More Ideas for Kids Fun–Cooking with Mom
Kids fun ideas, especially at an early age, have a lot to do with home and hearth. Baking cookies, making decorations, or just reading with Mom were such special times. I try to include my kids somehow in whatever activity I am doing around the house. I bought special slip on socks that they can skate down the hallway wearing to help dust the hardwood floors. I have step stools so they can help me cook, and, of course, I keep a book of fairy tales by my own bedside in case they want to cuddle up with me on a rainy day. One of the best kids activities that I’ve found is simply cooking. Kids enjoy being a part of food preparation—and who can blame them? It’s relaxing, tasty, and the smells stay with you for a lifetime. As fall approaches there are limitless ideas for what can be made together in the kitchen. One idea that I recently found online is making “apple” lollipops that they can take to school to give to their teachers and classmates.
This will require a tiny bit of prep shopping at a store that sells candy making supplies. Believe it or not, I’ve found everything I need for this at Wal-Mart and Target so you don’t need to trek to a bakery shop for supplies. Unless you really want to, of course.
Kids Fun: Apple Lollypops
You will need:
- Lollipop sticks, dipsticks, or thin straws
- Red candy coating (this can be red melt-able candy wafers or you can use almond bark and red food coloring)
- Chocolate cake mix
- Chocolate icing
- Green fruit rollups
- Pretzel sticks
The first step is just to make and bake the cake according to the package directions. Once the cake has been cooled break it up in a large bowl and mix in the chocolate frosting. Bring the kids in at this point to help you “shape” the apples. This is the epitome of kids fun! They get to put their hands into a gooey chocolate mixture and form tiny apples from it. Have them place the “apples” on a sheet of wax paper while you heat up the red candy coating in a bowl using your microwave.
Step two is just taking the lollipop sticks and sticking them into the “apples” and then dipping the apples in the red candy coating. When you place them on the wax paper to dry the tops will flatten slightly like a Macintosh apple.
When the candy coating is almost dry, allow your children to break off bits of the green fruit rollups to make leaves to place on the top and use a pretzel stick for the stem.
I promise you, not only is this one of those easy kids activities to do with the kids, but they will enjoy both sharing and eating them with their classmates. It’s a tasty alternative to the apple on the desk routine we used to do.
I’d love to hear your idea for cake pops—I’m sure a Halloween pumpkin could be done the same way. Till next time, I hope you enjoyed this tiny example of simple kids fun.
Birthday Party Ideas of the Stars that Won’t Break the Bank
Birthday Party ideas are always easier to come up with when it’s for someone else’s child. They are also easy to come up with when there’s an unlimited budget! Celebrities seem to have no problem coming up with virtual theme parks in their backyard when it’s their child’s birthday, but not all of us can spend $300K on our child’s birthday like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. The rest of us have to find unique birthday party ideas that don’t involve Ringling Brothers or gelato flown in from Italy. In fact, the closest most of us come to that would be a day at Chuck E. Cheese with pizza. Still, you can have a circus-themed party or even a make-your-own gelato party that would be just as much fun for your child as one of the lavish Hollywood events. After all, your child can’t tell the difference between a cake that you baked in your own kitchen and a cake made by a chef in France—or, at least, we hope they can’t.
Here are a few Hollywood kids birthday party ideas to get you started…
Suri Cruise
For Suri’s second birthday, Tom and Katie spent a whopping $100,000 to have a butterfly themed event. The cake was a four-tiered butterfly shaped cake that set the Cruises back around $5K—that’s right, five thousand dollars for a cake. They then ordered tiny versions of the same cake for their guests to eat. Now, I don’t want to guess about your budget, but while I adore themed birthday party ideas like a “butterfly garden birthday party” (or a bee party like the ones we wrote about in our July blog) I also adore not wasting money. If butterflies are your child’s idea of wonderful you can still have Suri’s butterfly cake and mini-cakes for your party guests just by taking a trip to your local crafts store (or shop online). You can purchase butterfly shaped cake pans, as well as, butterfly shaped sandwich cutters that you can use on a sheet cake to make mini-butterfly cakes for the guests.
