Switzerite: Mother's Day Recipes & Crafts

Sunday, May 14, 2017

Mother's Day Recipes & Crafts

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there!

We had a VERY fun busy Mother's Day and I definitely want to save some of these craft project links for other gift-giving times. Here was our day:

Becca started off the day by making Pineapple-Coconut Muffins. The three girls (ages 12, 13, and 15) all went outside to clean out and rearrange the shed (best Mother's Day gift EVER) and happily spent their morning outside. It was a drop-dead gorgeous day. Perfect weather. They chatted, sang showtunes and classic rock, argued a little bit, and ate muffins along with massive slices of honeydew melon and glasses of mint water.

(Mint water is our new obsession. Just take a huge jug of water and add mint leaves. Pour some through a strainer, leaving the mint in the rest of the water, and drink. Delicious! When the water level in your jug gets low, leave the mint leaves in and just add more water. The longer it sits the more intense the mint flavor. Becca loves throwing some lemon balm in there too.)

We had some yummy Vegan Portobella Pizzas for lunch.

Meanwhile, I spent the morning prepping for Craft Club. So fun! We had two other little girls over and the kids all happily made Mother's Day gifts.

First we played The BEST Game: A Team Building Activity for a little team building and getting-to-know-you.

Then I passed out the Mother's Day Card Making Activity. This has beautiful templates for kids who love those intricate coloring books that are so trendy right now. And I really like the selection of poems she includes to go inside the cards. The kids chose their design and started coloring while I prepped the next activity. The coloring card activity was great because people could return to it if there was downtime between crafts.

Next we made Peppermint Cocoa Lip Balm. I had already purchased 1/4 oz. slide top tin containers for lip balm and some of the ingredients, but I did have to go out and buy the sweet almond oil, avocado oil, and cocoa butter this morning.

While the lip balm was hardening (you can't put the lids on until it is fully cool) we made the second skincare gift item: Nourishing Tallow Hard Lotion Bars with Essential Oils. I let the kids choose the essential oil they wanted to add and that made it feel truly personalized. They loved looking through the Essential Oils Pocket Reference. I used a muffin pan for the mold -- simple!

Time for a snack! We whipped up a batch of Super Seedy Granola Bars (vegan and gluten-free) and then the kids had the rest of the time to play.

When the gifts were ready (we packaged up the lotion bars in squares of wax paper) we did a quick quilling lesson and I used my tag punch to punch gift tags out of card stock. Make them fancy with a little quilling and a "made with love by" rubber stamp and a colorful pigment stamp pad... DONE!

WHEW!

Craft Club was from 1 to 4 pm and after that we were all tired and ready for some relaxing family time. So we did a quick and easy dinner of hot dogs and Caprese Salad and played board games. My friend Sherri just gave me a bunch of board games and so naturally we had to dive right in! Only the Educational Games make the cut for the homeschool co-op; those that aren't deemed "educational" stay on our family game shelves. Of course... the only way to make that decision is to play them first!