Last Minute Printable Valentines

Love printable Valentine's Day cards by Bunny Cakes.

Don’t give up if you haven’t had a chance to get a card for your Valentine! Here are some gorgeous printable valentines from Bunny Cake. Her lovely designs make your home-made valentine classy and professional. Plus, you can do it all from your computer! Click here for the PDf file and instructions.

Adorable cards you can print for free.

Photos by Bunny Cakes.

Get Ready for Spring with these Home-made Sun Jars

Solar Powered Home Made Sun Jars

I know it’s still cold outside. I mean, Jeez. There WAS snow this week. But the days are starting to get longer and the sun is starting to shine to break through the gloomy Pacific Northwest sky. It makes me feel hopeful that spring and summer are just around the corner, and if you are anything like me, it might take a few months to organize and make enough of these to put around your deck or patio or even hang from the frence for those crisp nights when you WILL be sitting outside enjoying the beauty. Once again, this craft by Not Martha is a fave for me because it takes less than 5 items to make! Woohoo! This greatly increases the chances that I might actually make it!

Not Martha does a great job of breaking down the instructions for these Homemade Sun Jars based on the Sun Jar design by Tobias Wong. For your less than 5 items supply list, you’ll need a small Ikea glass jar, one solar garden light, glass frosting spray, and some Blue Tack. This great project will give you a solar-powered warm glow on your deck, porch or patio all summer-long. Save power! Make Home-made Sun Jars!

Photo by Not Martha.

Make Fairy Flower Lights

Make Fairy Flower Lights from Recycled Egg Cartons

This is an amazing repurposing craft! How adorable are these lights and you’ll be repurposing those egg cartons at the same time. This easy craft from Espirit Cabane has such a short suppply list (less than 5) that you probably already have lying around your house: egg cartons, scissors, a string of LED christmas lights, and a hole-punch (optional). What a creative way to repurpose egg cartons and make something lovely for your bedroom or to drape in your kid’s room for some twinkly fairy lights. Get the full instructions here.

Photo by Espirit Cabane.

Measure Up with this Stylish Growth Chart

With three kids 4 and under, I had scoured the stores for a cute growth chart. I didn’t really want a big clunky wall hanging. I just couldn’t seem to find something stylish and cute that would work easily in the kids small room. My husband had been tracking their height changes over the last couple of years on the door frame to the kitchen, but I wanted something a little more portable in case we ever moved. Besides, I also wanted to paint the door frame. So, I settled for a peel-n-stick wall decoration from Target.

Stylish Growth Chart by Bold and Noble

I WISH I had found this sooner. This stylish growth chart by Bold and Noble is graphic and beautiful. Bold and Noble’s designs are hand pulled screen prints made in England by wife/husband team, Jane Tobitt and David Wardle. Gorgeous.

The Perfect Frosting Recipe

The perfect frosting recipe has eluded me thus far. I have tried several different recipes for buttercream frosting, but HELLO? How hard can it be? Butter, sugar, a little milk, a little vanilla and lots of whipping. I CANNOT make frosting. I’ve tried several times. It all started with the Christmas Gingerbread houses. I promised the Monkey and Puppy that we’d make gingerbread houses, and it seemed that I could definitely make something much tastier than the boxed sets sold at Michael’s. Seriously. I made FOUR batches of frosting that Saturday. I tried butter. I tried margerine. I tried regular granulated sugar. I tried confectioner’s suger. None of them turned “light and fluffy” like the recipes said. I even tried a recipe that involved cooking flour and water to make a paste to add to the frosting. Nothing light and fluffy happened in my mixing bowl. One batch actually started to liquify into little beads of butter when left to warm to room temperature. I broke down and bought a couple of containers of the Duncan Hines frosting.

Perfect cupcakes for Valentine's Day

But a few days ago, I came across these pictures of luscious cupcakes on BunnyCakes that made me swoon with the cuteness of it all. The perfect swirls of frosting on these little cakes. I don’t even like eating cupcakes that much. But my kids love them, and I want to make these luscious little cakes that will be envy of all the moms at preschool. It even made me ecstatic to know that she wasn’t even baking the cake from scratch, but was using boxed cake mixes. My kind of girl! But the most IMPORTANT part was that she shared her secret for the ICING.

Bunny Cakes makes a luscious cupcake in a cup.

Turns out the icing is the recipe used by Georgetown Cupcakes, a gourmet cupcake bakery in Washington, D.C. Their recipe was featured on Martha Stewart and includes using cream cheese for this incredibly smooth frosting. I love cream cheese frosting. So, I will definitely be trying this recipe this weekend and making some cupcakes with boys.

UPDATE: I did definitely try this recipe and it is my go-to recipe for icing. Here’s the recipe which makes enough for about 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature  (I pop mine in the microwave for a few seconds to soften – but not too much!)
• 4 cups confectioners’ sugar (sifted if you’re fancy and have that kind of time)
• 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 6 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

How to:

Put all the ingredients into a nice-sized mixing bowl and use your electric mixer to combine all the ingredients until well-combined and smooth. Add food coloring and mix until well-blended and desired color. Paste food coloring works best if you want a vibrant color and it doesn’t affect the consistency of the frosting.

