Fruit Salad Flower Apple Bowls

If you hang around me long enough it won't come as much of a surprise that I like to make things. I love to be crafty, to rearrange things that are in place to make something different. I love to bake but when I saw this pin I knew it would be a great snack for Naomi to take to school on her birthday. I am all about cupcakes but I know that teachers don't always love the idea because kids aren't always very clean eaters!! There was nothing with the pin to tell me how to make these fruit salad flower apple bowls but that's okay, I just need a photo (sometimes two) and I can pretty much figure out how to make things. So I talked to Naomi about making these apple bowls and she loved the idea. So, here is a photo step by step tutorial of how I made the fruit salad flower apple bowls for Naomi to take to school on her birthday!

I washed the apples in water with a splash of vinegar.

 Cut the apples near the top with a slight diagonal cut. Not too deep.

Then turn the knife the other way to make a "petal"

 Make ten cuts thus making five petals.

Cut the top part off the apple

Cut little triangles out between the petals giving it more of a flower look.

Then scoop out the apple insides to make a bowl. I used a melon baller...and you can save the apple pieces to use in the fruit salad as well (obviously not the seed part though!)

Then soak the apple in sprite or ginger ale or lemon juice to slow down the browning...

Once I had all the bowls and flowers made I added some fruit inside the bowl and called it good!

 I wrapped each apple individually to make it easier on her teacher and to help prevent further browning since I made these up the night before.

She said the girls loved them! And those who didn't like kiwi gave them to Naomi and she LOVED that!!

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Back to school (and work) slow cooker cooking

Did your kids go back to school yet? Mine did. And along with them going back to school I went back to work. After being a stay-at-home mom for six years I'm not sure I was really prepared for what I was about to do. But I survived my first week and am looking forward to going back next week. I am the Director of Afternoons at my kids school. I get to be home with my little girls in the morning and then spend my afternoons with my big two and their classmates (and a bunch of other kids). So, since I needed a job this really is the best job possible for me and our family! 

If your family is anything like mine...they like to eat. And well, it's good to eat. We need energy in the form of food in order to function properly. When we eat the right food we function even better! So, it's important with me working now that I find a way for my family to eat well while being easy and simple to prepare. Enter the slow cooker!! We use the slow cooker a LOT around here and I'm so grateful for the many recipes floating around in the web-o-sphere. I'm also grateful for the Fix-It and Forget-It 5 ingredient favorites: Comforting slow cooker recipes book that a lady from church gave me. This book has been used many many times and I plan to keep using it until we decide to stop using the slow cooker to make dinner (and with me working that won't be anytime soon). To only need 5 ingredients saves me a ton of time and money. These recipes are easy to throw together in the morning when I'm hanging out with my little ladies before I head to work. Then when we get home all we have to do is fix a simple side, of which I plan to stock the fridge with on the weekends...like rice and noodles or whatever. If you haven't started using  your crock-pot as a way to save you time and money (you won't have to eat out as much) then let me encourage you to do so. It's really rather simple and doesn't take too much prep work.

Case in point, I was able to prepare 8 freezer slow cooker recipes this week in the mornings while I was home with my little girls. Granted I did have the help of grandma to watch the girls but still these meals are easy to put together and could be done on a Saturday or Sunday while someone is able to watch the kids, or get them involved with the chopping and throwing things into the bags if they're old enough. I love this freezer slow cooker cook book from Stephanie Cornais. The recipes that we've already tried were delicious and had lots of flavor. They are easy to prepare and it's SO nice to know that my freezer is stocked in case I forget to get things for one of my other slow cooker meals. It's also great to have on hand in case someone has a baby or if a family member is in the hospital, these would be easy to take for them as well. The other great thing is the Stephanie only uses whole REAL foods. No cans of cream of whatever in these recipes. I've even branched out and tried some new things because of this cookbook. I'm really excited to try to the Peanut Stew that I prepared last week!! Check out Stephanie's blog and she has a new mini eCookbook called Back to school slow cooker freezer recipes. She also has a gluten-free, grain-free dessert cookbook!!

We have three freezers...a little excessive, yeah maybe. But one is a chest freezer because we get a whole hog worth of meat each year. The other came with the house and we have ours that we purchased when we bought our first house. So now my hubby has his "beer" fridge in the garage which has lots of space for me to store my slow cooker freezer meals!!!

One little trick that I like to do (and feel I can do since this is just in the garage) is write what freezer meals are in the freezer with a white board erasable marker on the outside of the freezer. Then it's super easy to see what I have to put in my rotation when meal planning!!

Do you have a favorite slow cooker meal? I'd love to try it. You can also see more meals that I've found and pinned here. Enjoy your back to school time and prep some slow cooker meals so you don't have to worry about dinner!!

And just in case you were wondering how cute my kids looked on their first day of school...here you go ;)

 These first day of school printable came from Paper Coterie!!

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School Auction ideas

Last night was the big Mystery Dinner Theater and Auction for my kids school. I was on the planning committee and I was also fortunate enough to be on stage for the Mystery Theater itself.  What a blast! It was truly an incredible night. I feel like I missed most of it because I was backstage throughout 90% of the evening but everyone seemed to have a great time. Months of planning went into this auction and countless hours of time and many volunteers made the night successful. I feel blessed to have been a small part of something so great. I have no idea how much money was raised yet but I'm sure it was incredible. The school where my kids attend is an amazing school and we feel so blessed to have found it and for our kids to attend there. The teachers are so amazing, caring, and fun to be with. The curriculum is incredible and the things my kids are learning blow my mind...I never knew as much math in Kindergarten as Naomi does! And she learned how to read in just months! Incredible. Anyway, on to the reason for the post.

