Damsels in distress

Looking for something fun to try this summer?  Look no further!  Our Super Hero fun day was a huge hit, and can be in your home as well.  Here's one of the activities we used that was easy to assemble and lots of fun:



Freeze plastic toys in bowls of ice.  We used Polly Pockets so they could be completely covered in the ice, and rescued later by our Heroes. 

Fill several squirt guns with water, and let your kids race to break these little ladies out of their icy shell.  This would be a great birthday party activity, especially if you place their refill station in a different part of the yard.  Wears them out, and cools them off at the same time!

 Making progress! 

Save me!

This activity went great with our Super Hero lunch, and made for a really fun afternoon!

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A lunch of SUPER proportions

I wanted to tackle a party that was easy to assemble, and required no extra supplies.  This Super Hero party achieved this, and with the exception of the candy, managed to do it without any food coloring!  Colorful plates and bowls and small signs printed on Word, with a fun font and creative wording, tied my foods into the theme.  What a great party idea for boys ages 4-12!  There were SO many heroes to choose from!

My first time experimenting with Knox gelatin and fruit juice, instead of packaged Jell-O, which is LOADED with food dyes.  The kids LOVED the flavor that the Welch's grape juice gave these villainous squares.  No extra steps at ALL in preparation, just hot juice/cold juice in place of the water. 

Our nod to Spider man.  These can be filled with cream cheese spread or peanut butter.

My sons are OBSESSED with chicken wings, so I had to do this play on Batman's wings.  I don't make wings from scratch much, but it was easier than I thought!

Veggies and dip.  Building super powers...for real!

Captain America popcorn.  This is Pop Secret's new magic popcorn.  The blue color is soy based, so I didn't feel too bad serving it to the kids.  They were mesmerized by the cool color!

Superman's berries.  Summery and delicious, a true super food! 

The kids and I pumped some iron.  Lots of giggling as we pretended these weights were too heavy to lift.  :-)

Evil Kryptonite.  Superman...beware!

We have found the source of The Green Lantern's power...and it tastes good!

Before we ate, the kids had fun rescuing some damsels in distress.  After naps, we'll be decorating some fun masks that were free to print online.  I guess today SuperMom rescued 3 kids from the evil BooHoo Bordom.  Do-do-dahhhhhh!  *insert SuperMom theme song here*  :-)




Meredith

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Holy Granola, batman!

Have you ever seen a prettier breakfast?!?  I have to tell you, before I came up with this recipe, I was a skeptic.  To me, granola was for hippies and older people.  I've always seen it as something boring and uniformly brown, overly crunchy, and gross.  Our journey on the road of dye-free living spurred me on to create a breakfast cereal (and midnight snack) that was filling AND healthy, beautiful AND delicious.  I think this recipe hits a home run!



Not your average Granola
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Mix in a large bowl, and set aside:
4-5 cups oats (not quick cook)
2 cups sliced almonds
2 cups shredded coconut
2 Tablespoons flax seed, whole or ground


In a saucepan on low, stir together:
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup honey
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt

After 2 minutes, pour honey mixture over oats, stir with a spatula, and pour into a 9x13 baking pan.  Bake for 25 minutes, stirring at the 15 and 20 minute intervals.  Do NOT overcook your granola.  There's nothing worse than scalded cereal!  Remove from the oven, give it one last stir and set it aside.  Resist the urge to mess with it for the next hour.

Cinnamon candied seeds and nuts:
In a saucepan, combine:
1/4 cup water
1/2 sugar (I used turbinado)
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt


4 cups of any seeds and nuts. (I used pecans, almonds, peanuts, cashews, sunflower,and pumpkin seeds)

Bring mixture to a boil, stirring constantly.  Add nuts and seeds, remove from heat, and stir for one minute to fully coat nuts.  Remove to an oiled pan with a slotted spoon.  Nuts may not look coated, but TRUST me, they are, so don't pour extra sauce over them!  Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes.  Remove from pan to a piece of parchment paper, and let cool.  Don't let them cool on your baking sheet, because they will be stuck, and that's NO fun! 

Once both granola and nuts have cooled, toss together with a package of dried fruit.  I used pomegranate craisins, and the flavors go together SO well!  Store in an airtight container to retain freshness.  That is, if you can bare to put a lid on this beautiful snack at all!  :-)








 










Meredith

Make sure you visit my facebook and Pinterest pages for more meal ideas!

