Here are some combinations I’ve enjoyed:

• Spicy corn salsa, tomatoes, black beans, spinach (in photo)
• Hummus, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce
• Hummus, grated cheddar, carrots, celery, cucumbers, tomatoes, broccoli
• Spinach, a tiny bit of salad dressing (I love Annie’s Green Goddess), broccoli, white beans

The basic idea is something really flavorful, some protein, something crunchy (chopped into bite-sized pieces), and lots of green leaves, all piled into a whole wheat tortilla. As long as I include veggies I like, it’s all good.  It’s a very filling lunch, and at least I know I ate a couple servings of veggies early in the day.

My kids don’t like things wrapped up like this, but they will eat carrots, cucumbers, celery and lightly steamed broccoli plain or with hummus or ranch. I often serve them a veggie plate along with a grilled cheese or PB&J.

Other supplies for more complex projects are in the basement, and the super messy stuff (glitter, anyone?) is all stashed up high. But having a cabinet full of the basics right there where we’re all hanging out anyway is fantastic. The girls are empowered to create because these are all things they can access any time they like.  Having the materials organized into separate containers is great too. Note the reuse of peanut butter jars and wipes boxes; it doesn’t have to be fancy to work.

This art cabinet helps my girls incorporate art into their lives every single day.

Posted at Works for me Wednesday… because it does!

Last summer was fantastic for our family. Here’s my advice for making this a super summer too.

Reflect on what did and didn’t work last year.

Too many camps? Too few?  Too many bored afternoons at home? Too few? Just think about your memories from last summer. Try to repeat the highlights and work to avoid the low points.

Also, think about how your kids have changed. My youngest two were very clingy in years past, but this year, they are much more independent. So, they are more ready for swim lessons and more accepting when I leave them at camp programs. They also have more stamina and are okay with busier days.

Ask your kids what they want to do.

It’s really important to have a chat with your kids at the beginning of summer and see what they want to do. Children can be very knowing about what sorts of activities they crave.

For my oldest daughter, free time to play with her friends is high on her list. Another wants tennis lessons with her dad. Neither of those things are difficult to provide, but it’s so easy to overlook the simple things in the midst of a busy summer. Knowing what their top priorities are is so helpful.

Also, having a list of things they want to do is a wonderful for the days when you or they just can’t come up with something to do. A reminder to do something as simple as make homemade ice cream could turn an afternoon of boredom into a perfect summer day.

Plan for the must-dos.

If you are committed to family events or travel, be sure they’re on the calendar…along with extra tasks they require. Schedule the time for the shopping, packing, mail-stopping and other chores.  Maybe you can do some of those things when your children are at camps or at a friend’s house. Planning extra time for the non-fun activities will make those days less stressful for everyone.

Make up for what’s missing during the school year.

For my oldest, there’s never enough art at school. So, she gets to take several special art camps this summer, and I have ample supplies on hand for projects at home. For some kids, summer is the perfect time to take a break from one activity and try another–like exchanging ballet lessons for a swim team. My girls all want more playtime with friends, so now is the time to schedule those playdates! Things may not be as spontaneous, but at least they’re guaranteed to happen!

Plan for downtime.

I love the days when we don’t go anywhere. I love being at home, when I can catch up on chores and the girls can relax with no scheduled plans. These days are one of my favorite parts of summer. Sometimes these days go by in the blink of an eye…others aren’t quite as easy.

So I have a long list of activities in mind for those quiet days at home. Crafts and art are great. We can also pull out toys and games that have been forgotten about. Often, I can just send the girls outside to play on the playset, run under the sprinkler or come up with their own games.

Stock up on the summer necessities.

I’ve got loads of juice boxes, granola bars and Popsicles on hand. Quick lunches and portable snacks are a big part of summer for us. Having those on hand in bulk keeps me from being caught off guard when two or three or four other kids drop by. When we needed them, I kept swim diapers in the car and at home (for the sprinkler). I have sunscreen everywhere–in the cabinet by the back door, in my purse, in the car, in my girls’ backpacks.

That’s my plan to help this be a smooth, intentional, FUN summer.  I hope they help you do the same!

We’d forgotten how much we love granola, until my husband brought home a bag this winter. It was gone in two days! It’s super easy and cheap to make a big batch of granola. The best part is you can tailor all the ingredients to your personal preferences or what’s in your pantry.  Now, there’s almost always a container of fresh granola in our kitchen.

Here’s my recipe.  Use it as is, or adapt it to your own liking:

Honey Maple Vanilla Granola

5 cups oats

3/4 cup raw sunflower or pumpkin seeds

1 1/2 cups raw almonds, chopped

1 cup shredded unsweetened coconut

1/2 cup wheat germ

2 T Cinnamon

1/2 cup maple syrup

1/2 cup honey

1/4 cup oil

1 t vanilla

1 cup dried fruit

First, spray a rimmed 11 x 17 baking sheet with non-stick spray. Heat oven to 325 degrees.

