday party. This just looks so cute. The goody buckets were on the table filled with a hot wheels car, race pencil, bubbles with fire duct tape and cheez it crackers. I choose the red plain buckets instead of the themed bucket that were a $1 more. I really wanted checkered duct tape I found at JoAnns, but they were all out when I went back the next day. I was pretty bummed about not getting the black and white checkered tape. I got the hot wheels car looking flame duct tape instead. The little red buckets needed something, so I put the flame duct tape at the top to add a little pop and put Cars stickers on the bottom to continue the cars birthday party theme.

cars birthday party favors

For the bubbles inside the goody buckets, we took off the boring paper and put the flame duct tape around the bubbles. For car wash bubbles! These turned out so cute. It is amazing the things you can do with duct tape.

Cars Birthday Party Cake

Cars birthday party cake

The cake will be a separate post next week. This is always the star of my parties. I am so lucky the friend behind me loves to do cakes. I bake the cake and put on a crumb coat and then she comes over the night before and decorates it. We make a great team! To keep with the cars theme we decided on a race track stadium and placed Lighting McQueen and Tow Mater in the center. What do you think of that cake? Come back next Wednesday for a step by step.

 

cars birthday party menu

The snacks had to have clever little Radiator Springs names to keep in theme with our cars birthday party. Since I only a black and white printer, myoptions were limited. Good thing the colors were already black and white. I choose a black and white checker board pattern for the outside and then came up with catchy little Car names for each of the items. We kept the menu real simple Hot Rod Dogs for the kids and Flo’s V8 Hamburgers for the adults. Everyone had a great time.

Just as soon as we finished eating then the rain started and had to continue the party inside on our new wood floors. We opened gifts and it was an awesome, action packed racing cars birthday party. 

Filed Under: birthday party ideas, childrens birthday, Kids

10 Easy Back to School Breakfasts

August 14, 2012 by 2 Comments

It’s that time of year we as parents are really looking forward to or are hating sending our kids back to school again. I have in the years past looked forward to my daughter returning back to school; however, this year I don’t want her to go. This year is her last year in elementary school. I am really going to miss her during the day. We had a fun summer. I am not looking forward to it ending.

Back to School Breakfast ideas

Since she will be heading back to school, I don’t want to send her to learn on an empty stomach. I have listed some easy back to school breakfast ideas I make ahead of and a great alternative to cereal every morning. 

10 Easy Back to School Breakfast ideas

1. Pancakes: Make a double batch and freeze
2. Cranberry Pumpkin Muffins: Freeze and easily heat in the microwave for 1 min
3. Boil a dozen eggs and keep the hard boiled eggs in the fridge
4. Bacon: I make the entire package and freeze them. Warm in microwave 15 sec.
5. Waffles: Make ahead and freeze. Pop in microwave for 1 min
6. Frugal Homemade Lara Bars - 
7. Healthy Smoothies for kids - This is like having ice cream for breakfast
8. Make ahead muffin mix
9. Cinnamon Swirl French Toast - Pop in the toaster or in the microwave
10. Scrambled Eggs in the Microwave – Spray coffee cup with oil, scramble egg, microwave 1 min.

I usually make two or three of these at a time and FREEZE them. Once the kids are awake they have a choice of breakfasts that is not just sugary cereal. Something that will stick with them until lunch. I am always looking for more quick and easy breakfast ideas. Do you have any quick breakfasts you like to make ahead for your kids? Are you getting ready for back to school?

Filed Under: Kids, meals

Sharpie Tie Dye T-Shirt

July 18, 2012 by 3 Comments

We had a blast making these Sharpie Tie Dye T-shirts for a play date last Tuesday. Seriously no artistic talent needed. If you know how to scribble you will do fine. You just need a little imagination. I was watching my friends children, since she was taking a class for the day. I had to come up with something to entertain the kids for a couple of hours. I saw something like this on Pintrest, but of course I had to try something completely different.

Sharpie Tie-Dye T-Shirt

Sharpie Tie Dye

This is a great project, since sharpies are on sale at Staples for $5.00 for a 12 pack right now. It is back to school time so there are sales everywhere. I think I got my set of 10 last year for under $5.00 at Staples. I picked up the plain white t-shirts for every one of the kids at Michaels last week for $2.00 a t-shirt. These are perfect for Tye Dye t-shirts and I love a bargain. 

