Rainbow and Squirrel Sandwiches (not what you think)

We made it through September and October seems to be even busier!! Seriously is it me or do we get busier every year? What happened to the down time it must be somewhere, I am still looking!! The preparing dinners is tough enough, but making lunches can leave you at a loss too. Walking in to the kitchen groggy and trying to juggle breakfast, finding missing socks and making sure homework is in the backpack can be a real chore. The last thing you want to do is make a bunch of lunches, am I wrong? Well I can't help with that because the kids have to eat!! At our school we have to bring lunch everyday we do not have a lunch program (yet).  Over one hundred and twenty or more lunches in a school year can seem daunting, and if you have more than one child...well you get my drift!  

          When winter comes I immediately get out the Thermos and go for soups and stews, warmth during the day can give a child that little boost they need. But until then I like to make sandwiches, the problem is that my daughter has never been a fan of the sandwich. She much prefers a warm lunch, something homemade of course but that can't always happen. Recently I remembered I had some edible markers I usually use to draw on hard boiled eggs with. My discovery that they work on bread was a gold mine!!! I can write notes like "I miss you" or "drink more water" on her bread!! 

The best part is that she likes make her own lunches (with some persuading) because the markers are fun to use. We make the sandwich the night before so we are not rushed in the morning. We only do this once a week to keep it special but it sure is fun!!  We add, fruit, cheese and crackers, and a veggie like cucumbers or carrots. I very rarely add any sugary treats unless it is home baked like banana bread.   This gives me a break the next morning so I can gear up my creative brain for the next day's lunch.

Try going to a thrift shop for cookie cutters, Ikea has some fun ones too!  I have a large collection and find that I almost never make cookies with them. They work so well for "sandies" as we call them in our house!

Cookie cutters and edible markers make a great lunch.

Mucking it up in Spring!

Article from: Edible Marin and Wine Country — Spring 2011

Stone's Soup Corner

For those of us who live in Northern California, spring is all about waiting for the rains to end and the sun to arrive again, and, thankfully, it always does. During this time of year, there is a lot to be done to prepare the garden for summer planting. It's also a great time to talk to your kids about what you are going to plant so that they will be excited about taking care of the garden and harvesting and eating what you have grown–and getting dirty in the muddy veggie patch! So, put your rain boots back on and go get dirty with your kids in the Spring muck!

Try my recipe below for "Swamp Soup," and I bet you will get your kids to not only eat their vegetables, but love them. The trick here is to hide a few beans in the bottom of their soup bowl and tell the kids to eat to the bottom of "the swamp" to find the "muck beetles"–and yes, I made that up. By the time they get to the bottom of the bowl, the soup will have magically disappeared. The soup itself is delicious, packed with green vegetables and will warm you and your kids up on a chilly Northern California spring day.

Swamp Soup

Yield: 4 servings

INGREDIENTS

4 cups chicken or vegetable broth, divided in half

1 medium onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 cups zucchini, thinly sliced (about 3 whole squash)

2 medium ripe avocados, peeled and with the pit removed

½ teaspoon salt or to taste A handful of cooked organic black or pinto beans Prepared pesto (optional)

TO PREPARE

In a large saucepan, bring 2 cups of the broth to a boil with the onion, garlic and nutmeg. Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for an additional 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Next, add the remaining 2 cups of broth and the zucchini and bring back to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, re-cover and simmer for an additional 15 minutes. Remove the lid and allow the soup to cool slightly.

In a blender, purée the slightly cooled soup mixture with the avocado, in batches, until it reaches a smooth consistency. Return the purée to the saucepan, add salt to taste and warm gently. To serve, place a few of the beans in the bottom of the bowl and gently pour in the soup. When you serve it make sure to tell the kids to eat to the bottom to find the muck beetles!

OPTIONS:

• If you don't want to open a whole can of beans for this recipe or take the time to soak dried beans and cook them separately, just pick up a few at your grocery store's salad bar.

• Add a dollop of pesto to this soup after you purée it for an extra punch of flavor and a green color.

• Float strips of toasted bread or crackers on top of the soup and place a bean on one so your kids can make the "bean bug" "jump" from log to log.

KIDS' CRAFT–SCIENCE IN THE KITCHEN

Looking for something fun and educational to do with your kids over a long weekend or spring break? Try this project using dried beans that will teach them a little science and gardening know-how. Setting it up is a great inside activity on a rainy day. Beans sprout very quickly so they are fun to watch and this experiment works well for kids of all ages.