Add all the dry ingredients (except the dried fruit) together in a large bowl and stir well.

Mix the honey, maple syrup, oil and vanilla together. Pour over dry ingredients and stir well.

Spread the mixture on the baking sheet. Bake at 325 for 25 minutes.  Stir the granola. Bake 10 more minutes. Stir again.  Possibly bake 5 more minutes.

Bake until the granola is a golden light brown. Remember, it will dry out more as it cools.  Don’t overbake!

After removing from the oven, stir in the dried fruit. In this batch I used 1/3 cup raisins and 2/3 cup tropical fruit.  My favorite combination is half cherries, half blueberries. Let the granola cool in the pan. If you want to add mini chocolate chips, wait until the granola is completely cool. Store in air-tight containers.  Enjoy!

I linked up at:

A beautiful winter sunrise over our farm: the majesty of the clouds was amazing. Enjoy!

Yes, that would be shelled green beans in Annie’s macaroni shells….but presented just so.

Now, this dinner happened at the end of a very long day that included three ballet lessons, zero naps, and so many meltdowns I lost count.  Yet finally,we made it home for dinner, and the children–the tired, cranky, hungry children–began to eat…and to play with their food.

Charlotte began to shell her green beans, immediately eating the outsides and setting the actual beans aside. She also insisted on examining and dissecting each lima bean to see if it had sprouted at all. (A few actually had). She and Kathleen began comparing their veggies. Then they made the creations above, beans on the half shell, if you will.

The first thought that came to mind was, as you might expect, Stop playing with your food. Only sheer exhaustion caused me not to say it out loud.

And thankfully so, because my next thought was, Who cares if they’re playing with their food?  They are happily eating green beans. They are interested in learning how beans grow and sprout. They are working together to make these miniature, gourmet-to-children delights. They are proud of their work.

I’m pretty relaxed about mealtime because I have to be with three young children.  However, I do have some basic standards that I try to enforce, like using utensils. But that night, I just let go of all such notions and watched my children play with their food. I had to cook a second round of green beans! Even better than the high rate of vegetable consumption, I heard the tears, the whining, the frustrations that had marked the evening turn into giggles and bonding between sisters. I saw budding scientists examine and hypothesize, and I watched budding chefs work on their creative presentation skills.  I got all that just because I stepped back and let my children play with their food.

Playing with food is gross? Maybe. But I’m okay with that.

Shared at Works for Me Wednesday

As we headed back home through the fog and flurries, my husband and I knew we would still have a special day of pre-Christmas fun. Most importantly, we would finally satisfy our girls’ inquiries about when we would decorate the Christmas tree. 

I hauled all the boxes of Christmas stuff out of the basement. Immediately, the girls descended on them. As my husband put the tree together and I untangled the lights, the girls unrolled and unwrapped ornaments of all sorts, from hand-stitched felt animals to hand-blown glass baubles.  The family room was a sea of ornament hooks, bubble wrap and plastic bins. As the girls loaded the branches with ornaments, I tried to corral the chaos.  Amazingly, nothing broke, but I had moments where I held my breath as a child grabbed the tail end of packing paper and some fragile, lovely thing tumbled onto the floor, one misstep away from the feet of a sister. There were moments when, through clenched teeth and in a not-very-Christmasy voice, I said, “Be careful with that.” There were a few tense moments, even though nothing about decorating the  Christmas tree should have made me tense. 

Before I had children, I purchased beautiful glass ornaments and planned to ’someday’ decorate a tree in gold, silver and white.  I am not a fancy decorator, but I think the combination of these colors, together with tiny white lights, is really beautiful. But the newlywed years of just my husband and me (and a very waggy black Lab) in a small house weren’t conducive to me putting up such a tree. Nor were the following years of babies, toddlers and lots of moving.  Now that my children are a little older, they’re still rambunctious and curious, and having a tree that I wouldn’t want them to touch would be ridiculous and frustrating for everyone.

So on this beautiful Saturday, with white snow outside and bright laughter inside, I decided to simplify. I decided to make decorating the Christmas tree more relaxing and more fun for me.  I collected all the fagile items and packed them back up in two bins. I deposited those boxes at the very back of our storage space, so that next year, I won’t even get them out.  Everything that does come out will be child friendly so I won’t have to hold my breath as anything gets unwrapped.

Because we didn’t rush through this snowy weekend, because the weather upended all our obligations, I had the chance to do this. Given the gift of an open day, I chose to just be in that moment.  I didn’t try to squeeze in a few loads of laundry, do any cyber shopping, or even make dinner (ordering pizza was the perfect snow day treat!). I chose to spend the whole day decorating the tree, reading Christmas books, listening to Christmas music, and slowly cleaning it all up. We focused on the tasks at hand and on enjoying each other–because really, these precious days of our children’s childhood go by all too quickly.  The number of Christmases when they’ll be little are so few.