Directions for Sharpie Tie-Dye T-Shirts:

We started with the plain, boring white t-shirts I purchased from Michaels. Put some paper, magazines or cardboard between the shirt. This is to prevent the sharpies from bleeding through the front part to the back, unless that is the design you want. Then just make sure you put something under the shirt to prevent it ruining your carpet or table. I didn’t care what mess the kids made with sharpies. I didn’t even care they forgot to put the lids back on, since we were ripping out the carpet that week anyway. Very stress free for me. If you see my previous post carpet is now gone! Yippee.

Sharpie Tie Dye DIY

Next draw any design you wish. I just let the kids draw with the sharpies whatever tie dye design they wanted. They loved using their creative freedom. You don’t want to be really detailed, since in the next step all the colors will bleed together to create a tie dye effect. This is where we had lots of fun coming up with different tie dye designs.

How to make Sharpie Tie Dye

After you have created your design then the fun part starts. Take a squirt bottle and filled it with rubbing alcohol. I would then recommend taking this outside. Liberally spray the front of the shirt with alcohol. The colors will bleed as soon as you start to spray. We found red, orange and black run the best.

Sharpie Tie Dye Design

Let the front dry and then spray the back. These dry fast outside and since it is alcohol. 

Design possibilities for Sharpie Tie-Dye T-Shirts:

I used duct tape (the duct tape is zig zagged)  to create a cross that had a negative area then colored around the duct tape. I just used squiggles. I sprayed the alcohol around the duct tape and let it dry. Then I removed the duct tape. I was surprised it bled under the duct tape, but it came out really cool. 

Sharpie Tie Dye ideas

We created a rainbow circle like a tie dye T-Shirt on one. It turned out awesome. We found the more you color with the Sharpie marker on one area the more the Sharpie colors will bleed like a tie dye shirt. The swirl effect is created by drawing a spiral. Try different colors of Sharpies for an even cooler effect. The dot tie dye effect turned out awesome by put a dot of the Sharpie and let it set for a second or two to soak the shirt. Once this is sprayed it spreads.

Here are the designs we created using this Sharpie tie dye method. Now my mind is reeling thinking of all  the other possibilities that can be done with this great Sharpie tie dye style. You have so much more control of how the design of your tie dye t-shirt turns out by using Sharpies.

I would love to know if you made any of these yourself. Send me a picture or leave me a comment. So what do you think of this idea?

~   ~   ~

LET THE PARTY BEGIN!!!!

What have you been working on this week? Do you have a fabulous craft, recipe, organization or furniture redo? I would love for you to link up at our PIN IT Wednesday party! Pin this post if you like it.

Filed Under: Crafts, Kids, Pin It Wednesday

Homemade Finger Paint

May 9, 2012 by 2 Comments

 I have been looking for some fun activities for me and little face to do while we are at home. I saw this on Pintrest from Milk and Cuddles and thought wow I have all this stuff to make this and the cost would be nearly FREE. I stocked up on several containers of corn starch for FREE during the baking season in November and December. Since then, I have found so many uses. I wish I had more! So this is how we made Homemade Finger paints.

Homemade Finger Paint

Ingredients:

  •  ½ cup cornstartch
  • 3 tblspn sugar
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 2 cups cold water
  • Drops of food coloring

1. In a sauce pan pour and mix all the ingredients together except food coloring. Little face enjoyed helping with this part. He loves to help me cook in the kitchen.

2. Cook on a medium heat for about 10-15 minutes. At first this is a real thin soupy mix. Not much too it. As the cornstarch gets hot the mixture will start to thicken. It’s is the same principle as pop corn. After the starch is heated it expands and thickens with the water. Keep stirring during this stage. You want to make sure you don’t have any lumps in your goo.

3. Now that it is really thick, take it off the stove to cool for a bit. You can’t finger paint with hot paint!

4. Bring the white goo to vibrant colors using a few drops of food coloring. The more drops you use the more vibrant the colors will be. We decided to stay with red, blue and yellow. Little face had so much fun making new colors and painting with his paint. You could probably even use koolaid to color your paints and make them smell good too! I thought this was a great way to mix the colors to see what new colors he could make.  He knows how to make green, purple and orange!

