St. Patrick's Day tea party

Happy St. Patrick's Day!! I know, I'm a day late, but that's because I was busy hosting a little tea party for my kids yesterday. I always try to make the holiday's  extra special for my kids, and so I thought that it would be nice to have a tea party to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

I made a few different type of muffins for the kids to eat, in different shapes just because I thought the kids would enjoy that. I'll post some of the recipes shortly. The star muffins are apple carrot muffins. They're pictured next to the chocolate chip muffins. Underneath that are banana muffins that I made in my mini donut pan. I used my Best Banana Muffin ever recipe. Lastly I made a few cake pops. (I had a cake in the freezer that fell apart when it came out of the pan, so I popped it in the freezer so that I could make cake pops.)

I also had dishes of green grapes out, but the kids mostly just ate the muffins, and drank their tea (chocolate milk, served with white milk in the creamer pot.)

The kids had a great time, so I'm going to call this tea party a success! Hope that everyone had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day!

water playdate fun!

 Recently, I've just gone back to working outside of the home. This is my first time back since I've had Simon (he's two now). I was so lucky to have so much time off with my kids. On one of my days off this week, I hosted a little playdate for Claire and Simon, with four of their friends. We have been having such lovely, hot weather lately (30 C = 86 F) that I decided to have a water playdate.

The kids had a lot of fun. The first activity was a tin foil river. I just put a long sheet of tin foil on the lawn. Then, I folded up the sides of it. I put a rock at the top and bottom of the river to keep the tin foil from blowing away. Then I put the hose at the top of the river, turned the water on, and the kids floated bottle caps down it. Again and again.

The next activity lasted the longest. For a while now I've been saving my dish soap bottles. (I asked my neighbours to save their bottles for me too.) I used a few Gatorade, and salad dressing bottles too.) The night before the playdate I filled all of the bottles with water. Then I added a few drops (2 or 3) of food colouring to each bottle. For the playdate, I brought all of the bottles outside, with a couple of mixing bowls and spoons, and the kids had a great time pouring, mixing, and stirring the water. They played with the coloured water for more than 30 minutes. Kids occupied for half an hour screams success to me!

 The last activity was a winner too. I picked up a couple of bags of toys from the Dollar Store, a bag each of zoo and farm animals. I filled two 9x13 pans with water and put them in the freezer. I spread the animals out in each pan once they were in the freezer. THAT'S IT! The next morning, the toys were nicely frozen in the ice. Just run the pans under water to loosen the ice. The kids sprayed water on the ice blocks to release the toys. It was pretty exciting for them.

 We finished off the playdate with peanut butter and jam sandwiches and chocolate vanilla pudding popsicles. Simon loved them! So does Claire actually, as she continues to eat all of the leftovers. It was so nice to plan this little playdate. It was the easiest one so far, since everything was ready to go the night before. Have you hosted any playdates this summer? I think an ice cream themed one is up next....

Linking up with: Six Sister's Stuff &  Skip to my Lou & Tip Junkie & Tatertots and Jello

fun pirate playdate

I decided to have two of our neighbours over for a little pirate playdate with Claire and Simon last week. I had found these plastic gold coins at Walmart (for $1) that I thought would be perfect for a treasure hunt. I drew a treasure map for the kids, and I was all excited to take them on a walk/treasure hunt.Sadly, the day of the playdate it was raining so hard that we couldn't go outside on our hunt. 

Oh well, the kids had fun playing inside, and they loved this lunch that I made. I used the sword toothpicks to skewer blueberries and small grapes. These were a big hit.

 I made cannon ball peanut butter and jam sandwiches. 

And the biggest hit were definitely the pirate jello sail boats. The night before the playdate, I made (ha, mixed together blue jello powder and water) and poured it onto a plate (with high edges). Then, I cut several oranges in half. (When you're cutting the oranges, make sure that you cut through where the stem was on the orange. If you cut the orange the other way, jello will leak out where the stem was. I hope that makes sense.) Scoop out all of the insides of the orange. I served mine to Simon for breakfast the next morning. I set the jello halves in a muffin tin, and then I filled them up with jello. Refrigerate until set (overnight). The next morning I cut the orange halves in half to make the boats. I printed the pirate sails from the Makes and Takes website. I cut a small slit near the top and bottom of the sails, slide a toothpick in, and then put the sail on the jello wedges. Then, I loaded up my jello boats onto the sea of jello and served them to the kids.

Lastly, we got out the pool noodles that I cut in half, and had marble races. The kids had a lot of fun sending the marbles down the tracks. It was a fun playdate- hopefully the next time the weather will cooperate a little bit more!

Linking up with: Six Sister's Stuff &  Skip to my Lou & Tip Junkie & Tatertots and Jello