Easter Basket Sand Pail Gift Basket

I love making holiday themed gift baskets for all of our nieces and nephews.  This year I choose to do the Easter Cookie Pizza Gift baskets, however this wasn't good for our one year old niece.  So I choose to make a sand pail the basket for her Easter goodies.  Her Easter treats included some sidewalk chalk, bubbles, some sand toys and a plastic chick filled with Goldfish grahams.

Super cute and easy!  Just wrap in some cellophane and cute ribbon and you are done.

As always, thanks for stopping by.  -Robyn

John Deere Farm Birthday Party

I cannot tell you how excited I am to share this party with all of you.  When my soon to be five year old stated that he would like a John Deere/farm party I thought...really?!?!?  No way to just run out to the party store and pick up the supplies.  Naturally I turned straight to Pinterest and was overwhelmed with all of the great ideas I found.  If you would like to see how obsessed I was just check out my Pinterest Board for yourself.  As usual I would have loved to have taken more pictures, but that just was not to be.  So sad that I did not take a picture of the Happy Birthday banner that I made...oh, well.  Naturally we choose green and yellow for our colors with some orange thrown in (the birthday boy's favorite color).  I had many games and crafts planned for the day, however I found that all the kids wanted to do was play in the backyard.  So much for all of my planning, but thrilled no one was bored!  The first activity that the kids did was to Plant A Garden, which was my favorite of the day.  I saved a bunch of tin cans and punched holes on the bottom with a nail and hammer, for drainage.  Then I got busy crafting with some cute burlap ribbon and my hot glue gun.  I printed out the John Deere logo from Google Images onto card stock and then cut them out and covered them in clear contact paper to try and protect them.  I cut small slits on the sides and threaded them with the green ribbon and again used the hot glue gun.  I have to say that I was quite pleased with the results.

We set up the wheelbarrow in the backyard with dirt and scoops (found these at Target) and some tomato plants from the local nursery.  We tried to grow our own from seeds as a fun project for the kids, but this just wasn't meant to be.

Then I had made paper pinwheels following these instructions which I had each child's name attached to.

We had a guess the seeds game set up which only a couple of the kids played, however I was amazed at how good they were at guessing the seeds correctly.  We also had a puppet craft and a clucking chicken craft.  The clucking chicken was a huge hit.  I had printed out a bunch of farm themed coloring sheets and had those set up with crayons and markers.  We also had a Feed the Pig game which was simply a cute little pig garbage pail I had found at Meijer and some bean bags we had.  Then there was a Tractor Races game which was just a board set up and some small John Deere tractors to race down the ramp.

We served lunch for the kids which included Pigs in a Blanket, also known as bagel dogs which we kept warm in the crock pot.  Popcorn, watermelon and corn on the cob was also on the menu.  

For dessert the kids enjoyed dirt cups.  I loved the carrots in the dirt which I had found here originally.

While the adults had carrot cake.  This carrot cake is one of our favorite recipes which I make every year for Easter, so I was happy to be able to pull it out again so soon.  You can find the recipe for this Carrot Cake at Taste of Home.  Just a note, I prefer mine more cake like and bake it in a 13"x9" baking dish and bake it for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

The party favors were very simple and included a homemade s'mores snack mix which we made from the Pepperidge Farm graham cracker fish, mini marshmallows and milk chocolate chips.  A homemade chocolate covered oreo with green and yellow drizzles.  My inspiration came from here. Of course we had to include a candy Cow Tale.  

This party was so much fun to plan and host.  Next time I guess I will just host a large playdate.  :)  As always, thanks for stopping by.  -Robyn

Easter Treats

I am always looking for cute little ideas to share a little holiday treat with the littles in our life.  This past Easter I choose to make the same Peep pops that I used for the Easter Pizza Cookie Gift baskets and attach them to some bubbles.  Super cute and easy treat for the littles.  This could be altered to suit any holiday or special event.

Thanks for visiting.

Oatmeal Applesauce Muffins

Good morning all,

While looking for a healthy, kid friendly snack for preschool I came across this fantastic muffin recipe on the Quaker Oats website.  I only made one change, and only to see if they would taste equally as good with whole wheat flour and I found that yes they do.  I switched out a 1/2 cup of All Purpose flour with a 1/2 cup of  Whole Wheat flour.  One more note, I used paper muffin liners and I found that the muffins stuck to the papers while warm, however once they were completely cooled this was not the case.  So completely up to you how you choose to prepare them.  Absolutely delicious and didn't feel guilty eating them.

Hope your family enjoys these muffins as much as our did.  Thanks for stopping by.

