I made these Honey Joys a couple of weekends ago for our youngest’s third birthday party. They went down a treat with both the kids and the adults. I think most adults secretly love a bit of old school party food!

Honey Joys Recipe

Ingredients:

• 180g butter or margarine
• 2/3 cup caster sugar
• 2 tablespoon honey
• 8 cups Corn Flakes

(makes about 40)

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 150°C.

2. Line about 40 muffin tins with patty pans and measure out corn flakes into a large bowl.

3. In a medium saucepan, melt butter, sugar and honey together.

4. Remove from heat once it starts to bubble slightly.

5. Pour butter mixture onto corn flakes and mix well.

6. Spoon the mixture into patty pans. The mixture hardens quite quickly, so you need to work with a bit of speed.

7. Bake for about 10 minutes.

8. Allow to cool in trays for 10 minutes before moving to racks to cool further. If like me, you are going to put little party toppers onto the honey joys, it is good to do it as soon as they are out of the oven. The mixture then sets around the little stick.

Enjoy! I will share more photos and recipes from the birthday part over the next month or so.

Our Family Menu Plan For This Week.

Baking: Easy Chocolate Cake

Monday: Fried Rice

Tuesday: Lamb Chops With Steamed Vegetables

Wednesday: Left Overs

Thursday: Slow Cooker Butter Chicken – a personal fave of mine!

Friday: Pasta with Chicken and Spinach

Saturday: Marinated Chicken Sticks With Salad

Sunday: Sausages and Steamed Vegetables

If you are looking for further recipe inspiration, check out my complete list of Family Friendly Recipes. All of these recipes are in the database of the Planning With Kids Free Menu Planner. You can use the menu planner to plan a week of meals for your family and then print out the associated shopping list.

Current Sponsors:

• Bright Star Kids' Name Labels - Super Cute & Durable Name Labels
• Byk KIds Bikes - The first ergonomically designed Kids Bikes

Honey Joys – Old School Birthday Party Food! is a post from: Planning With Kids

Month two of 2012 already! Here are some ideas of fun activities to do with the kids during the last month of summer here in Melbourne.

The Picnic Room

Now with school back, those of us with younger ones at home, maybe looking for new activities to do with the littlest ones. The Picnic Room is part of Kids Style Hub located at 436 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn. Kids Style Hub is a recent initiative which brings together the work of 100+ Australian and New Zealand children’s and maternity product designers, it also has an online shop where you can purchase these gorgeous products as well.

But Kids Style Hub is more that just a shop. It also has:

• crafting workshops and other events for both kids and adults
• a party room which can be hired out self catered or fully catered with entertainers
• a multi use room which can be booked out to run classes, events, seminars etc
• a photographers gallery featuring emerging and established artists & a photo studio which can be hired out

And of course this gorgeous Picnic Room:

The Picnic Room is a community space where mothers groups, play groups or any parents and their kids can meet up, relax and enjoy. Our guests are encouraged to bring along their own food if they like and make use of the deck chairs or set up some play mats on the grass floor for some tummy time. There is a tea and coffee station with lots of refreshing flavours available including camomile tea and caramel latte.

There are also some simple activities for children to amuse themselves with including drawing and imagination farm animals. We have tried to keep it simple so that there is no fighting over toys. It does not cost anything for mothers groups or plagroups etc to use this space and we are open 7 days a week. 9am til 5:30pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 4pm Saturday and Sunday.

For more information you can contact Nicole Herrick on nicoleh@kidsstylehub.com.au or 0410 525 051.

Natured Kids

Natured Kids runs fun activities for children 0-5 yrs & their families in nature throughout the school terms.

Visiting a different location each week including Flora and Fauna reserves, local beaches, Community Parks and Gardens, Wetlands, and Bird Hides, Galleries and Sculpture Parks & Agricultural farms.

They are held at locations over Melbourne’s outer south east (around Frankston) and you can see what is planned for term 1 2012 here.

Cost:

• 1st child, 10 sessions = $130 ($13 per session)
• 2nd & 3rd child $80 each ($8 session)
• Plus – $10 family 2011 registration *To participate in craft, all children must register.
• Adults/babies free (with paying sibling)

For more information contact Narelle on 0431 791 379 or via the contact form on the website.

Riverslide Skate Park

Riverslide has 1800m² of skating surfaces and is the biggest skate park in the inner city. The park was designed in consultation with skaters, and has a street-skating focus so you can test your skills on ramps and fun-boxes.

The park is managed from 10am until dark. Night Sessions are run every Wednesday and Friday night – floodlit until 10:30pm (except winter months and weather permitting). It is open until 8pm Day Light Saving Time Wed & Fri nights open until 10:30pm.

Opening Hours: Daily, 10am to 6pm
Location: Alexandra Avenue, Melbourne.
Cost: Free
More info: Riverslide Skate Park

Zoo Twilight Sessions

We have attended a number of Zoo twilight sessions over the years and have always had a great time. This year this is a great line up. If you were looking for something to do tonight you could head to the zoo at 5.30pm to see Kasey Chambers!

Details: For the full line up list and to book tickets on line click here.
Cost: Prices vary depending on the artist, but the most expensive family package is 2 Adults + 2 Children (4-15 years) $165.00

And if you are at the zoo for a twilight session or just a regular visit, be sure to check out at the Zoo shop the Beads For Wildlife products like my beautiful bracelet. It is part of the hand-crafted beaded jewellery range, made by the women of Melako in Northern Kenya.

