Halloween is such a fun time of year, and I love it because it’s just so creative. From picking out the perfect costumes for your kids, hosting parties with fun spooky treats with friends and family and making crafts that celebrate the season while having fun making things with your hands. We don’t get a lot of trick or treaters where we are, but we do get some and it’s always fun to pick out treats to hand out and to see all the creative, adorable and spooky costumes on the kids that come to our door. And then there’s decorating the pumpkin. Decorating pumpkins is so much fun (and so is roasting and eating the seeds, yum!) – but some people feel really stuck about how to decorate them.
Let’s face it, getting kids to eat vegetables is hard. If they manage to eat anything more than a granola bar or macaroni in a day, it’s one for the books. If they manage 5 servings of fruits and vegetables? Dinnertime dance party.
One of the best ways to increase interest in vegetables is by growing your own. Yes, gardening. We know, sometimes keeping a child alive is almost too much, much less a cactus or tomato.
Tending food inspires curiosity, ownership and appreciation. So how do we find time to grow it?
The change in my son’s behaviour was so gradual I almost didn’t realize what was happening. At first, I wrote it off as a bad day. I explained his emotional meltdowns as tiredness or hunger—I know how a guy can get when he needs a taco.
One bad day turned to two, and two turned into a week. Before I knew it we were living a new normal. An emotionally unhinged, can-other-kids-possibly-be-like-this normal.
So here I am today, writing from Toddler Hell, where the red cup is never blue enough and shoes are evil feet-demons.
Especially during summer vacation, we have to keep our toddlers busy, hydrated and burning energy. I for one run out of exercise ideas faster than I get boring with making school lunches! We asked you to send us toddler energy buster ideas and tips.. here they are!
Today Ford was home sick from school so we took some time to bake a family favourite recipe that I so love on our Facebook live segment. We usually have Facebook lives on Mondays and Thursdays at noon Pacific time and baking and cooking is something I really enjoy doing live on Facebook. Normally when I’m making this particular dish, I double the batch so I have more to eat and some to freeze so that I can enjoy it later. It’s such a time saver!
Two summers…actually, three summers ago (my sense of chronology is on permanent mom mode), I had an amazing ‘mobile’ herb garden that we planted and grew in a bunch of mismatched pots on our deck. When we moved in to our first home, our tiny garden was totally professionally landscaped and we didn’t dare touch it, so this little collection of herbs was our attempt to curate and craft something of our very own in the backyard. Because I am a terribly undomestic goddess, I mostly just admired the herbs from afar (my husband trained as a chef in his twenties, so he’s in charge of the kitchen), until one day I decided to get experimental and leverage my love of cocktails to create a truly beautiful and very simple recipe.
So you’re thinking about starting a family. And you’re trying to start a family. And trying. And trying. And you’re at the point where, if one more person tells you to “relax” so “it will just happen”, you might lose your [email protected]#* completely.
You’re thinking about seeing a doctor, or you’ve seen one, or three. The idea of IVF has come up. Or maybe it’s come up for your sister, or your best friend. You have questions, but you have no one to ask. You’re scared it won’t work, you can’t afford it, that it’s going ‘too far’. You hate needles. You’ve begun to wonder if there’s a deeper, cosmic reason you can’t have a baby. There are countless reasons why it’s impossible to even try. And then you suddenly start to feel like you’re just done with it all.
Is life overwhelming sometimes? Ever feel the need for a refuge? Want one small space to call your own? If that sounds like you, sister, you might need a ‘she-shed’, a detached one-room bungalow with the sole purpose of providing comfort, privacy and serenity. Start planning, and before you know it, you’ll be gently closing your door on the rest of the world.
As your child gets older and more independent, the summer break takes on a whole different vibe. Your now-teenager has successfully navigated middle school, some of high school, and possibly even completed Drivers’ Ed (eek!) At this point, they’re likely pretty entrenched in their daily routine: getting to class, completing assignments, attending practice, and (hopefully) doing their chores. And then summer arrives and it all falls apart. Your once busy teenager suddenly has hours and hours of time to play with and no direction creating a situation that can quickly escalate out of moms control—so here are some summer tips for moms with teens to help nip it in the bud right from the start.
When we think about nourishment, most people know how to balance a good meal and many can also afford a few spinach leaves here and there. BUT… there are millions of people all over the world who can’t. Pacific Foods has always been one of the most socially-conscious companies in Canada. Their employees volunteer hundreds of hours, they have a zero-waste target that has almost been reached, and the company has always followed sustainable practices to ensure kinder treatment of people, animals, and the planet. They also just treated the public and a local charity to a fun and nutritious pop-up. The Pacific Tasting Kitchen was a public “soup-kitchen” in Yaletown, where for every sample of mouth-watering soup given out, another sample was donated to The Dugout, a local soup kitchen in the YVR Downtown Eastside. The charity provides a free soup breakfast every morning to 200+ people in the neighborhood. I feel so very lucky.