Calling all bloggers...

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Meredith

Make sure you visit my facebook and Pinterest pages for more meal ideas!

April showers bring May flowers

May.  How in the world can it be May, already???  I'm not sure where the last 4 months have gone, but suddenly, we find ourselves nearly in the middle of the year, and FINALLY at the end of our school year!  We kicked off the month with a tribute to the adage, "April showers bring May flowers".  Now, it doesn't actually rain that much in a Central Florida April, but our flowers have been showered with water, and bloom they have!  We turned our outdoor experiences into a fabulous meal to hail May's arrival.



Simple and easy pudding flowerpots:
-small plastic cups
-1 package of Jello chocolate pudding per 5 children
-3 or 4 graham crackers, crushed
-1 cup coconut, colored with 2 drops of green food coloring
-sugar cookies, any shape
-brightly colored frosting
-popsicle or sucker sticks


This is SUCH a cute hands-on idea for kids.  Even the smallest hands can spoon and sprinkle the "dirt","mulch", and "grass", turning snack or dessert into a colorful flowerpot!

I'm pretty proud of my frosting.  I made this raspberry butter cream with NO food coloring.  Just real berries!  Bright and colorful without any dyes at ALL !  It also tastes amazing, so that's a huge plus.

These flowerpots went so well with our May flowers lunch!  Turkey sunflower sandwiches, tomatoes and cucumber daisies, green grapes in a daisy cup, and pretzel crisps.

We're painting sun catchers, planting mixed flower seeds, and pulling out the glitter, stickers, glue, and anything else we can find to brighten up some card stock flowers that we'll use these to decorate our school room.

Happy May, everyone!

Make sure you visit my facebook and Pinterest pages for more meal ideas! Meredith

Make sure you visit my facebook and Pinterest pages for more meal ideas!

Our playful puppy lunch

So many of our favorite storybook characters are dogs, and they served us well as our inspiration for this puppy lunch.  Biscuit, Clifford, Howie, Wishbone, Mudge....all these fun and furry characters  be wonderful friends to read about along with this "paws on" meal.   

Our "puppy food", which was a batch of microwave party mix.  Anything goes when I make a batch of mix.  Today I included dried edamame, Chex, mixed nuts, and sunflower seeds.  These adorable puppy picks added some fun!

I whipped up a batch of chocolate scones with Nutella and cut them out with the medium doggie bone cookie cutter, and added a little white chocolate paw print.

Our entire plate: hot dogs, "puppy food" party mix, "sticks and bouncy ball" tomatoes and carrot sticks, a dog house made of buttered bread, and our paw and bone dessert.  Now that's something to howl about!

This would be a very easy meal to reproduce on a large scale for either a preschool class or birthday party.  You could play "Doggie, Doggie, where's your bone?", have a relay race, or have children color a puppy mask to go along with this meal.  Or, simply enjoy this pup-tastic lunch with your little ones at home. No matter who you enjoy it with, get reading and HAPPY EATING! :-)

Meredith

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Mini Chicken pot pies

We LOVE chicken pot pie around here. It's such a great comfort food. Paired with a fresh salad, it makes a great lunch or dinner. It seems that when we eat it old school, someone always ends up with a pile more than a slice. So, I decided to whip up a batch of these individual pies to make them easier to serve. I would think these would even travel well to a brunch or pot luck supper! Best part, you won't have to spend hours preparing them!

Pot pie filling:
1 can Chicken a la King
1 can Veg-all
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 chicken breast, boiled and shredded
dash of salt, pepper, and garlic powder

Start with a can of Grands Biscuits. Divide each biscuit in half, and place the first half in a lightly sprayed muffin tin. Top this with a scoop of super easy chicken pot pie filling, and cover with the other biscuit half, tucking it in a little.

See how beautifully they puff up in the oven? They just scream out, "Eat me!" :-)

Plate with a salad, break open, and enjoy! Meredith

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Psssst....Want to know a secret?

