Today’s Activity:

Bake a sweet treat.

Note:

Make sure you have enough of all the ingredients before you start cooking.

Evaluate:

Well my cooking skills were not up to par today.  First off I didn’t have enough sugar.  Although had just added it to my grocery list an hour earlier it didn’t click until I got it out of the cupboard.  Then somewhere things went terribly wrong while I was halving the recipe.  I’m not sure if I just did some math wrong or if something mysterious happened when my 3 (Max had a friend over) little helpers were helping.  Things turned out okay though and we called it chocolate cereal instead of no-bake cookies.  Max even said, “this is delicious”  and then everyone started adding milk to their cereal.  When you can’t dip your cookie in your milk then dip your milk in your cookie.

It’s been a while but today is baking day!

Note:

Serve your sweet treat for dessert tonight.

Evaluate:

Recently Elese has really enjoyed helping me cook and today was no exception.  I let Max choose what kind of treat to make and he instantly chose rollo cookies and the rest of us were please with his choice.

Today’s Activity:

Surprise your little ones with a freshly baked after school snack.

Note:

If you don’t have time to bake something extravagant then just pick up some pre-made cookie dough from the store.

Evaluate:

Max was thrilled to see that he was going to get warm cookies and milk for after school nap and Elese loved waking up to her nap with the smell of freshly baked cookies in the air.  As for me, I loved that I didn’t waste the time making them from scratch because last time I did that they didn’t turn out.

Today’s Activity:

Today is baking day.  I’m going to make peanut butter play dough.  Today I realized that I didn’t have any powdered milk (well, not any that isn’t a HUGE food storage size and I didn’t want to open it) so I searched a few more recipes.  I found this one and it also calls for powdered milk but several of the comments said that they only used the first two ingredients and it turned out.  They also suggested only halving the recipe.

Note:

This was my favorite treat growing up.  Not only is it good to eat but it is the only time mom wouldn’t say, “Don’t play with your food.”

Evaluate:

Max was SO excited to come home from school and have his PB play dough.  Elese thought it was great to be able to eat her play dough because she always tries to eat the real stuff.  This was a yummy treat and a fun activity.

Today’s Activity:

Baking day!  Start some Amish Friendship bread.  I would suggest scrolling down and reading the comment from Baked that was left Nov. 20th, 2007.  Also, it is easiest to store this in a plastic Ziploc bag and just massage the bag rather than stirring the dough.  Once you get to day 10 then go here to learn what to do next.

Note:

If you’ve never done this before it is a lot of fun and it about 10 days you will have some yummy bread!

Evaluate:

OK- let me translate this recipe for you.  I’ve only done this before after someone gave me the start and this was the recipe I found.  While the recipe helped me I would suggest a few differences.  First off save yourself some dishes and just mix the yeast and water in your liquid measuring cup.  Second, put the flour and sugar directly into a Ziplock bag and mix it in there.  Also, read the comment that I mentioned before and when you give this to someone make sure you give them the information included in the comment as well as the baking directions that are in the second link I gave you above.  Hope that helps.  Also, the kids weren’t too disappointed that we didn’t actually bake something today because Max just wanted to go play with friends.

Also, if your little ones are anything like mine they will think that smooching a Ziploc bag is WAY more fun that stirring something with a spoon!

Today I played go fish with Max.

Don’t forget to leave a comment about something good you did today so you can be entered in our drawing for a $25 GC.  Go here to learn more about our giveaway.

Today’s Activity:

It’s baking day.  Bake something yummy.

Note:

If you are sick of all the Valentine treats then bake something non-sweet.  I just might make a spinach artichoke dip to pare with tonight’s dinner.

Evaulate:

My mom got the perfect brownie pan for Christmas and she had not used it yet.  Max loves that infomercial and has been begging to borrow it.  So today we did.  Elese decided that she suddenly doesn’t like brownies.  We did use a mix and usually I use my MIL’s scratch recipe so that could be it.  Max, on the other hand, couldn’t stop saying “This brownie is perfect!”  I have to admit that they were pretty darn good…but bad for my diet.

Monthly Goal:

Today I said yes when my kids asked for treats.  They ate WAY too many sweets but you should have seen the look of surprise on their faces every time I said yes.

Don’t forget to leave a comment about something good you did today so you can be entered in our drawing for a $25 GC.  Go here to learn more about our giveaway.

Today’s Activity:

Today is Mardi Gras.  Do a little research and have your own little Mardi Gras at home.

Note:

Don’t forget to play some Jazz music in the background!

Evaluate:

I went a little overboard and decided to make some homemade king cake.  It didn’t turn as pretty as the real thing but I think it tasted better.  The kids enjoyed having an extra treat before bed and learning a little bit about Mardi Gras.

Monthly Goal:

Today I let Elese take her time as we walked home from dropping off Max for school.  I enjoyed watching her collect sticks and sing a little song she made up, “Magic, magic come alive and count to number five.  One, two, three, four, five!”

Don’t forget to leave a comment about something good you did today so you can be entered in our drawing for a $25 GC.  Go here to learn more about our giveaway.

Today’s activity:

It’s baking day!

Note:

If you would like you could bake something Valentiny and leave some on a neighbors door step as a special Valentine surprise.

Evaluate:

We were having a cookie exchange for a church activity so we decided to bake my favorite cookies, Rolo cookies.  We’ve made them here before.  Here’s the link with details.  My kids love them and they can help unwrap the rolos without getting in the way of the actual baking.

Recognition!

Joylyn took her kids to the adventure club at their mall.  I’ve never heard of that but it sounds like fun!

Come on ladies!  You all deserve some recognition.  What did you do today?

Today’s Activity:

Bake something yummy with the kids.

Note:

I’m making my favorite new bread recipe.  If it is ready in time for dinner serve it with Jam and call it dessert!

Evaluate:

Our day filled up pretty fast today so I wasn’t able to actually bake the bread but we did get the dough mixed and we are going to make it tomorrow.  That is one of the great things about this recipe, you don’t have to make it right away, in fact you could even wait up to 2 weeks to bake it!  The kids weren’t too excited about making the bread because they just wanted to play but once they started helping me measure stuff out they couldn’t agree on who got to help me next because they both wanted a turn.

Today’s Activity:

It’s baking day.

Note:

Here’s the recipe I’m using.  I’m going to be making these. You have to scroll all the way down to get to the recipe. I may even borrow the perfect brownie pan that my mom got for Christmas from her Brother-in-law.  Max LOVES that infomercial!

Evaluate:

This was not my best baking ever but at least I had fun with the kids.  They turned out pretty good but not really as good as I had expected which works out great for the diet.    The main thing I didn’t like is that the actual brownie was very cakey which my husband loves but not me.  Plus I messed a few things up in the recipe so if you are choosing to do this recipe read it before you start actually cooking.  For instance I used cocoa instead of melted bakers chocolate.  After adding the cocoa I read that if you choose to use cocoa then it should not be added at the same time you would add the bakers chocolate.  I’m not sure if this REALLY effected the end result but it did make me wish I had read through the recipe first.