We’re looking forward to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics starting tonight and have been thinking of ways we can get our kids excited about the games. Here’s a list of some of our favorites… we hope you’ll add some of your own ideas in the comments!

1. Learn all about the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Mascots and print off foldable cutouts to create your own cute little creatures.
2. Keep track of the medal standings on your own medals chart.  This is a fun way to keep kids involved daily as they check for new medals awarded and update the chart.
3.  The Olympic Rings flag has been the universal symbol for the Olympics since it was first flown at the Antwerp games in 1920. The white background symbolizes peace. The five interlocking rings represent the continents of Africa, Australia, Europe, The Americas, and Asia. The five colors of the rings are blue, yellow, black, green, and red. At least one of these colors appears in the flag of every nation. Teach the kids the importance of this historic flag by working with them to create their own Olympic Rings.
4.  The torch relay may be over, but kids will love recreating the fun with their own Olympic Torch.
5.  Watching the Olympics together as a family is great – but participating is even better!  Get the whole family involved and hold your own silly olympics.  These ideas for games to play are a great place to start.  Then get creative and make up your own.
6.  A great addition to your silly olympics (or just to burn some energy) is indoor skating right at home.  All you need is paper plates! See how it’s done.
7.  If you’re holding your own silly olympics, you’ll need medals to award.  Creating your own olympic medals is a great craft for kids of all ages.  If you’re not holding your own olympics, you can use these as rewards for doing extra jobs around the house, finishing homework or doing nice things for others.
8.  For older children, have them set their creativity loose on Olympic window clings. The theme can be to choose your favorite sport or recreate a favorite olympics moment.

9. Have a favorite event? Here are great crafts for the major Olympic events:

• Luge - Younger children will love creating their own luge course and sending an athelete down. Older children can create a popsicle stick luge keepsake.

• Skating - Decorating their own ice skate is a great craft for little ones. Or they’ll love working with mom or dad to create their own little critter who really skates.

• Curling – Create a 3D curling rink complete with curlers.

• Skiing - We love this craft for a pinecone skiier. So cute!

• Ski Jumping – The techniques used to create this 3D ski jumper would work well for other sports too.

• Snow Boarding – This fun chenille snowboarder lets kids be as creative as they want when decorating him.

• Hockey – Creating your own table top hockey game is definitely a very involved creaft, but could be a great project to work on as a family.

As if cupcakes are not already fun enough, check out these great ideas to take them to a whole new level. We hope you love them as much as we do.

1. Aren’t these funky? This creative idea involves painting the inside of the icing bag with food coloring instead of tinting the icing itself.  We love how easy this is so that anyone (even kids) can create some really cool looking cupcakes. Learn how to make your own colorful swirled cupcakes.



2. Our kids love when their food looks like stuff and cupcakes make that so easy. A great example is clown cupcakes. Cute for birthdays or “just because”, these make a fun project
   to have little ones help with. Looking for a birthday party activity?  Put out the supplies and let the guests create their own funny faces.

   

3. Looks like an ice cream cone, tastes like cake. The ice cream cone cupcakes are cute and super easy. They make a fun alternative to a birthday cake for a summer party or a snack at the next playgroup.

   

4. Arrange a bunch of cupcakes on a plate and ice them together. Voila!  You have a pull apart cake. Not only can you make some interesting shapes, but it also makes serving everyone a snap.

   

5. It made us laugh when we came across the idea for meatloaf cupcakes. They look exactly like the real mccoy but without the sugar.

   

6. Itty bitty goodness, these cupcake pops make fun gifts when you wrap them individually. Although we’re not sure we would be willing to give them away.

   

7. What do you get when you combine cupcakes and strawberries?  A fun surprise!  These strawberry stuffed cupcakes are as delicious as they are cute.

   

8. Fill cupcakes with all sorts of yummy creams and jams to create something really different. See these instructions for filling cupcakes to learn the technique and then get creative with your
   own fillings.