-Robyn

Easter Bunny Cookie Pizza Basket

It looks as if Spring may actually make it to the Midwest after all.  Which makes me realize Easter is right around the corner and I better get busy with Easter baskets for the family.  This year I decided to do joint family basket's with a cookie pizza theme for the cousins.  Each basket includes a sugar cookie mix, which is labeled Bunny Pizza Crust and a tub of white frosting, which is labeled Bunny Pizza Sauce.  Then we included the toppings; two tubs of sprinkles, little candy coated chocolate and jelly beans.  The candy coated chocolates and jelly beans are in little carrot and bunny "eggs" that I found at the dollar store (thought they were so cute).  The basket is finished off with homemade Peep Pops, Ring Pops, and a few other spring essentials...bubbles and chalk.  

Simple and fun gift basket idea.  Hope you enjoyed stopping by.

-Robyn

Teen Graduation Gift Basket

When our niece graduated from middle school I was looking for a cute and creative gift idea online.  I searched Pinterest, but most gift baskets for graduation were for High School Graduation.  So I used some of those ideas and used a few of my own.  I thought this idea was absolutely adorable, what college student would love to receive one of these?  I decided to go with the colors and mascot for the High School she would be attending the following fall.  So, this is what I came up with...

I found a bunch of essentials for High School and a few fun items as well.  The blue bucket was purchased at the dollar store and the rest were found at either Target or Meijer.  The basket includes the following:

• Watermelon cup with lemonade singles packets
• Hand sanitizer with a tag that read "Just in case"
• Ibuprofen with a tag that read "For life's little headaches"
• Hershey's nuggets with the tag "Nuggets of Wisdom" which I saw here
• Paperclip bookmarks that we made
• Sticky notepad holder which I found here 
• Eraser with "oops" tag
• Pens
• Desk Planner
• Notebook
• Hairbands
• Gum
• Nail polish
• CapriSun

Here are the notebook, which we just tied on some coordinating ribbon, and the desk planner.

Then I just arranged all of it in the blue bucket and wrapped it in cellophane and tied it with ribbon.  I didn't take a picture with the cellophane as it is hard to see what is actually in the gift basket.  

Thanks for stopping by.

-Robyn

Art Gift Basket - Easter Basket

The weather is cold, but the sun is shining which makes me think of Spring.  It sure is taking it's sweet time coming to the Midwest this year.  All of this talk of Spring weather makes me think of Easter and all of the spring birthday's in our family.  This was a birthday gift for our nephew's 4th birthday, however it could very easily be given as an Easter basket to any little one who loves to be creative.  I purchased the plastic bucket at the dollar store and filled it up with all sorts of art supplies.

Items in the basket were:

• Construction paper
• Doodle paper
• Coloring book
• Crayola Paint Brush Pens
• Markers
• Crayons
• Sidewalk chalk
• Watercolor paints
• Play-doh
• Stickers
• Glue
• Glue sticks
• Tape
• Eraser

And a CapriSun for refreshments after all of that creating

Then I just arranged it all in the bucket/basket and wrapped it all up in clear cellophane (sorry I do not have a picture of it all wrapped up, but I think you get the idea).  Very easy and fun child's gift basket.

Thanks for stopping by to see what is new.

-Robyn

Cute DIY Tween Girl Gift Basket

I have to admit I absolutely love making gift baskets for any and all occasions.  So when my kids are invited to a party I ask them for ideas and then we create a basket that their friend will love.  The kids love helping to find just the right items to stick with theme of the gift basket.  My daughter wanted to create a crafting/girls night in gift basket for her friend.  We started off with a popcorn bucket for the container that we found at the dollar store.  I have to say that that is the best place to find a variety of containers that will not eat up the entire gift budget.  She picked out a few boxes of movie theater candies, microwave popcorn, rubber bands for making the loom bracelets, charms for the bracelets, and a monogram note pad with matching pen.

We then filled the popcorn tub with tissue and paper shreds for basket making . We arranged all of the goodies and wrapped the entire basket in cellophane and tied it up with ribbon.  She was thrilled to give her friend a gift basket with all of the fun things that she picked out for her. I think they look so cute all wrapped up in such a fun way.

Thanks again for stopping by.

Easter Gift Basket

So today we were lucky enough to have warm enough temps to be outside with the kids, which was quite welcome after the recent blast of cold air and snow in our forecast for tomorrow.  Easter is only a week away and I wanted to share with you a fun and easy and also inexpensive gift idea.  I made these flower pot gift baskets for the kid's cousins filled with some fun Easter treats.  First, I used chalkboard paint to paint a shape on the front of the pot with a homemade stencil.  Since the stencil was not perfect I choose to outline the shape with some simple acylic paint using only the end of a Q-tip, which actually was great for this purpose.  Then I filled the basket with some paper shreds and added the goodies.  I used Cracker Jacks, little bags of Craisins, fruit leather, sidewalk chalk, bubbles and of course a package of seeds to go with the little clay pots.

I had  purchased little wooden shapes from Michael's and painted them with chalkboard paint and hot glued a popsicle stick to the back to use as a plant marker.  Wrapped the whole kit and kaboodle in cellophane wrap and tied it with a bow.  Super easy gift basket for all of the little ones.

Wishing you all a Happy Easter.