My Little Bits of Sunshine

My parents just left after flying down for a wonderful visit. It was so awesome having them stay here with us and definitely hard to see them leave. The weather was sunny and beautiful for their stay and we enjoyed some fun outings and great conversations.

One place we visited was a very unique strawberry farm. The strawberries are grown without soil using hydroponics. The strawberries are nourished with a liquid diet and to pick the strawberries you use little scissors to cut the stems. There were so many ripe berries I could have picked all day. One neat thing the farm does is it sells berries to our local grocery store just down the road from us. I love that they make buying local so much easier!

 

Olisa's 7th Birthday!

Olisa had a wonderful 7th birthday! She requested a chocolate batman cake and homemade peanut butter ice cream. She got to open her present from Dad and Mom right after breakfast as is our birthday tradition. It didn't take her long at all to shoot some into the target.

We took her out for a special lunch, played outside, opened presents and enjoyed cake and ice cream. I can't believe just how big she has grown and her kindness and love towards others is always overflowing!

She love riding her bike (without training wheels!), helping bake healthy lunch treats, pushing her little sister in the swing, reading books with lots of true facts in them and getting to stay up late on the weekends! 

Blessings, Kate

Olisa shooting her new bow. We had a wonderful weekend celebrating her 7 th birthday! 

More photos to come.

Blessings, Kate

Ayla loves her new big girl swing. She thinks it is so neat that her swing is just like big sisters.

Here are our green eggs we made using spinach to give them color. The kids thought they looked so cool and they passed the taste test with flying colors. I love making fun foods for the girls to enjoy. 

Yesterday I made homemade cheese crackers using some really nice organic cheese. They were actually very easy to make the thing that took the longest was poking the holes in the center (I just used the end of a skewer) and transfering them to my baking sheet. They were amazing and I will definately be making them again. Everyone is excited to bring some in their lunch tomorrow.

Enjoy your week. Blessings, Kate

We woke to an icy morning today. I couldn't resist taking some pictures it just looked so pretty covering the trees.

Stay safe, stay warm everyone!

Blessing, Kate

Mexican Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Mexican Stuffed Sweet Potatoes serves 4

Preheat oven to 400

4 small/medium sweet potatoes

1 tsp. olive oil

1/2 to 1 small onion, diced

1 or 2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tsp. ground cumin

1/2 tsp. chili powder

1 cup canned diced tomatoes with juices

1/2 cup cooked or canned blacl beans

1/2 cup frozen corn

2 Tbl. fresh cilantro, diced, divided

2 Tbl. cheddar cheese

sea salt and pepper to taste

Place sweet potatoes on baking sheet and bake 30 minutes. Remove from oven and prick with fork. Bake an additional 30 minutes or until tender. In a medium sauce pan saute onion in oil for a few minutes over medium heat. Add garlic, stir, then add rest of ingredients including 1Tbl. cilantro and stir well. Turn heat to low. Once potatoes are ready slice each one down the center, season with salt and slightly poke inside with fork to make room for filling. Spoon filling mixture into potatoes and if desired add a pinch of cheddar cheese on top. Place back in oven for 5 minutes until cheese melts. Remove from oven and garnish with remaining tbl. of cilantro. Enjoy!

This recipe is very flexible and you can easily adjustment the ingredients to suit your own needs. 

Blessings, Kate

treats and sweets

Here are some of the recent treats I have made. 

 

Above are teacher treats for one of our teacher luncheons recently. The pink hearts are buttercream frosted sugar cookie bites and then I made these amazing cranberry oat bites.

 

 

These Mexican potatoes were also made for the luncheon although I took this picture before I garnished with cilantro. They turned out pretty good so I made some for us-the hubby loved them!

 

Here is one of my juicer drinks Ayla and Olisa helped me make. We put in a lot of carrots, some apples, pears and a little pineapple. It was a super yummy cup of fresh juice.

 

This was my first time making a chiffon cake-I made it especially for company.  I overbaked it a littla but it was still very tasty. It was a maple pecan chiffon cake with brown butter frosting. 

Well that's all for now. I love being in the kitchen creating and baking especially when I have little helping hands and awesome taste testers! 

Blessings, Kate

Sister shirts

 

The kids made sister shirts to celebrate Valentine's Day! They had so much fun decorating them it was a great project. 

Olisa also made a shirt to celebrate her 100th day of school. She decorated her shirt with 100 flowers-it turned out really cute! 

Tonight we are having a vegtable pasta salad, red jello hearts, and pink frosted sugar cookie bites for dessert. Yummy! 

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Love, Kate

Learning Time with Ayla

 

Here is Ayla working on candy counting for our math time. She is really becoming a great counter!

 

Ayla and I have been having learning time in the mornings where we talk about and work on numbers, letters and many other things. She is loving learning about letters right now. She is working her way through an alphabet book - in the picture above she learned about the letters c and b. She glued cotton balls onto the c and buttons onto the b. 

Blessings, Kate

Happy Birthday Ayla!

Our beautiful daughter turned 3 today! She requested a rainbow stripes & Super Why! cake. Super Why! is a pbs cartoon show where the character has the power to read so her cake has mini books on it. 

We took her out for lunch and then came home and played some games. I made a game where the kids had to find a bunch of letters hidden around the room and then put them together to spell the special birthday message which was TIME FOR CAKE!

It turned out to be a great day! We are so blessed to have such an amazing, sweet, silly and smart daughter. Happy Birthday Ayla we love you so much.

Blessings, Kate