   

9. We can’t believe we didn’t think of this! Combine cupcakes and chococlate chip cookie dough to make the ultimate treat.  See this recipe for cookie filled cupcakes with chocolate frosting.

   

Photo by NoshWithMe

10. We couldn’t complete this list without mentioning a way we’re having fun with cupcakes at Define*Me Clothing. We have a few different designs of personalized kids shirts that feature cupcakes. Check out our personalized cupcake shirts available on your choice of shirt styles in sizes 0-3 months to 4T.

    

Here’s an easy recipe that’s quick and cheap to put together, plus it’s a great way to get kids to eat broccoli!

Cheese and Broccoli Rice

(Serves about 6)

Ingredients:
1 small onion, diced
1/2 cup celery, diced
10 oz broccoli, cut up in florets (or use frozen broccoli)
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 cup Minute Rice (uncooked)
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
2 tbsp butter

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 8” square casserole dish.

In a large skillet, melt the butter and sauté the onions and celery, until the onions are translucent. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until the cheese starts melting.

Pour mixture into the greased casserole dish and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes.

This is a very easy rice dish to make. You can throw in some chopped cooked chicken, ham or turkey to make it a one-dish meal. Serve with a salad.

The weather has been less than stellar lately so my kids are spending a lot more time indoors. Since I limit TV time, they get bored sometimes after reading books and doing puzzles all day. When my 5 year old told me she was bored the other day, I happened to be looking at a magnet on the fridge.

I took the magnet and put it on the side of the stove. Her eyeballs popped out of her head. My 3 year old son exploded with excitement. Magnets are magic!

I told them to try the magnet on the doorknob, then the tub, then a chair leg. After that, they found all kinds of spots where the magnet would stick. They were so amazed and ended up amusing themselves with it for another half hour.

Try it.

The day has arrived – quicker than you could ever imagine – your baby’s first birthday! You want to make this first celebration of life fun, significant and memorable for both your little one and your guests, but how? I suspect you still find it challenging to shower and dress by noon, let alone plan an elaborate complicated party.

Your baby’s first birthday should be a day more about fun and celebration and less about stress for Mom, so I have a few ideas to create affordable, unique, once-in-a-lifetime party memories in a snap – and free-up more time to clean-up the mountainous piles of diapers, wipes tubs, toys, and peas splattered on the wall next to the high chair before your guests arrive!

Picture/Video Montage

Chances are you went and purchased a digital camera sometime ‘round week 13. Admit it – you have a ton of pictures on your camera that you haven’t yet uploaded, right? Now is the time!

• Check the software that came with your camera;
• Use pictures from birth to present;
• Add your favorite tear-jerker songs and let it run during the party on your PC!
• Or a create a DVD for playing on your television!

If you want to get really ambitious use some cute font from your word processing software, insert your favorite picture, and print out “CD covers” to create additional CDs or DVD’s for your guests to take home. If you need help a quick Google search will give you some great pointers.

Framed “Guest Book”

Let your guests write “guest book” entries on a canvas and create a piece of art your baby can keep for a lifetime. Any craft store will sell art canvases (those for acrylic paints work best) you can use for this project. The same store will usually have open wooden frames (no glass) that fit the canvas size you choose.

Decide on your color scheme: dark blue and silver, dark red and gold, or light pink and purple, for example.
For the background, choose any of the multitude of acrylic paints (Hint: The most expensive isn’t necessarily the best; you shouldn’t pay more than $5 per tube for this project, and one larger tube will paint a large canvas.).
Select one or more paint pens and choose colors that will show up well against the background.
Allow your guests to write a message to the baby with the paint pens on the canvas as they arrive.

After the party, use the wooden wedges provided with the canvas, place the canvas in the frame, and with a few whacks with a hammer you have professional looking framed art!

Tomorrow I will share a couple of other great ideas… stay tuned!

