You know how I often talk about how important it is to get your kids in the kitchen with you?!

I have just proven myself completely and totally and absolutely right about the whole thing.  (Just in case we had been wondering about that.)

I’ve been sick the past few days…but everyone around here still wants to eat.  Don’t they know that when mama is sick, the world must stop until I wake up and feel better?  Huh-uh…it just doesn’t happen.

I have NEVER been so thankful that I’ve taught my kids their way around the kitchen.  Daddy’s doing great taking over in there, but sometimes he’s not home when the boys are hungry.  Or when I need something to eat.  AND, Daddy has been working hard trying to juggle all his work and mine too.  How nice for the boys to get a meal started so that he doesn’t have to come home and do all the cooking too.

My boys aren’t at the point where I can just turn them loose in the kitchen and tell them to whip up some spaghetti.  But because of all the time they’ve spent in there learning and working with me, they can go in there and do the whole thing with me just laying on the couch telling them what to do.  I’m so proud of them.

So just in case you’ve been meaning to do it, but you haven’t yet…here’s my Works for me Wednesday tip:  Get your kids in the kitchen with you so that when you need them to take over, they can!!!  (Here, I’ve written an entire series on it.)  Read it then do it.  It’s important for their future, and someday when you’re sick and need your kids to bring you something besides a box of cereal with a plastic fork, you’ll really be glad you did.  (Yesterday I walked Asa through making us some awesome fruit slushies that totally hit the spot with me.  He did great!!)

For the record this Works for me Wednesday…being sick….does not work for me.  To quote my youngest, Malachi, “My don’t love it.”  :) 

I LOVE using summer time around here to work on fun projects that we just don’t seem to have as much time for during the school year.  AND…I think summer time is a great time to focus hard on godly character training with the kids.  (Yes…by summer’s end…I plan to rid my children’s hearts completely of all selfishness and pride and lazyness and…*ahem*…well…we’ll be working on it anyway…) 

Seriously, there are all kinds of fun things to do with the kids during the summer time…and my kids are rarely bored.   (If nothing else…we have a pretty big garden with endless weeds.  And dirty toilets.  And dirty dishes.)

My boys LOVE the summer library reading program in our town…therefore they are inspired to read like crazy all summer long!  

Matt is great at assigning the boys outdoor projects…and they love doing these jobs with and for their dad!  It is amazing how much help they can be with yard work, hauling stuff, cleaning up wood and sticks, etc.  I LOVE watching them work with their daddy!

Inside the house, the boys and I have fun making up new recipes and cooking together.  And we play tons of games of Skip-bo.  And War.  And Old Maid.  And Crazy Eights.  And we make up our own card games. 

As the summer progresses…and we work on fun projects and activities together…I’ll be sure to share the ideas with you!   Here’s one idea to start off the summer:

This week one of our kitchen projects was making cool shaped pancakes.  Using this whole wheat pancake recipe with a couple of extra tablespoons of milk stirred into the batter…we filled a ketchup-like container with pancake batter and started getting creative with pancake shapes and letters.

This little tool didn’t make it quite as easy as I was hoping it would when I first read the idea…but it was really fun to experiment and play with!  (And of course the pancakes tasted good no matter what they ended up looking like!)

Here, Justus is working on a “J” for Justus.

Here’s Asa’s name (And by the way…in case any of the rest of you are wondering ~I’ve been emailed with this question~ Asa’s name is pronounced:  “ACE-uh”.)

We were pretty happy with the way this bear and bunny turned out. 
We decided the bunny reminded us of Buster on Arthur! 

I LOVE this extra “down time” with my kids!  I’ll look forward to sharing more ideas with you during the next several weeks!  Here’s to a wonderful fun summer with our kids!

Find more great ideas at Rocks in My Dryer!

Technorati Tags: kids in the kitchen, summer projects with kids, summer activities

We have two pretty solid Mother’s Day traditions at our house.  (Neither of them involves spending much money!)  ( More Frugal Fridays ideas at Biblical Womanhood!)

