Family Bites

8 Ways to Make Fruits and Veggies Fun at Your Next Kid's Party

Last summer I gave myself a project that wasn’t for work or for pleasure, and to be honest it wasn’t really all that necessary. In a moment of craziness I decided to create proper old-fashioned photo albums with the 7000+ digital photos stored somewhere on my hard drive.

It’s funny because I hear of more and more people transferring videos and VHS cassettes to DVD, in order to create an electronic library of memories, yet I’m headed in the opposite direction. I want hard copies of the best images I have, stored in an album that can be pulled out when needed or wanted. I’m hoping the books of photos will encourage us to take more walks down memory lane, and I like the idea of our family huddled over the pictures in tandem, instead of scrolling through them independently with our faces buried in a screen.

While I was culling my photos for printing, I came across an exorbitant number of food pictures. Naturally. What I started to notice was several themes within the photos, grouping that are probably worth sharing together.

The first images that caught my eye were the ones from the parties I’ve worked on in the past two years. I’m particularly proud of the ways I’ve made fruit and veggies look fun and festive for the kids, a challenge for most of us on a good day. I mean, how you do you really make a carrot look fun? It turns out to be easier than you might expect. My intention isn’t to tell you that serving a plain platter of veggie sticks is wrong, but rather I’m hoping some of these ideas might inspire you when it comes to your next kiddie celebration. 

A Hockey Party

For puck and stick loving kids, a hockey party is the perfect way to celebrate a birthday during the winter months. Find some ice (either a local outdoor rink or rent an indoor facility), a quiet street, or your basement (for mini sticks) and have everyone bring their own equipment to play. 

Serve some tasty post-game treats, along with this adorable and easy-to-make ice rink birthday cake, or the slightly more ambitious hot chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow frosting, and consider your party hosting duties complete. There really is very little needed in the way of decorations for this party because most of the action happens outdoors, but a plain white plastic tablecloth embellished with blue and red tape, and a few circles drawn with a Sharpie, can easily be turned into an ice rink table covering that is certain to wow the team. 

Head on over to SavvyMom for all the party details!

Gatherings: A Simple Birthday Party

We finally finished birthday month around here. Seventy-five percent of our four person family celebrates turning another year old in the weeks after Christmas, so we move from one type of celebration to another pretty quickly. This past weekend our extended family came over for Jackson's birthday celebration. He's eleven now, and if you can't tell from the photo above I'm thinking it's probably going to be a very silly year.

Let me pause here before getting into the cheesy details of making lasagna for 20, to use this as a segue way to introduce a fun new series my friend Julie and I have been scheming. Although there is no shortage of recipes or party ideas available at the click of our fingertips, what we love most about food is its ability to bring people together; not just families at mealtimes, but extended families - relatives and friends and neighbours and strangers connecting around food, for special celebrations, impromptu gatherings, and lots of memory making. Food is social, it's comforting, and it connects us. The concept of "entertaining", though, makes gathering friends around your dinner table seem daunting. The good news is, it doesn't have to be. 

So. This year Julie and I are bringing back the casual gathering - which means taking the pressure off! - and having as many dinner parties and other gatherings as possible. On the last Wednesday of each month we'll post about one or more of them here, which will allow us to get a running start on a new blog - called Gatherings - where we'll share recipes, ideas, techniques and tools that we hope will inspire (and help!) anyone putting together a party, or just looking for new ways to bring friends together around the table. Gatherings will (hopefully!) launch on April 1, and we're even in talks about turning it into a book... although those details haven't been figured out yet. For now, we'll start here.

With Jackson's menu. He chose a quirky assortment of foods that nicely tallied up to an American-Italian feast. There was piggies in a blanket, veggies and dip, meat lasagna, garlickly garlic bread, Caesar salad, ice cream sodas, and a Kit Kat Candy cake. He was thrilled, the food quickly disappeared, and it was the perfect menu for feeding a crowd. 

I always like to include a little festive décor at my gatherings, but nothing too over the top or costly. I found a red and white checked shower curtain on sale at Ikea for $8, and took some pinking shears to them to make a sqaure topper for my standard white linen. It was much cheaper than purchasing something cloth, and the material means it's washable and reusable - an essential for the kids. The centrepieces were made by carefully washing my tins of tomatoes, filling them with dried pasta and sticking in a few balloons I found in my basement storage. 

Let Them Eat Cake: A Guide to Making Birthdays Sweeter

Without a doubt, one of the things I like best about being a mom is having the ability to make the boys' birthday cakes. I suppose I'm a little old fashioned in that I truly believe if there is homemade cake, colourful balloons and a nicely wrapped present, everything else that happens on a birthday is secondary. Some years there are big birthday gifts (that's the 10th birthday in our household) and other years there are simple celebrations, but regardless of the type of party we have there is always, always a homemade cake.