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Show off your little ones first birthday status with a birthday shirt from Define*Me Clothing:

Find great first birthday gifts at Pipsqueak Boutique:

Have you ever been invited to baby shower and struggled to come up with the perfect gift?

I’ve been to many showers where everyone squealed and “ooh”-ed and “aww”-ed when new moms received really cute gifts and I was always a tad jealous that my own gift didn’t get as much of a reaction. I’m sure I’m not the only one that thinks that either!

The most memorable gifts that I received for my own babies were personalized gifts. My daughter received a beautiful needlepoint picture that was framed and had a plaque engraved with her name and time of birth. It’s still hanging on her wall and I know she’ll keep it forever.

These kinds of gifts are much more meaningful than a bag of diapers and a basket full of baby powder.

I have a list of some really great ideas for personalized baby gifts that are sure to impress.

Finding the right sippy cup for both my babies proved to be a fairly difficult task. It never crossed my mind when I bought my daughter’s first sippy cup that she would refuse to drink out of it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t lucky enough to win on the first try.

I bought pretty much every different brand and type of sippy cup I could find until I finally figured out she would only drink out of the hard plastic spouts on the Playtex sippy cups.

I know a lot of other parents have the same problem with their babies which can be extremely stressful when they’re trying to wean their baby off the bottle breast.

Introducing a sippy cup to your baby at about 5 or 6 months is typically one of the first steps in the weaning process. If your baby is refusing to drink out of a sippy cup, it could be that they need a different kind.

I’ve got a list of sippy cups that are not only favorites of picky babies, but they’re all Bisphenol-A (BPA) free. You can check out the best sippy cups here.

An unconventional yet effective way to trick your kids into eating vegetables.

Both my kids love to eat fruit but I have a hard time getting them to eat certain vegetables.

One time I bought some sugar snap peas at the grocery store. These are possibly my favorite veggie, so I put some in a bowl and sneaked them into my mouth when my kids weren’t looking.

It’s getting harder and harder to pull the wool over their eyes as they get older, so they eventually spotted me being stealthy with some food. Even though they had no idea what I was eating, they still insisted on eating some. It’s impossible for me to sneak food then have them find out and NOT beg for some.

Now, when I want them to eat a vegetable that they won’t normally eat at the table, I’ll put them in a bowl and pretend to sneak them. My evil plan works every time. They come running and gobble those vegetables down without ever being the wiser.

This little trick might not work for that long, but it should work long enough to give them a chance to develop a palette for all kinds of veggies.3

I’ve been on a recycling kick recently where I recycle absolutely everything possible. However, this means that my recycling drawers (the two biggest drawers in my kitchen cupboards) get full pretty fast.

My little two year old discovered the contents of these drawers a couple weeks ago and ever since I’ve had yogurt, margarine, and fruit cup containers all over the house. At first I was annoyed that I had these plastic containers laying around but then I realized how great they are.

Both my son and daughter have been playing with them non-stop. All those expensive toys they’ve been given over the years have been untouched. Instead, they’re building “castles” by stacking the containers, counting them, pretending they’re all sorts of things.

Then, at the end of the day, cleanup is a snap since they all stack together and take up little space.

If you’ve been throwing these kinds of things away, or shipping them out to recycling bins, consider using them for toys instead. Obviously you don’t need to keep every single one, but they’re extremely versatile as toys.

Here are a few ideas:

• Bath toys – The kids love to fill them up with water and pour them out over and over again.
• Toy storage – They’re great for storing smaller items like puzzle pieces, legos, etc., especially if you keep the lids.
• Games – You know the game where you put three cups face down and one has a ball underneath? Then you move them around and someone has to guess which one the ball is under? Kids LOVE that!
• Counting – I get my 4 year-old daughter to count the containers all the time. She never gets tired of it. My 2 year-old is learning to count now as well.
• Crafts – You can paint them, glue things onto them, stick them together – all kinds of possibilities.

At the end of the day, when the containers get wrecked or the kids grow tired of them, just chuck them in the recycling bin. Easy as pie and free of charge.