I’m taking the next few Fridays to spotlight my amazing contributors. Next up on the list is Mariel of Or So She Says who contributes once a month to our Family Time page.

Mariel is a fabulous story teller. I get mesmerized in her words. And she’s always got some fun tradition going on to celebrate the family. I loved the Father’s Day tradition she shared on M&T last year, that trophy is the best!

 I wanted to start a blog that was relevant to YOUR lives and would help improve mine. With every post, it is my goal to make you think “hey, now that’s a darn good idear.” Just like that.

With the help of this blog, my hope is that you can find new traditions, ways to spruce up your marriage, enrich family life, get some yummy grub on the table, and more! I love getting to know you, and focusing on what YOU need ideas for.

Here are just few favorite posts from Mariel over at Or So She Says…:

• Homeschooling
• Delicious Queso Dip
• Family Night: You Are Special
• Finding Stress Relief

Head over to Mariel’s blog to see all the fun and festivities happening in her family!

Here are just a few of the posts I’ve been sharing around the web over the past few weeks. And I’ve thrown in some all around goodness from blogland. Come see what’s been going on.

BabyCenter’s Momformation:

• 10 Ways to Beat the Winter Blues, including Roll a Snowman by Funky Polkadot Giraffe

• 10 Handmade Valentine Cards for Kids to Make, including these cute love bugs by Dandee Designs.

Babble’s The New Home Ec:

• 13 Snow Inspired Projects, including this Valentine’s garland by Peppermint Plum

• You’ve Made the Scarf, Now How to Tie it, including this scarf style from Jones Design Company.

Posts where LOVE is the word of the day:

• Love for a wife, mom, friend, blogger who has passed on. We’ll miss you Susan (Toddler Planet)
• He Said/She Said - What happens when your parenting style is different, but it’s all for love.
• A Month of Love: Should Marriage be Work? - great question, good post.
• Look good for your Valentine with this Loose Curl Wave Tutorial.
• Slacker Mom’s guide to homemade Valentines. Although these are anything but slacker.
• Story time for the kids with Love from Mr. Hatch.
• Darling Valentine treat bags, all too easy!

My guest post: at Whip Up, sharing a Valentine’s craft from my book:

I’m signed up to help with my daughter’s Valentine classroom party this year. I love elementary schools during the holidays, especially Valentines. There’s so many fun ways to decorate and celebrate with hearts. While I was thinking of what I’m going to help with during my daughter’s party, I thought I’d share my ideas here. Are you helping with a party this year? Possibly a Room Parent?

I’ve broken it down by activity below, as I think it’s best to have rotating stations. You can easily fill 1 hour with 4-5 stations set up around the room. Each station sharing something different for the kids to do, eat, or create for about 10-15 minutes at a time. You can always gather everyone together at the end to eat their snack and listen to a story.

Here’s a few ideas for games, crafts, food, and story time: 

GAMES for a Valentine’s Party:

• Heart Healthy Exercise – This is one of my favorites, I do it almost every year. The kids get into it and it will keep them going for a good 10 minutes. And the kids are exercising, even better. **If you’d like to download a free printable version of this board, visit Fantastic Find who created one the kids can take home!

• Valentine Heart Puzzles – You can make these ahead of time and the kids have to figure them out, or this can be a fun craft for the kids. Maybe have the kids swap puzzles and try to put each other’s puzzles back together.

• Teacher Heart Attack – Give your child’s teacher a “heart attack” by having all the kids write down what they love about their teacher on a heart. Then take each heart and tape them up on her door or onto a giant poster sized heart. He or she will LOVE it.

• Giant Heart Tic Tac Toe – Create a tic tac toe game board with a red poster and a few handmade heart bean bags. You could make a few of these so 4-6 kids could be playing all at the same time.

• Hide and Seek the Heart – Again, with the same handmade bean bags from the tic tac toe game, you can play a game of hide and seek. This is best done with the whole class. Have one child leave the room. Another child will hide the heart, and then the first child will come in and find it. The other children can help  by saying hot or cold!

• Heart Letter Match – this game could be played with any type of learning objective. You could create 3-4 games of these and let the kids match them up and take turns with each set. 

CRAFTS for a Valentine’s Party:

• Paper Heart Lei – this is fun to have each child create, simply with straws and hearts. Here’s a video I’ve done making cutting hearts a breeze!

• Pipe Cleaner Heart Glasses – or love goggles if you will. With just 3 pipe cleaners, each child in the class will go home with a fun new pair of glasses!

