Kids | Home Is Where The Haggis Is

Category: Kids
- Cannoli Dip
  
  Posted at 8:53 am by Lisa Cavallari
  
  Jun 16th
  Happy belated Father’s Day to all of you awesome dads! Even though Dad’s Day is over, check out my tribute to Dads on Red Typewriter. You can take the ideas and use them for upcoming birthdays.
  
  Yesterday morning, the girls and I surprised my husband with handmade cards and a beer mug filled with Werther’s candies and huge marshmallows on top. I’m glad I planned ahead on this because I have been battling a bit of a bug lately and did not have the energy to do as much throughout the day as I would have liked.
  
  My husband enjoyed steak salad, crusty bread and some Caymus Cabernet for dinner – all of his favs. For dessert, I tried a new cannoli dip with all kinds of fun stuff to use for dipping.
  
  Here’s the cannoli dip recipe. I modified it slightly from Cooking Classy.
  
  Cannoli Dip
  
  Ingredients
  
  8 ounces mascarpone cheese
  
  15 ounces ricotta cheese
  
  2/3 cup powdered sugar
  
  1/2 cup heavy cream
  
  1/4 cup miniature chocolate chips
  
  1/4 cup chopped pistachios
  
  Directions
  
  Tear off a few sheets of paper towels and carefully scrape the ricotta cheese on the towels. Squeeze the paper towel gently to remove the moisture from the cheese. Combine mascarpone and ricotta cheese in a large bowl using a spoon. Fold in powdered sugar. In a separate bowl whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Gently fold whipped cream into the cheese and sugar mixture. Add the chocolate chips and carefully combine. Sprinkle chopped pistachios on top and serve with graham crackers, strawberries or Italian cookies. (The graham crackers were everybody’s favorite. It tasted like a s’more.)
  
  Try this dip for your next fun gathering. It’s easy to make ahead and store in the fridge for a few hours.
  
  (In case you were curious, the cheese board pictured is from One King’s Lane. An early birthday gift from my mom. My new entertaining staple. Thanks Mom!)
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  Posted in Baking, Kids | Tagged Cannoli Dip, Father's Day, Werther's Candy
- Vacation, All I Ever Wanted
  
  Posted at 6:55 am by Lisa Cavallari
  
  Jun 5th
  Let me start off this post by stating that I love my children. I love spending time with them for 359 days out of the year (give or take.) But there was a time when I was not the happiest mom on the planet…far from it! I was cranky, tired and the people around me felt that negativity. Something had to give so one cold February in 2011, my husband was stressed to limit with work and I was a witchy crank so we planned a trip. Just the two of us. WITHOUT KIDS! Scandalous, right? I know, I was feeling a slight pang of guilt when we started to plan this trip and I was worried that the girls would miss us, but we were all VERY pleasantly surprised to see that none of that occurred when the time came around for our vacation.
  
  If you need a retreat where you can recharge your batteries, catch up with your spouse and feel like yourself again instead of whoever it is you feel you turn into when it gets to be too much, then here are some tips to help you plan a vacation to anticipate before and dream about long after you have come back to reality. The picture above and further below are from our first vacation alone together since our children were born. We went to Los Cabos, Mexico.
  1. Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead- The most important question is: Who will be caring for my children while we are away? This is crucial and for my husband and me, we were fortunate enough to have my mom watch them for six days. It’s a 6 hour trek for her to drive from Minnesota to Illinois, but she loves spending time with the girls and vice versa. If one set of grandparents is busy or not able to watch them the whole time, reach out to other family members like your aunts, uncles and cousins. Or even try breaking up the time between relatives so that the kids aren’t wearing everybody out while you are gone. If family is not an option, plan your trip way, way out, like a year. Try using a babysitter recommended through friends or neighbors for a few date nights and see how your kids feel about him or her. Work up to an overnight trip to see how things go and then see if you feel comfortable leaving for a long weekend. It may take time, but you will get to a point where you trust them enough for 4-5 days.
  2. Find Someone To Help With The Help– If you have the option of using family, try this idea. I hired a babysitter to come by in the afternoon when things began to get a little whiny, between 3 and 6 so that my mom could get a small break and prepare dinner, if needed. The girls had fun playing games with someone new and were less likely to act up.
  3. Plan, Plan,Plan– This is what moms do best. We think of every possible scenario and the last thing you want to mull over while sipping a cocktail by the pool is whether you left the phone number for your pediatrician in a prominent spot. If the kids are very small and somewhat picky eaters then lay out a menu. (A sample menu will be in my next post.) I left money for things like ordering a pizza or going out for ice cream a few nights too. Have a small first aid kit handy, important phone numbers including your hotel, your flight information and nap and bedtime schedules written down.
  4. Surprise!– I like to have a few surprises for the girls like a new cup or bowl with breakfast in the morning while we are away or something from the Dollar bin at Target that my mom can give them if she catches them being good. The biggest hit were the whoopee cushions last summer. 🙂
  5. Groceries– Get some fun foods for the kids to eat while you’re away like mini containers of Edy’s ice cream or the small cereal boxes that come in a pack of 10. Our job is to make sure they eat healthy foods most of the time, but the babysitter can have the glory of letting them indulge for a few days.
  6. Souvenir– Of course you can’t go somewhere and come home empty-handed so this probably goes without saying that you should pick up one or two small things you think the kids will appreciate.
  7. Call Me, Maybe– My husband and I still have memories of when our own parents took the annual vacations without kids and whenever they called, that’s when we realized how much we missed them and the waterworks started. It’s not a bad idea to check in once or twice, but we prefer to keep it at that and totally immerse ourselves into our vacation. After all, you are taking it to relax, but if you call and find out that Toby spilled his juice all over the floor or Timmy got a boo-boo, you will be stressing about a sticky floor or lamenting that you are not there to kiss it and make it better. In the grand scheme of things, everyone will survive for 5 days that you are away. Unplug and unwind.
  Now my husband and I look forward to planning our own vacation each year. We are closer as a result. Our children see that too and feel more secure knowing that Mom and Dad love each other more than ever. Oh, and cranky Mom? She still shows up sometimes, but it’s nothing a good workout or a night out with a few drinks can’t fix. Go on and plan your own trip. This is a challenge I am throwing out there to you. Let me know where you end up planning to go.
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  Posted in Kids, Travel | Tagged Couple's Retreat, Vacation, Vacation Without Kids
- Last-Minute Easter Ideas
  