P.S. The BEST boxed cake mix that I’ve used so far is Pillsbury’s Funfetti. The kids love the color spots and it is a soft, moist, yummy cake for less than a dollar per pox. I love this cake, and I don’t even like cake.

Cupcake photos by Bunny Cakes.

Teaching Your Preschooler the Value of Money with a Chore Chart

There is a parenting debate about whether you should teach your children that they should do chores simply because they are a member of the household or if they should get compensation or paid for doing chores. If you go one way, your child might think that they are entitled to receiving a certain amount of spending money regardless of their contributions to the house. If you go the other way, your child thinks that they should be paid for everything they do and don’t learn that they have obligations and duties as a member of a household.

After considering both sides of this issue, I think that allowances should be contingent on work performed for these reasons:

• Children should learn that you need to earn money. That it comes with hard work and dedication. That it takes effort to work, earn, and save enough money to purchase what you want. Yes, they should do things as a member of the family, but it is also useful to show them that they can earn some rewards for their efforts.
• Children learn how to manage the money they earn.

To test my theory (although I won’t be able to judge for sure if this works until my children are adults with savings accounts), I’ve decided to implement a chore chart for my four-year-old son, Jonas, to use. My middle child is quite three years old; so, this really hasn’t made any sense to him, but Jonas is VERY excited by this idea.

We printed out a chore chart from Simplemom.net, cut out the chores, and pasted them on. Then, Jonas happily performed a variety of the chores in exchange for a check mark in the box (which he was allowed to make as well). Each check mark could be exchanged for a nickel or 5 minutes of playing a video game or computer game (redeemable only only on certain days and in specific quantities – e.g. 30 minutes).

The chore chart is working lovely so far. Jonas is excited to do his chores – even asks to do them! He happily marks his sheet and waits anxiously for the weekend to redeem them. His first week he traded half for time to play his favorite video game and half for coins he counted into his piggy bank. This week he traded his points in for money to purchase a small toy.

Try it with your child and let me know how it works for you! If you want a chart you can just print out and skip the cutting and pasting, try FlipFlop and Applesauce’s chore chart.

Make Paper Hearts

Make paper hearts for a lovely display.

Here’s another great inexpensive idea for Valentine’s Day. Using pieces of paper that you might already have in your craft stash, you can easily make these paper hearts to decorate your space. Sweet and inexpensive. You only need pretty paper, scissors, and tape or glue. Go to Flip Flops and Applesauce for the complete instructions.

To display, punch a hole in the corner and string several along on a pretty ribbon or some string or yarn. Hang in front of your window, on your bulletin board, or on a cubicle wall for some love no matter where you are!

Photo by Flip Flops and Applesauce.

Easy Valentine’s Day Treat

Easy to make Valentine's Day recipe for all ages

Looking for an easy Valentine’s Day craft or project? This recipe from Make and Takes is a winner in my book. It includes less than five ingredients, doesn’t involve much cooking, and is a project that my preschool kids can do with me. All you’ll need is pretzels, chocolate to melt (white chocolate and milk chocolate), wax paper, toothpicks, and sprinkles. Use food coloring in the white chocolate to get that lovely pink or try mixing it with some blue, yellow, or green for some fun spring colors.

Simple ingredients you probably already have in your pantry.

Although most of these will probably get eaten by the kids as soon as they are done, you can save some to pack away in some little bags or little boxes to give away as an inexpensive teacher’s gift or a gift to any friend! Click here for the full recipe and how-to-do-it instructions.

Wrap it up for the perfect little V-Day gift for a teacher, friend, office mate, or neighbor.

Entertaining Your Kids with Paper Crafts

With the economy in a slump, I’ve got my eye on the budget very closely. All those trips to Target are getting nipped in the bud, but my preschool age sons are not interested in saving for a rainy day. How does one stay-at-home mom keep the kids busy without paying out a fortune for crafts, games, and toys?

Enter the world of paper craft. When I was a little kid, I had a paper doll book. These days, they have intricate paper origami and paper craft for everything imaginable. The other day, my four-year-old, Jonas, wanted to buy a Millenium Falcon he saw at the store that cost around $150. I promptly said, “No, maybe we can make one at home.” I kind of thought I would just print out a picture of it for him, but then my ever-helpful husband found a papercraft to create a suprisingly realistic version of the space craft.

Image by SF Movie Paper Craft

Of course, this is NOT a craft for young children and is really designed for a Star Wars loving adult with plenty of time to construct. But I did put one together for Jonas over a couple of evenings and he thought it was COOL! And it only cost me a few sheets of cardstock, printer ink, and some elbow grease. Download your own Millenium Falcon papercraft here. You can make a much simpler origami version by watching this video.

Again, my helpful husband also directed me to a few much simpler paper craft characters. Not quite the impact of the paper Millenium Falcon, but much easier to make with a couple of preschoolers tugging at you. Cubeecraft.com boasts quite an array of characters ranging from Spiderman, Super Mario, Darth Vader, and even Barack Obama. Try it.