Can I give you a little tip? Good food REALLY can be simple. Here's my NO fail dinner, great for those anticipated lazy days of summer:

1 large pork shoulder (might be packaged as pork butt. I didn't name it!)
1 large bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce
1 onion sliced thin

That's it. Put the pork in the crock pot on low. I like to put mine in with the fat side up so that the juices run down the meat as it's cooking. It also makes it SUPER easy to skim off before you shred later. Cover that pork with the sauce and sliced onion, put the lid on, and don't TOUCH it for at least 15 hours. When you're ready, skim that layer of fat off the top, find the two or three large bones that will probably be completely free of the tender meat, and toss them.


Isn't it beautiful?

I like to shred my meat, drain off some of the juice, and put it back in the crock pot for another hour with another bottle of BBQ sauce. I have also put it on a sheet of foil, and popped it on the grill with some mesquite chips in the smoker box. There really is no wrong way to serve this easy barbecue!

One pork shoulder will yield 12-15 servings, so if you're making it for your family, it's a great way to knock out 2 or even 3 meals at once!  BONUS!  :-)

Meredith

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What would YOU do with $500?

I've been waiting FOREVER for my Amazon box to come in with my supplies for our next two themes, so while I was waiting, I joined up to bring you a HUGE prize, $500 cash, sent to you via Paypal!  That's right, I said F-I-V-E hundred dollars!  :-)  This week, I've teamed up with some great bloggers out there to give you a chance to win just that!  Entry is quick and Oh-so easy, so start clicking and thinking of all the things you could do with this great cash prize!



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Meredith

Make sure you visit my facebook and Pinterest pages for more meal ideas!

I "Dyed" a little :-/

I love color. Colored food looks pretty, and it seems like brightly hued cereals and snacks should be more fun to eat, right? I have been in the, "Eh, what's a little food coloring every now and then?" camp, until I recently found my son to be nearly uncontrolable after eating a huge bowl of fairly popular breakfast cereal.

I have recently begun looking into where the colors we consume so regularly come from, and the results are SHOCKING! Due to this research, I am DETERMINED to weed out as much food coloring as I possibly can from our home! I am going to be purchasing a set of natural food dyes to be used in my future posts. I DO want food to be fun for my kids AND yours. I just want to bring you foods that I am confident will allow them all to be the best kids they can be! I will be sure to let you know how our new adventure in natural food coloring is going. :-)




Are your children dye sensitive? What have you found that works for you?

Meredith

Make sure you visit my facebook and Pinterest pages for more meal ideas!

Our Good Friday lunch

I wanted to do something to really hit home the meaning of Easter this year, so I came up with a last supper/food from the region meal. I used flat bread crackers, and I topped them with olive hummus, gave them a boiled egg, (Though I could not find one reference to these beauties in the Bible, it stands to reason that they COULD have had them, since they had birds, right?) a mixed green salad, dried fruit, and an empty tomb dessert, made with a graham cracker topped with green coconut and half a doughnut. I think it turned out great, and it really opened the door for discussion about the various parts of the Easter story.   Continuing our theme, this last supper was served with a cup of grape juice. 

I hope you had a fantastic and memorable Easter weekend!  I would love to hear how you made the weekend special for your children!




Meredith

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Teaming up for fun meals AND money saving tips!

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Meredith

Make sure you visit my facebook and Pinterest pages for more meal ideas!

Bugging Out

We celebrated the work of author Eric Carle with some of his famous books, bug activities, and VERY fun and easy bug food! My kids ate a huge feast, and the funny thing was, most of it was veggies!

Couldn't resist making a batch of bugs on a log.


The very hungry caterpillar, in salad form!


Tortilla wraps make a great caterpillar, too!


Fruit salad, to represent all the fruits the caterpillar ate through each day.


Here's our very grouchy ladybug!



Cricket dip, based on The Very Quiet Cricket..YUM!



Easy spiders, from The Very Busy Spider


And some very pretty butterflies, because we all know what happens at the end of The Very Hungry Caterpillar!

While I had read The Very Hungry Caterpillar many times, I don't think I had read Eric Carle's other works before. We all enjoyed them SO much! Check some out at your local library, and cozy up with some creepy crawly snacks for an afternoon you and your kids won't soon forget!
Meredith

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Having a BERRY good time

Life in Central Florida is warm and sunny for most of the year, as evidenced by the fact that our berry picking season starts in FEBRUARY! It seems that we barely put away the Christmas decorations before it's time to head to Pappy's Patch for some amazing strawberries!


