It’s that dreaded time of year where we “fall back” and set our clocks behind an hour for Daylight Savings Time. Technically, this means we should all have one extra hour to do with as we wish! If you are stuck on things you can do to fill that one hour time block, I’ve got 5 suggestions for you….

Read More

The post 5 Things To Do With An Extra Hour appeared first on Dine and Dish.

Like we do every year, my kids and I have come up with a list of activities we hope to get done before the summer is over. We always tend to overshoot just a bit, which is fine, but at least our list gives us some focus on those days where we may not have a clue as to what to do. I love the lazy days of summer, but I love also having our bucket list to go off of so we can make sure to have as much fun as possible in the next couple of months!

You can check out our 2013 Summer Bucket List here and our 2012 Summer Bucket List here. We always carry some favorite activities over from summer to summer. Make sure to follow our Summer of Fun Pinterest boards too to see things that might get added after today! Without further ado, here is our Dine & Dish 2014 Summer of Fun Bucket List!

…

Read More

The post 2014 Summer of Fun Bucket List appeared first on Dine and Dish.

It’s Summer Bucket List time again!

Our family had such a great summer last year as we worked through our first ever official list of things we wanted to do over the summer. Of course, after doing the first one we knew we’d want to do another one for 2013. So, here you have it… the Dine & Dish 2013 Summer of Fun Bucket List!

Like last year, I pinned all of our plans on to a Pinterest board. You can find our 2012 board here and now our new 2013 Pinterest board full of summer plans is here….

Read More

The post The Dine and Dish Family 2013 Summer Bucket List appeared first on Dine and Dish.

This time of year is always overwhelming. I haven’t figured out a way for it not to be, yet. Don’t get me wrong though…I LOVE the holiday season! It’s the time of year where my mind starts racing and I think of tons of things I really want to do with the kids before it slips by.

I decided, much like my 2012 Summer Bucket List, I’d make a similar list for the Christmas / New Years season and then I thought I’d share it with you!

So, without further adieu, here are some of the things I’d like to do with my family this holiday season.

…

Read More

The post 2012 Holiday Fun for the Family List appeared first on Dine and Dish.

I alluded to my Summer Bucket List in my last post. My Summer Bucket List is the list of things I hope to accomplish with the kids by the time school resumes in August. 99.9% of the time, I don’t accomplish most that’s on the list and then I feel really bad about it when they go back to school. (Well we do try to cram as much as possible into that week before school starts to ease a bit of my guilt :).)

This year, I decided to take things a bit more seriously and follow the lead of amazing blogger and mama, Amy Clark. Amy created a “100 Days of Summer” Pinterest board last year and I watched, enviously, as she checked the items off, one by one. She’s doing it again this year and I can’t wait to see all the fun she has with her kids.

I decided to make my own Summer of 2012 Pinterest board, thinking something more concrete might be exactly what we need to make the most of our time this year. My list is fairly large, and I can guarantee we won’t get everything done on the list, but I’m hoping we can cross a lot of the things off! So, without further ado, here is our Summer of Fun Bucket List for 2012.

• Go on a Nature Scavenger Hunt
• Go on a Family Moon Walk
• Make homemade Waffle Cones for Ice Cream
• Have a water balloon fight
• Watch the 4th of July Fireworks
• Make inexpensive chalkboard message boards for each kids room
• Have a neighborhood squirt bottle water fight
• Paint Rocks
• Teach the kids how to play tennis
• Go to a Kansas City T-Bones Game

• Make homemade pretzels
• Have a watermelon eating contest
• Have at least one date night with each kid individually
• Build an awesome indoor fort and live in it for the day
• Make artwork placemats
• Find a good book to read a chapter out loud of every day
• Make homemade Coke Icees
• Have an overnight staycation in our town
• Make homemade bagels using the bread machine

• Make funnel cakes
• Teach the kids to follow the FlyLady Daily Kids Challenges
• Decorate water bottles and drink lots of water all summer long
• Watch the sunset, preferably near the water
• Make and eat sno cones
• Make treats and take to the fire station
• Have an outdoor movie night
• Go to a production at Theater in the Park
• Make a PVC pipe sprinkler car wash
• Plan and do several Acts of Kindness for others

• Have a pajama day (at least one!)
• Take the kids to the Independence, KS park and zoo
• Make homemade musical instruments 
• Play flashlight tag
• Go on a road trip / day trip with no destination in mind
• Go to a small town festival in Kansas
• Visit the Omaha Zoo
• Go to the Tonganoxie Rodeo
• Go on a picnic in the park

• Go fishing in Iowa with the cousins
• Have a Shrimp Boil
• Go to Happy Valley Farm to pick berries
• Take the kids on an ABC Photo Walk
• Make a Cookie Cutter Bird Feeder
• Participate in the Great American Backyard Campout
• Play miniature golf in Parkville
• Make Flubber
• Make Glow Stick Lanterns

• Make Old Fashioned Egg Cream Floats
• Go to the Missouri State Fair
• Send handwritten notes to friends and loved ones
• Have the kids write in journals each day
• Create a summer music playlist and listen to songs from it each day
• Go hiking at Shawnee Mission Park
• Fly a kite
• Sharpie Dye T-Shirts

• Make and eat homemade ice cream for breakfast
• Ride in a canoe or pedal boat
• Make a jar and catch lightening bugs (then release)
• Have a summer solstice party
• Take a family vacation to Rocky Mountain National Park / Estes Park
• Visit my niece and Aunt and Uncle in Branson, MO… go to Silver Dollar City
• Have an old fashioned, outdoor play party – play Red Rover, Red Light Green Light
• Go on a photo scavenger hunt

