Call me crazy, but I’m sincerely looking forward to packing school lunches for Miss G. Although she’ll only be attending Kindergarten half time, we’ve discussed whether to pick her up before lunchtime or after, and we’ve decided that picking her up after lunch might make for a better transition. We’ll see how things go of course and re-evaluate a few weeks in, but that’s the plan for now at least.
With the rain pouring down this afternoon and Brad out for the evening, Miss G and I decided to bake a batch of delicious cookies just before dinnertime (oops). Miss G, the little chocolate lover that she is, requested chocolate chip and was more than happy to go with dark chocolate chunk cookies with walnuts. Now, I must say… These are definitely not the healthiest cookies we’ve ever made {hello, butter and coconut sugar!}, but they are absolutely delicious. In the past, we stuck to coconut oil as our go-to fat and really only did small amounts of local honey and pure maple syrup {as well as dates and other fruits} to sweeten our baking, but now that Miss G is 5 {eek!}, I’ve definitely become more lax with the ingredients I’m willing to use in our homemade baked goods and treats. That being said, these cookies are made with 100% wholewheat flour {something I’m not yet willing to compromise on} and use a super dark organic fair-trade chocolate bar cut into chunks instead of regular chocolate chips, so they’re definitely on the better-for-you side when compared to traditional chocolate chip cookies.
Miss G recently had her first ever lemonade stand and it goes without saying that we had to use the opportunity to make our own lemonade from scratch. ☺
With just over two weeks left in the desert, we’ve been doing our very best to work with what we have in the kitchen instead of doing our usual {ridiculously expensive} weekly grocery shop. So far so good, though the shelves are definitely looking quite bare. Luckily, we always seem to have something that can be thrown into the blender to create a yummy breakfast smoothie, or in today’s case according to Miss G, a ‘milkshake’. ☺
This afternoon, after a lovely morning out of the house, Miss G and I got started on the first of our homemade Easter treats. After seeing some milk chocolate lollies covered with pastel-coloured candy sprinkles while at Dean & Deluca last, I knew we could very easily make our own {healthier} version and that’s exactly what we did today… We made dark chocolate fruit and nut lollies and Miss G is pleased as punch about having a bowl full of these pretty little lollies sitting in our kitchen!
Oh my goodness… Miss G and I have been having way too much fun with our advent activities this year! I’m so thankful that I created all of our advent activity cards ahead of time – having them pre-made and ready in a jar has saved me tons of time already, and I never have to worry about coming up with a fun idea because the ideas are already right there in front of me.
Grae and I are very lucky to be part of a fabulous little play school co-op here in Kuwait. The whole thing is very low key. We meet at someone’s house every Sunday morning to partake in a few fun activities that go with our weekly theme, and then we meet on again on Thursday mornings for a less structured outdoor outing or ‘field trip’ of some sort. Since this week’s theme was apples, I helped to set up an apple pie making station for our little ones {ages 1 to 4} to enjoy.
When Gracen gets invited to a birthday party, she’s usually excited about two things – actually going to the party of course, and coming up with a fun gift to bring along! This gift was for a friend who was celebrating her 7th birthday this time around, so Miss G knew she wanted something ‘big girlish’. We brainstormed ideas throughout the week {a hair dressing kit and a card making kit were other options in the running – two of G’s favourite things}, but in the end we decided on a little chef’s baking kit since our friend enjoys baking with her mama just as Grae and I enjoy baking together.
With Halloween just a couple of weeks away, Miss G and I have been talking a lot about what kinds of treats she wants to handout to her friends this year… Of course since she’s a sugar-free kid, we stick to sugar-free treats, which means we have to be a little more creative. This week, we’ve been having fun coming up with all sorts of cute non-candy Halloween treats and we figure that these five snacks would be perfect to share with classmates or friends. They’re all simple to make, they’re all healthy {or at least relatively healthy}, and in the words of Grae, they’re all ‘SOOO CUTE!’
