Breakfast // Heart-shaped wholewheat flax oat pancakes with a tiny drizzle of pure maple syrup. Strawberry hearts.
Special drink // Frothy strawberry milk (made with freeze-dried strawberries) with heart-shaped milk ice cubes.
Lunch // Veggie and wild rice soup with heart-shaped carrots (aka “love soup” according to Grae).
Dinner // Roasted veggie and feta pizza on a thin wholewheat crust.
With a Valentine’s party earlier this week, and our annual Valentine’s tea happening tomorrow, when Miss G asked to have a special day at home today instead of attending our Valentine’s celebration at Strong Start, I was more than happy to oblige. It was a day of cooking together and doing special activities, topped off with a few hand-picked gifts for each of us at the end of the day.
Here is our day in photos…
Little breakfast helper.
A breakfast full of hearts.
A special drink.
Jello play dough experiment.
Play time.
A special project for Papa.
“Love soup”.
Proud.
Papa’s pizza topping.
Heart-shaped bacon warrants a regular rectangular pizza.
Regular roasted veggies means the pizza needs to be heart-shaped.
Finishing off the day with a few little gifts. A beautiful picture frame and some David’s Tea goodies for Papa, Fauberg macarons for Mama, and a handmade purse, a new book, and some scented stickers for Miss G.
Check out last year’s Valentine’s Day with my little lady here.
♥
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I must admit, since creating our first batch of healthy{er} crispy rice treats, we’ve made several batches since. The good news is that through all of the ‘testing’, we’ve learned that they last really well in an airtight container on the counter, they can be made into fun shapes using silicon moulds and ice cube trays, and they can easily be cut into shapes with cookie cutters {all while holding their shape just as well as regular Rice Krispie treats do}. The one lesson we’ve learned along the way is that if you overdo the cereal, they turn out crunchier, more dry, and not nearly as yummy. Lesson learned.
When planning some of the treats we’d serve at our annual Valentine’s Tea, Gracen’s most enthusiastic suggestion was “Crispy treats! Valem-time ones!” Making the treats pink came to mind first, but since I’m not crazy about feeding Miss G a bunch of unnecessary food dyes, that got nixed shortly there after.
The next thing that came to mind was one of Grae’s favourite treats… Freeze-dried strawberries. We buy ours at Trader Joe’s, but I have seen them in other stores as well. They’re just strawberries, but the process of freeze-drying them causes them to be super crunchy and astronaut food-like.
I asked Grae if she’d like to experiment with making strawberry crispy rice treats, and she was on board all the way.
To get started, we took about a half a cup of freeze-dried strawberries, ground them to a powder in our food processor, and added them to the wet mixture while following our usual crispy rice treat recipe.
Of course, Miss G licked the cashew butter spoon, because, well… That’s probably the best part about helping with this recipe.
Once we’d combined the cereal and the wet mixture, we took another portion of freeze-dried strawberries, crumbled half into the mixture itself, and then sprinkled the other half on top of the mixture after pressing it down firmly on a baking sheet.
We let the mixture cool completely, then used a cookie cutter to cut out heart-shaped treats. Miss G liked helping with this job, but it required some serious muscle, so I had to help out.
It’s a simple twist, but so far the feedback’s been great… Strawberry crispy treat success! ☺
Healthier Crispy Rice Treats
Measure the brown rice syrup, cashew butter, ground freeze-dried strawberries, and maple syrup into a large pot. Warm over medium heat, stirring almost constantly. When the mixture is hot and liquidy (but not bubbling), add the vanilla, give it another quick stir, and remove the pot from the heat.
Add in the crispy rice cereal and mix well to ensure the cereal is evenly coated with the sticky mixture. Next, add in a 1/4 cup of the crumbled strawberries and stir to distribute them evenly.
Dump the mixture onto a parchment-line baking pan and press it down firmly. Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup of freeze-dried strawberries on top of the mixture, and gently press them down into place.
Allow the mixture to cool completely (or almost completely). Use a cookie cutter to cut out heart-shaped treats.
Enjoy!