One tradition is that we take the pictures of our boys beside the peach tree that we planted a few years ago.  Each year, it is super fun to see how much the tree has grown and how much the boys have grown.  We then email these pictures to all of the special women in our lives for Mother’s Day.  I LOVE looking back at these pictures! 

The second tradition is that I get the day off from cooking. 

And I get to choose what we’re eating!  (okay…I do that EVERY day…)

I absolutely NEVER want to eat out on Mother’s Day.  I find the restaurants overflowing and stressful…and that is not a treat for me. 

So Daddy and the boys put on their aprons (not really) and cook for mama.  I LOVE it!!

You can read about the Mother’s Day Muffins they’ll be making here.  And for lunch…they’ll be making steak on the grill, baked potatoes, veggies and cheesecake.

Here’s the cheesecake they’ll be making for me  (and YES, we’re compromising a bit and by eating processed sugar and graham crackers from a box.  I know…you must be absolutely shocked!) 

Simple Cheesecake

2 pkgs graham crackers
2 sticks butter
¼ cup sugar
2 – 8 oz. pkgs. cream cheese, softened
2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 t. vanilla

In a gallon sized Ziploc bag, crush graham crackers with a rolling pin. Melt butter in a small saucepan. Pour crushed graham crackers, melted butter and sugar into a 9 x 13 inch pan. Stir ingredients together and pat it down to create crust. Set aside.

In a medium sized bowl, stir together cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla. In a large bowl, whip the cream until soft peaks form. Add cream cheese mixture to whipped cream and fold in gently. Smooth mixture over the crust. Chill for at least two hours.

This cheesecake is super simple to make…which means the boys can do it entirely by themselves!

The boys LOVE crushing up the graham crackers in the baggie.  It IS permission to BREAK something after all!  (Oh, and don’t you just LOVE Malachi’s outfit in this picture?  He chose it himself…) 

Okay, and I always do pour the vanilla myself for them.  It’s organic, and it’s pricey, and I’m afraid they’d accidentally pour in the entire bottle.  Just the control freak in me coming out while they make MY cheesecake…

I love this Mother’s Day tradition…and so do Daddy and the boys!  They look forward to it as much as I do! 

I’d love to hear about any Mother’s Day traditions you have!!  What special things are YOU looking forward to this weekend?!

Technorati Tags: Mother’s Day, Kids in the Kitchen, Cheesecake

I ALWAYS seem to forget May Day…until someone brings a cute May Basket to our door.  Then the kids get all excited and ask if we can make some.  And at that point I feel like it’s too late to start thinking of a plan.

This year…I remembered!!

We started working on our baskets three days early!

We started by tracing this pattern onto yellow cardstock:

The yellow cardstock pattern fits around a paper cup.   The boys picked their favorite pictures from this sheet of cut-outs and glued them on.

(You’ll find the downloads to these here!)

These were simple to make….and ALL of the boys had fun with them!  I think they turned out ADORABLE!

We’ll be filling the baskets with Tiny Cookie Bites.  These cute little cookies are fun to make and yummy to pop into your mouth!

Tiny Cookie Bites

1 stick butter, melted
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 t. sea salt
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t.  vanilla
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

Mix together melted butter and brown sugar.  Stir in egg, salt, baking soda and vanilla.  Add flour and mix thoroughly.  Place tiny bits of dough on a baking sheet and bake for 7-8 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

Find all the instructions and download the patterns and picture cut-outs in the Clever Creations section of the HeavenlyHomemakers site here.  They are free for you to use!  Have Fun!!

(As an aside…my boys can’t wait to go ring someone’s doorbell…drop off the May Basket and make a run for it!  Ah…the joys of being sneaky!)

Visit Tammy’s Recipes for more fun kitchen tips!

Technorati Tags: may day baskets

Tomorrow, Justus and Asa are performing in a musical…more on that later!!

Each family involved with the musical is supposed to take refreshments…so of course, I put my boys on the job!

I wrote down a chocolate chip cookie recipe for them…handed it over, and asked them to double it.

I stood in the kitchen with them, listening to Asa teach Elias about doubling fractions, “If you have a half cup plus a half cup…what do you have?”  And Elias says, “Two - half cups.”  (well, true…)

I left the kitchen (to go sit out in my hammock and sleep, of course)…and they made the cookies all by themselves!