I know that school held auctions are pretty popular and sometimes you run out of ideas for what to put in the auction as classroom items. Well, I'm just going to share two with you here because they are the two that I helped with. The kindergartners were so kind to let me come on two different occasions to take their pictures. The second time I came was because I messed up the first time on the letters...(I'll say it again...jack of all trades master of none). Anyway, we had them form letters with their bodies and then spelled two words to be framed "FAITH" and "LOVE". I also took each kids silhouette photo, made them colorful and had this 16x20 canvas printed at my favorite canvas place Canvas on Demand. The idea for the silhouettes came from Judith at Judith Fernstrom Photography, she also sent me detailed instructions on how she did the silhouettes and I'm sure she'd be willing to send them to you also!! This piece actually did really well at the auction and had two moms bidding against each other getting top dollar for the piece. I'm actually going to get a second one printed so both moms can have one and the school gets more money ;)

Here are some more photos from the auction!

 Here's a photo of the Mystery Theater cast with our amazing director. He not only directed the play but he wrote it! If you're looking for a good short mystery play for an auction or something similar maybe he'd be willing to sell his great play!!

 If you have an auction coming up and are looking for ideas pinterest is a great place to start. I have a board for auction ideas that you can check out and I know there are MANY more ideas that I didn't even pin.
There was no link for the source of the "FAITH" and "LOVE" photos but here's the pin for it. And no I wasn't paid by canvas on demand to tell you how awesome they are. They are just that awesome. GREAT customer service and GREAT products. Hope you have a great weekend! I'm looking forward to not having to go to play practice or plan for the auction...but it was a LOT of fun!!!
 

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Getting fresh fruit in school lunches!!

Well, the kids have been in school for a week... but can you believe I sent Micah to school on the wrong days?! Ugh! Who does that?! He was supposed to go Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday but I sent him Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They allowed him to stay yesterday but next week we'll make sure to get him to school on the right days! My kids have the option to stay at school till 2:30 once their classroom time is over at 12:30 or they can come home at 12:30. On Mondays we'll go get them since Greg has the day off and then can spend more time with them...but on the other days we'll probably let them stay. Naomi is also taking ballet at the school on Wednesdays at 1:45 so it doesn't make a lot of sense to pick her up for lunch just to have to take her back. 

So, I will be packing two lunches two days a week and one lunch two more days of the week. This week has been pretty boring for the kids in the lunch department...pb&j, applesauce, animal crackers, etc. Yesterday I had bought lunchables for them and decided to pack some fresh fruit for them. Packing fresh fruit for the kids is not always easy, having to deal with keeping the fruit cold, making sure it doesn't spoil, etc. I found a great idea and for the life of me cannot remember where it came from. I think I saw it on pinterest but it's not on my creative lunches board where it should be. So, I am sorry that I don't have the original post to link to but as soon as I find it I will let you know.

All I did was buy some containers at Walmart...and these are "Great Value" containers that had an attached lid, so I thought that was pretty awesome, then I got some fresh fruit, washed it all, cut it up and portioned it out into the containers. Then I put the containers in the freezer and will just throw one in the kids lunch bags in the morning before they go to school and by the time they eat lunch they will have cold, fresh fruit!

 I put 4-5 pieces of each fruit in the container! That's all the fit and really that's all they need!

 The kids told me that the fruit was still just a little bit frozen but pretty much just cold!! What a great way to get fresh fruit into the kids lunches!!!

Here are my two little cuties all ready for Kindergarten and Pre-Kindergarten! They love it so far and have GREAT teachers!!!

Here's to hoping I can actually get my act together to make some creative lunches in the future...like the ones I have pinned!

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Shrinky Dink Necklace - Teacher Gift

Hey Strangers! I know, I know, I have been MIA lately. Sorry and without warning. We have had some crazy couple of weeks here. My youngest daughter had a scare and we have been a little worried. To make a long story short, she is 7 and lost her ability to speak for about 5 minutes along with tingling on her right side. :( So very scary. The CT scan was normal but we will be having an EEG, MRI, hormone testing done and seeing a neurologist too. My oldest daughter had 3 similar events so we will be testing her also. I am praying that it is just a hormone imbalance and panic attack. Please keep my family in your prayers as we try to figure all this out.

Also, I was working on my kiddos school yearbook. It turned out great.

Ok on to what I am sharing today.  The kids have 9 days of school left and we have been working on teacher gifts. 

...What you will need...

Ink Jet Shrinky Dink Papers

Image downloads

Colored Pencils

Hole Punch

Necklace

Jewelry Gems

Jewelry making supplies

First start by saving the files below. 

Personal Use only. I do not have rights to these images!

I removed our teacher names on these so you can add in your own.

Print the images on your Shrinky Dink Ink Jet paper. Have the kiddos help you color them in with their colored pencils. 

Don't forget to have the kids write on the backs. Their names, year and some cute decorations.

Cut out, hole punch and cook in the oven. 290 degrees until images shrink and lay flat.

Now you can start making your jewelry. Use your tools to add rings to the shrinky dink teacher pieces. Then start adding them and gems to a necklace. Wrap them up for he last day of school. ;)

Here are a couple up close pics.

We plan on making some key chains with these too. So I will share those soon. Hope you like what we shared today!

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