The sale of these products, part of our Beads for Wildlife program directly support over 600 families in Melako; providing an alternative income, taking the pressure off precious resources and helping preserve species such as the Endangered Grevy’s Zebra.

You can also purchase the beads online here.

Tunes In The Trees

Sing some songs, shake out some rhythms and come and enjoy music inspired by plants and animals of the garden. Created especially for younger children, this program provides fun with song and movement in The Ian Potter Foundation Children’s Garden.

Ages: Suitable for children aged three to four years; adult participation is required.
Event date: Thursday 16 February and Thursday 23 February
Time: 10am to 10:45am and 11am to 11:45am
Location: Ian Potter Foundation Children’s Garden, Royal Botanic Gardens, Alexandra Avenue, Melbourne (Meet at the Visitor Centre at Observatory Gate, directly opposite the Shrine of Remembrance)
Cost: $10 per child
Bookings: Required – Tel: (03) 9252 2429
More information: Royal Botanical Gardens Website.

Have fun and take the time to get outside and enjoy the last of our summer in February!

Current Sponsors:

• Bright Star Kids' Name Labels - Super Cute & Durable Name Labels
• Byk KIds Bikes - The first ergonomically designed Kids Bikes

Kids Activities Melbourne – February 2012 is a post from: Planning With Kids

In the survey I conducted last year, I asked you to share your biggest struggle with family life at the time. Overwhelmingly the most common response was around the dilemma of balance. Here is just a selection of the responses:

• Balance – juggling work, family and home duties.
• Balance and being a better mum
• Balance and having ‘me’ time
• Balance between work and home
• Balance of work & family time
• Balancing demands of breastfeeding with keeping an active toddler engaged and happy.
• Balancing different needs of each child – naps, school pick ups, homework, sport, meals, housework
• Balancing everyone’s needs
• Balancing having a life and having an organised house.
• Balancing everything and feeling like I’m on top of it all!
• Balancing kid & parent needs
• Balancing the different needs of two children
• Balancing the needs of all family members, including extended family
• Balancing things to be fair to all parties & dealing with anxiety issues for one child / sensory issues for another

For some of these balance issues I have strategies that I use to make it easier, like:

• How To Entertain A Toddler While Breastfeeding A Newborn
• Spending Individual Time With The Kids
• Mum’s work plan
• 10 Cleaning Tips To Get The House In Shape Quicker

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I do have a question:

Is Work / Life / Family / Balance something we should set as a goal?

Personally I spent a lot of last year thinking, fretting and aiming for balance. Being a planner I liked to think I could divide my time evenly amongst the things that were important to me:

• My kids
• My partner
• My family
• My friends
• My work
• Me

Life doesn’t serve out demands evenly, so there were and are still times when all these areas need my attention, yet I simply couldn’t split it that many ways. Often I would feel like I was failing and very disheartened with “my time management” or “my decision making” skills.

Then in October I read this article by Sarah Wilson, I find what happy women get right and what I read let me breathe a massive sigh of relief:

It’s estimated 1.3 million people have been involved in studies across the first world that confirm the same grim fact: as women’s life circumstances have improved, their happiness has plummeted. The studies conclude the reason for the paradox is not just that “having it all” – career, kids, access to the rowing machine at the gym – has meant “doing it all”. The more important factor is that women have got it into their heads they should be able to do it all. And in perfect balance (I speculate men are, increasingly, feeling the same; it’s just not reflected in the studies yet).

Somewhat in response, UK pop-trend researcher Marcus Buckingham took a different tact and investigated, inversely, what the happier women were doing differently. And his conclusion was this: they strove for imbalance. Messy, all-over-the-shop imbalance.

These happy women, he said, realised that balance was impossible (and therefore stressful) to achieve, but also rather boring. Instead, they “tilted” towards activities and commitments they liked and found meaningful. Scanning the “sad female lawyer” study I found the happier blokes did the same. They were more likely to take breaks at work for personal activities, which I took to mean play golf and eat lunch away from the office, and for simply relaxing. Which I read to mean, not for balancing out an excel sheet of life order.

I didn’t read into to this article that it meant I could just do as I please and put all the things I like to do first and not worry about everything else. It made me think about what was I really trying to achieve with balance. Was I aiming for:

• balance across a day?
• balance across a week?
• balance across a month?

In the end I really just wanted for my family to be happy and satisfied and that I was also happy and satisfied too. I realised that this may sometimes means I leave my family for a week to attend a blogging conference on the other side of the world and other times that I will go offline for weeks at a time to have my family as the sole focus.

For the last couple of months of 2011, I tilted towards key activities at different points in time. And by not hooking myself into the goal of balance, I could do it without the over thinking and the fretting. It wasn’t neat, tidy and even but we were all happy and were able to achieve individual and family goals in this time.

There is much I can do to plan and utilise my time better, so when titled, the other areas of my life are not deprived of my attention. Over the next few months I will be sharing strategies for this.

But for now on the dilemma of balance, I would recommend considering if this is something that you want to set yourself as a goal?

Over to you – I would love to hear what you think!

Current Sponsors:

• Bright Star Kids' Name Labels - Super Cute & Durable Name Labels
• Byk KIds Bikes - The first ergonomically designed Kids Bikes

The Dilemma Of Balance is a post from: Planning With Kids