School Holidays.. *Bliss* & School Friend Gifts.

After a long and drawn out 12 weeks, we have finally reached the school holidays.  I love school holidays for their sleep in's, late breakfasts, extended PJ wearing time (particularly now it's getting cooler) and of course getting to do some wonderful activities and spending time with the kids. 

On the last day of school my Son took in a little present for each of his school friends and a chocolate bunny for his hard working teacher, I have made this a tradition each year for special occasions since he started Kindy 2 years ago and he really enjoys handing out these little gifts to his friends. 

Last year and the year before I used the little Easter marshmallow shapes and chocolate eggs, but this year I took a simpler approach and opted to use the little plastic eggs I have often seen at discount stores and we placed a chocolate egg and some easter stickers in each one, sealed them up with another easter sticker and sent them on their way :)  I also sent an additional bag of eggs for him to hand out randomly to friends (at $1 you can't go wrong.. )

My son said his friends loved them, they didn't take me all night to prepare (as these gifts often do) and it was something he could help me out with each step of the way!

Cute Chicken & Bunny Craft.

Today Indi and I tackled two Easter craft projects that I found on Bianca's blog, A Little Delightful

One involved making a hand print Easter chick & the other a cotton wool bunny.. both were a lot of fun, so cute and will make gorgeous Easter cards.  I love that you use the hand print for the chick's wings & it was so fun actually making the hand print, we used paint & tracings of his hand for each of the different chickens. 

I decided to pop some split pins into the 'wings' so the hands could move up and down also, this was an addition I added in after the photographs. Such a simple craft activity but it was a favourite in our home today xo

Meal Planning Monday

I dont know why I just dont call this post, 'Meal Planning Wednesday..'  once again it's Wednesday and im only just getting around to putting it up for the week.. Im going to blame school holiday fun this time round (I say its healthy to always have an excuse or two up ones sleeve..) Lets see how I go with meal planning 'Monday' incorporating the Easter long weekend..

The picture above is of a delicious easter cake I made yesterday and although it came out of a packet (Betty Crocker - Devil's Food Cake) I had so much fun making my first official double layered cake and it was super easy.. I used 2 cake tins and sandwiched the 2 together with jam and fresh cream. I topped it with the included icing & some candied chocolate eggs from Big W.  I ended up making 2 of these, 1 for an easter morning tea we went to & the other for our eating pleasure :-)  (per hubby's request..) 

Monday - we had yummy chicken breast with pumpkin, potato, broccolini, peas, corn, capsicum and carrots with gravy!

Tuesday - My son had chicken and prawn noodles for dinner & a plateful of cheese and cherry tomato crackers, I intended on getting back up and having pea and ham soup (as hubby was working late) but I dozed off and didn't end up eating dinner at all..

Wednesday - Beef and Vegetable Casserole, done in the slow cooker..

Thursday -    Hot Dogs with the lot.. (bacon, cheese, onion, mustard and tomato sauce)

Friday -        Since it's 'Good Friday' i'm saying fish and cooked green prawns & salad on the side.

Saturday -    BBQ of some description..

Sunday -      Usually I am one to go with a traditional easter roast (but I will be making

that on Monday) tonight for lack of time, spaghetti bolognaise is on the menu :)

Monday -     Lamb Roast with roast vegies. 

Tuesday -    Back to school - Kid's choice.. :-)

Baking List:

Choc Chunk Cookies

Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

Chocolate Fudge Cake

Recipe's I would like to try this week;

Baked Fish on the BBQ

Garlic Prawns

Homemade Potato Salad

Meal Planning * cough cough * Monday.. (Wednesday)

Gee where do the days go? One day its Sunday, the next it's early Wednesday! Can't quite believe how fast this week is travelling by.. Not that i'm complaining, the school holidays start in our house this coming Friday so i'm very much looking forward to that.  It's definitely been a very very long term and I think we are all in need of a break..

Meals this week;

Monday (was):  Steak Burgers with Onion, Egg, Tomato, Cheese, Beetroot, Spinach Leaves, olives and BBQ and Tomato Sauce.

Tuesday (was): Beef and Vegetable Ravioli pillows with Lean Beef and Roast Vegetable Sauce.

Wednesday:      Fried Rice

Thursday:         Eat out night to celebrate the end of school term & my son's school awards day!

Friday:              Thai Green Chicken Curry

Saturday:          Fish and Salad with homemade pumpkin and potato salad.

