Winter Craft & An Easy Recipe

Thanks to everyone who entered the key fob giveaway.  I absolutely loved reading about everyone goals or resolutions for the new year.  The winner of the custom key fob and one to share with a friend is…

#90 Chrissy Vas.  Super congrats Chrissy and check your email for a message from me!

One of my goals for 2012 is to have a weekly planned craft for my kiddos.

Being prepared is not always easy.  Life happens and we get busy…it’s just a fact.  One thing I got from teaching kindergarten is if you have a good book, you always have a craft.

I am one of those crazy people that has one shelf on my kid’s bookshelf they cannot reach and on that shelf I put holiday or season books.  So winter, spring, summer, Easter, Halloween, fall, Thanksgiving and Christmas books only get brought off the shelf at the right time.

I know, I know…I think it’s another teacher thing.

Right after we put up our Christmas books, we brought down our winter and snow books.  One of our favorites being A Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.  If you don’t have any of his books…go get some now.  We have almost all of them.  For this weeks craft we pulled out A Snowy Day and each Kelley kid picked their favorite page.  And then we got busy crafting our favorite page using paper, paint, stickers, etc…you can use whatever you have on hand.

Huddy’s favorite page was mostly snow.  He painted his snowy hill and then put on as many snowflake stickers as his heart desired.

I did have to draw and cut out Peter (the main character) for Huddy and Sol.  They are decent cutters, but they struggle with small pieces, so I lent a hand.  They glued and also put little faces on Peter.  I just freehand most things like this, but if you want it to look just like Peter, then you could use tracing paper or even some thin paper like notebook or an old envelope.

Sol chose the bathtub page.  I again cut out Peter, the boat and the duck, but Sol did all the gluing and he cut out the bathtub and all the pieces of paper for the floor.  For the bubbles Sol used the eraser on a pencil and I cut a circle out of an old sponge.  Stamping the sponge and the eraser tip was his favorite part.

And Harper chose the snow angel page.  Harper cut out everything and glued and painted and just crafted her little heart out.  She’s got the craft thing down.  She cuts way better than the boys, so Peter was a piece of cake for her.

And we used some fun winter stickers for the tops of the buildings.

When we were done…fun had been had and a mess had been made.

If you have a good book, then you have a craft.  All of these could have easily been done with only paper.  Get your creative juices flowing.

And how about an easy, easy recipe.  I am always looking for quick and easy recipes…always.  My friend Courtney made this one night for Bible study and we have been addicted ever since.

So all you need is about 3 chicken breasts (I use frozen), a can of black beans, a can of fiesta corn, some salsa (as much or as little as you like) and a pack of taco seasoning.  That’s it.

Drain the corn and just dump everything in your crock pot.  I even put my frozen chicken in there.  Stir.

I usually start this around noon and cook on high until a little before dinner and then I just turn it on low.  Or you could cook it on low all day.  It will be more soupy when it is done.

Then before dinner, take the chicken out and shred it.

Dump the chicken in a bowl and I use a measuring cup to dip out all of the goodness.  We like ours less soupy.

Then mix it all up.  The yum factor is just off the chart.

We eat ours on soft tacos, crunchy tacos or just chips.  Everyone devours this…every single time.

Make this for dinner tonight…you can thank my friend Courtney later.  Enjoy!