Crafting with Mod Podge!

Yesterday was my sweet little Kiki's 3rd birthday! The theme was cupcakes!

 We had her party at a place with a coffee shop and a large Gym for the kids to play. For a party favor we wanted to give out balls to everyone and we wanted to incorporate the cupcake theme. So I brought out one of my favorite craft supplies called Mod Podge! I love this stuff and I use it ALL the time! If you haven't heard of it, you are missing out! It is a non-toxic, waterbase all-in-one glue, sealer, and finish! This means you can use it like glue then paint it over top and seal it to whatever you are making. Mod Podge comes with different finishes too: matte, gloss, and even glitter! HERE is their website so you can find out more!

So this is what we did to make cupcake balls.

We colored cute cupcakes that I printed out off the computer for free. HERE'S the link if you want them also. They are so cute and fun to color!

 I cut out the cupcakes and then painted Mod Podge on the back. Use it like you would use glue!

 I placed the cupcakes over the ugly bar code on the ball, then painted the Mod Podge all over top of the cupcakes.

 Here is what kiki's ball looked like right after I painted Mod Podge all over the top! Let it sit till fully dry.

 I like the gloss finish Mod Podge, it gives a nice shine to your crafts! Here is Kiki playing with her birthday cupcake ball at her party! Completely sealed for hours of fun! =)

 The kids with their  cupcake balls! =)

*Since it's halloween time, i'll give you a few other ideas of how I've used Mod Podge. We painted some of our pumpkins with acrylic paint and if anyone else has done this then you know that if you leave these pumpkins outside then the paint washes away with the rain. After the acrylic paint was dry, I sealed it with Mod Podge so we still have our fun painted pumpkins sitting outside! I also used fun Halloween paper and cut out the first letter to my children's names and sealed them on little pumpkins. Also, I let the kids use Halloween stickers on their pumpkins and sealed them on with Mod Podge!

You can do so much with this stuff!

I will tell you one other thing I did when I first got married. I bought an old lamp shade at a thrift store. I printed out a bunch of black and white photos of my husband and me and then Mod Podged them all over the lamp shade. To bad I don't have a picture to show you but it was a cool unique lamp that hardly cost me anything! =)

Halloween Craft: Balloon Ghosts

Ghost Balloons are an easy cheap fun craft to make with your child to decorate your house or just to play with! It's so nice to have decorations that kids could just grab off the wall, throw around a bit, and then hang back up! If they get destroyed during playtime, just make more! =) All you will need is:

• a white plastic grocery bag
• a white balloon
• a sharpie marker
• a piece of string (about 3 feet long)

Here is my ALL white plastic grocery bag...

 If you can actually find a plastic bag with no logos on it, you got lucky and you just have to cut off the handles at the bottom.

Most peoples plastic bags are from Target or Walmart so you will need two bags! Cut off the handles on the bottom, as pictured above, then cut all of the logo side out! Repeat this step with another plastic bag. Discard the logo side of the bags and just keep you two plain white sides.

Then cut bag into strips about an inch thick. They don't have to be perfect! You can even let older kids do this part! Stop a few inches from the top of the bag. Then set aside.

 Blow up your white balloon and have you child draw a spooky face on it with a black sharpie, Tie side up!

 Tape your plastic bag around the bottom of the balloon, tie a string to the top, and there you have it! A fun halloween toy/decoration!

Here is a video of my daughter playing with her ghost balloon! Fun Times!

Cooking: Pumpkin swirl muffins

Here is my first post where I show you how I convert a normal recipe to make it a little more healthy for your family but just as YUMMY!

Pumpkin Swirl Muffins are a perfect blend of spicy pumpkin with a little swirl of cheesecake on top. My kind of muffin and a wonderful treat around the holidays! This recipe makes about 12 regular size muffins.

