LAST MINUTE VALENTINE'S DAY...BUTTONS?

Button Hearts (for some reason, I called Candy Dots "buttons" when I was little):
These are the easiest homemade Valentines ever - make a bunch in a hurry!
From Martha Stewart [Source]

Try these cute last-minute Valentine's Day ideas I recently found on  (click the red "button" to follow me there, but I'm warning you: pinning all those ideas/recipes/crafts/books onto virtual bulletin boards can be addictive!).  Look what I found to make: Button Hearts,  Valentine Pretzel Buttons, Cute-As-A-Button Valentine Cards, and a Sorted Button Valentine Heart.

At the end of my post you'll also find some fun books about buttons (and about something else, that most of us can't resist!)

Valentine Pretzel Buttons - Lately, when I go and visit my sister's kids, we make some form of these.  It started when a friend gifted them to me for Christmas one year (using the square butter pretzels, Rolo candies, and red and green M&M's)  I can't wait to try this version!

Recipe found HERE

Cute-As-A-Button Valentine Cards - A great way to use all those extra buttons you've collected through the years. I think these are adorable, but to make them with kids, I would just glue or tie on any cute "extra" buttons you have (without first making them into earrings).  The dowloadable card template is free...

Download the cards and tutorial HERE 

Sorted Button Valentine Heart - Look at this little guy, sorting his buttons into a muffin tin and gluing them onto his red paper heart!  What could be more fun?

Check out the finished MASTERPIECE!
[Source - Hands On: As We Grow]

HERE ARE THE BOOKS:

Corduroy, by Don Freeman. Remember the teddy bear in green overalls who lives in a department store and wants a home? One day a little girl named Lisa comes and wants to buy him, but her mother tells her she's already spent enough money; and besides, the bear doesn't look new: he's missing a button. This fact sends him off in the middle of the night to search for it...maybe someone will buy him if he can find his button and fix his broken strap!

All at once he saw something small and round. "Why, here's my button," he cried. And he tried to pick it up. But, like all the other buttons on the mattress, it was tied down tight.

Will Corduroy ever find his button - or a home?

The Button Box, by Margaret S. Reid, Illustrated by Sarah Chamberlain.  This little book takes me back to a rainy day during my childhood, when I remember my mom getting out her Mason jar full of "extra buttons".  My siblings and I spent the afternoon counting and sorting all the colorful buttons. We eventually ended up threading one onto a sturdy, but thin piece of string or ribbon to play "Button Button, Who's Got the Button?" The colorful illustrations in this book show the buttons the boy discovers in his grandmother's button box - how they can be sorted, and where they may have originally come from.

The Belly Button Book, by Sandra Boynton. Okay, well I know this isn't really a book about "buttons", but who can resist bare-bellied hippos and reading aloud the word, "Bee-Bo"?

Did you know Sandra wrote and illustrated a book for us grown-ups, too:  New York Times bestseller Chocolate: The Consuming Passion (you knew I had to work chocolate in here somewhere for Valentine's Day!  That was for you, Carol B-McK!)  It's out of print now, but hopefully you can find it at the library.

From the book jacket: Boynton's apologia for chocolate misses nothing. Myths are debunked: "chocolate is not fattening", she argues, "especially when the caloric expenditure of carrying it home from the store and hiding it from company is factored in". Directions are supplied: "to remove stains, lick them". Plus, "how to grow chocolate at home", a foolproof method for determining if chocolate is in season (does the name of the month contain the letter A, E, or U?), and a recipe for Hippo Pot de Mousse.

BELGIAN COOKIES FOR ST. NICHOLAS DAY

On December 5th, the evening before St. Nicholas Day, children in Belgium put their shoes (or small baskets) on the hearth - along with hay, water, carrots, and a sugar lump for the saint's horse, with a glass of wine for the saint. The children may also include a picture they've drawn (or a list) showing what they would like. They believe St. Nicholas rides on horseback over the rooftops, dropping his gifts down their chimneys. What do they find in their shoes the next day?  Chocolate, oranges, marzipan, small toys, and ...speculoos cookies!

Originating in Belgium and the Netherlands, speculoos cookies were first traditionally baked to celebrate St. Nicholas Day. The name may derive from the Latin speculum, "mirror", in reference to the bas-relief image of Saint Nick stamped into the cookies. These cookies (some very large) are still displayed every year on December 6 in the windows of Dandoy, in Brussels.

Alternatively, the name of these thin, crunchy cookies could have been derived from specerij, the Dutch word for "spices". The cookies are flavored with holiday spices—cardamom, cinnamon, clove, ginger and nutmeg—plus white pepper. Less spicy and sweeter than gingerbread, speculoos cookies make a perfect accompaniment to a hot cup of coffee or cocoa.

Biscoff (as in "BIScuits for COFFee") is the most readily available brand of speculoos cookies. An all-natural (nut-free) spread is made of the ground spéculoos cookies.  And it's lucious! It was created in 2007 on a Belgian reality TV show contest seeking the year's best new invention. The spéculoos spread made by contestant Els Scheppers was a top finalist.

My daughter discovered this spread when she and her husband were living in France. As of about two months ago, and to our extreme delight, it's finally available in the U.S.  You have to try it on apple slices!

By the way, did you know that St. Nicholas is also the patron saint of bakers?