When the kids were little the cakes weren't always pretty; they were fashioned from a cake mix and often iced into a cloying and colourful mess. But when the boys hit their third and fourth birthdays I knew it was time to do something about this growing birthday cake passion of mine. I enrolled in the baking program at George Brown College in Toronto, and followed that up with a cake-decorating certificate from a private school close by. To this day, my cakes aren't perfect, but they're nice, and making them is one of my favourite things to do. 

For work assignments I tend to get far more creative than I do when I make my own family's cakes. But I like challenging myself to come up with a cake that looks impressively difficult, while simultaneously being easy enough for the average mom to execute. Which is why I've decide to start a monthly series here on the blog, which will be known as "Let Them Eat Cake: A Guide to Making Birthdays Sweeter".

Are you excited? I am.

Chitchat and Chocolate

This morning I woke up with a little spring in my step. It's been an unusually challenging week, and I'm thrilled it's finally Friday, but more than that I feel a little lighter after spending a good amount of time socializing yesterday. Who knew I was in such need?

First, there was a long overdue and lengthy Skype session with a good friend, which was followed by an evening out with a lovely group of women I didn't know to celebrate a mutual friend's birthday. Plenty of conversation with interesting and charming ladies was just what I needed to bring me out of this funk I've been in lately, and last night did not disappoint.

Party Savvy: Major League Celebration

I loved working on this party. Charming in its details - like the black and white photos of famous ballplayers turned into a birthday banner - this outdoor fete is very easy to execute and requires little work on the parents part. If you don't feel like making your own crackerjacks, feel free to buy the boxed variety instead, and no one will cry foul when you offer up hot dogs and hero sandwiches to your guests.

My boys were so envious that neither of them have a summer birthday when they saw me putting this together. I think we may have to have a baseball themed party just for fun, at some point, don't you agree?

Have you ever thrown an outdoor sports themed party? What did the kids like best?

For all the details head on over to SavvyMom.

A Circus Party

I promise, this will be the last party post for at least a week or so. :)

This circus party isn't for one of the many January birthdays we recently celebrated.  Instead, it's part of the Party Savvy feature over on Savvy Mom that I work on each month.

I created the desserts and food for this soirée, and as I was making everything I wondered how it's possible that I've been a mother for almost twelve years and I never thought to go with this theme for any of the parties I've thrown for the boys. I LOVED working on the many elements of this birthday bash, and feel that it looks super impressive without being difficult to execute, wouldn't you agree? I mean, a cake made out of Rice Krispies. Could it get any easier?

The Ringmaster Lemonade was my one of my favourite elements, and I think kids will look so sweet slurpping their beverage with a moustache, courtesy of the ones attached to the drinking straws.

Please feel free to visit Savvy Mom for the remainder of the recipes and decorating ideas. 

DIY: Simple Lego Party Decor

My sweet boy turned 10 yesterday.  

For tenth birthdays we don't do parties, but instead I take the boys on a trip, just the two of us.  When Ben hit his double-digit birthday we went to New York City for four days, and Jackson and I are now making plans to visit Washington, DC, in March when the weather is a little more favourable.

We did have a family dinner though, and while there was no official theme to the party, I incorporated a little Lego love into the decor, to represent Jack and his favourite hobby/toy. There was a large Lego birthday sign and some primary-coloured balloons in a small Lego centerpiece.  The cake was Lego-ish but not quite what I hoped it would be, however I was much happier with the Lego man cupcakes I made yesterday as a treat to mark the day.

To Make a Lego Birthday Sign:

I used coloured cardstock, a large circle punch and glue dots.  I cut out sqaures and rectangles, and affixed the circles with the glue, which raised the dots, giving it a 3D appearance.  I shaped the paper "blocks" into the number 10, and attached it all to a large mirror using double-sided table.

To Make a Balloon Centrerpiece:

I picked up a package of coloured balloons with sticks and blew them up, inserting them into a glass jar that I filled with Lego pieces.  I used these on the mantle and the dining table.

To Make Lego Minifigure Cupcakes:

The cupcakes were a hit, I must admit.  For Christmas, Jackson received a Lego minifigure ice cube tray in his stocking.  I melted some coloured chocolate and filled the tray with it, creating a mold for the edible men. I made a small batch of yellow cupcakes and vanilla buttercream, and added the chocolate Lego figure and a few sprinkles for decoration.

 

 

A Birthday Cheese "Cake"

It's birthday week around these parts.  Rob turned 45 yesterday, and Jackson turns 10 tomorrow.  Forgive me, but I think the next few posts will be mostly birthday inspired.

What you see above is my idea for a birthday cake for the person who doesn't eat cake.  Or any sweet treats for that matter. Rob's sweet tooth is fairly non-existent, which works out well when it comes to birthdays, otherwise we'd have to eat two celebration cakes within three days.  

So, this year I made him a cheese cake.  As you can see, it's a small wheel of cheese placed a top a cupcake stand.  Insert a candle, use crackers instead of a plate, and you have the perfect cake for those who don't want to make their birthday wish over a floury confection.