Muffins:

• 1 15oz can of pumpkin  (I used organic)
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil  (in this case you can also use olive or coconut oil)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar (There are MANY great substitutes for white sugar. I used Agave nectar which they now sell in most grocery stores but you might have to go to the health section. Stevia is a good natural choice or one of my favorites 100% Maple Syrup! You normally don't have to use as much as the recipe calls for so in this case I used 3/4 cup Agave Nectar.)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups all-pourpose flour (I blogged about white vs. 100% whole grain so you can understand why I would make different choices when it comes to this area and other options you have. I had Spelt flour on hand so I used= 1 1/2 cups Spelt flour. To make this Gluten free use Buckwheat flour)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Swirl filling:

• 8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature (For those of you who are Lactose intolerant like I am there is a great substitute for cream cheese made by Tofutti and is pictured below)
• 1 large egg yolk
• 5 tablespoons sugar (4 tablespoons of Agave nectar)
• 1/8 teaspoons vanilla extract

Crust:

• about 6 Graham crackers (Trader Joes has YUMMY Graham crackers made without high fructose corn syrup, pictured below)
• 3 tablespoons of butter (dairy free option : Earth balance)

Start by preheating your oven to 350F (180C)

Mix pumpkin, oil, and sugar (agave) together.

 Add eggs, one at a time, combining thoroughly after each.
add vanilla

 whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices in separate bowl.

 Slowly add flour mixture to liquids, combining thoroughly and scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula.

 Line you muffin tin with paper cups or grease.

 Here comes the fun part! Divide up the 6 graham crackers into ziplock bags and let the kids pound on them and make them into graham cracker crumbs! Heat up 3 tablespoons of butter in a bowl then mix in your graham cracker crumbs until moist.

 Evenly pour the crumbs in each muffin cup, then press firmly down to flatten on the bottom of the cup, making the crust!

 Then evenly pour your pumpkin muffin mix into each muffin cup.

 Now for the cheesecake swirl filling. Here is a picture of the cream cheese substitute I used.

 Mix together cream cheese, sugar(agave), egg yolk and vanilla until well combined.
I let my kids lick the beaters but you always have to be carful with this when raw egg is in the mixture!

Add a small spoonful of the cream cheese mixture on top of each muffin.

 Swirl with a skewer.

 Bake times:

• mini muffins : 20-25 min
• standard muffins: 25-30 min
• jumbo muffins: 30-40 min

You will know they are ready when toothpick or butter knife stuck in the middle comes out clean.

Here is a picture of finished product, NO white flour and NO white sugar and showing off the YUMMY graham cracker crust!

*Two things you could do to add to these muffins would be to sprinkle chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans) to the top of the muffins before baking or add a cup of dark chocolate chips to your pumpkin muffin mix, mix them in before separating out into muffin cups!

Stickers!

Stickers are so much fun! Most times I just have to pull out a few books of stickers, paper, and markers and my kids will be busy for at least a half an hour. Most of the time you can find books of stickers in the dollar section at Target or at Michaels! 

This is what happened today with the stickers! Forget the paper, lets put them all over our body! =)

HOMEMADE STICKERS

*Heres another idea: You can have your child cut out pictures in magazines and make their own stickers! All you need is 2 Tablespoons of any flavor Jello gelatin and 4 Tablespoons of hot water. Stir in a small bowl until gelatin is dissolved. Then paint on the back of your cut out pictures. Let dry, Gelatin side up, for an hour and your homemade stickers are ready! WARNING: these will taste good so make sure when you lick the back to apply them to paper, you don't lick ALL of the gelatin mixture off! =)

Open ended art

Craft Time doesn't always have to be so much work for mommy! Bring out what you have on hand like: Paper, Markers, Colored Pencils, Tape, Scissors, Toilet paper rolls, pipe cleaners, and even candy wrappers. Just let them create! The trick to your child staying at the table longer is all in the surrounding! Fix some hot coco, put on some music, and, the most important key, Create with them! This doesn't mean help them with their project! Do something you enjoy like scrap booking, drawing, or even bring out a puzzle. My son and I had a relaxing hour this afternoon creating together. He is very proud to show off his creation on my Blog. He calls it "Volcano, Snow, & Candy Corn Land"

Let their Imaginations soar! =)

Cooking: Chocolate Bowls!