In this version of the old-school experiment you use different liquids–milk, water, salt water and sugar water–to find out which one causes the beans to sprout in the shortest amount of time.

Things you'll need:

4 empty cups

1½ cups of water

½ cup milk

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

4 paper towels

20 dried beans

4 plates

Steps of the experiment:

1. Fill 3 cups each with ½ cup of water, and a 4th cup with ½ cup of milk.

2. Add the sugar to 1 of the cups that contain water and add the salt to another, leaving 1 with just plain water.

3. Soak 1 paper towel in each cup for 1 minute, or until saturated.

4. Label each of the 4 plates with one of the following: water, milk, salt-water and sugar-water.

5. Place 5 beans on each plate, and cover loosely with the saturated paper towel that corresponds to the label on that plate.

6. Observe the growth of the beans each day for several weeks, making notes on the number of beans that have sprouted on each plate, as well as the length of the sprouts. Determine which liquid was the most successful at causing the beans to sprout.

7. Once the beans sprout, you can plant them in dirt and keep them growing!

Going Against the Grain - Healthier Gingerbread House * Recycled*

Here we are again...It is winter and the holiday season is in full swing. I bet you are all as busy as I am so I know you will understand when I tell you that I am recycling an old post I wrote for Edible Magazine. Things around here are great and I have a few projects up my sleeve. I am not quite ready to share all the details with you. So I figured it is better to re-share than post nothing, enjoy and if this is old news to you then chime in with some new ideas for the perfect gingerbread house!! I promise that after the break I will get back to posting more healthy recipes for your little ones. Until then enjoy your time and don't stress out too much, remember to have fun and take a breath this holiday season!

With the holidays coming, kids have two things on the brain—presents and sweets! When I think of the holidays I always think of a gingerbread house. We made one every year when I was growing up, and we always looked forward to it. It was an elaborate plan of blueprints and time. This year I am thinking of making a much healthier and simpler version—a rustic gingerbread cabin, if you will.

Are the kids sighing in the background? (Just wait kids, this can be fun.) I understand that the thought of a gingerbread house conjures up visions of candy canes, sugary gumdrops and gobs of frosting, but why not build one with some healthier, but still tasty, ingredients?

Remember, a gingerbread house can be any kind of house—a tiki hut, a ski lodge, a trailer, a mouse house or a train. When you make a traditional gingerbread house you end up with bags of sweets left over and, let’s face it, no kid wants to get old, stale candy for Halloween next year and tossing it out is so wasteful. Go against the grain and forgo the candy this year! Challenge the kids to use items you already have in your cupboards and try not to go out and buy a ton of new ingredients. The great thing about this project is that the “decorations”—foods such as nuts, cereals, and crackers— are healthier, easy to use, and you could make a fun cereal trail mix with your leftovers. This gingerbread house will be different, and still just as fun to look at and eat.

An easy way to make a small gingerbread house is to use graham crackers. If you are more adventurous or want to make a larger structure, you can purchase a readily available gingerbread house kit or bake your own.

You will need:

· Graham crackers: 10 per house to allow for mistakes!

· Royal icing for mortar (see recipe below)

· Piping bags and tips or gallon size freezer bags (make sure your bags have a nice square corner, not a pleated one)

· Decorative items such as: nuts, seeds, dried fruits, chocolate-dipped dried fruits, candied ginger slices, banana chips, marshmallows, pretzels, crackers, cereal of any kind, and cookies

Tips:

· To color your royal icing “mortar” for a more rustic look, add a drop of black food coloring during mixing.

· To fill a zip top bag with the royal icing, stand the bag up in a tall glass before filling.

· Cut a tiny hole in one corner of the zip top bag after filling it. You can always cut a bigger hole, but you can’t make a big one smaller!

· Keep your icing bag in the refrigerator for touch ups or other projects during the holidays.

To build the house:

Use a large plate or sheet pan as a base so you can also create an amazing landscape around your house. Attach the graham crackers to each other with the royal icing by piping a line of frosting along the edge of one piece, pressing it against the adjoining piece, and holding them in place just until the icing sets. Prop up the pieces with cans of food or other heavy objects, if necessary, while they dry. Allow the house to dry for several hours before decorating. A graham cracker cut in half diagonally works well for the sides of the roof, or make yours a flat-roof house.