• Make homemade, glazed yeast doughnuts
• Jump in puddles
• Make regular trips to the library and load up on great books for summer reading
• Play back yard frisbee golf
• Make word cloud about me portraits
• Find pictures in the clouds
• Paint with water
• Make Sidewalk Chalk Paint

• Make homemade bubbles
• Make water bottle bubble blowers
• Make and play Balloon Ping Pong
• Do glow stick lawn bowling, at night
• Make an outdoor Twister game
• Make homemade root beer
• Go bowling

• Make homemade popsicles
• Make Summer Sponge Bombs & play splash tag
• Do giant canvas finger painting
• Play hide and seek with glow sticks outside at night
• Go swimming at the pool as much as possible
• Go see a double feature at the Drive-In movie theater

and one final thing…

• Make an Instagram Photo Album at the end of the summer that captures all the fun we had, no matter what we end up doing!

Alright – that’s about it! There are some fun new ideas I’m excited to try and some tried and true fun summer favorites that we do each year. I hope you’ll stop by Pinterest and create a summer fun board of your own! Let me know what your plans are for the summer. Whatever you do, I hope it is a safe, happy and fun one!

The post Summer of Fun Bucket List for Kids 2012 appeared first on Dine and Dish.

This past Thursday I had a really fun opportunity to host a holiday event at a T-Mobile store location in Mission, KS. I was assigned to bring the food and the guests and T-Mobile was in charge of the fun… and boy did they deliver! We had a fun, delicious, information packed evening!

To start with, we had plenty of delicious food and drink. These festive cookies were created by my friend Ashley from My Cookie Affair. My friends at Green Mountain Coffee provided plenty of hot beverages for everyone to enjoy, which was nice because it was our first truly cold night of the season.

New T-Mobile concept store in Mission, KS – open, bright and comfortable!

As part of our night, the T-Mobile experts shared helpful tips on how to shop for mobile devices for those on your list. Selecting the right mobile device for someone can be difficult, but T-Mobile takes the guesswork out of shopping by asking important questions about the person you are buying for. With some simple information about your gift recipient, the T-Mobile “elves” can find the perfect device to match your needs.

T-Mobile Elves take the mystery out of shopping for mobile devices!

One of my favorite plans I found out about at the T-Mobile event was their $15 a month, no contract, unlimited texting plan. If you have a teen who doesn’t need a phone for calls but is a texting fool, this is a great plan for them! I also discovered by playing around with the MyTouch phone how great of a starter smart phone it is.. feature rich, yet perfect for a beginning smart phone user.

Courtney, Kris and Tracie strike a pose before the flying monkeys game!

It was a fun night and I am so glad to have had the chance to come together with other Kansas City friends to discover the great things T-Mobile has to offer. Oh – and no one left empty handed to our event. The winners of the games we played won the 5 MyTouch and MyTouch Q phones and the rest of us got to take home Holiday Survival Kit swag bags!

Michelle, Farrah, Carrie, Kelly and Jennifer show off their new T-Mobile phones!

A special thanks to T-Mobile for all the great shopping tips, the fun games and the giveaways! If you have a mobile device to buy, hopefully you’ll consider stopping by your local T-Mobile to see if their experts can help mark one more person off your holiday shopping list.

This is a sponsored post on behalf of T-Mobile. I was compensated for my time in coordinating the T-Mobile Holiday event. All opinions expressed are my own.

The post T-Mobile Kansas City Holiday Event appeared first on Dine and Dish.

I just realized I haven’t done a Happiness Report since the first part of September. Eeeks! Well I have a lot to be happy for right now, so I’m going to share some of that with you!

My first baby girl is celebrating her 8th birthday today! Kelly really is one of those kids who is so sweet and loving. I nickname her “second mama” because she has such a loving and nurturing nature about her. I am so proud to be her mom! Her one request for her birthday was an Easy-Bake Oven. The Easy-Bake Oven was my favorite toy growing up so I was excited to get her one! We are going to have loads of fun with her new toy….

Read More

The post Happiness Report #14 – Birthdays, Blogs & More! appeared first on Dine and Dish.

Oh, yes we did… lots and lots of fun…

and to be honest with you, it was all kind of by accident…

All because I made a promise to my 5 year old that we’d do something really special this afternoon while Kelly (7) was at a sleepover. The promises of exciting things to come left my lips, her eyes lit up, and the voice in my head was saying “Well crap… now I have to think of something special and fun to do!”

I flipped open my laptop to check my email/Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Pinterest do important research on fun special things to do with 5 year old girls and lo and behold, if it weren’t the answer to the voices in my head in the form of a Google+ update from my friend Bridget.

Ummmm…. heck, yeah! I had cornstarch. I had water. I had a kid who needed to be entertained for hours. This sounded like a winner!

2 hours later, we were still playing with the Oobleck. I even turned a blind eye to the massive mess being made. Instead, we were having so much fun being amazed at how cornstarch and water can be a slimy liquid and then a hard solid at the same time.

Truthfully, I did ignore the mess until this happened…(which was a photo taken after I had already started wiping up the entire bowl of Oobleck which had been spilled on the floor and chair by my over excited daughter. Ahhh and look… I just noticed there’s a cracker down there too. Nice. Well, just keeping it real for you all!).

We still had fun, mess and all. So much that Ella decided to make a little video for you showing you how much fun playing with Oobleck can be. If you are looking for something to do to entertain your kids and don’t mind the mess, get some corn starch and water together and watch the fun unfold! You’ll love it, I promise.

The post The One Where I Ignore the Mess {Recipe and Video: Oobleck} appeared first on Dine and Dish.