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Pasta Noodle Recipe:

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After the dough has “sat” overnight, it becomes more elastic (much less “stiff”).   Knead and play with the dough.  The more it is played with the better your noodles will be!

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Form noodles by making dozens and dozens of “little worms”.  You can also roll the dough out into a sheet and cut the noodles out in thin strips.
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These homemade noodles are a great staple in homemade soups or as the starch in pasta primavera!  Our kids love to eat them with caramelized onions, along with fried cabbage and ground pork.

I love making cut-out sugar cookies with my kids during the holidays, but let’s be honest…it makes a huge mess and takes a long time!  If you’re looking for a quick way to make Halloween cookies with your kids, check out these adorable Candy Corn Sugar Cookies! 

No cookie cutters, no rolling out the dough…so these can be done lickety-split.

You will need:

*Your favorite sugar cookie dough recipe

*red & yellow food color

*loaf pan

Prepare your cookie dough as per your recipe for cut out cookies (not drop cookies).

Divide your dough into thirds.  Color 1/3 yellow, 1/3 orange (use color mixing chart on your food coloring drops box), and leave the last 1/3 plain.

Line a loaf pan with plastic cling wrap or wax paper.  Press yellow dough into bottom of pan, followed by orange & white dough.  Press firmly.  Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or overnight for best results.

We didn’t do a very good job of splitting our dough evenly into thirds…but it turned out cute anyway!

When the dough is firm, turn loaf pan upside down & remove your dough.  Look at those layers!

Using a sharp knife, cut your dough into 1/4 inch slices. 

Cut each slice into triangles.  Discard (or eat!) the ends that are rounded if it bothers you.

Spread out triangles onto a cookies sheet & bake according to your recipe’s directions.  Be sure to pull them out before they get browned on the top…the colors will not be very vibrant if they bake too long!  I learned the hard way with my first batch…

I love how easy these cookies are to shape, and you don’t have to flour the counter, roll out the dough, use cookie cutters, re-roll your dough, and repeat the whole process fifty times. 

Allow to cool & enjoy!

One of the things that says “summer” more than anything else are popscicles.  This is by far my kids favorite way to consume a banana – stuck on a stick, smothered with chocolate, and covered with sprinkles.

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Freezer Banana Pops are also a great way to rescue those bananas that are nearing the end of their shelf life.  These homemade Popsicles will keep in the freezer for several weeks.

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Your Banana Pop Ingredient List:

Lollipop sticks.  We cut up bamboo skewers to create our sticks.  You can also use popsicle sticks or even plastic forks.

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Chocolate.  Melt it in a small crockpot or a double boiler on low.  Add a dab of butter to it while it melts and stir frequently so the chocolate will be smooth.

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Sprinkles.  ‘Cause everything is better if it is rainbow

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Egg Carton.  We plugged the sticks into the egg carton to help keep the pops upright and not touching each other so they would look pretty.  They taste just as good if you lay them down on a lined cookie sheet.

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What is your favorite summer Popsicle?

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Cut 1/4th of the apple out, and core the remaining portion.  Add something sticky – we used cream cheese and peanut butter, but I bet nutella would be great too!

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We made some with horns, some apple monster faces with worms crawling out of their heads, and of course, lots of crazy eyes.  These were a hit with my preschoolers..

Have you played with your food?  Or done an activity with monsters?  Let me know!  I’d love to feature you in an upcoming post!

Jen from Big Binder has a fun Angry Birds Lunch idea.  She used lunch meat (or if you are meatless you can use tomato) along with cheese and bits of olive to make a silly meal.

Jay made some lunch sacks/angry birds themed party favor bags. They look super simple to replicate!

Brooke over at Crafting Chicks had fun creating some adorable angry birds cupcakes.  The tutorial is awesome.

And we all have toilet paper tubes!  The tricky thing with Amanda’s TP tube angry birds is that they are SO hard to knock over!  But SO easy to make!   This looks like a great at-the-party craft idea.

One of my favorite Angry Birds Videos come from Holly of June Cleaver Nirvana.  She had a blast with her boys literally recreating the Angry Birds flight and the Mean Pigs demise!  My kids watch it over and over again!

Another favorite clip features Ben and his Dad over at Electric Pig.  They created an edible, playable angry birds cake – too cool!