I got out of my hammock only to snap a couple of pictures…

Oh - and to show the kids where the sugar was.  How great it THAT?  They are so used to using the good stuff…they didn’t even know where the sugar was!!

Okay now…what is UP with Justus?!  He seems to have this THING about standing on the countertops!!  That kid cracks me up! (And wears me out!)  Oh, and check out Elias…he’s giving the vanilla a big sniff!  And Asa, the ever-so-practical oldest child was saying to him, “Yeah, it smells good…but be sure not to taste it plain…it doesn’t taste as good as it smells…”

Ah, at last, at picture of Justus cooking at ground level.

So, right now my house smells like cookies baking… 

I’ll be calling them in soon to start lunch…

(You know don’t you, that I don’t really have a hammock?!)

Technorati Tags: kids in the kitchen

If you’ve been tracking this series…you know that I’ve been working to get my kids into the kitchen more…

And that this week they are in charge of cooking or helping to cook every meal.

They’ve been doing GREAT!!  

But, I’m learning a few things that I need to do to make it work better.

So…let me tell you about our morning… [She says…with her eyes bugging out…]

Just as all of my boys were waking up today, the little guy I babysit for had a blow-out BIGGER than any I’ve ever dealt with…

(That’s saying A LOT…because I have four boys and 10 years worth of blow outs to brag about.)

So, while I’m going through many baby wipes…stripping down the babe…changing out of my clothes……starting a load of laundry…giving the baby a much needed bath….spot scrubbing the floor…and scrounging around for another outfit for the baby to wear…and whatever else needed to be done after the unbelievable you-had-to-see-it-to-believe-it-but-aren’t-you-glad-you-weren’t-here-to-see-it eruption…

I hurriedly write the breakfast muffin recipe down on a piece of paper for the big boys so that they can get started making a double batch of Honey Wheat Muffins…

All by themselves…because I’m up to my elbows in….um…well…bath water. 

And I’m thinking, “I wonder how they’ll do without my help?!”  Because I’m usually in there walking them through everything and helping everyone share jobs so that the stirring and the pouring is all fair and stuff.

Well, they did have a lot of questions…and it did take longer than forever for them to get the silly things into the oven…

But they did a pretty good job!

I wish this picture wasn’t so dark…but this is what I walked into when I came into the kitchen after the baby’s bath…  Don’t ask me what Justus was doing getting ready to launch himself from the countertop. 

Anyway…what I learned this morning is that I’m guilty of telling them what to do while they’re helping me, instead of letting them read the recipe and figure it out for themselves.

So I need to turn them loose a little more.  Like I did this morning.

Also, I learned that my baking stuff needs to have labels on them.  I buy it all in bulk and then put it into jars.

But when they needed baking powder…they opened the cabinet to this:

“What’s this one?”…”Minced onion.”…”How ’bout this?”…”nutmeg.”…

So, I hopped on the computer later and made labels so that the boys would never put garlic powder in my cookies…

And so…it seems that I’m learning things right along with my boys in the kitchen.

I also learned that my boys like to talk a lot…and TOTALLY don’t get it that you need to efficiently get your food into the oven to start baking if you EVER want to start eating it.

I kid you not…it was 11:15 when they finally had made their muffins, eaten them, and cleaned up after themselves.

Just in time for them to go back in and fix lunch… 

Come by tomorrow…the boys are making Breakfast Pizzas!  Maybe I’d better get them started on it right now…

More WFMW!

Here are a few highlights of the kids in the kitchen on Tuesday!

Elias and Justus made scrambled eggs completely by themselves.  They made a great team!

You should have heard Justus (the professional egg scrambler) explaining to Elias the way to scramble eggs…  It was SO cute!

For lunch, the boys made Shepherd’s Pie.  Justus and Asa peeled the potatoes…

And Justus started browning the meat.

Elias and Malachi helped mix the soup and veggies into the pot of meat.

And Elias whipped the potatoes.

Then, each boy made a “personal” Shepherd’s Pie.  (Sorry for the smudge on the bottom left of the picture…I SO needed to wipe off my lense!  Also, can you tell that I had different aged guys putting on their potatoes?  Who do you think did the one on the top right?!)

