Fun with Food - Apple Tortoise

Struggling to get the kids to eat their fruit and veg? You aren't alone!

Carving food into something more appealing really helps to encourage them to tuck in though and that's exactly what we have been doing this week with the Thomas Kitchen knives from Tesco!

The 5 knife set, worth over £100 and complete with block, is really useful for dicing and chopping but with seriously sharp blades they make transforming ordinary food into something a little more exciting easy too...

Tortoise Apple

• Slice your apple in half straight through the core.

5 Ways To Get Your Kids Involved To Organise Their Birthday Parties

Organising a child’s birthday party can be quite complex. That’s why it can be useful to get your children involved, after all it is their party. Rather than trying to find time to get things organised and prepared by yourself you can do it with them. The following article lists five easy ways that you can include your children; all of them are great ways to keep them entertained, occupied and receive a helping hand. It almost sounds good to be true.

Designing Invites

Kids birthday invites can be expensive but there are methods to save you money. Why not pull your resources and hand-make them, your resources being your children. They are full of creativity and also require amusement. Help yourself by helping them. Arts and crafts are a great way to not only amuse them but also provide them with a creative outlet. The only supplies you will really need is coloured paper or card, glitter and stickers. Here is a handy tip; print the invites out on the coloured paper and then let your children decorate. This will save you time and insure the invites are all legible.

Guest List

This one is quite obvious; of course your child will want to tell which friends to invite. Take this opportunity to get them to practise their hand writing and spelling. This is a great way for them to get the practice they desperately need without it being viewed as homework. You may have to check over the list and confirm the names of some of the guests but this should only take a few minutes rather than hours of guess work. Make sure to show your child any corrections, how else will they learn?

Preparing Food

Most party foods are simple and don’t demand much cooking time. What and excellent way to expose your child to cooking skills and gain an apprentice. Obviously they won’t be able to do everything so you will need to supervise. If you don’t feel comfortable giving them too much responsibility then they can plate the food, making funny faces and other odd shapes.

Planning Games

They can be your own critique, telling you what games will pop and which will flop. You can also ask them how long they would like to spend playing each game. For pass the parcel and the piñata you can make them yourself. More arts and craft and more activities to keep your children occupied.

Cleaning up

A mother can dream. If you can come up with some kind of compensation or turn it into a game you should be able to receive some kind of help. All you can do is ask.

They grow too fast

Next month Jamster will be turning 7, I'm not sure how that happened so quickly but I have begun to plan his day and picked up a few presents for him already... mostly Marvel for my little Spider Man fan! 

Thankfully it is a teacher training day so he won't be at school and we can spend the day having fun.

I still remember his first birthday at my parent's house, I had moved back in temporarily after I split with the Mini Me's dad, and how he had very little idea about what was going on but loved the attention regardless! He probably had more fun eating, ripping paper and playing with empty boxes than he did his actual gifts but I think the majority of kids are the same when they are very small. 

I made a buffet and had family over to celebrate too...

He has always loved to suck two fingers and remains to do so even now when he is tired, something that hasn't changed! He has however developed into a rather cheeky yet intelligent and cute little dude over the years.

His birthday's 2nd-6th

Do you feel that time goes to quickly when you have children?

I'm linking this with...

Reasons to be happy

I'm really glad I took part in this weekly link up to concentrate on the good things in life and I continue to do so into a new year - 2013. It can often be hard to see the positive when there can be so much hurt, stress and loss but I find it really uplifting and it makes me appreciate the things that make me smile, however small, that little bit more.

My reasons to be happy

We welcomed in the new year surrounded by loved ones; parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings which was really lovely. My Grandma came along too and I was surprised she managed to stay awake to hear the fireworks go off at midnight, as did the Mini Mes for the first time. They are usually tucked in and snoring away so it was nice that they were involved too enjoying everyone's company and the delicious buffet meal my mum had prepared. We were told it was fancy dress but it was only Jamster that wanted to wear costume!

Blogging has given me some really great opportunities over the past few months and for that I am grateful. We have enjoyed some lovely days out as a family and even a weekend to Blackpool in 5 star luxury reviewing 7 Merlin attractions. I already have some goodies on the agenda to review this year and I won a luxury spa trip during December for my Reindeer Pops.

Having things to look forward to always keeps me smiling and we are already thinking of holidays for this year. It looks like we will have some camping trips when the weather improves, some UK breaks and a trip abroad. I need sunshine!

What reasons to you have to be cheerful this week?

5 Children's Party Theme Ideas

If you are throwing a birthday party for your child it is sometimes hard to find inspiration for the theme. You obviously want it to be kid friendly as well as being extremely accessible, in that you want both boys and girls to be able to participate. The best place to start is often, to simply ask your child. Children generally go through phases of deep interest in one subject and it is really nice if you can aim your theme to have their newest interest as the key element.