♥
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Today, while enjoying some downtime together as a family, I put together a quick and easy sugar cookie felt board set for Miss G… A sugar cookie cutting and decorating set. All it really required was a few sheets of the cheap {recycled from plastic bottles} felt, a pair of sharp scissors, a plastic cookie cutter, and about 40 minutes of {interrupted} time. Because Valentine’s Day is coming up, I went with a heart-shaped cutter, but any shape would be fun.
To start off, I traced the cookie cutter onto the tan felt several times, placing them as I’d cut out cookies from rolled dough (making sure to leave a decent amount of space between each). The only tricky thing is that in order to keep your ‘rolled dough’ piece intact, you have to very carefully cut the shapes out without cutting through the borders.
Here’s what you should have when your shapes have all been cut out.
Then I quickly rounded the edges to make the rolled dough piece look a little bit more realistic.
Next, I cut out smaller hearts in different colours (and two sizes) to act as the frosting.
The last {and easiest} job was creating ‘candy sprinkles’ by chopping up thin strips of felt.
Miss was dying to get her hands on her new game, and began placing the cookies into the dough immediately.
Then it was straight to cutting them out using her cookie cutter.
Next up – the best part… Decorating!
Almost as much fun as the real thing… If only felt cookies tasted delicious. ☺
You can find our easy and inexpensive felt board tutorial here and some of our other felt board games here.
♥
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After putting together our ‘Will you be my Valen-slime?’ favours this afternoon, Miss G and I got out a few things and put together a really simple Valentine-themed slime sensory tray.
Slime is just one of those things that never gets old. Miss G’s spent quite a lot of time playing with it in the past, but was every bit as thrilled to play with it again today.
Her favourite part of today’s set up was definitely the heart-shaped cookie cutters. She’d imprint a bunch of hearts, watch them slowly melt away, and then loudly exclaim, “MAMA! THEY DISAPPEARED!!” before making more.
My favourite part was that because this batch turned out just a tad firmer than our last, there was zero mess. It didn’t stick to her hands, it didn’t goop up the bowls and kitchen utensils, and it didn’t cling to her clothes. (A seemingly messy activity sans the mess = win!)
We left this out for most of the afternoon and evening, and Miss G came back to it again and again before it finally had to be sealed up just before dinner. But before that happened, she wanted a guarantee that her tray and container of slime would be left out and ready for her to enjoy first thing the next morning.
Okay, so not the most traditional of Valentine’s Day treats, but when you ask a two year old what she wants to give her friends for Valentine’s, you have to be open to the suggestions. And those just happen to be heart wands and sparkly slime this time around.
Luckily, fun-to-play-with slime is a cinch to make and requires ingredients we always have around the house. Plus, we’re slime experts after whipping up 50+ slime treats this past Halloween.
Detailed instructions can be found here, but basically all you have to do is mix the glue, glitter, food colouring, and some of the water together…
And the other bit of water with the Borax separately.
Then pour the two mixtures together, knead it together a bit…
And watch oozy gooey slime form. It’s honestly so easy that Miss G can do almost everything (save the measuring) on her own.
For packaging, we like using these 125 ml mason jars because they’re the perfect size and can be reused for something else afterwards (plus they’re pretty cute!)
Filling the jars with was Miss G’s favourite part of the process this time around, especially when she discovered that she could create all kinds of silly noises by forcing the slime down into the jars.
Though she’d asked for red slime with red sparkles, this is what our finished product looks like {even after using a half a bottle of liquid food colouring}. Luckily the pink and red combo is perfect for the occasion and Miss G was pleased with how it turned out.
For the tops, we created simple paper circle inserts that include a little ‘Valen-slime’ saying and a sparkly red heart. Here are a few close ups…
‘Be mine, Valen-slime.’
‘Be my Valen-slime.’
‘Will you be my Valen-slime?’
Surely we’re the first ever people to give out slime on a holiday centred around love and friendship, but who wants to be run of the mill anyways?
