kid-friendly recipes

5 Ways to Make Potty Training Fun + Sweet Incentives

November 30, 2017 by Danielle

We’re celebrating potty success with help from our sponsor, Pull-Ups Training Pants! Check out these 5 ways to make potty training fun plus a recipe for crazy cake below.

We’ve been on our potty training journey for a few months now and I’m happy to tell you that our youngest is now 100% potty trained. And we couldn’t have done it without the help of Pull-Ups Training Pants. Pull-Ups products are all about providing parents and kids with tips and advice to help make potty training easy and fun, plus they provide plenty of tools specifically designed to keep children engaged throughout the potty training journey. Pull-Ups has potty trained 50 million Big Kids and counting – so I’ll take this one from the experts.

Potty training success starts with attitude. And if you don’t have the right attitude, neither will your kid. This is such an important milestone for toddlers and it’s also an opportunity for parents to work together with their children to reach the end goal: potty training success! It sounds daunting to so many parents, but why not make it fun?

5 Ways to Make Potty Training Fun

1. Purchase your first pack of Pull-Ups –

Pull-Ups Training Pants help your child recognize potty training as a significant milestone in their development by providing independence, teaching physical and cognitive skills, and offers a consistent representation to your child of their potty training journey.

With different design options, let your child choose a package that they identify with to make the process fun!

2. Singing the “Time 2 Potty” song –

Following the fun path, sing the Time 2 Potty song with your kid to get them used to the idea of being a big kid and all that being a big kid entails.

Time2Potty Song:

We’re gonna do this together,

we’re gonna stick to the plan.

Do everything we can to make it easy and fun,

It’s time to potty everyone!

They’re designed like underwear,

special friends make ’em fun to wear.

So boys and girls sing out loud:

I’m a Big Kid now!

3. Donate unused/leftover diapers –

Find a local diaper bank that needs diapers or donate your unused diapers to a friend or family member with a baby to help your child get used to the idea of transitioning out of diapers and into Pull-Ups. By removing the diapers from your home, you’re preparing for the potty training journey and removing any crutches.

Once your child has transitioned from Pull-Ups to underwear, you can do the same thing with your unused Pull-Ups. My daughter decided to gift our Pull-Ups to her 1 year old cousin (hence the bow on the package in the photos). She may be too young just yet but my daughter knows that all the Pull-Ups were given to her cousin and we don’t have any more in the house to use.

4. Print, color, pose and post with a Potty Training Certificate –

Grab a Potty Training Certificate and print it out for your child. Let them color and personalize it, then snap a photo of them with it to commemorate the moment. You can do the same thing when they’ve successfully potty trained to commemorate their progress and their “graduation” into big kid underwear.

5. Celebrate potty training success with sweet incentives –

When your child has transitioned into Pull-Ups and starts to have accident free weeks, consider a sweet incentive to encourage them even more. We would use lollipops and other small prize rewards to give to our kids when they successfully went on the potty, when they had an accident free week, and finally, when they transitioned from Pull-Ups to big kid underwear, we celebrated with a Crazy Cake!

Cakes mean celebrations for us and this Crazy Cake recipe is one that my husband’s family has been making for years. It’s a super easy recipe that the kids can help with AND it’s egg and dairy free. Most of the ingredients are staple pantry items.

Chocolate Crazy Cake Recipe

Chocolate Crazy Cake

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups cold water

Sift dry ingredients together directly into a 9 x 13-inch ungreased baking pan.
Let your child make three wells in the dry ingredients. Pour the oil into one well, vinegar into the second well, and vanilla into the third well. Pour cold water over everything and stir well with a fork.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Frost with your favorite icing.

What sweet incentives would your child love to celebrate with?

Loved the tips we shared in this post? Check out these other potty training tips:

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Filed Under: Baking, In the Kitchen, Parenting, Recipes Tagged With: Cake, dessert recipes, kid-friendly recipes, parenting, Potty Training

Deliciously Tempting Candy Apple Bars with M&M’s

October 17, 2017 by Danielle

These deliciously tempting candy apple bars with M&M’s are the perfect sweet treat to use up all of those apples you picked this season!

Oh my gosh you guys. I’m seriously melting right now and wondering where the heck fall is. Over 100 degrees today and the forecast does not look good over the next week. Oh, how I yearn for the cool crisp 75-degree air of fall.

With pregnancy cravings that have me wanting apple pie, hearty stews, and other fall recipes I can’t help but give into temptation and bake up a delicious treat for the family even when it’s a sauna inside and outside of the house. Did I mention we have no a/c in the new house? Yeah…

After finding some delicious Candy Apple M&M’s on our most recent trip to Walmart I was inspired to make these delicious candy apple bars that are part apple pie, part candy apple.

I made sure to gather most of the ingredients we needed and have it all pre-measured because another crazy girl in the house wanted to help mama out even in this heat.

I’ve found that when cooking or baking with kids a little prep work goes a long way. And makes things go a little smoother. And this recipe couldn’t be easier to make with kids. No mixer needed, no special measuring or ingredients. Easy peasy!

We mixed together the oat mixture and reserved a bit for the topping. The rest we mixed with some delicious applesauce

Once the applesauce oat mixture was ready I let my daughter spread it on the bottom of our 9×13 pan while I tossed the apples in some flour.