Don’t have time to create an elaborate cake that topples?  Christy over at The Girl Who Ate Everything has a tutorial of some adorable Angry Birds Cake Pops.

Married to a photographer?  I am.  He finds the human version of Angry Birds and Pigs to be humorous.

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Do your kids play angry birds?

Sun Scholar has two fun activities where she made her kids food into an experience.  In her post Edible Beach Bucket, Rachel made a graham cracker topped pudding for her kids to enjoy and then made a watermelon shark – complete with a mouthful of fish.

Deb from Science at Home had several snack ideas, the one that stood out to me was scotch eggs.  I have never heard or seen them before, but they look like little bread covered globes!  This would be a perfect take-out “learning” snack!

Jill of Kitchen Fun has a whole blog chock full of silly cooking ideas for kids!  I could get stuck there for hours!  Two of the posts she recently linked up include her Panda Burgers and the Bert and Ernie Fruit Faces.  Yummy!

Amy is one of my new blogging pals.  I have enjoyed browsing her blog chronicling the preschool she is running from her house.   She has numerous varieties of butterfly snacks, some with muffins, others with fruit and tortilla chips but the one she linked up had fun with veggies – my favorite!

Another wacky kids blog is Paint on the Ceiling, featuring Hannah and her kiddos.  This week they had fun munching on and painting with their food!

Bananas, flax seed, antioxidant filled chocolate and pretzels make up this fun and simple “spider snack“.

Kelley of Little Wonders made a great bucket list that I featured on the QuirkyMomma Facebook page a few weeks ago.  This week they linked up one of their activities: Making banana pops!  These look so yummy!

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The It’s Playtime weekly link-up is featured on the following blogs – check them out to see the different play-themed posts they are featuring:
* Anna : The Imagination Tree
* Jamie : hands on : as we grow
* Rachele : Messy Kids
* Jenny : Let the Children Play

How to Play :

* Let us know you love us, make our day & link back to us in your post/blog.
* Visit on Thursdays.  Link-up a post about play. Your link will show up on each of the blogs in the It’s Playtime community.
* Each hostess will pick posts to feature. (By linking you are giving us permission to use an image and link to you)

P.S. Printables, giveaways and reviews will be deleted, we are trying to keep this link-up party about playing with our kids.
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Do you have any tips on how to save money on meals when you are “on the go”?  I’d love to hear about them!

• Canned cinnamon rolls
• Eggs
• Milk

Yup, it’s that easy. Quirky E and her siblings smashed the rolls till they were nice and flat, then we put the pan into the oven to cook them until they were just done – probably about ten minuets or so. Then they broke and beat the eggs (their favorite part) and after getting the flattened rolls out of the oven they soaked them in the egg and dropped them onto the frying pan. Make as traditional free ch toast at this point. Yummy, and my daughter loves knowing that “she made it”.

Want another kid-cooking recipe? Check out Esther from Laugh With Us, her daughter had fun making french toast too! And this post was originally inspired by college student, Meaghan from Clutsy Cooking, who made these in her dorm room.
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What are your kids favorite foods to make?

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Do you have a favorite, cheap kids meal?  Stop by and tell me about it in the SavvyLiving community!

To make the smoothies:

Chop up the Kale, Spinach or Collard Greens and fill your blender to the brim.   We prefer Kale as it is more nutritious than spinach with 25% more vitamin A,  higher levels of Vitamin C and Calcium – it is a true powerfood!  It also tastes better than Collard Greens which has a spicy aftertaste.

Once you have your blender full of kale, add half a cup of juice.  Blend well.

Top with 2 bananas and as many berries as you want.  I think we added about 2 cups worth.  Blend till smooth.

Serve immediately or freeze into Popsicles.  If you want to make sorbet, freeze it for 1-2hours, till it just starts getting ice crystals.  Then stir.  Re-freeze.  Wait an hour or two and then stir it again.  At this point you can re-freeze and it will stay soft.  Our Kale Sorbet is the perfect after-dinner dessert for my dairy-intolerant kiddos.  Yummy and good for them.  Who needs to eat veggies for supper when we can have them for dessert!  Don’t want to have Kale smoothies?  Check out The Local Cook for Kale Chips - they sound great!

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