Want to make your own? Download our printables here:
Printable Valentine’s Day Slime Favour Labels
Sparkly Slime
(This is essentially the exact same recipe we used last time, but in a bigger batch. This recipe yields 24 – 26 mason jars of slime – perfect for a class of kids – or in our case, 12 mason jars and a big batch to use for sensory play.)
This morning Gracen and I made one of our go-to breakfasts… Eggs in a hole. Except we always make ours with a fun shape instead of a plain old circle and then change the name just a tad. ☺ On this morning’s menu? Hearts in a hole.
I love this breakfast because it’s so easy, but it’s more fun than just plain eggs and toast. Plus Grae gobbles it up every time and all you really need is eggs, bread, a little bit of oil, and a cookie cutter of some sort.
This is really so simple that it doesn’t warrant instruction. Just place the cookie cutter in the middle of the bread…
And really push down.
Then place the bread, along with the cut out in an oiled pan warmed over medium heat and carefully crack the egg into the hole. Because we like our eggs cooked hard, we cover the pan right away.
When the white appears cooked through, flip everything over and let it cook a couple more minutes.
That’s it – breakfast is served. And today, just for fun, we added strawberry hearts too. (This meal may just have to be repeated on Valentine’s Day.)
♥
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Today Gracen and I whipped up a batch of what is easily her most loved treat in the entire world – our homemade version of the classic ‘fishy crackers’. Though I’ve shared this recipe before, I thought I’d share it again as we did things a teeny bit differently this time around… Plus, this heart-shaped version would make a perfect treat for Valentine’s Day.
First off, our ingredients… We used the usuals, but tried using a coarse stone ground wholewheat flour, replaced the cheddar with Colby and fresh parmesan, and added some basil into our spice mix.
Then my little helper dumped everything together.
Instead of mixing everything in our mixer like we have in the past, this time we did it in the food processor I got for my birthday. It definitely allowed the dough to come together more easily, and as guessed, adding a touch of water wasn’t necessary in the food processor.
With all of the ingredients well mixed, we dumped everything out onto our workspace and used our hands to form it into a large mass.
Then we patted it down by hand, covered it with parchment, and rolled it out nice and thin.
It must be all the talk about Valentine’s Day festivities, because Grae chose a heart-shaped cookie cutter this time around.
We cut out endless hearts, carefully lifted them with the flat edge of a butter knife, and transferred them onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.
We popped them in the oven, and in no time, we had crispy, tender crackers that are full of flavour and free of preservatives.
See our original recipe here.
Wholewheat Cheese Crakers
Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine all ingredients and gently form dough into a ball.
Sandwich dough between two layers of parchment and roll it out to 1/8 of an inch thick. Form shapes with a cookie cutter, dipping it in flour from time to time if needed. Gently transfer crackers to a parchment-lined baking sheet using the flat edge of a butter knife if needed.
Bake the crackers for 12 to 15 minutes, or until they are just barely browned at the edges. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
Enjoy!
♥
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In addition to our annual Valentine’s Day tea, Gracen and I have a couple of other Valentine’s parties and classes to attend this year. And since we don’t do the whole candy thing just yet, it means getting a little bit more creative with the ‘treats’ she hands out. When I asked her what she’d like to give her friends, she responded with Valentine’s slime (thanks I’m sure to our Halloween version for her ballet class friends) and heart wands (thanks to a Kiwi Crate package we received from our most recent PBK story time). And because both take a little bit of prep work, we started early… More time left over to figure out what we’ll bring for the 30+ kiddos in her Strong Start class, right?
These little wands are beautiful and easy to make, and although some may think they’re a little ‘girly’, we believe that hearts and magic are for everyone. ☺
Here are the materials we used for the project… Wooden dowels, adhesive glitter foam sheets, acrylic paint, a paint brush, and some ribbon. The best part is that we picked up all of these things at our local dollar store, so not only were they inexpensive, but we only had to make one stop – always nice with a toddler in tow.
First off, we started the project by painting our wooden dowels. Miss G does not always enjoy having her hands covered in paint, so we attached clothespins to the ends of the dowels so she could rotate them as she painted without painting her fingers. When she declared a dowel done, I went over the stick with a couple of quick strokes in order to smooth out the globs.
