Valentine’s Day is almost here. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that. You’ve probably been stewing over what to do for days.  If you’re still looking for that perfect idea to make that certain special someone feel loved and appreciated, look no more because I have just the thing for you.  Personalized Fortune Cookies! And let me tell you, someone’s gonna be super impressed with this  fun, unique, and easy Valentine’s Day idea.

Personalized Fortune Cookies

It’s surprisingly simple and uses store bought fortune cookies. You just take out the lame-o fortunes that are already inside, and replace them with your own unique messages. It’s a great idea for your spouse, your kids, your significant other, your best friend, or whomever you’d like to make feel special.

How to make personalized fortune cookies

1) Buy a package of pre-made fortune cookies and unwrap cookies. I usually get the La Choy brand.

2) Prepare your messages either by handwriting them on small strips of pretty paper, or by printing them out on a  computer printer and cutting them into small strips (about 1/2″ x 2″ at the largest)

3) Take a damp paper towel (not dripping, just damp) and wrap it around one of the fortune cookies so that it completely covers the cookie. Do this one at a time.

4) Microwave the wrapped cookie for about 15-40 seconds (time will vary, depending on microwave and dampness of the paper towel… experiment with it. I would start with 15 seconds and then increase the time in small increments if necessary.)

5) After microwaving, the cookie will become flexible a for about 20 seconds or so…  QUICKLY  take the paper towel from the cookie. Gently  open up the cookie and remove the old  message,  and put your new message in.  Fold the cookie back up. It will naturally fold back into the original fortune cookie shape.  Then let the cookie sit to cool and harden.

6) If you’d like, you can then dip the cooled fortune cookie half-way into melted chocolate and add fun sprinkles to the chocolate before it hardens. Let cool on waxed paper.

Put personalized fortune cookies in a fun, cute container. It’s a great way to show someone special that you love them.

See, easy peasy and sure to impress. Enjoy your Valentine’s Day.

~Kate…Enjoy your Coffee Break!

The big day is almost here, but never fear, I have a few more fun, inexpensive and simple ideas for Valentine’s Day. First of all, I found a really cool site called Match the Memory (www.matchthememory.com) It’s a site that lets you make your own match game by uploading your own pictures and captions. You can completely personalize a match game for your someone special, and then send them the link to play their own game. This one is great for kids, parents, spouses, boyfriends/girlfriends, best friends, or anyone else you’d like to treat to this fun Valentine surprise.

I made a game for you to play using photos from Kate’s Adventures. Go ahead and try it out.

Kate’s Match the Memory Adventure Game

See if you like it, then sign up for your own free account and start creating a game.

Also…

I also found two cute Valentine’s Day card ideas, courtesy of Family Fun Magazine

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Materials

• Scrapbooking paper or card stock
• Scissors
• Lollipops
• Tape

Directions

1. For each Valentine Flower, cut three heart-shaped petals, two leaves, and two flower centers from scrapbooking paper or card stock.
2. Poke a small hole in each heart petal, leaves and flower center. Crease the petals and slide onto lollipop stem in this order, flower centers, heart petals, leaves.
3. Tape the bottom to secure. Write messages on leaves.

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mMaterials

• Sticks of gum
• Licorice strings
• Construction paper
• Scissors
• Heart stickers
• Tape

Directions

1. Place two pieces of string licorice between two sticks of gum, taping the top and bottom closed to secure the antennae in place.
2. Next, cut two heart-shaped wings from construction paper, write your valentine message on them, and secure them to the top stick of gum with a heart sticker. Add other stickers to give personality to your butterfly.

We have an amazingly strange week of holidays this week, beginning with none other than Doo Dah Parade Day on Jan. 18.  Oddly enough, there are several days of the year when this one is celebrated, and apparently Pasadena has quite the parade (not on the 18th…). but since I can’t figure out what the sam hill this one is all about, let’s all break out in a round of Camp Town Ladies sing this song… doo dah… doodah… and leave well enough alone, shall we?

Rid the World of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day follows on Jan. 18. While I think the originators of this day probably had the best of intentions, I don’t see this one ever happening. Fad diets and gimmicks have been around since food itself. Might I suggest that the best way to celebrate this one would be to drop any fad diet just for today – and dream of a world where you could eat whatever you wanted and dare anyone to stop you.