Bluebell Halliwell
When Spice Girl Geri Halliwell decided to throw her daughter a birthday party she decided upon an Alice in Wonderland theme. Being a celebrity she went a bit out there by bringing in white rabbits and things of that nature, but from the pictures of the party it still looked like an awesome time. While an Alice in Wonderland birthday party isn’t necessarily one of the more unique birthday party ideas on the planet, it is still a fun one that opens up a lot of possibilities. You can have a Mad Hatter’s tea party with lopsided cake and audacious tea pots. The kids could all wear mismatched clothing or funny hats. They could even come as a character from Alice in Wonderland!
Kingston Rossdale
Kingston Rossdale’s parents Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale spent $15,000 dollars on his fourth birthday party which utilized a carnival theme. They had bounce houses, cotton candy machines, lemonade stands, face painting, clowns—basically, “The Works”. Now, depending upon the budget you want to set this can be reproduced in smaller scale with a trip to your local rental center and party store. Bounce houses, cotton candy machines, and face painting kits are easily accessible items these days and the always loved by children.
Bigger is not always better—especially when you are dealing with younger children. Your child of three won’t know the difference between your husband dressed as the Mad Hatter or Johnny Depp. To a child of five your butterfly cake probably tastes just as good, if not better, than one flown in from France.
If any of you have a cheaper version of a celebrity birthday party drop us a comment, but until then I hope that you got some mileage out of these celebrity birthday party ideas.
Baby Shower Ideas
Baby Shower Ideas: And the Retail Price of that Rattle is….
Whenever people come to me for baby shower ideas they usually want help with baby shower games. We’ve all been to showers where we got the mixed up words like: “prseaid” and were asked to figure out that it really was “diapers” for a prize. I’m certainly not going to down a game I still play in bed when I can’t sleep, but I think that most of the people who want some help with ideas are looking for something a bit beyond the usual.
For the record my favorite baby shower game ever played at a friend’s shower (and this actually went along with a whole game show baby shower idea) was a version of The Price is Right. This is such an easy game to set up and depend how far you take it (and they took it the whole way) can be a super fun game for a shower or party. For other fun Baby Shower Ideas read a fun article about throwing a Disney Baby Shower.
Baby Shower Ideas
Baby Shower Ideas
To do it right you may want to download the Price is Right theme music to play in the background like my friend’s did—it makes it that much more fun to play. Set up a table that is long enough to have 3-4 people behind it. Hand everyone large sized postcards and a sharpie. The rules are just like the television show. They must guess the price of a baby item without going over it. The closest price wins. Eventually, you can weed down the “contestants” for the big prize. My friends skipped the whole wheel and went straight to the showcase showdown for the final 2-4 participants. By the time we were finished with the game everyone was smiling and laughing, it was an unusual but fun baby shower game.
This is just one (great) idea for baby shower games, but it does give you a starting point to get creative. For example, what game show or board game do you enjoy the most? Take that game and figure out how to apply it to baby shower ideas that will work for your shower.
As always, we’d love if you’d share those baby shower ideas here with the rest of us.
Birthday Party Ideas
Birthday Party Ideas: Inexpensive Birthday Parties for a Girl
Planning a birthday party for any child can be both an exhausting and rewarding experience depending upon how good you are at coming up with birthday party ideas. When you love someone as much as parents do their children, you can’t help but want things to be “perfect”. You scour the Internet looking for birthday party ideas that will help you create a perfect day of kids’ fun for your child and her friends. The fact is, and we’ve all learned this just by living, that the best times aren’t always “perfect”.