Sure, eventually, I’ll get out those fancy-schmancy Christmas ornaments. I’ll have a beautiful shining tree with coordinated ornaments.  But it won’t matter to me nearly as much as this family room tree full of handmade gingerbread men, ornaments painted with my children’s tiny fingerprints, and all the mismatched souvenir ornaments collected to remind us of hobbies, jokes, friends, trips, and events in our lives together. 

What a blessing to be able to clear the clutter of the fancy and the fragile to focus on having fun together, making memories more precious than silver and gold.

(This Works for me Wednesday and any other day of the year too.)

Out came the snowsuits and boots, the hats and gloves.  And out went the girls. Well, not exactly. Kathleen got as far as putting on her snowsuit. Eleanor got totally suited up and made it off the porch before she came back in.  But Charlotte was out for hours!

She and her father made this awesome snowman, Jolly.  What a great exercise in teamwork and stamina!  She was out for hours afterwards too, experimenting and playing with the snow.  Welcome, winter!

She liked the color of her room, lavender, so I didn’t feel the need to repaint it (yay!). Primarily, I wanted to replace a lavender and white valence with curtains for greater privacy and to block sunlight on early mornings or later summer evenings to promote sleeping.  I also wanted to pump some color and fun into the room.

We went together to a local fabric store. All of the home dec fabrics seemed so boring, but this regular 44″ fabric immediately appealed to Charlotte’s energetic and colorful personality. 
I had thought I would pair it with some other fabrics in that line with stripes and polka dots.

I had planned to use 2″ to 8″ strips of the other fabrics at the top and/or bottom of the curtain panels to break up all those psychedelic waves. But as I played with the fabrics, I decided it was better just to let the wavy pattern shine.

We all love the curtains. They complement the pale walls by adding lots of color and energy without overwhelming the space.  They are simple tab-top curtains, lined with a middle weight cotton muslin. My favorite thing about the curtains is that she won’t outgrow them anytime soon. I think she will be happy with them for many years to come.

(And that extra polka dot fabric came in handy when I recovered a chair and bench for her room.)

Made by You Monday

Charlotte’s been back in school for a few weeks now, and the little girls have been back in preschool for just one. It’s hard for me to think that another summer of their precious childhoods has gone.

However, we do have some great memories! Our favorite thing that we did together as often as possible was go to the pool.

Charlotte went off the high dive for the first time.

The cool water was a great antidote to the heat.

Every summer vacation is good, but I think this was my favorite one yet as a mom. Why?

• Now that my youngest is two, we weren’t so limited by the nap schedule. In fact, the little girls went days without naps this summer. Some days, they held up great. Others, well, things might have been rough around 4:30, but they were sound asleep at 7 o’clock. On days I could tell they were running out of steam, we made sure to be at home in the afternoons, but for the most part, I used this new freedom to pack more into those brief summer days.
• We had almost exactly two months for summer vacation–not enough time for all the things we wanted to do! Last summer, I felt like the days got away from me, so this summer I was prepared. In early May, I talked to the girls about what they wanted to do this summer. Charlotte wrote a list of  activities like the children’s museum, the pool, a picnic and so on that the girls agreed they all wanted to do. I think we managed to go and do everything they requested except for the zoo. The days we could have gone were just too hot, so we’ll go over fall break!
• The list also included specific requests for playdates, and I set to work inviting friends over as soon as school ended and kept it up through August, trying to plan a week or so in advance. The girls didn’t get to play with everyone on the list, but they had more friends over than they would have if we hadn’t planned for it. It was really nice for them to strengthen their friendships from school over the summer.  My girls also spent lots of time playing with the neighbors. Long afternoons of play was much more fun than play sandwiched between homework and school-night bedtimes.
• I sprinkled in just enough summer camps. I started looking into different programs in March or April and got recommendations from friends. Some great programs I didn’t sign up for because they were all day, and I wanted to have my children with me for at least part of the day; others just weren’t convenient; other sounded great, but I thought that particular week needed to be a week of downtime.  Amazingly, I got lucky. Every program my girls went to was a positive experience for them and we hit a great balance of scheduled and unscheduled time.
• I was prepared for days at home. I had several craft ideas tucked away in my mind for days when plans fell through or the grumps hit. Really, though, my ideas didn’t come into play much–the girls were content to rummage through our art cabinet and come up with their own plans. But, if that hadn’t been the case, I was prepared.
• Finally, as evidenced by my lack of presence in the cyberworld this summer, I just gave over to the whole concept of summer vacation. I didn’t want to be at the computer, shooing kids away so I could type. I wanted to enjoy this time, especially with Charlotte who I see too little of during the school year. The computer and then house were a little neglected, but my family got plenty of attention. We read books, cooked, sat in the hammock, and did all those other great summer things that families should do.

Yeah, it was a great summer….