Next was my daughter’s favorite part. After I put a layer of apples down she was in charge of adding the Candy Apple M&M’s on top of the apples. Now normally I use a layer of caramel here for caramel apple bars but we wanted some chocolatey candy goodness.

Once she was done I spread the reserved oat mixture over everything and had her help push it down gently. Then we baked up this scrumptious dessert and enjoyed a little kiddy pool fun to cool down.

By dinnertime, these were perfectly cooled and ready to enjoy for our dessert. Boy, was this a good treat to end our hot day. Now let’s bring on some cooler temperatures!

Candy Apple Bars with M&M's

For the candy apple bars

1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup applesauce
3 peeled fuji apples (finely diced)
1 granny smith apple (grated)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cup Candy Apple M&M's

For the drizzle

1 cup powdered sugar (sifted)
3 tablespoons apple juice

Heat oven to 400ºF. Mix brown sugar, butter and shortening in large bowl. Stir in 1 3/4 cups flour, the oats, salt and baking soda. Reserve 2 cups oat mixture. Mix remaining oat mixture with applesauce and spread on the bottom of an un-greased 13×9 pan.
Toss apples and 3 tablespoons flour; spread over mixture in pan. Spread Candy Apple M&M’s evenly over apples. Sprinkle with reserved oat mixture; press lightly.
Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until topping is golden brown and apples are tender.
While bars are baking, mix together powdered sugar and apple juice and set aside. Once bars are done, let cool before drizzling with icing and enjoy!

Grab What You Need:

What’s your favorite fall-inspired dish?

*This post was originally featured on September 14t, 2014.

Filed Under: Desserts, In the Kitchen, Recipes Tagged With: apple, apple recipe, apples, Candy Apple, Dessert, easy kid friendly desserts, kid-friendly recipes, Recipe, Recipes

Goldfish Crusted Chicken Tenders

December 15, 2014 by Danielle

This post featuring Goldfish Crusted Chicken Tenders has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #GoldfishMix #CollectiveBias

As the kids get older they are more and more interested in helping me with the daily chores. But the one thing the are always bugging to help me with is dinner. While it sounds like it’d be something that would take forever with kids, having them help in the kitchen is actually … well… a help!

These Goldfish Crusted Chicken Tenders are not only absolutely delicious but the kids have a blast helping cook them. The only thing I have to do is supervise and do the actual cooking! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Dinner, In the Kitchen, Recipes, Uncategorized Tagged With: chicken, dinner recipe, easy kid’s meals, Easy Meal Ideas, easy recipes, Goldfish, kid-friendly meals, kid-friendly recipes, kids food, Recipe

Pumpkin Pie Smoothie Drink Recipe

October 8, 2014 by Danielle

This pumpkin pie smoothie drink recipe was created as part of a sponsored post for Socialstars #SweetNLowStars

Fall was in the air. For about a week. And then the high temperatures hit yet again. So in an effort to enjoy Fall without sweating to death I tested out a few pumpkin pie smoothie recipes to cool me down and still give me the pumpkin fix I was looking for.

Plus this smoothie is perfect as a quick breakfast for the kids. I threw it all together and blended up in less than 5 minutes! Much faster than pancakes or waffles.

With the natural sweetness of the banana and added guilt-free sweetness of Sweet’N Low I think I’ve found a winner with this one!

Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread Recipe

June 5, 2013 by Danielle

I love summertime. For one we get to play outside later in the evening and secondly my mother-in-law is always sure to bring over some yummy (but very large) zucchini.

Figuring out ways to use up the zucchini is always fun and shredding it to put in baked goods and savory meals is usually the way to go. Especially since my son has a fascination with our food processor.

When searching for a recipe to use up some of our zucchini I stumbled upon a delicious looking muffin recipe. Chocolate and zucchini? Why it’s a match made in heaven!

This bread tastes exactly like a chocolate cake. My son would have had no clue that there was zucchini in it had he not been the one to help mix the ingredients together.

And the mini chocolate chips just add a bit of deliciousness and push this bread over the edge. Next time I might consider adding a few walnuts to the mix. Mmmm….

Healthy Kid-Friendly Meals for the Whole Family

March 18, 2013 by Danielle

Once my kids were eating meals with my husband and I, we really had to think twice about what we were serving. I mean it’s one thing for my husband and I to eat a little un-healthy but the kids? They deserved well-balanced, nutritious meals 3 times a day.

I started to come up with quick and easy recipes for those nights that I just didn’t want to spend cooking and was surprised with how easy it was to incorporate healthy eating into our lives without spending tons of time prepping and cooking.

With the help of one of our family’s staples, whole-grain brown rice, I can jump in the kitchen and make some delicious favorites for the kids without worrying if they’ll actually enjoy it.

Need help preparing healthy kid-friendly meals that the whole family loves? Check out these great ideas that are in monthly rotation at our home!

Kid-Friendly Homemade Chicken Nuggets and Brown Rice #LoveEveryMinute

March 12, 2013 by Danielle

Dinner can sometimes be quite the chore for our family. Not only do we have children with limited palates right now, we also seem to forget to plan ahead lately and end up scrounging around the cupboards and fridge for a quick, healthy meal everyone will love.

Luckily I have ~~a few tricks up my sleeve~~ recipes to fall back on that are also kid-friendly. These homemade chicken nuggets are not only tasty but healthy as well. They’re pan fried in a little bit of olive oil and served with delicious brown rice and steamed veggies.

What kid could resist a chicken nugget?