On Jan. 22 we celebrate Answer Your Cats Questions Day. In truth, I’d be more inclined to turn this one around on all the cats of the world. While I don’t presently own a cat, I do babysit the neighbor’s cat from time to time. And I have a few questions I’d like to ask. Things like:

• Why must you fly past me as I’m walking down the stairs? Do you really want to see me fall and break a limb? Is it that important that you’re always first to reach the first floor?
• Why do you jump on the counters when you are clearly aware that such activity is not tolerated?
• Why must you root through my cabinets every time I open a door? That’s just gross.
• Why must you always get into things you aren’t supposed to get into, then dash off with a look of feigned innocence as soon as you see me coming?
• Why don’t I trust you? Hmmm???

I suggest holding interrogations with any cats on your list on this day. I may even borrow the neighbor’s cat for a little celebratory fun. Anywho…

We round out the week with National Handwriting Day on Jan. 23.  In fact, Jan. 17-23 is National Handwriting Analysis Week. I think we can have a little fun with this one, too. Since I’d never urge you to do anything I wouldn’t do, I set out on a mission to find a good, free handwriting analyzer on the internet.

After going through several of the analyzers, I found this rather painless (and free) test that you may want to check out for fun. There are a slew of free handwriting analyzers on the internet, so if you have time, do a little surfing and use more than one analysis.

While I really learned nothing new, it did underscore some of my personality quirks with great accuracy. And since this holiday has its own week, you’ll have plenty of time to change your penmanship, should you feel so inclined.

That’s about it for this week, so until next week, get your party on!

Christmas is a time for traditions, a time for making memories with your loved ones.  When I ask my kids what some of their favorite Christmas memories are, they always seem to mention memories centered around our family traditions. For us, it’s what makes the holidays have that warm and cozy feel.

I am a big believer in holiday traditions, and for my family it’s not just the  Christmas routines, mind you, I’ve got traditions for practically every holiday of the year. If anything, I think I tend to ere on the side of OVER-doing it. But Christmas is the biggie, the granddaddy, the big kahuna of holidays. The other holidays are just warming me up for the grand finale holiday of the year.

I’ve been at this mom business for a long time, and over the years I’ve added some new traditions and dropped others which didn’t stand the test of time. Today I’m going to tell you about one of my family’s favorite Christmas Eve traditions. (I think this will be the 17th year for this one.) This is our twist on an ornament exchange. It’s a fun, easy and inexpensive way to have fun together and as a bonus, when the kids grow up and leave the house, they’ll have a collection of ornaments (and memories) to take with them for when they have their own tree to decorate.

Ornament Exchange Game

Supplies:

All you need are…

• an ornament for each person (I like to get mine dirt cheap on the day after Christmas for the NEXT year’s exchange.)
• a small gift bag for each person
• a favorite Christmas story
• and maybe some yummy cookies and hot chocolate (totally optional, but who wants to ignore an excuse for some yummy treats, right?)

These are the ornaments for this year's exchange. I try to choose a different theme for each year. This year...sparkly.

These super cute bags came from the Dollar Store..8 for a dollar. Do you love that as much as I do?

Put each ornament in a separate bag and tape it shut so the kiddies can't peek.

Pick a favorite Christmas story. We usually use The Night Before Christmas, but on occasion we've used the Grinch.

Have all the kiddies sit in a circle on the floor and give each one a sealed bag. Now here's where the fun begins. Have an adult read the story and every time the word "the" is read, the kids pass their gift bag to the left. Every time. That's a lot of "the's", 27 if I counted correctly.

And just for fun, because that's how we roll at our house...heehee, we added a "The End" at the end for one final pass. Then open the bags to see the ornaments. We've discovered that it's helpful to use a Sharpie to mark the ornaments with each child's initials. This could aviod an argument over whose ornament is whose, not that my family would argue over such a silly thing.

Have some easy Christmas fun and create some traditions and memories with your family this year!

Enjoy your Coffee Break

~Kate

Can you believe this is the week of Christmas? That in only a few days, Santa – the man in the big red suit – will be coming down the chimney? Maybe it’s just me but it seems like those last couple of weeks before the most wonderful time of the year always fly by.

Sometimes, even that ritual visit to see Santa gets put off until the last minute. So this year, I figured I’d be one step ahead and actually plan the day for our visit. We headed to Lexington Green before 9 a.m. on Saturday. The plan was simple: I’d pick up a few things from the bookstore, and by the time we were done there, Santa would be arriving, Colton would divulge his wishlist, and we’d be outta there before millions of other Lexingtonians were even awake. (OK, so there are a million people in Lexington, but that’s hardly the point. Any city that has to put up “Caution: High accident risk. Do Not Block Intersections” signs in this area lends the appearance of having at least a million people in the vicinity of the mall.