Then, because the tips were not painted where the clothespins were, I was able to stick the dowels into chunks of {gingerbread} play dough to dry upright.
A couple of days later, when our paint was good and dry (it actually only takes about an hour), we came back to our project. We started by drawing a heart shape onto a piece of cardboard and cutting it out to use as a tracer.
Next, using our newly-made tracer, we traced hearts onto the backs of our foam sheets. Gracen was happy to do the first few, and let me do the others when it came to this job.
With some strategic placement, we were able to fit 4 hearts onto each of our foam sheets, but of course it depends on the size of your tracer and the size of your foam sheets.
Next, we cut out the hearts.
Now to actually assemble a wand, you need two foam hearts, a wooden dowel, and a cute little helper.
This right here was Grae’s favourite part of the whole project… Peeling the backings off of the hearts!
With one heart shaped peeled, we placed the sticky side up on our work surface and placed the unfinished end of our dowel in the centre of the heart, up maybe an inch or inch and a half from the bottom.
Then Grae peeled the backing off of another heart, and we carefully placed it on top of the dowel, making sure to line up the hearts as closely as we could.
With the heart in a good position, Grae pressed everything together firmly.
Next up – the ribbon! We chose 3 colours, looped them in half, and cut them slightly shorter than the length of our exposed dowel .
Then we stacked them up and tied them onto the dowel at the base of the heart, giving them a little tug to coax them into falling downwards nicely.
Then, with a different, slightly narrower ribbon, we tied a bow right above the previous ribbon knot…
And finished off all of the ribbon ends with v snips.
And there you have it. Sparkly heart-shaped wands for Miss G’s little friends.
♥
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One of the things I’ve been doing to encourage independent play {and creativity} in recent months is keeping a fun, inviting, and well-stocked ‘creative table’ for Gracen. All it is is her little table (or sometimes a tray or even the floor) with an assortment of materials available for her free use. Sometimes it’s paper and glue and embellishments (like in our Christmas tree creative table), sometimes it’s play dough and cookie cutters and decorations, and sometimes it’s a tray of baking soda with droppers and dishes of different coloured vinegars. Naturally, some creative table set-ups are more open-ended and some lend themselves more to a finished product, but either way, the purpose is for Gracen to explore materials, experiment, and create freely while enjoying the process.
Today, Miss G and I did a little bit of shopping for this year’s Valentine’s Day projects (yes, we’re thinking about it already), and though I intended on holding off on a Valentine’s themed creative table for a while yet, my little lady popped up from her afternoon nap and her first words were, “I want to craft now. Grae Grae gets her new craft things!” And that was that. A Valentine’s creative table it was.
Together we gathered up all sorts of pink and red craft supplies… Smelly markers, sparkly foam shapes, bingo dabbers, stamps and a stamp pad, doilies, construction paper hearts, and some glue.
As she does with most creative projects, Grae dove right in.
The immediate favourite? The foam stickers. She plower through the initial stash and asked for more right away.
Throughout the afternoon and evening, she came and went as she pleased, adding to her pieces as she wished.
Here are a few of the pieces she declared ‘finished’…
While it won’t be around until the big day (I try to change up our creative table supplies every 4 to 7 days or so), there’s no doubt it will be enjoyed, added to, and revisited for several days to come.
♥
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Today we hosted Gracen’s second mamas and munchkins Valentine’s tea. It was a very different scene than last year’s party where us Kuwait mamas sat around a blanket of rolly polly babies while chatting and sipping on hot coffee. This morning was wonderfully chaotic, and by the end of it, I think all of us mommies had worked up a sweat. Just goes to show how much things change in one year. Here are some photos from this morning’s mamas and munchkins tea, complete with three curious and busy toddlers and one adorable 6 month old.
The decor:
Sidewalk chalk art.
The mantle.
Pink tulips, a free Valentine’s print, a paint chip garland,and a candy bar we didn’t even get to because there were so many other sweets.