Balloons are so much fun! If you are going to play the balloon game from my last post, that means you already have some in your house! All you will need for this project is:

1. thick balloons
2. chocolate for melting, any kind you want!
3. non stick spray
4. a needle/knife (I used the sharp end of a compass)
5. Parchment paper
6. Something to fill you bowl with (I give suggestions at the bottom)

Here is how you start! Let your kids have some fun washing the balloons as you blow them up! You know how much they love to play with soap and water!

 After you dry them off, spray the bottom with non stick spray!

 Now you want to melt your chocolate! We already had Almond Bark for a different project so that's what we used! A healthier option would be Dark Chocolate!

 After it's melts it time to dip your balloons! OK, now here is where I had a problem.... the pictures above show that we blew up water balloons but when dipped into the chocolate, they POPPED! To much heat for how thin they are! In a quick moment, I grabbed my large thicker party balloons and blew them to about the same size as the water balloons, washed, and sprayed them!

 Now we are back on track! Dip your balloons in your melted chocolate and just go about and inch up from the bottom of the balloon. set the on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

You can make as many of these as you want, I made about 10 balloons and there still was room on my cookie sheet for more! After you have them all dipped, put in fridge to cool. About 10 minutes later, bring them out and pop your balloons!

 Here is what it will look like! YUMMO!

 Because of the season, I am going pumpkin CRAZY so in ours we added a scoop of Pumpkin Ice cream!

 The best part about this is we brought it over to a friends house and got to share our sweet treat with them just for fun! That's what life's all about! Sharing in sweet moments with friends!

* Other ideas you could do with a white chocolate bowl is sorbet and fresh cut fruit! If you have a peanut butter chocolate fan, try using peanut butter chocolate chips for melting with chocolate ice cream inside. Most kids would probably go for a milk chocolate bowl, vanilla ice cream inside, and don't forget the sprinkles! For the healthiest option, how about a Dark Chocolate bowl with just fresh cut fruit!

****Check out this fun idea for Christmas Time****

Click HERE to see more!

Pop the Balloon Game!

I promised something fun! 

My son Brenden inspired me to do something with balloons! He had an idea to put little balls of play dough in a balloon. Its fun to play with and it makes cool sounds when you shake it! I wanted to make a game out of it so I surprised the kids with 3 packages of mini lego figures. If you have never seen these, its just different lego guys that come in a small bag, all in pieces! 

 Here are the three characters all in a pile, straight from their bags! I figured they would all be a good size to fit into little water balloons.

 Here is a picture of one of the pieces going into a little balloon.

 After the piece was mostly stuffed into the balloon, I stuck my balloon pump in there to get it blown up! The mini balloons WOULDN'T get blown up without a pump!!!

 This process took a little while but they were with me through the whole process because I was documenting for the Blog. If I were you, I would do the blowing up balloons by myself and then let the kids have a surprise when they play the game! They won't know what is inside!

 Put all the balloons in a pile. Count down and then they get to pop the balloons by sitting on them!

 The water balloons are so much easier to pop, especially if you have little kids playing! However, I had a little trouble fitting certain lego pieces into them so I added a couple large balloons in the mix.
Below you can actually see the legos inside the balloon that Brenden is about to pop!

 Here are the three lego guys we got, put together after the game!

Now, we played with Legos, but there are many ideas of things you can use to put inside the balloons! Since its Halloween time, you can put a single SMALL piece of wrapped candy or a spider ring inside!
If you are doing this for a birthday party you can use small party favors like silly bands and other fun prizes, just make sure its something they can't break when sitting on the balloon!

*My suggestion after playing this game is little water balloons for younger children. It's not fun if they are struggling to pop the balloon. Save the large balloons for bigger (school age) children. Part of the fun is watching them struggle to pop the balloons! =)

Check out this short video of my kids playing the game!