Just so we’re clear, the Santa at Lexington Green is not your average run-of-the-mill, typical mall Santa with a fake beard and suit stuffed with a pillow. Oh, no. He’s the real deal. You can even pull on his beard. If ever there was a Santa who more closely resembled Miracle on 34th Street, I would be shocked.

My scheduling was working without a glitch, and by 10 a.m., we were walking toward Santa’s temporary headquarters.

“Here we are!” I said to Colton. “Ready to go see Santa.”

“Nah, I’m good.”

“What?!? What do you mean, ‘you’re good’? We’re here to see Santa! Christmas is a week from today!”

“No thanks,” he said, while peeking in to try to catch a glimpse of the old man. Santa’s “organizer” overheard the conversation and tried to help out, while getting the first of the GOOD little boys and girls – the ones who WANTED to talk to Santa, lined up for their turn.

“Are you kidding me, Colton?? You aren’t going to talk to Santa?”

“Nah – maybe tomorrow. Besides, I don’t really want toys like the little kids. I want cool things, like a bluetooth for the PS3.”

“So you don’t think Santa makes those too?!?!”

“Yeah, it’s just that I’d rather come back tomorrow.”

I wondered if he really meant that. Or if, in a dark stroke of fate, it meant he deemed himself too old for the Santa stuff. To hear him talk about it, he’s the last true believer. But how can that be if he doesn’t want to go see him? Is the age of innocence over and gone? Never to return??

Well, maybe for him (although I’m holding out hope). As for me, I’m headed to Lexington Green to get a couple of last minute requests to Pere Noel. I’m no fool… Santa’s Coming!

Ahhh…Thanksgiving.  That often overlooked holiday sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas.  You know, the one holiday that can’t really be commercialized, so the stores pretend it doesn’t exist?

And yet, it is one of the most important holidays of all, because instead of focusing on material things and “stuff to buy”,  we can spend this time focusing on family, gratitude and thankfulness…the things which are truly important in life.

For the next few weeks, I’m going to share with you some fun ideas, tips and recipes to help celebrate this most wonderful Thanksgiving season.

Today’s idea:

A Thanksgiving Gratitude Tablecloth

This is an easy and inexpensive way to  start a Thanksgiving tradition in your home.  All it takes is an inexpensive, washable, light-colored cloth tablecloth and some permanent fabric markers, which can be bought at any craft or fabric store.

On Thanksgiving Day, before  your family sits down for the Thanksgiving Feast, spread out the tablecloth and have them gather around the table.  Ask each family member to think about 3 things that they are thankful for this year. Have them write on the tablecloth these three things, along with their names and the year.  The idea is to help your family (and yourself) focus on the things they are thankful for.  As you bring the tablecloth out each year it will bring back many happy memories as the family reads and reminisces over what they wrote in previous years. This memory tablecloth is a simple, yet meaningful,  Thanksgiving tradition.

Perhaps the feeling of gratitude can be best summed up by this quote…

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
– Melody Beattie

~Kate

Enjoy your Coffee Break!

*Enter a comment at the bottom of this or any other post, and be automatically entered in this week’s giveaway!

The big day is almost here. We have a Thanksgiving motto at my house…

Gobble ’til You Wobble!

A perfectly acceptable motto for one day of the year, don’t you think?  Well, maybe you could stretch that out to two days, if you have enough leftovers.  But three days?  Don’t try it unless you are expecting a gym membership for Christmas.

The star of every Thanksgiving feast is certainly the turkey.  And probably nothing strikes more fear into a cook than taking that heavy, slimy, pale blob of meat and bones, and turning it into the perfectly golden delicious main dish.  I myself have only cooked one turkey over the years, as that Thanksgiving tradition  has always been left to my mother and mother-in-law.  I’m sure my day is coming.

I  found an amazing website that will take all of the guess work out of preparing your Thanksgiving turkey…

SeriousEats.com

They have everything you could ever want to know about cooking a turkey.

Serious Eats’ Ten Turkey Tips You’ll Be Thankful For

• What Kind of Turkey to Buy
• What Size Turkey to Buy
• Thawing Time
• To Brine or Not to Brine?
• Calculating Cooking Time
• Roast Turkey Recipes
• Non-Roasted Turkey Recipes
• How to Carve a Turkey
• Still need help? Turkey Hotlines
• What to Do with Turkey Leftovers (Yay!)

