Food is an important part of each day in our family and we feel lucky to have two kids that have adventurous pallets. During the process of starting this site, we have encouraged them to be even more involved in cooking and meal planning.
Our daughter expressed an interest in having her own section that would focus on her favorite foods and fun crafts. Kids Corner gives her the chance to express herself and share special foods and activities with her friends. We hope they inspire you to try new things.
Valentine’s Day is next week and our daughter wanted to make Valentines for her teachers and classmates. We pulled out the glitter glue, glue stick, glitter, cardstock and construction paper and started experimenting. In order to get the cards to fit in an envelope, we cut the construction paper in half and folded it to make a card.
We wrote XO and drew hearts on the front cards with the glue stick and sprinkled the glitter. This does get messy so do this outside or in the garage if you can. Then, we changed it up by cutting out hearts and glueing them on the front. Our daughter wanted the arrow so we used the glue and glitter at first but realized the glitter glue makes a better arrow.
For the inside of the cards, we typed up a note and printed them. Our daughter will sign each one with a red pen. The envelopes are plain white envelopes which we spruced up with stickers. Kids love stickers.
We also traced the hand print of both our kids and glued them to a large sheet of card stock. We wrote the name and age for both kids so we can look back years from now and remember how small they were. They are growing up so quickly.
We hope this is a fun activity you can do with your children.
We were invited to a cookie swap on Valentine’s Day and thought these butter cookies would be perfect. Instead of making them thumb print cookies, we used two heart shaped cookie cutters to create a cut out for the strawberry jam. They are delicious and fun to make.
The original recipe is from Hartstone Inn Signature Recipes by Michael Salmon. The Hartstone Inn in Camden, Maine is one of our favorite inns and the owner is an amazing chef. The rumor is he cooked for Julia Child’s 89th birthday dinner. He is that good and we love his recipes.
First, we creamed the sugar and butter. Next we added the yolks and vanilla extract. Then we added the flour. We mixed the dough until it formed a ball.
Then, we rolled out the dough on our cutting board. We selected two different heart shaped cookie cutters. The larger shape cut the hearts for the bottom and the top. The smaller heart shaped cutter was placed inside the larger one so there was a place for the jam. The large heart without a cut out was on the bottom and the other heart with the cutout was placed on top. The jam was spooned inside the heart shape.
We baked the cookies on convection for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Please let them cool before you pick them up or they will break in half.
Enjoy!
Yes, we used eggs since this was our first time making this recipe. Our son was not happy watching us eat these when he couldn’t. We will work on an eggless version when we have more time.
