happy easter!

happy easter from our family to yours!  i hope you've had a marvelous day!  we spent the day with loved ones, sloshing through the mud looking for eggs, eating way to many sweets, giggling, chatting, playing in the rain, making music, and feeling blessed. 

easter eve

today is "easter eve".  i'm spending the day doing what i do the day before almost any major holiday...cleaning, preparing, organizing, list-writing, cooking, etc.  just readying our family for the chaos that can come with holidays.  i feel like everyone is much happier going from place to place and missing naps if we are ready and organized ahead of time.  if i attend to all of the details the day before, then i don't have to worry about them in the morning or while running out the door to our first event, or in the car on the way to our second event.  now that i have successfully marked off so many items from the to-do list today, tomorrow morning we can move at a more relaxed pace, savor the moments together while the kids search for eggs, have a leisurely quiet breakfast, and leave the house in a calm, cool and collected manner instead of racing around like chickens with our heads cut off.  thanks to a good long dry spell this morning before the monsoons hit this afternoon, i was able to send the kids outside while michael worked in the garage and the baby napped.  so i had a couple of hours to really tackle the to-do list.  i'm not usually so productive in one morning, but having no children under foot really helped me to stay focused and get stuff accomplished.
here's what i've been up to:
- cooking for easter parties: french onion dip, green bean casserole (recipe to come soon!), sausage & rice casserole, and later i'll put together this super easy pull apart coffee cake from paula deen
- cleaning: i enlisted the help of the children when they came in from playing, and they did a fantastic job picking up around the house
- going through old pictures from easters past (see below)
- making a few notecards (a few of my aunties want to make purchases tomorrow, so i want to be ready!)
- setting out all of the outfits for easter (even ironing a few)
- doing a bit of blogging and cleaning up the photo storage on the computer
and later we will have baths, read books about easter and then bed for the munchkins.  then it will be a quiet evening for mama and dada - filling eggs and watching the king's speech.  heading into easter in a calm and peaceful way.  and tomorrow we will spend the day surrounded by family, hunting for eggs, noshing on delicious grub, and being thankful for all of our blessings.  how will you spend your easter sunday?

happy easter to you and yours!

Cupcakes from Heaven

I've been on quite a cupcake kick lately...finding some interesting and tasty recipes on the world wide web...and I have been making my own icing too!  I think that the homemade icing really makes it extra tasty.  Last week I made Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough cupcakes from the Tidy Mom blog, and they were AMAZING!  They took quite a bit of time to put together, but it's well worth the work.  They are quite rich & decadent:  chocolate chip cupcakes with a bit of egg-free cookie dough inside of them...topped with tasty icing & mini chips.  Delicious, and quite a hit at the birthday dinner.  I only changed one little thing in the recipe, I used mini chips in the cupcakes instead of regular size chocolate chips.  I just like the minis better in baked goods.  I thought when I put the cupcakes together that the blob of cookie dough in the middle was going to be noticable, but it's really not, the textures of the cupcakes, dough and icing all blend together deliciously. 
I have a few more cupcake recipes bookmarked for the coming weeks.  I'll let you know if I find any more winners!
Do you have a favorite cupcake recipe?  Please do share!

{this moment}

Inspired by SouleMama:  A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Cirque du Soleil is coming to town!

If you live in the Greater Cincinnati area you've probably heard that Cirque du Soleil is coming to town and raising their tents at Coney Island for the show OVO.  The show opens on April 21, 2011. I, along with the other ladies who blog for Family Friendly Cincinnati have been lucky enough to receive tickets to the show from our friends at Cirque du Soleil.  I cannot wait to take our children to see this show!  I have been to several other Cirque shows, and I love them, they are always magical and captivating.  If you have not gotten tickets yet, but would like to go to the show, I have several ways you can get tickets...either by winning them, or by purchasing them for 30% off! 

MOTHER’S DAY

Celebrate Mom with a thrilling Cirque du Soleil experience!
Treat your mother to a memorable Cirque du Soleil experience by taking advantage of our special offer on show tickets—bring your family of four to a show for only $107.50!
Cirque du Soleil is pleased to announce that it has opened in Cincinnati with the big top touring production of OVO, now playing for a limited engagement. OVO is performing under the trademark blue-and-yellow Grand Chapiteau (Big Top) at Coney Island.
OVO is a headlong rush into a colorful ecosystem teeming with life, where insects work, eat, crawl, flutter, play, fight and look for love in a non-stop riot of energy and movement. The insects’ home is a world of biodiversity and beauty filled with noisy action and moments of quiet emotion.
Fun for the whole family!
Click on this link for 30% off TICKETS TO OVO promo
TICKET GIVEAWAYS