We picked just under 10 pounds of these bright red berries. This weekend I will use them to make a double batch of Sure Jell's freezer jam, and we'll freeze a few small batches of washed, cut, and slightly sugared berries to pull out for strawberry shortcake throughout the year. Some will go into the fridge to eat this week, and the rest I will flash freeze on a cookie sheet (unwashed, with the stems on) and toss into a bag to use for smoothies.


My helpers. LOVE how fast the pile grows when you have extra hands! WE LOVE BERRIES!
Meredith

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S'mores cupcakes

Look at these! Last week, we had a chance to sample these cupcakes shared by a wonderful friend, and I just KNEW it wouldn't be long before we made a batch of our own. If there has been a dessert more widely approved by the members of my family, I can't remember what it was! We made these cupcakes to tie in with our dinosaur unit. I thought they would work well as the prehistoric dirt for our white chocolate dinos.




Simple and delicious S'more cupcakes
Whip up a batch of your favorite brownie mix. We like the ones with chocolate chunks in them, so I chose Dunkin Heinz Triple Chocolate mix. Add ingredients to the bowl as recipe instructs. Set aside.

Crunch up some graham crackers and place in the bottom of a muffin cup. Don't crush them up too much, you want to still be able to see them when you unwrap these goodies!



Place a spoonful of brownie mix right over the graham crackers, and add a few marshmallows, or even one large pillow. I thought the small ones would be a great exercise in counting for my youngest.






Place another spoonful of brownie mix over the top of the marshmallows, and bake at 375. I believe ours were in for about 15 minutes, give or take. The marshmallows will make your cupcakes puff up, but they shouldn't spill over. You could always place a cookie sheet under your muffin tins to catch any drips, should they happen.

These delicious brownie cakes need no garnish, as they are beautiful on their own. Our cakes were completed with various white chocolate dinosaurs, and tree picks I found in my decoration box. They made a great ending to our di-no-mite lunch! Very prehistoric, don't you think?






Meredith

Make sure you visit my facebook and Pinterest pages for more meal ideas!

$25 Amazon giftcard giveaway!

Purple Carrots Inc is SO excited to welcome new readers to the blog! Take a few minutes to check out some of our great recipe and party ideas, perfect for parents and teachers. You'll find tips to bring colors, holidays, and even stories to life for children of all ages. We are dedicated to growing this blog, providing you with even more tips and suggestions!

In celebration of this, we're giving away a $25.00 Amazon giftcard to one lucky fan! Entry is quick and simple! Winner will be notified via facebook when the contest is over. Make sure you share Purple Carrots Inc with your friends, so they can enter to win the gift card as well. Good luck!


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Meredith

Make sure you visit my facebook and Pinterest pages for more meal ideas!

One Di-no-mite lunch

As the mom of little boys, I know the drawing power dinosaurs have. They're such unusual creatures, full of power and mystery. That's why we decided to dive into the study of them this week. A quick stop at our local library yielded a treasure of books, both fictional and non.


I bought a clear drink dispenser to use for our themed meals, and I couldn't wait to try it out. The red punch is very unintentionally fitting for our punch, which is showcasing a battle between T-Rex and brontosaurus. I assure you, no plastic creatures were harmed in the making of our lunch! :-)


I found an idea on pinterest, and decided to give it a whirl. I hard boiled several eggs on the stove. Once they were finished, I put them in a bowl of VERY cold water to make the peels easy to remove. While they were cooling, I dropped several drops of food coloring into the still hot water used to first boil the eggs. The now cool eggs were cracked, leaving the shells in place, and put back into the hot, now green water. I left them in the water for about 30 minutes, peeled away the crackled shell, and VOILA! Dino eggs!


Other meal components, Tyson's dino nuggets, (Is it cheating if I don't make them from scratch?!?) frosty frozen grapes, carrots and broccoli in green ranch, (twigs and bushes in our swamp) broken pieces of chocolate covered pretzel, (dinosaur bones) dinosaur fruit snacks, and these YUMMY prehistoric earth cupcakes.




We had a great time reading about (and eating) thunder lizards!


Meredith

Make sure you visit my facebook and Pinterest pages for more meal ideas!