Royal Icing

3 egg whites *

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 (16 oz) box confectioner’s or powdered sugar Yield: 2 cups Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Beat with an electric mixer until smooth and thick, about 7 minutes. When a knife blade drawn through the icing leaves a clean cut, it is ready. Chill in a tightly sealed container if you are not using it right away.

· Purchase pasteurized egg whites if you are concerned about using raw eggs.

IDEAS TO SPUR YOUR CREATIVITY

Firewood pile: mini Tootsie Rolls

Shutters: sticks of gum

Rustic stone siding: chocolate cereal

Sand: brown sugar

Roofs: Oreo thins, Wheat Thins or Shredded Wheat cereal

Fences: pretzel sticks

Lamp Posts: pretzel sticks with marshmallows on top

Trees: green gum drops shaped like leaves (sold as “Spearmint Leaves”)

Pile of presents in a sleigh: decorated sugar cubes

Barnyard: animal crackers

Walkways: flat cookies or dried fruit

Snowmen: marshmallows with pretzel sticks for arms

Bamboo siding: pretzel sticks

Chimneys: sugar cubes or marshmallows

Snow: shredded coconut (can be sprinkled on for a snowy look on roofs and trees)

Photos: Matthew Carden—www.350degrees.com

Halloween 2010 - Treats and Insanity

I am writing this fast post between sleepover and costume application for my small yet scary Vampire child....Claire.

This Halloween seemed to come on like a huge wave. The water was calm, I turned around and WHAM right in the face! Usually I have a list of planned out treats to make for the various we go to. This year I was not focused at all, I was distracted by life, not ready for the "big game." I am only being overly dramatic because generally I love Halloween, I live to make disgusting treats once a year, like the Kitty Litter Cake or Severed Fingers. This year I was so overwhelmed with great ideas from my Twitter friends, magazines and bloggers that my brain became a scramble of ideas and then my head popped off!!

My first idea was to make Bakearella inspired Cake Pops like eyeballs on a fork. Then my ideas changed when I saw some cake pops that had witch hats made from Oreos. Let me save you from the thought process, anyway I went back and forth and eventually just let it become free form.

The Cyclops were and after thought, I was low on eyeballs so I decided to make a one eyed monster. I had black sprinkles and thought they make goofy hair, perfect! The second is a witch and the kids loved them.

I also saw some fake earwax Q-Tips so of course I made them and, they were my yuck factor.

Last but not least, Lychee "cow eyeballs"

I happened to have a can of Rambutan, I used creative licence and substituted them in for lychee, it worked just fine.

So I am just taking a few minutes to share our creepy treats with you. I'd love to see yours, leave links in the comments for me to see!! Happy Halloween!!

Making Faces

Kidlet turned 7 this week, hard to believe seven years have gone by. Most of it has been spent eating, photographing, growing and playing with our food. Kidlet is a good sport, she likes helping me develop recipes and helping her dad take photos of food. (please excuse my non- professional food pictures here) It was four years ago that we started writing The Toddler Cafe and she was just as much a part of it at age three as she is now.

Her dad picked up a very cool gift having to do with food, of course! Food Faces, is a very inventive brand of plate that kids can use to play with their food.

For dinner I made Pork chops with Cherry Balsamic glaze, sauteed kale, steamed broccoli and homemade creamed corn. I was sure she would reject the sauce but she ended up using it as "hair color" and loved it. We also had some potatoes that kidlet helped harvest so I knew she would eat those.

It was one of those tossed together meals, I was trying to use up what I had in the house.

Once she started decorating the plate she was hooked! The only thing left on her plate after was a scrap of food, she ate everything! I was thrilled and she was full. I am very proud of my adventurous eater, she tries anything once and that is all I can ask.

If you can't get a plate like this I suggest buying a few cheap clear glass plates, from the second hand store. Use a Sharpie marker on the back and draw an outline of a face. Turn the plate over and your kids can decorate the face just like we did! Make sure if you draw on a plate it is on the underside so no marker comes in contact with the food. To remove the marker wipe with rubbing alcohol.

Have fun and stay creative.