Several of the bloggers from Family Friendly Cincinnati are giving away tickets on their own blogs, I've listed them below, but be sure to enter soon, the contests are about to end! 
Ticket Giveaways:
Shannan at MommyBits (contest ends Thursday 4/21 at 8pm)
Kristen at MasonMetu (contest ends Friday 4/22 - after clicking the link, you have to scroll down a bit on her blog to see the contest)
Kandi at Mommy Confessions (contest ends 4/21)

I'd love to hear from you...are you going?  Have you been?  What do you think?

then & now :: sam & the caterpillar

2008 & 2011...pictures taken at the Highfield Discovery Garden.

{this moment}

Inspired by SouleMama:  A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

tiptoe through the tulips

yesterday we spent hours at the zoo...and we were captivated by all of the beautiful blossoms.  especially the tulips.  ella wistfully said to me as we left: "don't you wish we could cut some for our kitchen table?".  and i agreed with her, but we restrained ourselves.
ps...the purple tulips are my favorite!

{this moment}

Inspired by SouleMama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

farming ~ sam style

Italian Meatsauce & Garlic Bread

I am a sucker for pasta dishes.  And I'm even more of a sucker for easy cooking.  BUT it has to be YUMMY pasta dishes and YUMMY easy cooking.  We want flavor and spice and everything nice!  This meal meets all of those requirements.  The spaghetti sauce is simple to prepare in the morning, and will be ready in the crock pot at dinner time.  The garlic bread can be created at the last minute and is scrumptious. 

what is your favorite slow cooker recipe?  Please share in the comments section...I'm always looking for new recipes!

Italian Spaghetti Sauce

(I stole this from my cousin Laura, who adapted it from a Betty Crocker Slow Cooker recipe)

2 pounds Italian sausage or ground beef
3 medium onions, chopped
2 cups sliced mushrooms (yuck…I omitted this)
6 cloves garlic, chopped
2 cans (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, drained
1 can (29 oz.) tomato sauce
1 can (12 oz.) tomato paste
2 Tbs. dried basil
1 Tbs. dried oregano
1 Tbs. sugar
1 tsp. Salt
½ tsp each of pepper & crushed red pepper

Cook the meat, onions, mushrooms and garlic for 20 minutes until cooked through. Drain. Spoon into slow cooker and stir in remaining ingredients. Cover and cook on low 8-9 hours until veggies are tender.

 
Garlic Bread
 
French or Italian loaf, sliced in half
Olive Oil
1 stick butter (may need less depending on size of loaf), melted
¼ tsp. Garlic Salt (mixed with butter)
Garlic, pressed ~ the more the merrier!
Oregano
Thyme
Basil

Spread a bit of olive oil on the bread, then spread the butter/garlic salt mixture (be generous!). Then add pressed garlic, spreading all over the bread. Sprinkle the spices on. Bake at 400° for about 15 minutes, until brown. Slice and Enjoy!

refrigeration ~ sam style

imagine my surprise when i went to start dinner the other night....

monster mayhem

many small tots are afraid of monsters...this project might be just the ticket to help make monsters a little less scary.  it's also a great opportunity to talk to kids about reality vs. make believe.  and it's just downright fun.
to begin,  i collected several books about monsters that weren't so scary and read them to the kids before starting our monster craft:

all of these books are favorites in our house.  especially Leonardo the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems, it's such a cute story!  And of course Max loves Where the Wild Things Are!
After we read the stories (some of them more than once), I collected our monster making materials.

we used pieces of colored foam (large and small), puff balls, eyeballs, pipe cleaners (we actually ended up ditching these because they were tricky to glue down), scissors, rainbow colored sharpies, tacky glue, and feathers.  the beauty of this particular project though is that you don't need these exact materials.  you can create monsters out of anything you have on hand...construction paper, crayons, empty boxes, empty toilet paper rolls, recycled materials, and the list goes on.  anything goes with monster mayhem!

so i threw all of these materials out on the table and told them to make their own monsters...and encouraged them to be as creative as they could...and they were creative indeed!  that's it, just one direction:  make a monster.

max took a few minutes to think about his monster plans before starting the project.

ella jumped right in and started cutting out body parts for her monster.

sam hardly spoke at all while working on his monster...he was so intent!  and he did not want any help or ideas from anyone.  which is just how it should be when letting the creative juices flow.

monster body

then add a monster head...and other various monster body parts and eyeballs.

and the end result is monster mayhem!

(l-r: ella, sam & max)

{this moment}

Inspired by SouleMama: A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.