So though I haven’t mentioned it yet, Miss G and I have been pretty much stuck in the house for the last week and a bit… We’re not sure what’s going on, but she’s dealing with some sort of bladder issue that is causing her to have to go every few minutes, the poor thing. Needless to say, our usual routine of being out of the house every morning on fun adventures and meet-ups with friends is not happening right now. It’s just too hard.
In the meantime, we’re getting things done around the house {like painting a chalkboard wall finally and adding new pictures to our photo wall} and trying out some fun new activities. This morning, we decided that we’d have some fun with our breakfast! Instead of toast and fruit {a regular morning meal in our house}, we used our ingredients to create adorable little toast animals {or TOASTIMALS thanks to our friend Tairalyn} and admittedly, we had waaaay too much fun doing it.
The best part is that all of our toastimals can be made with these four ingredients – bread, your favourite spread, bananas, and berries (strawberries and blueberries to be specific). For ours, we used delicious walnut bread from Paul and almond butter, though cream cheese did make an appearance part way through. {Honey or any other nut butter would be good too!}
Before starting, we sketched out some of our ideas… First, I was the drawer, and then Gracen added to our idea sheet afterwards. Her illustrations include monkey toast {my drawing wasn’t doing it for her I guess}, FRUIT FLY toast {bahahahaha!}, and lizard toast {plus a cloud and some rain of course}.
Then it was time to get to work. Here are the 5 fun toastimals we came up with…
A bear {a favourite though not a new idea – we’ve been making this one since Miss G was wee}…
A kitty…
An owl…
A monkey…
And a chicken!
This poor guy did not get Miss G’s stamp of approval, sadly. He was supposed to be a pig, but kind of turned out looking like a dog or a bull or something else, and she declared him ‘very mix-upded’. Perhaps we’ll have to rework him and try again next time…
For now, however, I have to say that our little zoo of approved toast animals is pretty cute. ☺
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It’s certainly not one of the prettiest breakfasts, but this banana pecan oatmeal is a definite favourite in our house. And for good reason! By recommendation of a friend, I started making this when Miss G was a newborn and I was a constantly starving nursing mama. It was quick and easy to throw together, it satisfied my raging hunger come morning, and was delicious too – sort of like dessert for breakfast. I’m pretty sure I ate it most mornings for months, and it’s no surprise that Miss G now loves it too.
Oh my goodness… Miss G is absolutely obsessed with these chocolate almond bliss balls. Seriously. She begs for them like they’re candy and when you give her one? Her eyes light up like it’s Christmas morning. I love them too – they’re delicious, easy to make, and make for a great portable snack to throw in my purse or into our carry-on when travelling.
This silly little idea came to me the other day when I was looking at the huge box of fresh blueberries we had sitting on the kitchen counter. The Okanagan has been pretty warm recently, so turning some of our blueberry stash into popsicles seemed like a good thing to do. The thing is, I have a weird thing about blending fresh, local fruit. I just can’t do it. Especially not berries. Not even in the name of popsicles. {Living a berry-deprived life in Kuwait for several years has obviously gotten to me.} Since we love frozen blueberries as a snack, why couldn’t our beloved berries stay whole and become popsicles? There’s no reason they couldn’t! Add some organic, no-sugar-added lemonade, and you’ve got polka dotted blueberry lemonade popsicles! ☺
Since we first introduced it into her diet, Miss G has always eaten plain organic yogurt. She loves it as is, and its fun to dress up with fun toppings if she’s wanting to add a little flavour to it. Sometime just before leaving for our second stint in Kuwait, however, we got our hands on a few little cups of flavoured yogurt sweetened with pure fruit juice, and she just loved them. I had forgotten all about the flavoured Gracen-friendly yogurt until a couple of months ago, when Miss G requested we get some more. I would have happily obliged, but finding decent yogurt in Kuwait is a challenge, let alone finding decent yogurt that is flavoured, organic, and sugar-free. Never going to happen. Luckily, she happily accepted the fact that it would be something we’d find and have in the summer… Only Mama can’t find the darn fruit-flavoured, naturally sweetened, organic cups now that we’re back in Canada. Oy.
Last week while we were in Alberta visiting my brother and his family, I had way too much fun whipping up these fun watermelon popsicles made of nothing but fruit!