Fall Leafs Me Feeling Happy Mobile

I know, I can’t believe it either but yes, Thanksgiving is here again! The leaves are falling all around us, how about making good use of them? Let the planning begin and make sure to involve the kids. As a kid, Thanksgiving always seemed stressful for my parents; running around, cleaning, bringing up chairs form the basement and foreshadowing the negatives of how the day would go. “Would Zedi (grandfather in Yiddish) be in a good mood?" “Oh, and make sure he gets the turkey neck, that will make him happy for sure!” Isn't this season supposed to be about joy?

There always seemed to be a layer of tension being laid down with the table cloth as it was smoothed over the big table. Having people over to the house was more of an performance then a relaxing event about togetherness. Mom is a fabulous cook, she had nothing to worry about in that area. The kids were usually shooed out of the kitchen. As the clock got closer to afternoon, the adults could focus on preparing the meal “in peace.”

As a grown up I can respect that, but as a mother I want my child to be involved, to make the holiday as much theirs as ours. It can be done in a way that makes everyone feel involved.

I remember not being able to wait until we were dismissed from the table so we could go watch TV or play a game. I want my child’s memories to be filled with food, pride, and feeling like a valued part of the holiday preparation. What better holiday to start with than Thanksgiving. Here is a craft that will get the kids excited, it is a nice way to honor the guests too.

Make a point of taking a walk a few days before Thanksgiving and searching out beautiful fallen leaves for this project. Do the project in the days prior to the holiday and use that time to connect with your kids. Once the day comes and you get busy your kids will have a great feeling of being a part of preparation for the day. If you live in a place where there is no "Fall," you can get leaves at the craft store, they will work just as well.

Fall "Leafs" Me Feeling Happy Mobile

A great way to involve the kids is in a craft, get some air make it a fun walk to gather leaves. This particular one is a great way to honor your guests and let them know that you gave thought to who was coming, plus it adds some color and interest to your room.

Items you will need:

Leaves with beautiful fall colors a few more than the number of guests

A branch about 1 foot long

Scissor

Clear contact paper

Ribbon

Hole punch

Permanent metallic marker

• Have the kids help gather beautiful large leaves, the leaves need to be supple not too crunchy,
• Wipe the leaves with a dry cloth
• Cut large squares of contact paper 1/2 inch larger than your leaf, peel off backing. Lay leaf on one half of the strip, and fold over covering leaf.
• Seal and pushing out air bubbles
• Cut around leaf leaving 1/4 inch of contact paper boarder
• Punch hole in the top of each leaf
• Write each guests name in large letters on each a leaf. I like to use small leaves for kids and large ones for adults
• Tie ribbon through hole and string up
• Tie leaves on to the branch and hang over your table

Tip: go one step further and use photos of your guests kids and hang them from the mobile too!

Ice Ice Baby....

This summer has been so much fun for our family, we traveled, gardened, went to camp, taught camp and were lazy and very busy.  We also purchased an old (1973) pop up camper from Craig's list. We fixed it up and took it out and had the best time, we are converts now, and we want to camp as much as we can.

So where does the ice come in? Well being a 1973 camper it has an  old-fashioned   icebox in it. For the ice box to work, you have to get a large block of ice, the  old-fashioned   kind. The ice fits in the top of the icebox and as it melts it drains out the bottom into the ground. If you camp for one night then you have a great big block left when you get home, I threw it in the freezer for another day. This is where the play comes in, what to do with an over sized block of ice?

It was hot after school and the kids needed something to keep them busy. I put the ice outside on some rocks far away from anything valuable. 

I got a few turkey basters (I have no idea why I have more than one) and filled a few cups with warm water. The water got a few drops of food coloring so the kids could see how the warm water affected the ice.

We shot the water in to the ice and made craters and rivers, they had such a blast with it. I did end up running to the kitchen a lot to refill and change out the colors per request.

It was a great experiment for them; we talked about what happened when you shoot the warm water in, as opposed to slow drips. We talked about freezing our own ice with rocks so they could get the treasure out by the force of the water. You could make ice blocks with all kinds of goodies in them, army men, gems, blocks to name a few. It was a great afternoon and I can't wait to do it again.

Who knew camping could lead to such a fun after school activity.

Georgia O’Keeffe in Milk?

[Photos taken with my phone....sorry about the bad quality]

What am I talking about, you ask? I hate to stray away from food because this is The Toddler Cafe you know, but this was so fun I just have to share. Lately my husband

and I have been doing projects with our daughter, simple stuff from home school websites.

