cooking with kids

DIY Heart Shaped Tortilla Chips

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Is it too early to make Valentine’s Day treats?  Maybe not if love is celebrated all year long! These Heart shaped tortilla chips were just an added bonus and very fun for the kids. Add them to your Valentine’s Day occupational therapy activities or as a crunchy snack option to a sensory diet.
 
Whether you make star shaped tortilla chips or heart shaped chips, they are a fun little detail and perfect for dipping.  And this mama-to-be KNOWS her chips 😉
 
DIY Heart Shaped Tortilla Chips

Heart Shaped Tortilla Chips

 
Note: This post contains affiliate links. 
 
DIY Heart Shaped Tortilla Chips

We started with corn tortillas.  These had been sitting in the fridge for a while since I bought the wrong ones and no one liked them as wraps.  They came in handy for this recipe.  {While you are cutting hearts, preheat the oven to 350.}

I pulled out the smallest heart from my Heart Cutter Set
and started cutting hearts from the tortillas.

DIY Heart Shaped Tortilla Chips

DIY shaped tortilla chips:

Once I had a pile of hearts cut out, I spread them out on my jelly roll pan.  Then I added a drizzle of olive oil over them
and tossed them around with a spatula to cover the hearts with olive oil.  These were thrown in the oven at 350 degrees F for about 15 minutes.  I made sure to keep a close eye on them and pull them out every once in a while to flip the chips around.  At one point, I sprinkled a little chili powder on the chips.

 

If you are using regular or whole wheat tortillas, the amount of time needed to brown the chips may vary.  When we made our star shaped chips, it took 20 minutes to get them to a crunchy state.  And they puffed up a bit more than the corn tortilla version did. 

We dipped our DIY tortilla chips into a taco filling-type dip.  Perfect yumminess!

 

Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.

Christmas Healthy Snacks for Kids

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You may have seen these Christmas snacks that our kids have been enjoying recently on our Instagram feed.  ((Are you following us? Stop by and check it out!  We are loving Instagram!))  These Healthy Christmas Snacks for the Kids were easy to throw together for hungry kids.  (Aren’t they ALWAYS hungry?)  This time of year, there are so many sweets everywhere.  A few healthy and festive snack ideas are perfect to make a special moment.  Of course, they don’t need their cut up apples in a fancy shape to eat healthy foods, it’s just fun to make things special every once in a while!

Christmas Healthy Snacks for kids. By Sugar Aunts

Healthy Snack for Kids: Christmas Tree with Apples:

This was a last minute after-school snack for Big Sister one day.  She comes home from school SO hungry!  A cut up apple and a pretzel rod made the perfect Christmas Tree snack and filled her belly until dinner time.  A reader on our Facebook page suggested adding dried cranberries for ornaments.  Wouldn’t that be the perfect addition?  Love that idea!!

Christmas Healthy Snacks for kids. By Sugar Aunts

Healthy Snack for Kids: Cucumber Snowmen

One snowy Saturday, there were choruses of “I’m hungry!” from the kids.  This was a quick snack and was gobbled up just as quickly!  When they saw these snowmen, there were cheers.  This one used slices of cucumber. (I doubled them up for each section of the snowmen.)  A few raisins, slices of red peppers, and a bit of shredded cheese.  Done!
What healthy snacks do your kids love?

Salt Dough Apples

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We made these salt dough apples one day after we pulled out our Fall decorations.  We had made salt dough pumpkins two years ago and they are still in great condition.  So, we decided to make some more decorations with salt dough! 

Salt Dough Apples
Salt Dough Pumpkins

Salt Dough Apples

We used a variation of this recipe from The Imagination Tree for our salt dough: 
1 cup salt
1 cup flour
1/2 cup water
 
Mix together until combined.  We added a little more flour because the dough was a little sticky to work with.  Once nice and mixed, we added red food coloring.  And then a bit more flour because of the moisture from the food coloring made it sticky again!  I’m thinking gel food coloring would work a little better for the consistency.
 