• Valentine’s Coloring Pages – download and print off these free coloring pages. If you’re done with a specific activity early, these are a great way to keep the kids focused at their station.

• Heart Pop Up Cards – There are so many ways to create a pop up card. If you have the supplies ready, the kids can come up with what ever they’d like to add to make a pop.

FOOD for a Valentine’s Party:

• Heart Shaped Cookies Creatures – Make a big batch of heart shaped sugar cookies and let the kids decorate them to look like fun heart shaped creatures.

• Heart Shaped Snack – you can pretty much form or cut a heart into any snack for kids. Cheese, crackers, cookies, bread, watermelon, strawberries. You could even make a fun heart shaped snack kabob on a wood skewer.

• Marshmallow Heart Necklaces – These are too cute and the kids will love to thread through a marshmallow, making a fun necklace. This idea comes from Cute Food For Kids.

STORY TIME for a Valentine’s Party:

• Happy Valentine’s Day, Mouse – from the creator of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Cute story!
• The Day it Rained Hearts – this story fits living in Seattle!
• The Night Before Valentines – follows the rhyme from the night before Christmas.
• Amelia Bedelia’s Valentines – she is always doing silly things.

Here are a few more links to party ideas and classroom parties:

• Room Mom Spot by Volunteer Spot
• Love Crush Party by Hostess with the Mostess
• Milk and Cookie Valentine Party ideas from Pizzazzerie

What are you planning to do? If you’re helping in your child’s classroom, share what fun ideas and crafts you’re going to create.

This giveaway is now closed. Thanks to all who made a guess! There were two people who guessed right on: 273!! So after choosing between the two at random, our winner is #70 Andrea. I’ll email you for details.

I’m in the giving, loving, sharing spirit! Valentine’s is such a fun holiday and our little family is following the 14 Acts of Love countdown. We picked one this week that said, “share a toy with a friend”. Well, I’m going to share a “book” with a friend… one of YOU!

But I like to make it a bit of a challenge! You have to guess how many Hot Tamales are in this heart dish. The person who is the closest, over or under, WINS a copy of Make and Takes for Kids. Hooray!

A little back story…

Hot Tamales are my favorite candy, f-a-v-o-r-i-t-e! And I’ve just realized this. Really, all time favorite. Like eat an entire box by myself at the movie theater kinda love. Am I alone?  The best part is no one else in my family likes them, they are too hot, so they are all m-i-n-e! ;)

So, now enter heart dish filled with red candies for a Valentine contest. Yippee! I’m showing you two angles to get a better view. Count them up, include the 6 on the table, then enter your number choice in the comments. The closest person to the exact number in this bowl, yes I counted each one, will win a copy of my book.

You only have until Friday Feb 10th at midnight, so get your answers in the comments. And just one comment per person, (which means if you have kids and they want a shot at it, let them guess and leave a separate comment for them.)

Good luck!!

A few years back, we made really fun giant Valentine puzzles. These were great. Perfect for little hands to help with, cutting and forming the puzzle. I thought this would be fun to do for my children’s friends or classmates, so we made a mini version. This little heart puzzle is simple and fun to make, and fits perfectly in an envelope. Just add a little candy or pencil to make it complete.

Supplies for Mini Paper Valentines:

• colored cardstock paper
• scissors (child-friendly if you’ve got them)
• black marker or crayons
• envelope

1. Cut out a small heart, about 3-4 inches across.

2. Write something on the front. It could say “Be Mine” and then have your child’s name on there, so then the other children would have to finish the puzzle to see who it was from.

3. Cut up your heart into puzzle shape pieces and add them to your envelope.

Place in a treat or toy and seal up the envelope. Hopefully your Valentine won’t be too puzzled!

The best thing about robots is they can be tailored for both boys and girls. They are easy for little ones because you can construct them from simple shapes such as squares, circles, rectangles and ovals. Embellishing them a bit gives school age children a chance to express their creativity and give their robots character. A fun valentine to give to friends and family!

For these Robot Valentines you will need:

• Card stock
• Construction paper
• Sequins
• Marker
• Googly eyes
• Glue stick
• White craft glue
• Scissors
• Red glitter

First cut and fold card stock into cards. Use scissors or a paper cutter to cut some simple shapes from construction paper. Use the glue stick to attach the shapes to the card stock.

Draw arms, legs, and antennae on with a fine point marker. You can decorate them with a marker as well if you like.

Embellish the robots with sequins, using white craft glue to attach them as antennae tops, hands and wheels. To make the mouths, draw vertical lines on a piece of white paper then cut a half-circle shape so that the lines look like teeth.