So those of you attempting to tackle the big bird this year…be brave. With these tips, I’m sure your Turkey Day will be a grand success.

And here’s a little Turkey-day wishbone FYI for you, sure make you look like Mr. or Ms. Smarty-pants at the Thanksgiving dinner table discussion.

Apparently the origins of the Thanksgiving tradition of breaking the wishbone date back to 2,400 years ago with the Etruscans who lived on the Italian peninsula.

The Etruscans believed fowl were fortune tellers because the hen announced she would be laying an egg with a squawk and the rooster told of the coming of a new day with his early morning crowing. A circle was drawn in the dirt and divided into twenty wedges that represented the twenty letters in the Etruscan alphabet. A piece of grain would be placed in each wedge. A hen would then be allowed to peck at the grain. As she ate, a scribe would list the letters in order and those letters would be interpreted by the high priests to answer questions.

When one of these chickens was killed, its collarbone was considered sacred and left under the hot sun to dry. Anyone was permitted to stroke an unbroken bone and make a wish, thus, the name wishbone. The Romans took many of the Etruscan customs as their own and since everyone wanted good fortune, they fought over the bones, breaking them.

It is said that the phrases “I need a lucky break” or “I never get a break” come from being the loser in this tug of chicken bone contest.

The English heard of this superstition from the Romans and called their wishbones merrythoughts after the merry or happy wishes that most people desired. When the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock in the New World, they brought along the custom of breaking the wishbone. When they discovered the northeastern woods of North America were filled with turkeys, they changed their custom from the chicken bone to the turkey bone.

And remember…

Gobble ’til You Wobble!

~Kate

Enjoy your Coffee Break!

How filled with fear do you people get when I start crafting? Pretty fearful, I bet .

Anywho, this week, I wanted to bring you super simple project to adorn the Thanksgiving table. Not sure what else to call them, so we’ll just call them Veggie Candles.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Desired number of candles

• Green beans (about a half-pound per candle)

• One bunch asparagus (that will do one candle, as well)
• Rubber bands
• Ribbon of choice

Making the candles:

• Wrap rubber band around candle
• Slip the veggies under the band. You can cut the veggies to same height for uniformity if you want.
• Tie with ribbon

And we’re done. Talk about an easy way to bring the harvest to the table! Not to mention a sure fire way to serve waxed green beans I’m JOKING!

Kate and I hope you enjoy this project – and that your creative juices are starting to flow. Because next Friday, our 2nd Annual Craftdown to Christmas returns! And it’s not too early to send us your favorite crafts, recipes and homemade gift ideas! Just leave your ideas as a comment or email lizandkate@live.com!! We’d love to see the photos, too! We’ll be waiting…

Do you remember when Thanksgiving meant absolutely nothing was open, store-wise? As in, you could drive through Anytown, America on that day and it was  as if the streets had been rolled up. You were lucky to  see a passing car.

My how things change. This year, a host of stores will be open on Thanksgiving Day. Theories are aplenty – perhaps it’s because lots of people want to beat the Black Friday crowds, or maybe stores are trying to generate the additional sales. Or maybe we’ve just lost touch of Thanksgiving all together.

Is it that difficult to stay clear of the stores for one day? That difficult to stay at home, eat some turkey, watch some football and chill?

I realize the movie theaters and bowling alleys are usually open Thursday. And I really don’t have as big a problem with that, because I’ve done the family movie and family bowling on Thanksgiving. But that seems different from going shopping. Why is that, I wonder?

Let’s face it – if you’re that desperate to shop on Thanksgiving, there’s really no need to leave your home. Just jump on the internet and shop until your heart’s content.

It just seems as if we continue to fall even deeper into the consumerism trap, further away from our values and closer to the total annihilation of the family. So I’m curious. What will you be doing on Thanksgiving? How will you spend the day?

Is Thanksgiving a day of gratitude and blessings? Or just another day of the year?

-Liz

President Truman with the 1947 turkey, who wasn't lucky enough to be pardoned.

Yep, this is it – the day of days for the gobblers out there. The day when one lucky bird gets the ultimate gift: a pardon. Meanwhile an estimated 45 million will be landing on our dining room tables. For that, I am thankful.

Anywho, the presidential pardon will be given today. This whole pardoning thing began in 1989 with the elder George Bush, and has continued since. And two turkeys are pardoned, not one. (Think of it like the Miss America contest or something – if the winner can’t fulfill her duties, the alternate takes over…).

-Liz