If you are anything like me, you are sick to death of the answer from your toddler to the age old question “what do you want for lunch”. Macaroni, macaroni, macaroni.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind it every now and again, but I do think that I can provide something a little more, how should we say, nutritional, the rest of the time.

In addition to the macaroni and grilled cheese sammy repertoire, my toddler will also tolerate soup, for the most part, as long as it doesn’t have anything yucky in it. So with that I took to making some toddler friendly soup that I could freeze and re-serve in toddler size portions.

Toddler Friendly Easy Chicken Soup

What you need:

Chicken breasts or pieces (raw or cooked)
1/2 cup chopped onion (optional)
1 clove of garlic mined (optional)
1 litre chicken broth
1 cup of diced carrots (or whatever veggie your little one eats)
1/2 cup of diced celery
1 cup of egg noodles

What to do:

If using raw chicken, place diced chicken in your saucepan with onion, garlic and a couple tablespoons of water. Cover and cook.

Once the chicken is cooked, I removed the chicken, rinsed and put back in the pan minus the onion. You know, doing everything one can to keep the toddler happy.

Add broth, carrots and celery and bring to boil. Simmer until vegetables and cooked, but still crunchy. Add noodles, cook for 5 minutes and serve.





At this point, because I have an entire pot of soup minus everything I like, like spices and seasonings, I poured the soup into muffin tins to freeze into toddler size servings.

Enjoy with your picky toddler!

The Mommy in Charge

The tulips are blooming. Blooming inside our house this morning. Of course they aren’t blooming outside, remember the current state of my garden?

So with this current state of my garden, combined with the distant memories of last year’s visit to the Tulip Festival, we decided a Spring Craft was in order for today.

Using what had on hand we decided on Egg Carton Tulips.

What you need:

- cardboard egg carton
- paint
- bamboo skewer
- green pipe cleaner

What you do:

Cut the egg carton sections apart and trim to the shape of a tulip.





Paint each tulip inside and out. Allow to dry.





Cover each bamboo skewer with green pipe cleaner, winding it around. Poke the pointed edge of the skewer through the bottom of the flower and arrange in your vase.





Voila, the tulips are blooming while we try to patiently wait for spring.

Enjoy,
The Mommy in Charge

I love to garden. Getting the garden ready in the spring is one of my favorite things to do. Planning, shopping, usually too early, caring for the flowers until just the right time when it is safe to plant without risk of frost. This is when we are in full swing for spring.

While we never have spring this early in the year, we are usually at the point where we are starting to see grass and getting to a place where we start to believe that winter just might be over.

This is my garden today and I’m not feeling the hope that winter might be over.





And myself, like most people I know around here, we’ve had enough! Snow, cold, snow, cold, the never ending cycle has become a little much for any of us to take. A year with record snowfall has really pushed me to the brink.

So today we had a little more snow mixed with no sun, and decided to take matters into our own hands and start some planting early.








We’ll keep you posted on our progress, however keep in mind, with no sun it may be minimal.

The Mommy in Charge