Roll the dough out and cut with a cookie cutter.  We used a pumpkin cookie cutter for our apples and it worked just as well.
Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees.  Place the dough cut-outs on a sheet of aluminum foil on a cookie sheet.  Bake the cut outs for 2 hours. 
When we made our pumpkins, we didn’t add color.  Rather, we painted them after they were cooked and cooled.  With our apples, they didn’t need any painting, they were just right as is!

 
Be sure to poke holes in the bottom of the dough before baking.  This allows the dough to bake flat and not rise.  Maybe it rises more with self-rising flour? I forgot to add the fork holes on our apples and they puffed up.  You can see how flat the pumpkins are compared to our apples in the bottom picture.
Slat Dough Pumpkins
We’ve been using our Salt Dough Apples for decorations, pretend play in our play kitchen, patterns with Little Guy and Big Sister, and counting.  We’ll keep these little cuties with our pumpkins and pull them out year after year!
Salt Dough Apples

Tinkerbell Fairy Birthday Party details

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Check out the party details below, and watch for a Ninja Turtle post to come, soon 🙂
We made coffee filter butterflies here (using a straw to pipet watercolors onto coffee filters!), and strung them in the light fixture using fishing line.  Raiding dad’s tackle box was a fun adventure one afternoon 😉
Chocolate covered Oreos with Key Lime Pie melts from Joanne’s.  This combo was really good!  They may not be the prettiest chocolate, but with those Joanne coupons, you can’t beat it! 
Finger food even a fairy would love!

Another Joanne’s coupon deal: Little fairy houses for each party go-er to decorate.  We had a goopy, glittery, sticky house for lots of little fairies! (Or birdhouses for a certain little nephew…) 🙂
I LOVE the concentration going on here!
We painted a big sheet of cardboard and hung it to our outdoor play house.  This was a fun afternoon in the week leading up to party day!  Big Sister really got into this one.
We had a great celebration of Big Sister’s birthday with family and friends.
Happy Birthday to my sweet, smart, kind, sensitive, silly girl.

Summer Kick-Off Playdate party details

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We had a Summer Kick-Off Play Date last month
(this post is just a little delayed, haha!)
…and we wanted to share the party details and fun!
We invited some friends over for a play date and instructed the moms to dress the kids in their bathing suits, and bring towels.  What else says “summer” like the sprinkler??
A summer kick-off party also needs a bucket of chalk, popsicles, and a big bin of lawn toys.
I made the sunny straw toppers one morning while sitting and watching my kiddos take their swimming lessons.  Big Sister drew a bunch of suns on yellow cardstock and I cut them out.  Easy and cute!
I put out a bowl of bubbles and added sunny little details like yellow bowls, napkins, and plates. 
The Oreo dirt dessert was a hit!  And very easy to make:
Crush a package of Oreo cookies.
Make a package of pudding (I used vanilla but chocolate would be good, too).
Pop open a container of Cool-Whip.
Layer pudding/Cool-Whip/Oreos.
YUM!!
Our summer kick-off play date was a great way to connect with some friends we haven’t seen for a while and a FUN way to get excited about summer!

DIY Taco Seasoning Mix

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What do you do when tacos are on the menu for dinner, you go to grab your taco seasoning packet from the cupboard, and find not one single packet there waiting for you?   When it’s 5:00 pm, and the thought of taking three kids to the grocery store for one little seasoning packet is the worst imaginable torture??
You Google.


Of course there is no one recipe that you have all of the ingredients to and so you mix a few together and add a couple of extra things to make up for it.
And that’s how this recipe was born.
1 Tbsp. McCormick chili powder, (or any brand will do)
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp McCormick onion powder
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp celery salt
1 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp dried McCormick dried parsley flakes
1/4 tsp dried basil flakes
Mix all ingredients together.  To make a taco beef mixture, brown one pound of ground beef and add 2 Tbsp of the taco seasoning mixture with 1/2 cup of water. Simmer the meat to combine flavors.
Taco Night was saved!
This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

Taco Empanadas

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This taco empanadas recipe is a quick and delicious meal you can make using leftover ground beef, chicken, or ground turkey. Leftover taco meat is perfect for making taco empanadas! This Mexican empanada dish is a delicious one for all ages. If you are looking for a cooking with kids recipe that the whole family will love, this one is it!