Some of our best days are when everything goes wrong. Ultimately what we remember as being good or bad has everything to do with who is sharing that moment with us. So, don’t worry about making the birthday perfect for your special girl. Just make sure the day is filled with love and everything will be just fine. Remember, a birthday party doesn’t have to be a budget breaker to be a good time. You don’t need to rent out the local inflatables center for the day or hire a magician (although if you can afford it, both are great ideas).
Birthday Party Ideas
Here are four “cheap” but fun birthday party ideas for girls:
• Have an outdoor party at a park. Many parks have outdoor pagodas or pavilions that can be rented for the day cheaply. The kids can play on the swings and playground equipment while you watch over the grill. There are so many benefits to an outdoor party at a park. Not only does it get the children outside and moving, but you don’t have to worry about cleaning your house either before or after the party. You can just use paper cups, plates, and disposable tablecloths making clean-up a snap!
• Have a cooking party. Kids love to help in the kitchen. Whether it’s because they like to help, eat, or just get messy—kids love to cook! You can purchase frozen roll dough from your local grocery store as a base for mini pizzas and allow kids to create their own miniature pizzas from a pizza topping bar. This kills two birds with one stone. Not only do you not have to cook (the kids are making their own) but it keeps them occupied and feeds them at the same time.
• Happy Halloween! Having an October birthday pretty much seals the deal as far as birthday party ideas go. Creating a mini mystery party or Halloween themed party is easy, and it enables children to utilize the expensive Halloween costumes their parents bought/made them for more than a single day event. Bobbing for apples, making monster’s punch, or participating in a mystery game will make for a memorable birthday for your child and their guests.
• Have a princess party. No, not one of those princesses. I did say “cheap” party. Purchase crafting supplies and allow each of the girls to make their own princess hat and scepter using, construction paper, glitter, sequins, fabric and other bits of sparkly scrap. It keeps the kids busy, allows them to explore their own creativity and they have something to play with afterwards, or wear while they watch their favorite princess Disney movie.
These are just a few birthday party ideas for girls, of course you can also read our Host a Candyland Party which is unisex and always fun for little ones. Planning a party doesn’t have to break the bank as long as there is laughter and kids fun.
Mom’s are the greatest resource for fun and inexpensive birthday party ideas, please, tell us some of your thoughts.
Kids Fun: Rainy Day Activities
We receive a lot of inquiries about things to do as a rainy day kids fun activity. When I was younger my mother purchased me a kid’s craft book. I remember it clearly. There was a sock puppet on the cover and the entire book was filled with children’s crafts (as opposed to adult’s crafts that kids can help with). This thing had everything in it: how to make kites, sock puppets (of course), origami, how to grow a crystal garden out of sugars and salts—I mean, EVERYTHING. If we were ever treated to a rainy day my mother would pull the book out and she and I would find something in it to make. We went through a lot of projects together using that book—I wish I still had it to share with my kids. My favorite, however, was the crystal garden. If you’re looking for one of those kids fun projects that you can start on a rainy day and keep up over time, I absolutely recommend the crystal garden.
Crystal Garden
Kids Fun: Crystal Garden
All you need to get started is:
• ¼ cup ammonia
• ¼ cup non-iodized salt
• ¼ cup water
• ¼ cup liquid bluing (they sell Mrs. Stewarts at most grocery stores and Wal-Mart in the detergent section)
• A few pieces of sponge or charcoal
• Food coloring
Find a glass or see-through dish and place the charcoal or sponge on it in any formation or arrangement you want. Take all of the other ingredients except food coloring and mix together. Once they are thoroughly mixed pour over the dish. Drop food coloring on the dish in whatever pattern you like and wait for crystals to appear. This will usually happen overnight. My mother and I would keep adding to our garden a little at a time.
This one of those kids fun projects that is great for a rainy day. It’s fun, it’s messy, and it’s educational. What could be better? Sure, you can buy grow your own crystal kits in stores (and I’m sure they turn out a heck of a lot prettier), but in a pinch…you can always make your own rainy day crystal garden.
For other kids fun ideas on crafts for a rainy day see our post on How to Make a Magic Wand.