~   ~   ~

The curiosity got the better of me.  I just had to taste it, since this is a non toxic paint and all the ingredients are edible. It is a little sweet, but not that appetizing. Don’t worry if your little one wants to taste some, since all these ingredients are safe. This mix will keep for a few of days, so be sure to make lots of masterpieces quickly. I thought this made quite a bit for just using it a little while, I might try to decrease the recipe by half next time. We did not use all the paint before it started to get stinky.

 My cost for this project I would say about $.10 for the sugar, salt and food coloring.
Featured on Cast Party Wednesday        

Filed Under: Crafts, Kids

Tips for Tuesday – Valentines Yummies

February 14, 2012 by 7 Comments

Happy Valentines Day everyone. I wanted to share with you some things I made all my sweeties today to let them know how much I love them. On this special Love Day.

I made sure everyone had a heart filled breakfast. With Strawberry heart shaped pancakes and heart shaped bacon. Nothing says “I love you” like bacon!

I have been loving these cute ideas for bento boxes lately. This is a hard heart boiled egg. It is more work than I think I would want to do on an everyday basis, but it is a cute idea for special days. You can read how to make heart shaped eggs on Anna’s site. I did mine a little different, since I didn’t have a milk carton, I used the brownie box below and cut the corners off to make the V and wrapped the corners with plastic wrap. It still worked great!

Here is a sandwich I made for Little Miss and Little face this morning. Heart shaped scalloped bread with the heart shaped eggs inside. She loves egg sandwiches. I forgot he had a party today at school and didn’t eat his sandwich. I just brought it back and put it in the fridge. He can have it on Thursday.

I even made the cheese heart shaped. I put it on the sandwich and forgot to take a picture, so I took it off and it has some Ceaser dressing on it. Oops!
And finally I made Chocolate Strawberry brownie kisses for my sweeties. This tastes like Chocolate covered strawberries, since I used strawberry puree instead of water in the recipe. I will post this recipe at a later date. 
Now what am I going to do for dinner?

Did you do anything special for your sweeties? Leave a comment or link, I would love to see what others did today.
Filed Under: Family, Great Gifts, Kids

Whatever Wednesday – Wii Party Ideas

February 8, 2012 by 2 Comments

My stepson wanted a birthday party this year, so we agreed to host it at our house. (long story) He told me he wanted a Wii party this year. I have to say I am inexperienced at hosting boy parties unless they are two or younger. So I thought I have Follow Me on Pinterest this is going to be easy, until I realized this is not a real popular party idea. I searched on Follow Me on Pinterest, Googled and used Swagbucks to search for Wii party ideas.

Since my theme was Wii. I also wanted to pick a color theme to tie some of my random ideas together. I chose blue and green, since this was a boys party.


Here are some of the decorations and things I designed for the party

Wii Party Ideas



These are the tags I designed to have another gift favor from his party. They all thought they were cool. I don’t have a color printer, so these were black and white. I covered his name to protect his identity.
I made mustache straws. The boys got a kick out of that. The mustache was for Mario and they are all the rage now, so I thought it would be funny. They took the mustaches off the straws and started wearing them. 

 

I wanted to make something fun for them to do. I had some long paper and cut it in half to look like a Wiimote and used this print out. They were to make a Wiimote without looking. I thought this might be fun; however, this did not go over well with this age group. Maybe a younger crowd would enjoy it.
It is my new tradition every kid gets their own birthday banner. His name is wrapped around the other side. I chose not to show it in order to protect his identity. Not to toot my own horn, but I am getting pretty good at making these. I used scrapbook paper and cut out a million triangles in different colors and plan out the pattern. I used the Paper Bunting Template and to get five triangles per standard 12X12 sheet of scrapbook paper. Then I sewed them together using bias tape. Yes you can sew paper and it is super easy.

I found this fabulous free 3D Wiimote favor box download. I cut out and put together and glued, with help from the birthday boy.



I only needed to make five, so this was doable. Once put together. I stuffed it with 1 bag of M&M’s and one fun size Twix. What do you think? The boys loved them.






We also had those fabulous Homemade Pizza Rolls I blogged about last week. These were so good. I forgot to take a picture of them baked before they were devoured.