Use your finger to spread some white craft glue onto a piece of construction paper then cover with red glitter. Knock off excess and cut two hearts from the glittered paper. Glue stick the hearts to the robots. Finally, use white craft glue to attach the googly eyes.

Write your Valentine message inside!

I’ve made pop up cards before – these fun Valentine Heart Pop Up Cards. I’ve just given them a fresh new look with some much improved photos (they were sad little snapshots from the early days!) This is a great card for you or your little one to help make for Valentines.

Well I’ve got another version of the pop up card. A card that pops out! It’s perfect for creating something different and festive on Valentines.

Supplies for Pop Up Pop Out Cards:

• 1 sheet of paper, any size or color
• pencil
• scissors
• 1 sheet of cardstock paper, larger than the first paper
• markers, crayons or stickers to decorate

1. Fold your smaller paper in half. With your pencil draw a line on the fold. The line should be as long as you want, but make sure not to go too far to the edge. You can also place it on the top or bottom half of the fold, it doesn’t have to be in the middle.

2. Cut along your pencil line.

3. Fold back each of the cut pieces, forming it into 2 triangle shapes, and making a good crease.

4. Bend the folds back in and open the card. Bend the folds through the front and pop them out to look like a mouth.

I love this one and you can do lots of things with this mouth. I made “Hot Lips”, but you could draw a face around the mouth or make it an animal beak. I’ve also seen these pop up cards with a frog mouth. Way to much fun with these pop up cards.

Glue your second piece of paper to the back of the card, so you don’t see the hole in the middle. Add marker or stickers to make it stand out.

Have fun making your fun Valentine cards POP!

The Super Bowl is this Sunday.  (You probably already knew that, but I had to Google it.  We’re more likely to be watching Downton Abbey instead.) But if you need a tasty little appetizer/snack for your Super Bowl (or Downton Abbey) Party, might I suggest these rice rolls filled with a spicy, crunchy, refreshing Radicchio Slaw?

They’re so good.  My kids enjoyed helping roll them up and then, of course, the eating part.  I’m finding that I can sneak more veggies into their diet if they get to help me prepare the food.  Anything that gets dunked in a sauce helps too.

For the dipping sauce I threw in a twist to a favorite dipping sauce we make for gyoza (pot stickers)–equal parts soy sauce and lime juice with a little sugar.  I’ve used orange instead and added a bit of toasted sesame oil.

If you can’t find radicchio, finely shredded red cabbage would work here.  Radicchio is a little bitter, but it works well with the dressing and dipping sauce.  Any raw leafy green or lettuce would be fine too.  Add in other veggies or even fruit if you feel inclined–bell pepper slices, bean sprouts, jicama, avocado, mango, etc.

Radicchio Slaw Rice Rolls

1/2 head of radicchio, cut in half horizontally and thinly sliced
3 carrots, peeled and shredded
2 celery ribs, very thinly sliced
1/4 white onion, finely chopped

Tahini Dressing (recipe follows)

Rice wrappers (I like using the large ones, 9-10″ diameter)

Orange-Soy Dipping Sauce (recipe follows)
Place all the veggies in a large bowl and drizzle with the Tahini Dressing.  Toss to coat.

Fill a large, shallow pan with warm water.  Place one of the rice wrappers in the warm water for a few second, no more than 10, and lay carefully on a large plate.  Spoon some of the slaw, letting any excess dressing drip back into the bowl, onto the middle of the rice wrapper and fold one edge tightly over the slaw, and the sides towards the middle and tightly roll.  (Just like you’re rolling a burrito.)  Place on a platter.  Repeat until all the slaw has been used.  Leave any excess dressing in the bowl.

Serve immediately with Orange-Soy dipping sauce, or wrap each roll tightly in plastic wrap and chill for a few hours.  (Does not keep well overnight.)

Makes 8-10 large rice rolls.

Tahini Dressing

1 Tbsp. tahini (or peanut butter)
2 tsp. soy sauce (I used gluten-free tamari)
2 tsp. rice wine vinegar
1/2-1 tsp. sambal oelek (go easy, it’s spicy)
1 tsp. agave nectar (or more if you want it sweeter)
1-2 tsp. freshly grated ginger
1 clove garlic, finely minced or 1/4 tsp. garlic powder

Whisk together all ingredients and taste.  Adjust seasonings as needed according to preference.

Orange-Soy Dipping Sauce

Juice of 1 large orange
2 Tbsp. soy sauce (I used GF tamari)
a little toasted sesame oil.
a sprinkle of red pepper flakes (optional)

Whisk together and serve with rice rolls.