The other day on a whim I found this project, Color Changing Milk. I thought well, it is made with food so therefore I can put it on my blog! The project itself is very easy and fun, but I warn you it will only work once or twice and your child will want to keep doing it. I say this because you may have to use a lot of milk, could get expensive.

Who knew that milk and food coloring could produce such amazing and beautiful images I was shocked by the colors. I kept saying wow that looks like and O'Keeffe and I'd explain to kidlet what her paintings look like. She thought latter ones looked like Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night, I was amazed she remembered that.

Here are a few shots of our milk paintings at the start:

It turns out that when we went to open house for her kindergarten we learned that they had been learning about O'Keeffe. Each student had copied one of her flowers, our daughter was absent on the day of the project so she never got to learn about O'Keeffe. I turned to her and said, "remember you made on at home in milk, I bet no one else made one out of milk." She smiled!

We learned that we can be in the kitchen and use food to make art with! We also learned that we can use up passed date milk by making cool temporary paintings!!

Crafty Thanks and Giving

The season is upon us, like a speeding bullet, how is it that November is half over? Summer ended so abruptly, I guess that starting kindergarten tossed us into the routine of the school year. Time goes quickly when it is divided into semesters. I love Thanksgiving, it is my favorite holiday to plan and cook. I love it partly because I get to stuff myself with the comfort foods of childhood and partly because cooking this meal, smells up the house with the roasty delicious scents of times gone by.

The best part of Thanksgiving to me is the warmth (being from the East we really needed it) of friends and family being together centered around the table.

Thanksgiving is also a great excuse for our family to get to be crafty. We love to use natural items that we gather from our yard or on a walk. A few years ago we started giving tokens to our guests. We wanted them to feel welcome and go home with some of our decorations.

At our craft store we bought inexpensive brown paper mache frames. We color copied photos of all our kid guests and glued them to the frames.

When the children arrived we gave them leaves and glitter and they decorated their photos. We hung them around the room, and when they left they got to take the one with their photo on it.

We also collected a bunch of bright yellow Ginkgo leaves and sandwiched them between contact paper to use as a table cloth for the kids table. (not pictured) This craft was a great way to get my daughter involved and a good way to keep our table clean.

Get the kids involved with setting the table too, even though I have to give up control on how my kids table should look, the kids are happy and excited to eat when it is time.

What I have learned over the years is that it is not how the table looks or how much food is cooked but how we remember the day and look back on it with nostalgia. I know everyone experiences the holidays differently, some turbulent some lonely, some loud but we have to make sure we find the little kernel of joy in it for ourselves and hold on to it. So make it a calm and enjoyable day and maybe lower your expectations a bit.

This year even though we are going to a friends house and I am sure whatever we eat and however the table is decorated it will smell good, be warm, fun and satisfying.

EXTRA EXTRA! “Fairy Dust Found on Bed Post!”

I knew this day would come, the one where my daughter says, “look mom, my tooth is hanging out.” First off…ewe! The whole tooth falling out thing really freaks me out.
I have never had a good relationship with my teeth or the dentist for that matter.
The next day she came home with an over sized plastic tooth around her neck and inside was her real tooth. It is a little thing, like some old shell you might find in the sand on a beach.
My first thought was, yikes, she is not a baby anymore.
The second was, what the hell is the tooth fairy supposed leave her?
And the third was a memory of a friend telling me that one time she forgot to leave something from the tooth fairy for her child, she felt terrible of course.
My goal was not to forget to leave something.

The day was fading; my husband and I had not rehearsed this event yet so we were mouthing ideas back and forth during dinner. He had a great idea for a charm bracelet. With each tooth she would get a charm to attach to the bracelet, but it was 7pm and there was nowhere to get that, although it was a good idea. We had to think of something special, we ended up giving her 2 bucks and a pin (more of a broach) of mine of van Gogh’s Starry Starry Night. We wanted to put it in a little satin bag but we thought she may recognize it and then figure out that it was us all along. After much debate we decided on a baggie. It was like a silly sitcom, us runing around trying to decide on what to do, it was pretty funny. We slipped the tooth out and placed the new goodies under her pillow.
The best part is that I sprinkled “fairy dust” all over the bedpost so when she woke up she saw it.
In the morning she was delighted to see the gifts under her pillow. I told her the fairy must have landed there to rest and the dust came off her wings. The fairy dust was the icing on the cake, but really it was just edible cake glitter!
My husband thinks she knows it is us leaving the gifts, but is just going along with the whole song and dance because we are having such a good time with it!