Sunday:            Roast of the week - Pork Roast with Roast Vegies

On the Bake List:

To bake this week;
Devils Food Cake (evil Betty Crocker packet mix I have sitting in the cupboard..)
Mixed Berry Muffins
Choc Chunk Cookies..

My take on Egg Baskets..

When I saw these on the Blog 'A Little Delightful I was super impressed and decided to give them a shot for this morning's breakfast. I had done a trial one, with one lonely egg that I had leftover in the fridge earlier in the week, but my Son turned his nose up at it (not unusual as he's not a big egg fan..)  So this morning I altered the recipe a little..

What you will need;

A muffin tray - I used a standard size.

Bread with the crusts removed, as I was feeding 6 I made all 12 so we could have 2 each.

Baking paper

Grated cheese

Ham

Eggs

Spaghetti

I started by preheating the oven to 180 degrees & then lined all of my cupcake tray with squares of baking paper. I then pushed the bread (with the crusts removed) into the baking tray to form little cups. I then placed some grated cheese into the bottom of all of these bread cups and some shaved ham.  I then made 3 with spaghetti for the non-egg lovers and the remainder with eggs.  I found I needed to remove some of the egg white as I was using XL eggs and they were overflowing the muffin tray. 

I then popped them into the preheated oven with some salt and pepper on top for 1/2 hour.

Today they were a hit.. even the spaghetti ones which tasted super yum and it goes to show how endless the possibilities are when adding ingredients.. You could try almost anything onions, tomatoes, bacon etc..

A Little Life Lesson in Money

I won this cute little fella a couple of weeks ago on the Beyond the Baby Facebook page, thanks to Money Savvy Kids  It arrived in yesterday's mail and this morning was spent, setting it up and explaining how it all worked, it was a lot of fun having the 'money discussion' (I wish someone would have had the same discussion with me, when I was younger)

The money savvy pig has 4 slots unlike your traditional money box, which only has the one - Save, Spend, Donate and Invest.. So I went through and explained each of the areas to Mr 6 as best I could (I'm not too crash hot on the save and invest myself, so I hope I covered it well!)  I'm sure I covered the spend accurately though! No,seriously.. after explaining EACH area fully (using the handy little booklet that comes with the money box) we set up some of the goal stickers that came with the piggy.  He decided in his 'SAVE' slot, he would like to save for a new craft set, he decided $20 was his goal for his 'SPEND' slot and after getting $20 in there, he would like to take it to the store & buy something, his 'DONATE' slot he is going to use to put into various charity boxes at stores and the 'INVEST' slot is so far going to be used for an Ipod (which at age 6 is a big investment of course!).  The book encourages using the INVEST slot for future expenses such as cars or education, but when explained to Mr 6, he decided to Ipod would be an excellent investment for his 2012 future, perhaps we'll tackle University at 7.. hehehehe..

We then set about emptying his old money box, into the new. 

I empty out my purse at the end of each week and give all the silver coins (20c and under) to the kids equally in their money boxes, its amazing how quickly they tend to add up, so Mr 6's money box was full of mostly 5c and 10c coins and of course the odd $1 or $2 that he gets from odd jobs or change from his pocket money.  I got out my trusty purse and we 'exchanged' a lot of his 5c coins for larger currency such as 50c, $1.00 or $2.00 coins and I found this too was a great lesson in money - IE. "How many 5c coins do you think makes up 50c?" and  "If I give you $1.00, how many 10c coins will you need to give me?"  so on and so forth..  it was a lot of fun.

So there we have it, a new piggy bank.. I'm hopeful to swap over all the kids money boxes to this style over the upcoming months, I think it may help them to learn a valuable life lesson and will eliminate finding an empty money box (such as I did in Miss 9's room today) seems she may have made a withdrawal from it for the tuck shop quite regularly of late and decided to leave only 5c behind.. (oh well you cant blame a girl for taking after her Stepmother!) but perhaps the Money Savvy Piggy Bank may help her too (maybe I should grab one for myself while I'm at it).

Some of the blogs I love!

I adore that I found the world of blogging & even moreso adore that I found lots of gorgeous blogs from such clever women that I love to read whenever I get a chance to sit with a cuppa.  These blogs give me great inspiration for craft, recipe's, my home and life in general and I thought i'd share some of my favourite blogs that I love to read with you;

Super Organiser Mum

Eighteen25

Two Little Tots (Gruber Girls)

A Little Delightful

Sunny Side Up

Clover Lane

My Pigeon Pair

Landee See, Landee Do

The Organised Housewife

Happy reading, im sure you will find something you love in each of them!