Saint Nicholas
Patron Saint of Bakers

Copyright © 2002-2011 St. Nicholas Center

What does all this have to do with children's books?  I found two wonderful picture books about baking to share with you today. (Even St. Nicholas would have liked them!)

The Baker's Dozen: A Saint Nicholas Tale, by Aaron Shepard, gorgeously illustrated by Wendy Edelson (Make your own St. Nicholas cookies!  Aaron has included the recipe here, on his website).

Van Amsterdam the baker was well known for his honesty as well as for his fine Saint Nicholas cookies. He always gave his customers exactly what they paid for -- not more and not less. So, he was not about to give in when a mysterious old woman comes to him on Saint Nicholas Day and insists that a dozen is thirteen! The woman's curse puts an end to the baker's business, and he believes it would take Saint Nicholas to help him. But if he receives that help, will it be exactly what he imagined? This is a great way to teach young children about the the joy of giving, and about the life of St. Nicholas.

Christmas Cookies: Bite-Size Holiday Lessons, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, with cute illustrations by Jane Dyer.

Similar to Rosenthal and Dyer’s previous book, Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons (2006), this adorable picture book offers a variety of terms defined in child-friendly ways, while relating to the theme of Christmas cookies: FRUSTRATED means, "I can’t believe we burned them again" / PERSEVERANCE means, "We tried and tried and tried, and finally we made the perfect non-burned batch,”/ and HOPE means, "I’m filled with good feelings about what will be.”

A variety of cutely dressed children and animals are depicted throughout the book with a little carryover of characters from one picture to the next. A sugar-cookie recipe is included in this "sweet" and wholesome Christmas story. Ages 3-6.

Happy St. Nicholas Day tomorrow, and Happy Reading!

CRANBERRY THANKSGIVING

Today is slated for cooking, and Traditional Family Recipes rule the day!  My potatoes, for a yummy potato casserole that my mother-in-law handed down (and which my children won't ever allow me to deviate from!), are almost boiling. Meanwhile I have a quick minute, before starting on my sister's delicious recipe for a spiced Zinfandel cranberry sauce, to share about a fun children's book by Wende and Harry Devlin, appropriately titled Cranberry Thanksgiving.

Cranberry Thanksgiving is the story of a young girl named Maggie who lives with her Grandmother near a cranberry bog in New England. Maggie and her Grandmother traditionally each invite a guest to their Thanksgiving feast. But this particular year, Grandmother almost loses her secret recipe for cranberry bread to one of the guests. (The book includes the secret recipe.) This classic was published in 1971 and is a traditional family read for many families each year - you can read it while the cranberry bread is baking.



Cranberries are amazing little powerhouses of nutrients and they go a long way back in the history of the traditional Thanksgiving meal.  Long before the Pilgrims came to North America, the Indians combined crushed cranberries with dried deer meat and melted fat to make pemmican - a convenience food that would keep for a long time. As the Pilgrims began to settle and thrive, cranberries became a staple in their lives as well.

Contrary to popular belief, cranberries do not grow in water. Instead, they grow on vines in impermeable beds layered with sand, peat, gravel and clay. These beds, commonly known as "bogs," were originally made by glacial deposits. Normally, growers do not have to replant since an undamaged cranberry vine will survive indefinitely. Some vines in Massachusetts are more than 150 years old! (Cranberries are also grown in the Pacific Northwest.) Photo sources and more information here.


Well, I'm off to start my cranberry sauce!  Scroll down for the recipe below, or find it here (it's not a secret recipe, like the Grandmother's)...

SPICED CRANBERRY SAUCE WITH ZINFANDEL

INGREDIENTS:
1 3/4 cups red Zinfandel wine
1 cup sugar
1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
6 whole cloves
6 whole allspice
2 cinnamon sticks
1 3x1-inch strip orange peel
1 12-ounce bag fresh cranberries
PREPARATION:
Combine all ingredients except cranberries in medium saucepan. Bring to boil over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat and simmer until reduced to 1 3/4 cups, about 10 minutes. Strain syrup into large saucepan. Add cranberries to syrup and cook over medium heat until berries burst, about 6 minutes. Cool. Transfer sauce to medium bowl. Cover and refrigerate until cold. (Can be made 1 week ahead. Keep refrigerated.)

APRIL FOOLISHNESS: POETRY & A PRANK DINNER FOR YOUR FAMILY!

Need some fun reading for April Fool's Day? Try anything from Mo Willems or Dr. Suess. And don't forget about the poetry of Jack Prelutsky...

It's raining pigs and noodles,
it's pouring frogs and hats,
chrysanthemums and poodles,
bananas, brooms, and cats.
Assorted prunes and parrots
are dropping from the sky,
here comes a bunch of carrots,
some hippopotami.


It's raining pens and pickles,
and eggs and silverware.
A flood of figs and nickels
is falling through the air.
I see a swan, a sweater,
a clock, a model train -
I like this so much better
than when it's raining rain.

I mention FAMILY FUN MAGAZINE fairly often on my blog. When my kids were young, it was my go-to resource for fun ideas and activities.  They have some hilarious ideas for April Fool's Day.  I remember the year I served fish sticks (Zagnut Bars) and ketchup(strawberry jam), mashed potatoes and gravy (vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce) and green peas(sour apple Nerds or Jelly Belly candy peas & carrots) to my husband and children for dinner one year! 

Here are some more "pranky" foods from their website:

DESSERT that looks life meatloaf!

MEATLOAF that looks like dessert!