If you really are stuck for ideas and your child seems like no help at all, or perhaps you want to surprise your child so consulting them would ruin the wonder, here are some ideas to get you on your way.

• Underwater Theme – Under water is great, the decorations are easy for a start, just a lot of blue crepe paper and shiny material as well as maybe some fish shapes cut out from orange card. Both boys and girls can get involved and there are endless possibilities for costume ideas from sea creatures and mermaids to sailors and divers.

• Power Rangers – This is perfect for a smaller party, one where all of the children have access to the costumes. Power Rangers is better for a boy’s party but since there are female characters too it is not an exclusively male theme.

• Alice In Wonderland – A mad hatter’s tea party is just the ticket for a children’s party steeped in wonder and fairy tale magic. You might have to do a little more on the decoration front with this one but you if you really turn your home into a wonderland it will be a party never forgotten buy your children. But to make sure things don’t get too out of hand, why not involve yourself in the party as the host, there are plenty of adult mad hatters fancy dress costumes at Fancy Dress Ball.

• The Very Hungry Caterpillar – Another children’s classic, a Very Hungry Caterpillar theme is a really great call for attempting to make children more interested in healthy food. The party can surround the types of food the caterpillar eats throughout the book and your party games can be on the same theme.

• Toy Story – Toy Story is a classic for both adults and children alike. There is no one who has seen this film who doesn't hold a special place in their hearts for it. There are loads of different characters to choose from and both boys and girls can pick and choose from the trilogy of amazing films.

*This is a featured post*

Halloween Party Food

We like to decorate the house and make it spooky ready for the Trick or Treaters each October and we love to have our own party with a themed buffet too.

Hopefully these ideas from previous years will help to inspire you when creating your own nibbles for the ghosts and ghouls in your haunted house this Halloween!




Coffin Sandwiches

These are really easy to make by trimming the edges into the shape of a coffin with a knife and using icing pens to write RIP







Strawberry ghosts

You can still get the little ones to squeeze in one of their 5 a day by decorating strawberries in white chocolate. We warm the chocolate to melt it, dunk the strawberries in and us an icing pen to add the faces on once they have set in the fridge.

Melon brain

By peeling the outside from a watermelon and slicing out sections carefully with a knife you can create a brain for your dinner table. Another healthy option too!

Pumpkin snacks

By placing carrot sticks and orange coloured crisps into a circle and using dips for the eyes and mouth you can make a pumpkin out of food to enjoy!

Burnt hand pizza

Using a cookie cutter you can make pizza a  little more exciting by having it in the shape of scary hands.

What Halloween food do you have?

You can link up any Halloween posts here and there is a chance to win some Halloween goodies here too!

October

With October comes Halloween, my second favourite celebration of the year! I love Halloween crafts and spooky food and of course dressing up and trick or treating close neighbours and family.

I was never allowed to get involved as a child despite really wanting to, but I like to let the Mini Mes have fun with the event and I have done so since they were tiny. I remember Jamster dressed as a bat at around 7 months crawling across the lounge floor trying to get at the sweets tub!


2009

2010

2011

...and the Mr and I like to join in too!

I normally have some of the Mini Mes friends over for a party and buffet dinner and then the Mr and I like to go on a night out with friends all dressed up too (this also involves a few glasses of wine!). I've not really thought about this years costumes as yet but I will be soon.

What does October mean to you? Do you enjoy Halloween?

If you have written a Halloween themed post you can share it here!

Jubilee Jam Tarts

Having a Jubilee party? These Jubilee themed jam tarts are delicious and would look great laid out on your picnic blanket to share and enjoy. They are very simple to make so the kids can help out too!

You can add crowns to make them Jubilee themed!

Ingredients
5oz plain flour
2.5oz butter
1/2 tsp salt
Jam
Egg yolk (optional)

Makes around 12 tarts

Method

• Preheat the oven to around 180 degrees.
• Rub the butter in with the flour and salt until it looks like breadcrumbs and then add a small amount of water (around 2/3tbsp) to form a stiff dough.
• Flour the surface lightly and roll out the dough to around 3mm. Cut into rounds with a 7cm cutter and place in a cupcake tin.
• Add a tsp of jam to the centre of the rounds
• With the leftover pastry dough cut out crowns and place on top of the jam.
• If you want to give the tarts a shine you can brush them in egg yolk at this point.
• Cook for around 15 minutes.
• Scoff - Cooled or lovely warm with ice cream!

Have you made anything special or the Jubilee?