Taco Empanadas

This recipe is just too easy not to share with you…and the best part is our kids love it (and love to help make it)!  I made these one day last week for a play-date and the kids thought they were pretty neat. 

You can improvise the filling with anything you think would be good…I have made them with chicken, ground turkey, and the traditional beef empanadas. 

 

 
 
 

Taco Empanadas Ingredients

To make the taco empanadas, you’ll need to first gather your ingredients:
 
  • Mexican pastry shells
  • 1-1.5lb ground beef
  • One package Taco Mix
  • 6oz salsa of your choice
How to make taco empanadas:
 
  1. Start out with these pastry shells, I get them in the local Mexican store in the refrigerator section.  I usually pick up several packages and keep some in the freezer. 
2. Brown the ground beef- I browned some ground meat in the slow cooker, added a package of taco mix and half a jar of mild salsa.  Let this cook until the meat is browned and it is ready to fill the shells.
 
 
 3. Spray a cookie sheet with cooking spray so the shells don’t stick.
 
Here comes the part the kids love helping with…
 

 

 

 

 

 


4. Fill the shells with the meat mixture and fold over. 

5. Use a fork to press the shells together. 

6. Wisk an egg and lightly paint the shells with the egg.  My four year old daughter loves helping with this part. 

7. Using the fork while pressing into the dough is great for her little fingers. 

8. Bake in oven at 375 degrees F for approximately 20 minutes or until golden brown.  Delicious!

 

 

Pair this recipe with other easy dishes:

 Veggie Puffs Recipe

Homemade Pasta Recipe

Veggie Quesadilla Recipe

Vegetable Rice

Veggie Quesadilla Recipe

Peep Popcorn

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Get ready to use up all that Easter candy!
Somehow we cannot avoid the Peeps around Easter time…they always end up in the house.  My daughter and I made this popcorn mixture as a snack for the annual cousin Easter egg hunt.  We thought it was pretty yummy (and fun to make)!

 I pretty much made it like you would make a Rice Krispie treats.
Make approx 6 cups popcorn
1/2 stick butter
6 rows Peeps
M&M’s
sprinkles
First, pop some plain popcorn kernels into a large bowl.
 Melt half a stick of butter and add some marshmallows and peeps.  I added a few more marshmallows for some extra goo.  You could definitely add only peeps (try adding different colors).
I will admit that my daughter and I both made a few whimpers as we watched these little cute peeps melt:(
Once it has melted together to make a soupy gooey mixture stir it all together.
 We added a few extras…egg sprinkles, white chocolate M&M’s, and pretzel M&M’s.
Delicious!

Easter Preparations

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This week has been spring break from pre-school and Pre-K for my kiddos.  We have been busy playing at home, laying low, starting our Spring Cleaning, going to a couple of parent-teacher conferences, and preparing for Easter.

Bunny Snack Cups…

This is a fun little project that Big Sister helped me with.  She was my part sorter, ear counter, and finished-product-liner-upper.
We’ll use these snack cups for our Annual Family Easter Egg hunt. 
I love the cute little tails.

Carrot Utensil Wraps…

We’ve done these utensil carrot wraps before for the Easter Egg hunt.  These were left over from a previous year. 

Easter Snack Tray…

We had a couple of little friends over today for a play date and when snack time rolled around, they LOVED this.  Everything was gobbled right up.

Peep Vase…

This was simple project that came together quickly and inexpensively 🙂
The vase is always sitting out in our dining room.  Put a drinking glass in the middle and surround with a little grass filler, pack of peeps, and a little more grass. 
I’m thinking some tulips would look pretty perfect in there!

We have more to share on our Easter preparations.  We’ll share all of the party details after our egg hunt 🙂