Tales of a Crafty Mommy

When it comes to Valentine's Day, my mind goes off thinking of romantic music like Michael Buble, Gary Barlow, and other Latin artists like Alberto Plaza. Good lyrics and a good voice along with a plate of full chocolate cookies.   Cuando se trata del día de San Valentín, tiendo a pensar en aquellos días de verano en Chile mientras escuchaba la música romantica en alguna radio local. Por estos días, me conformo con escuchar a Michael Buble, Gary Barlow, y Alberto Plaza. Toda esta linda música, con bellas letras acompañadas con un plato de galletas.  As I have mentioned in other posts, my kids love, love, LOVE, to play restaurant and pretend to cook all kinds of foods like soups, rice, and baked goods. I have made them  Empanadas  and  Buttery Toast  for their play food.  This time, I made them a seasonal item for their restaurant, crochet HEART shaped cookies. Yum, yum!  I'm a huge chocolate fan so I made them chocolate cookies filled with raspberries, mint, and vanilla.

                          I'm so thankful for my Hubs and the yummy food he makes for me. The other day he made awesome s'more brownies. The name says it all: chocolate, graham cracker, and marshmallow ? Yes. Please!  Ingredients: brownie mix graham cracker marshmallows Procedure:  Mix and bake brownie mixture according to directions. Once it's almost baked, take out and put marshmallows on top with broken up pieces of crackers.  Bake for another two minutes until the marshmallow begins to melt.  Take out, let cool, and enjoy it.  Ready for some brownies! The mixture even had some walnuts in it. It was good!  Enjoy,  ~ Fabi 

    This post contains affiliate links.  Breakfast pies are such a fun way to make and serve breakfast. Everyone gets to have a small pan, cover it with dough for the crust, fill it with their favorite ingredients, some cheese, and an egg. The baked pie will smell oh-so good and it will be so cute to sit at the table with your very own breakfast. I seriously felt like I was at Panera having my breakfast or at some fancy hotel. Yet, I was at my own home in my pjs with my kids having mini pies.  So how is it that we got into making mini pies?  For Christmas, my daughter had requested a Lalaloopsy Baking Oven to bake mini foods just like the ones she's seen on the YouTube channel. Have you seen the Lalaloopsy girls youtube channel? It's very entertaining. The channel teaches you step-by-step how to make recipes like chocolate chip cookies, strawberry cakes, and so much more!  Everything is made using this tiny appliance and tiny baking pans.  The tru

We were just a tad-bit excited the other day when we got a hold of a pint of blueberries from Chile that we had to make blueberry smoothies to go along with our breakfast. We recently read Boxcar Children Book I aloud and got to snack on blueberries quite often. Yet, it seems like we just can't get enough of this delicious fruit.  This post contains affiliate links.                           Ingredients:  1 cup blueberries  1 apple 1 cup spinach 1 cup milk 3/4 cup of water 1 teaspoon of ovaltine (optional) 1 banana (optional) Handful of ice  Procedure:  Pour all the ingredients in the blender and blend until desired consistency. Then add some ice and crush in the blender.  Serve and enjoy!  We used  smoothie straws and some fun little umbrellas to decorate our glasses. The kids thought the umbrellas were a lot of fun! Blueberries are certainly a favorite and they have just told me they want to make blueberry scones . Lol.

Last year we saw The Boxcar Children movie a few times on Netflix. I hadn't heard of it before nor the books, but I quickly fell in love with the story of the four Alden children: Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny. Since my kids have enjoyed the story so much, I promised them I would read them the book. Normally, I would prefer to show them the movie after reading the book, but even though it's the other way around this time, I have been able to see a few or perhaps one main benefit from doing it this way this time.  My kids have been noticing that certain events happen at different times in different chapters rather than in one scene like in the movie. In other words, they have been noticing that movies are adapted in order to try to get the most in while a book is more descriptive. Personally, that's one of the things I like most about reading fiction. Writers have a way to convey ideas and describe settings, people, and events in a such a way that one is able to imagin