  Posted at 10:51 am by Lisa Cavallari
  
  Apr 14th
  Here are some easy ways to get ready for Easter this week.
  - Decorate Easter Eggs. Sydney and Olivia decorated theirs yesterday. Is this tradition becoming dated? I would think not, right? Anyway, they had loads of fun.
  - Find some Easter stories to read together. We found some adorable Easter-themed books at the library. My childhood favorite was Humbug Rabbit. It has beautiful illustrations and combines two stories into one.
  The girls enjoying their books.
  - Prepare the baskets. For Easter Sunday, I found a cute idea using a galvanized bucket, painting it with chalkboard paint and writing the child’s name on it. That will be Olivia’s basket. We already have plenty of Easter baskets around here and this is something that can be re-purposed for organizing toys or collecting rocks and shells at the beach.
  For Sydney, my mom suggested opening a new umbrella (a gift from Mr. Bunny) and placing all of her Easter goodies in it. I love that idea and will try to take some pictures to share with all of you.
  
  Enjoy your activities! Do you have some of your own traditions or ideas to share?
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  Posted in Holidays, Kids | Tagged Easter, Easter Basket, Easter Books, Eggs
- Movies We Watched As Kids
  
  Posted at 9:31 am by Lisa Cavallari
  
  Mar 2nd
  The other day a rare moment occurred while the moms were waiting to pick up their little ones from preschool, many of us actually had time to sit down to converse! Not only that, a conversation about the movies we watched as kids developed. Some were movies that actually came out in theaters when we were kids and others were classics that our parents watched. There were many, “Oh! Good one(s).” Or an occasional sigh as if we were reliving a bit of the past. The list we compiled is by no means complete because it was off to the races in no time and all of us needed to pick up our child(ren). Soooo, I am asking all of you to throw out some of your favorites as well.
  
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  Pop some popcorn, pass the rope licorice and watch these movies with your own kids or significant other.
  1. Annie (1982)
  2. Adventures in Babysitting (1987)
  3. Babe (1995) Not as old as most of these, but still so good.
  4. Back to the Future (1985)
  5. Batteries Not Included (1987)
  6. Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)
  7. Big (1988)
  8. Black Beauty (1946)
  9. The Black Stallion (1979)
  10. The Boy Who Could Fly (1986)
  11. Charlotte’s Web (1973)
  12. Flight of the Navigator (1986)
  13. Freaky Friday (1976) The original before Lohan soiled the title.
  14. Ghostbusters (1984)
  15. The Goonies (1985)
  16. Harry and the Hendersons (1987)
  17. Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993)
  18. The Jungle Book (1967)
  19. Lassie (the t.v. show started in the 1940s, but the 2005 movie received good reviews)
  20. Little Monsters (1989) Gotta love Fred Savage!
  21. The Monster Squad (1987)
  22. The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
  23. Milo and Otis (1986) A pug and a kitten. Every animal-loving child will be hooked.
  24. The Neverending Story (1984)
  25. Old Yeller (1957) A tear-jerker, but a rite of passage nonetheless.
  26. The Parent Trap (1961) Again, stick to the original. 🙂
  27. Pete’s Dragon (1977)
  28. Pippi Longstocking (1969)
  29. Pollyanna (1960)
  30. Popeye (1980)
  31. The Princess Bride (1987)
  32. The Reluctant Dragon (1941)
  33. The Sandlot (1993) Baseball and rambunctious boys versus a giant dog nicknamed “The Beast.”
  34. The Secret Garden (1993)
  35. Splash (1984) Didn’t every girl want to be a mermaid when this came out? I certainly did!
  36. The Sound of Music (1965)
  37. Spacecamp (1986)
  38. Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
  39. The Yearling (1946)
  40. Where the Red Fern Grows (1974) Bring out more tissues. Truly one of my all-time favorites.
  Have I forgotten one? Let’s hear some more!
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  Posted in Kids | Tagged children's movies, kid's movies
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