Silly Hat Supper

Lots of families have the fun tradition of eating green food for supper on St. Patrick's Day, ours included. But we've also added a little bit of silly. We always wear funny Irish hats during supper. (Thank-you, dollar store). We've added quite a few to our collection, and the kids have their favourites. It has also turned into a mini-tradition to get a group shot of the kids in their gear before supper. Here is this year's picture.

Yes, the parents play along too. Like my green wig?

Leprechaun Hat Cookies

We made some fun and easy treats for St. Patrick's Day today. They are reminiscent of the Pilgrim Hats we made for Thanksgiving, so if you liked those, you'll like these too!

What you need: chocolate chips, large marshmallows, shortbread cookies with chocolate on the back, green coloured sugar, and toothpicks.

Start by melting the chocolate in a double boiler, or in your microwave (be sure to stir every 30-45 seconds if you are using the microwave!)

Insert toothpicks into marshmallows to use as a handle, and dip them in the melted chocolate.

Let the excess chocolate drip off.

Put chocolate covered marshmallows on the chocolate side of the cookies, and gently pull out the toothpicks. Touch up any areas that need it with the melted chocolate.

Let the cookies set until the chocolate is hardened. Tip: put the cookies in the fridge for quicker set-times. (about 15 min)

Put remaining melted chocolate into a Ziplock bag, and snip a small hole in one corner to make it into a pseudo-icing bag. Pipe chocolate around base of marshmallow.

Sprinkle the green sugar on the melted chocolate.

Ta-Da! Little Leprechaun Hat cookies! (They are pretty good, too!)

Felt Gumball Machine

I made this felt gumball machine a few weeks ago for my middle son's fifth birthday. We used it as a game and played Pin the Gumball in the Machine, as pictured above. But since then, my two year old and I have had a good time with it as a learning game. (That is my two-year-old in the picture. So cute!)

We have used it for colour recognition: "Let's put all the green gumballs on."

Counting: "How many gumballs are there?"

We've combined both concepts: "How many orange gumballs are there?"

We've done simple math: "Three gumballs in the machine, now we'll put on two more. How many do we have? What if we take off a gumball?"

We've made comparisons: "Are there more red gumballs or more yellow gumballs?"

We've also made patterns with the gumballs as we put them on. "First blue then green, then blue, then green..."

Who knew there were so many ways to learn and play with a felt gumball machine?

*PS: his favourite is when we play with it, and then gets a real gumball when we are done!*

Swirly Valentine's Cupcakes

Something pretty for Valentine's Day.

To make cupcakes with swirls inside, make a batch of white cake batter, and add food colouring to half. We put pink in the bottom of half the cupcake wrappers, and white in the other half.

Then add the other colour on top of the first one.

Swirl them together with a toothpick.

Then bake and cool them as usual.

To make swirly icing, we put pink and white icing in my decorating bag at the same time, and then piped it onto the cupcakes. So pretty. As a finishing touch, we added little heart sprinkles to the top. Cute.

Here is our filled cupcake tower.

Last step: eat them up!

Simple Heart Puzzles

I made a very quick and simple game for us to play on Valentine's Day.

I just made some hearts of different sizes from pink and red paper, then cut each in half. Done.

My two-year-old did really well finding the pairs that went together.

Sometimes it was tricky to get the cut sections to line-up,

But when he got it, he was so proud! (and so was I!)

Heart Braids

If you tilt your head to the side, you might see what my daughter's hair looked like on Valentine's Day.

I thought it would be fun to do something special with her hair, so I made a heart. I just started with a single pony-tail, and then divided the hair into two. I braided each of the two halves, and then to create the heart, I just formed a half-heart with each braid and bobby-pinned it into place. Easy, fast, and cute.

Chocolate Dipped Valentine's Cookies

We always make sugar cookies at Valentine's Day. Usually we decorate them with pink frosting and candies, and last year we turned our regular cookies into cookie-pops.

This year, I added chocolate. Yum!

To make them, I just make regular heart-shaped sugar cookies, and when they were cool, I dipped one half in melted chocolate chips. Tip: I set down each cookie on waxed paper until they chocolate set. Then clean up was just throwing away the waxed paper. Ta-da!

I really liked the way they looked, (more of a grown-up cookie) and even more the way they tasted. To make them more kid-appealing, I sprinkled half of the cookies with Valentine sprinkles while the chocolate was still soft.