Gracen’s bedroom door decorated with hearts she painted and hung {mostly} by herself.
Mama treats:
Dark and white chocolate covered strawberries.
Raspberry white chocolate scones.
Fruit salsa and cinnamon sugar chips (adapted from this recipe).
Pain au chocolat.
Cookies from Mozart Bakery. (There was also the most delicious dip with strawberries and heart-shaped fruit cut outs, but somehow I missed taking a photo. Shoot.)
Munchkin treats:
Fruit leather hearts.
Melon hearts.
Mini heart-shaped margherita pizzas.
Activities:
Mess-free finger painting station.
Mural wall.
The munchkins:
Jackson.
Ainsley.
Keagan.
And of course this little pizza monster.
The action:
Snack time for Ainsley and Jackson.
Drool never looked so cute!
Finger painting toddlers.
Obsessed with Keagan’s soft blanket. In fact, she loved it so much that she insisted I take her ponytails out so she could roll around on it without her head hurting.
Checking things out.
Recess time at the school across the street looks pretty cool.
Baby love.
Team cleaning.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
♥
I remember loving making Valentine’s Day cards for my friends when I was little, so I was very excited to make them with Gracen for the first time this year… Here’s what she shared with her little friends and cousins today:
‘Have a colourful Valentine’s Day!’ cards with homemade heart-shaped crayons for her little friends. (We cheated a little bit and borrowed this already made card.)
A bigger version of the same card for her cousins Korbin, Chayton, and Kinslee.
And also for the cousins – felt heart hair clips for the little girls…
And felt tic-tac-toe boards for the big boys.
And something special for Papa too…
A handmade card card stamped with her little hands and feet.
♥
Gracen and I had a jammed-packed fun-filled Valentine’s Day today and it all started out like this.
With heart-shaped pancakes, strawberry slices, and fresh whipped cream. Gracen was in heaven.
After breakfast, Grae opened her little Valentine’s Day bag from Bradley and I.
Inside she found a new photo book called Gracen Loves…
A pretty little shirt (that she helped pick out last week)…
And a new set of felt hair clips made with love by Mama.
With the help of her Papa, she got dressed and ready for the day while I zipped around the house doing a few last minute things for the tea.
This morning when she woke up Papa for breakfast, she marched into the bedroom and proudly presented Bradley with this card she made. (From the bottom of my heart…)
(To the tips of my toes… I love YOU!)
And before he left for work, Grae snuggled in closely and they danced around the living room for a few minutes. ♥
Before her guests arrived, Gracen tested out the mess-free finger paint station we set up on the front window.
After a wonderfully busy (and slightly crazy) Valentine’s tea (separate post to come) and a much needed nap, Grae had an afternoon snack of strawberries and fresh whipped cream.
And then we headed to the park to get some fresh air and enjoy the day’s last hour of sunshine.
When we got home, my sous chef and I started working on dinner.
This little lady loves helping in the kitchen. Not to mention that having her cook with me has solved our recent “witching hour” dinner making disasters.
For Mama and Grae – chicken, sundried tomato, roasted garlic, and feta pizza. (I’m embarrassed to say that Grae ate 5 – yes, FIVE – mini heart-shaped pizzas at her little party today and I had already planned pizza for dinner too. BIG helping of steamed green veggies needed on the side!)
And for Papa – prosciutto and caramelized onion pizza.
And if we hadn’t overdone the heart thing yet, heart-shaped bananas for dessert.
Overall, a wonderful day with my little valentine. ♥
Tomorrow morning Gracen is having a handful of little friends (and their mamas) over for a Valentine’s Day tea, so this afternoon was all about party prep. We ran errands, picked up some groceries, cleaned house, and got things ready for her pint-sized guests.
Gracen helped out by testing out the mural paper I hung on the wall while she was napping.
Then we headed outside to do our usual sidewalk chalk thing.
Gracen is all about hearts and stars right now, so she was quite pleased that we were filling our walk with all hearts of all shapes and sizes.
Now let’s just hope it doesn’t rain overnight!