Fiesta Salad - good ways to get kids to eat salad!

I found this idea on the net and felt the need to try it and share it.

It was a genius way of getting the boys to eat what is basically a salad without realising!

It is layers of finely chopped peppers, rice, tomato, corn, black beans, cucumber, crushed avocado, crunched tortilla chips and cheese.

Lego party food & games & party bags

We had a little birthday tea for Max's birthday and it had a lego theme.

There is tonnes of ideas on the net. This is just the bits I pulled together for his little party tea.

1.Legohead marshmallow cakepops

Dip marshmallows in yellow food paste coloured, melted, white chocolate. And topped with a yellow smartie or skittle. Face painted on with black icing.

Lego head tophat/cakepops

2. Lego brick biscuits. 

Nigella's sugar biscuits covered in coloured water icing and 6 smarties or skittles would work too (with brighter colour matching)

Lego brick biscuits

3. Lego brick sandwiches

This idea went down a storm and I have made them several times since. By request for lunch boxes and for our early doors car journey to legoland! The photo isn't great but hopefully you get the idea. Make a simple sandwich, cut off the crusts and cut in half horizontally. Using a small  round cutter, cut multiple rounds from another piece of bread and stick on 6 to the sandwich using philly or spread. Easy and highly desirable by small and big boys alike!

4. Lego brick juice boxes/cartons.

I found a free printable on one of my internet trawls (sorry I can't find it to post it here) and printed it on coloured paper and wrapped around the juice boxes. Fab idea!

Non lego related food products were served in lego/duplo (sterilised) box/containers. That was a job I could delegate to the boys and kept their hands out of the way for a while!

Duplo made food serving vessel

Other decoration ideas I used;

1. Birthday message written in lego.

2. I found and downloaded a free lego font and  used it to make this backdrop sign.

3. The lego head made of cardboard. which was used in one of the games as well as for decoration.

4 And lots of print outs of head found on the internet.

Games we played

1. Pin the head on the lego man!

2. Throw the lego bean bag in the lego head.

Party bags included
1. Lego bean bags
2. Lego name plates
3. Lego erasers
4. Lego cake
5. Lego pop
6. Homemade lego colouring book

Another not very successful jelly!

In case it isn't clear (which I know it isn't!), this was my attempt to create a spotty jelly! I made strawberry, blackcurrant

Mr Tumble's Spotty Birthday Cake (inside and out!)

The Hidden Spotty Design

Charlie's second birthday already and time to think of another cake! He is mad for Justin and Mr Tumble on Something Special (CBeebies) and so I thought we could have a go at a spotty cake. But that was too dull and so I thought I would have a bash at a hidden design cake and make it spotty on the inside too as a surprise.

I started by making the standard pound cake mix but split up the mix into 6 and added food colouring to make different colours.

I baked these in a mini muffin tray sprayed with cake release for about 15mins.

I then made another standard pound cake vanilla mix. I placed the cooked (and cooled) mini muffin cakes in a standard cake tin and spread the raw mix over and around the precooked ones. I then baked this for 22 mins (a few mins less than I ordinarily would). You have to be careful when testing it, to make sure the skewer goes in the vanilla mix not one of the spots!

I decorated with precoloured fondant icing (as the colouring is more intense than when you add it yourself).

It just so happened that the give away gift for Something Special magazine was a Mr Tumble figurine this month so I stood him next to the cake to alleviate any doubt that it was just a spotty cake!!!

Colourful mini muffins. A.K.A The Spots

The cooked 'Spots' covered in the vanilla raw cake mix, ready for their second bake.

Mint Choc Chip Cookies (aka Grinch biscuits)

For the School Xmas Cake Stall I made some of this festive version of the best ever chewy cookie recipe (found here). For this version I added some peppermint extract, chocolate chips and a little green food colouring. Bob's your Uncle - Grinch biscuits.

Reindeer Poop & Snowman Poo

Another make for the School Xmas Fair/Fayre. Reindeer Poo, chocolate raisins.

The Snowman Poo is tictacs

I have lost the link for the free printables I used but google it and there are loads! They went down a storm especially with the boys. Toilet humour reigns strong!

Awesome Witches Brew trick

This is the BEST Halloween trick ever. The kids were totally absorbed and in absolute awe and wonder of the magic. Basically you tell them that you bought this bottle of drink from a witch who was selling door to door. (You buy it from the supermarket, It's fizzy, flavoured water and put a free printable spooky label on it). Then you pour it into the cups and by magic each cup is a poured clear but fills the cup as a colour and then the next cup is even more magical because it isn't even the same colour and the next and the next and they are flavoured not just plain water!

The trick is to set the cups out earlier with ice. Hidden under the ice is a tiny dab of food colouring which when the fizzy water is poured over it mixes up and makes the water that colour.

Total awe and wonder - achieved!