I thought it would be fun to place the cookies on skewers and have them in a vase sticking up. This is not the best idea to have boys running around the house with sharp objects acting like they are mini swords. So I had to police as the cookies were eaten, to make sure I got the mini swords, I mean skewers back. I used an old oatmeal container and wrapped it with scrapbooking paper, that matched the banner, to cover it completely. I put a package of black beans to weight it down and stuck the cookie pops in at random places.
The Wiimote cake turned out fabulous. I have an unwritten agreement with my neighbor. I bake and ice the cake, and she decorates it for me. She has all the awesome frosting tips and gadgets to decorate a cake. In return I give her coupons and share good deals with her. Fair trade I think.
I will post instructions on how make this fabulous cake next week.

 

Oh yeah and the boys played Wii most of the night.


Stay connected with Pounds4Pennies on Facebook or join me at Pounds4Pennies on BlogFrog community for more great savings.  
Filed Under: birthday party ideas, childrens birthday, Kids

25 Days of Christmas Blog Share – Day 21

December 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Join Parga’s Junkyard as we share Christmas with some of the web’s best bloggers!

25 Days of Christmas

December 21, 2011 Features It’s Not Over til You Quit

Do you have a favorite Christmas book? Has it changed since you were little? The books I read at Christmas have changed but I still love the idea of have specific books for Christmas. Right now my favorite Christmas book to read with my nephews is the Hawaiian version of the night before Christmas. It’s nice to bring that piece of my childhood alive when I live so far away and remember reading books about snowy Christmas’ on Christmas eve wishing I could experience that!
Come on over to It’s Not Over Til You Quit to see how reading this Christmas book goes in my house and hear how you can enjoy Christmas no matter where you are!
Do you have a Christmas blog post you would like to share with our readers? Sign up on our linky below to share your posts! Or if you are one of our readers just click on the Linky to see more Christmas posts to check out!

Filed Under: Kids

25 Days of Christmas – Blog Share Day 9

December 9, 2011 by 5 Comments

25 Days of Christmas

December 9, 2011
Featured Blog – Pounds4Pennies
I am so happy to be able to participate in this Blog Share with so many other bloggers. I love Christmas time, because it was always about spending time with my family. It is the one time of the year where we all try to make an effort to get home to mom and dad’s (nana and papa’s) house to enjoy time with each other. When I was a single mom I was able to purchase a set of 3 trees of different heights for my Christmas tree. We now use these trees to put in the three kids rooms. These are their Christmas trees to decorate how they choose each year. They get to place their handmade ornaments on it each year. In order to count down to Christmas we make a paper chain advent calendar for them to put on their trees to count down to the birth of Jesus. Here are some variations on this easy frugal advent calendar.
One thing I want my children to remember is, Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus. I make sure we read the Christmas story from the Bible each year. I enjoy reading Luke 2 verses 1-21. For each length of chain you could write one verse and read it before you tear it off. If you started on the first you can use a few verses from the book Matthew about the birth of Jesus.
If you decide to make only one chain and each child gets a different color to add. They can write what they like about other siblings on their pieces of colored paper and they get to read their day and that is the day they get to tear off. I like coming up with ideas to promote fairness to every child.
The really crafty person can decide to make the chain and decorate each link with their own personality. I find using decorative scissors or punches are fun to do if you have those from scrapbooking. You can sequins, glitter, ribbon. If you make a wonderful masterpiece and don’t want to rip it every day, you could use a marker such as a clothespin to mark the day. Of course you would decorate the clothes pin to match your garland.
There is still time to make an advent calendar. It is a great way for children to enjoy the countdown to Christmas. Here are the simple instructions of how to make this chain calendar.

You will need glue, scissor and paper in different colors.
1. Let your children pick the colors they would like to use.
2. Cut small strips of construction paper across the short end of the paper. Use a pencil and draw lines to make straight cuts on the paper.
3. Take the construction paper and make a circle and glue the ends together to make a circle. This step is good if you have a couple of helpers. Continue until you get to the end.

4. Once you are at the end you can place something special to signify ONLY ONE MORE DAY until Christmas. I used a star this year and placed it near the top of the tree.
5. Hang the garland on your tree or where ever you want. Make sure you enjoy the Christmas season with your Children.


Filed Under: Family, Freebie, Frugal living, Great Gifts, Kids
«Older Posts