For dinner, the boys helped me make Chicken Tortilla Soup.  Justus used the food processor to chop up the tomatoes and chili peppers.

Asa poured in the chicken broth.

Malachi added the chicken and the corn.

Everyone got to help tear up tortillas…

And, YUM…you have to try this soup that they made!!!!  It is so good!!

Allright…the dishes are done and the boys are off duty for the night!  See ya tomorrow!

This week…my kids are going to be doing most of the work in the kitchen (while I lie out back in a hammock sipping lemonade…). 

(Oh, that is so funny…)

They are so excited to be put in charge this week!  And they are learning so much!  Each day this week I’ll be sharing the things I’m teaching them…  It is SO important to start ‘em young!!

Here’s a look at what my kids did in the kitchen on Monday!

Elias was the first one awake…so he got to mix up the pancakes…he loves getting egg slime all over his hands… 

Asa did great cooking his pancakes…he added blueberries just before turning them over…YUM!

Justus got a little frustrated that his pancakes didn’t turn out pretty…but I assured him that they would taste great on his plate as a Great Pancake Pile Plop…  He agreed.

After breakfast while the big boys were upstairs working on their journals, Malachi helped me make Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Brownies.  (Because I knew I would need some chocolate after lunch…)

He did great counting the cups of rapadura (dehydrated cane sugar juice) and flour.  (I’m not sure why I gave him a spoon that is as tall as he is…)

Ah, the best part of helping Mommy… 

Lunch wasn’t too difficult, as we had burritos that I had made and frozen a week or so ago.  Justus just put them in the oven to warm up…and then got to go work on math while they heated. 

After lunch everyone helped with the dishes!  Asa rinsed…

Elias loaded the dishwasher…

And Justus scrubbed the burrito dish.

Asa wiped off the table. (Hey, check out my two week old flowers!!  They look as beautiful as the day Matt brought them to me!!  I LOVE them!)

For dinner…the boys helped make Beef Stroganoff.  Asa sliced mushrooms…
…and sauteed them in butter with onion.  Then we added the meat.

Elias and Malachi got the noodles ready to boil.

Then Elias washed the asparagus.

Justus set the table…

And we sat down to a scrumptious dinner!

These boys were so excited to tell Daddy all that they had made today…and they even said, “And we get to cook everything all week too!!”

Check back in tomorrow to see how they do!  I love to see how much they’re learning!!

Take a peek over at Tammy’s Recipes to learn more kitchen tips!

Please join me for today for Gratituesday!

Lately, I’ve been working to get my kids in the kitchen more…and to encourage you to do the same!  Read more on my Kids in the Kitchen series here.

Each day this week, I’ll be making a focused effort to pull my kids (ages 3, 6, 8 and 10) into the kitchen to help…(even when it will be easier to just send them out and do it myself!)…and I’ll be snapping pictures and blogging each day about what they are doing and learning.   Hope you’ll join us this week to see how it all goes!  I’d love to hear what you’re doing with your kids in the kitchen!!

Here’s our menu:

Download your free pretty menu planners here!

More Menu Plan Monday…

Hope to see you back here this week…for more Kids in the Kitchen!  I’ll be posting pictures, ideas, recipes…and about all the crazy fun we’re having together!!  See ya tomorrow!

Technorati Tags: kids, kitchen, menu

Here’s a great way to get your kids excited about being in the kitchen! 

Pick a person or two to surprise with a special treat…bake up something yummy…download this free card…and deliver your goodies…along with a little springtime cheer!!

My boys and I are going to bake some Orange Muffins and take them to two elderly couples we like to visit. 

One of the biggest reasons for teaching my kids to cook…is so that they will learn to serve and minister to others.  I want them to learn to love blessing others with food.

And this is a great way for them to bless somebunny…don’t you think?!

That’s my kitchen tip for today!

Hey, wanna share with us some special ways God has been working in your life?  Come join in on Gratituesday at HeavenlyHomemakers!!

Also, be sure to sign up for my new Healthy Treats Recipe E-book Giveaway!!