Halloween feast food

Spider bodies (black olives)

Chopped intestine dip (salsa)

Vampire Teeth (Apple and mini marshmallows)

Sick dip (Houmous with bits of carrot and sweetcorn)

Witches toenails (almonds) and Zombie Bogey Dip (Guacomole)

Bat droppings (chocolate raisins)

Snake Pie (snake shaped sausage roll!)

Mummy school - Olympic biscuits

This weeks topic isn't very original but still worthwhile and very exciting. It is the Olympics.

We have been busy counting down & preparing for our opening ceremony feast, doing worksheets galore, playing some of the many games on the official Wenlock and Mandeville website and learning all about the countries participating , the history of the games and what games are included.

I will post a few of our favourite activities and this was certainly one. Not exactly in keeping with the ethos of health as they are cookies but they are made with wholemeal flour and malt to attempt to make them healthier than the average biscuit.

We used Nigellas cut out biscuit recipe but substituted wholemeal flour and added some instant horlicks powder for flavour rather than vanilla.

I then used my lovely new colour pastes to make the colours of the rings. Did you know the colours are chosen because every flag in the games contains at least one of these colours? 

We decorated them with our friends, learning that the 5 rings represent the 5 continents (although North & South America is counted as one which is a bit of a cheat!)

Homemade Fruit Leather sweets

So we still have fruit left from PYO. So I decided to have a go at making some fruit leather. It is so simple!

First choose any fruit and blend with a hand blender. I made 2 batches, this is kiwi, gooseberry and apple, and the other was pure strawberries. You can add sugar or sweetner to taste. You could also add any other flavourings like almond essence to cherries or raspberries, or vanilla or cinnamon to apple etc.
Then pour the mix onto a baking tray lined with cling film. Try and make it as evenly spread as possible.
Then place in your oven on the lowest possible heat setting and leave for 6-8 hours or until it no longer leaves a dent when you press it. If it is not evenly spread you may need to moisten the edges with water to make sure the middle is cooked before the edges frazzle.
Remove from the oven and slice as you wish. I made small squares for sweeties, you could make roll ups or use some of the kids playdoh cutters (cleaned obviously) for more interesting shapes.

Dinosaur watermelon carving at Summer Mummy School

This week we have been learning all about fruit at 'Mummy school'

Because we are moving from Scotland to England over the summer holidays, the boys are going to end up being off school for 10 whole LOOOOONNNNNGGG weeks!

So, to help them remember everything they learnt to do so well this year, (and to stop me going quite so insane!), we have decided to go to 'Mummy's school' for an hour a day, while the smallest boy is having his morning nap. Each week we will choose a topic.

This week was fruit. This is what we have done;

Thought of every fruit we can think of.

Made a banana smoothie

Been shopping for a fruit we have never tried before, weighing it on the scales and buying it with coins.

Surveyed family and friends for their favourite fruit and drawn a bar graph

Coloured in pictures of fruit found on the net

Drawn our own pictures

Completed various fruit related literacy and maths worksheets (free online downloads)

Read a free online book about fruit that was really cute

Carved a watermelon into a dinosaur shape (after last years success with a shark - see here)

Gone to the library and got out books about fruit

We are going pick you own fruit picking at the weekend and we plan to make some fruit leather with the pickings.

Made a fruit salad.

Illustrated the seasons with the seasonal cycle of an apple tree

Next week will be the very original.... Olympics. Today we kicked it off by watching the torch procession come passed Nanny's house on the Skype video chat! It froze at the exact moment it came passed!

Monster mouths

What a super cheeky monster1

I just realised there is a load of stuff I intended to post from Max's party that I never finished. So here is one about some special straws I made, to make the monsters that came even more monstery! Inspired by another pin. This one in fact. I made them from foam sheets like I used for the feet, just glueing together with pritt stick and making up some mouth shapes.

Monster birthday cake

Here is the monster birthday cake I made for Max's Monster Birthday party. It was inspired thanks to this pin.

It was just a regular chocolate sponge, plus some star nozzle piped orange flavour (used squash concentrate) butter icing. The cake pops were made with a chocolate and marmalade cake I baked, mushed with chocolate fudge icing (shop bought), dipped in melted white chocolate with fondant icing eye lids, iris and pupils. The mouth is fondant icing also.

Some Easter biscuits

Thank you Aunty Sally for the wonderful Easter themed cookie cutters. We had a ball making some. Sadly the colours didn't come out quite as sweet and pastel as I hoped but fortunately my children have very bad taste in lurid biscuit colours. I must get myself some proper cake maker food colouring pastes rather than the rubbish you get in the supermarket. 

More felt food

I didn't quite manage to finish everything I set my heart on making in the last felt food post but I did quite well.
Here are some pictures.

Felt sesame seed bun and burger

Felt bourbon biscuit

Felt Pizza components

Felt four seasons pizza

    

Felt hot dog bun with sauces

Felt tomato slice

Happy Valentine's to the 'apples of my eye'

This morning I sent the boys off to school with this as their snack as my own little Valentine to them.