Here is my recipe for 

Fairy Dust Snack Mix

Edible glitter- fine (get at baking supply or craft store)

Use up all your leftover:

Cereal

Pretzels

Dried fruit (we love coconut)

and whatever else you need to use up

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, sprinkle in glitter and toss until you get the desired effect. 

Chase the Gray Days Away with a Spring Birthday

With Winter approaching why not throw a little spring themed princess or princely birthday party, or heck just throw a party for the fun of it!
Keep the grey away with lots of ideas on how to create an easy bright and colorful party. Spur your creativity for healthy colorful foods and fun party ideas. You can get just about everything you need at a large craft store.

Princess and Princely Capes:
Purchase inexpensive fleece fabric or go to Ikea and get cheap fleece blankets there.
Cut wide rectangles about 3 feet long and make a 6 inch slit about 10 inches below the top. (See photo of prince)
The slit will slide over the head of the prince or princess. Remember get two colors if there will be boys attending.
Use the scraps to make “cuffs” by cutting a doughnut shape to slip over tiny wrists. Add fringe by cutting around the “doughnut with scissors.”





Cake:
If you are feeling adventurous you can make a princess cake from a mold. You can get used molds on Ebay for less than a brand new one. You can also go on line to find out how to make a doll cake in a mixing bowl, just search “making a doll cake in a mixing bowl.” If you purchase the mold you can reuse it as a volcano for another child’s party. The doll for the cake comes with a spike in place of legs to be put directly into the "skirt" of cake; they can be purchased at most craft stores.




Snacks:
Dipped Strawberries:
Buy melting chocolate, little disks made especially for candy making. Get any color and follow directions on the bag for melting. Remember make sure your berries are dry, adding water to melted chocolate will turn into a hard lump. Drizzle berries with a contrasting chocolate color.

Lunch:

Use a sandwich press or shape cutters to remove crusts and cut in to simple shapes.
Fill them with cheese and a thinly sliced apple slice or your child’s favorite filling.
A springy salad and bread for the grown ups makes them feel welcome too.



Decorations:
Use molding chocolates (the same ones you use for the dipped strawberries) and a flower mold to make these cute flower arrangements. Buy a few pots of cat grass from the pet store and “plant” enough flowers (or bugs) for each child.


Favors:
I like to invite a small group that way we can give out nicer favors. Fore this party we had one my little pony bought on sale, one cool marshmallow twist, a necklace and bracelet in a cute pink purse. For the little prince we had a brown more cowboy-looking horse in a more boyish bag.

Craft
Make sure you have a craft to occupy the time.
We made foamy crowns and wands with foamy-s that have sticky backing. Each child gets to be proud of the craft they made!

Girl's gathered vintage valance top

I know this really has nothing to do with food but I just love this idea. My friend Melissa has a sewing store called STITCH LOUNGE . The women of Stitch also have a few books all about re-purposing old clothing and fabric in to beautiful new things for you, your kids and even your dog!
They post tutorials on how to do these crafty projects on their site.
Here is an excerpt from the girl's gathered vintage valance top.
Our newest tutorial brings you something for the lovely little lady in your life - a Girl's Gathered Vintage Valance Top!

We love the fabric in vintage valance curtains and they can be found aplenty at your neighborhood thrift store—or in your grandma’s kitchen! Valances (as opposed to longer curtains) are already hemmed on top and bottom, and have a pre-sewn casing in place, making it a super easy, super fast project for a crafty mom on the go!
To see the rest of this cute crafty project go here.

Lisa Quinn Living the Creative Life

Lisa Quinn designer extrodroniere and mom of two, has a great blog, check it out at
thequinntessentials.blogspot.com


She is a super creative person and that always gets me excited. She is a Chic, over-worked, under-appreciated Mom. She is blogging on life including the latest in home decor, entertaining, kids' stuff, time management, and mental health. Her blog has great reading suggestions, design tips and mommy speak too!

Check out her book, $500 Room Makeovers.
Her site is: http://www.lisaquinninc.com/