A Valentines Day Countdown for Kids

Check out this Valentines Day Countdown for kids! I've included instructions to make your own Valentines Countdown and a couple of lists of Kid Friendly Valentine's Day Activities and FREE Valentine printables for kids!

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For Valentine's Day this year, I wanted to do some fun things with my kids so we put together this Valentine Countdown for Kids! There is a little envelope for each day and inside is a little note, with a valentine activity for the kids or the family to do together that day, in preparation for Valentine's Day!  I'm excited about the things on our list (which I will share in this post)!

Rock Climbing Accident - Ankle Injury

Before we were a week into 2023, I had an ankle injury from a rock climbing accident! 

We got a family rock climbing membership in the summer and it turned out to be an excellent family activity- both for exercise and for building camaraderie!  We decided to pause our membership & reactivate it in the new year to use rock climbing as an indoor activity during the part of the year when weather is not so nice for spending time outside.

So we reactivated the first week of January, and that week during one of our visits, the accident occurred. Here's what happened:

If you want the whole detailed story, watch the video above. For a summary, read on:

Family Goal Setting (with Worksheets)

For several years, we've been holding a little family meeting where we all sit down and do a couple of worksheets to help us to figure out some goals for the year (and beyond).  This post includes family goal setting worksheets and approaches. 

We've tried several different goal-setting approaches throughout the years and there are a few goal setting worksheets we've found to be most helpful for brainstorming what you want your goals to be.

This year, we broke these steps up into more than one family meeting, to make them more tackle-able and to give us some extra time to think about the next step.

If you're more of a video person, I've explained much of what I've written in this post in this video:


I hope sharing these ideas will give you some ideas & inspiration for how you'd like to approach goal setting in your family!

Soft Sour Cream Cookies

Soft Sour Cream Cookies... yep, the secret to those soft sugar cookies you can get in store bakeries is sour cream!  Did you know this?  

Well I'm about to share the recipe, so you can give it a try yourself! ;)  Aren't these snowflake cookies adorable?

I originally shared this post on the blog a few years ago, but I thought it was time to bring these sour cream sugar cookies to the forefront again. Just yesterday, the girls were requesting that we make some for Christmas. :)


I'm using Gay Lea's Premium Sour Cream (which is their thickest, richest sour cream made with 3 simple ingredients.  It's amazing with chips (if you're like me ;) or to use to make a flavoured dip, and it's awesome in baking!  This sour cream is only available in Ontario and only in the 425ml size.

Now, let me share this recipe with you!

Decorative Thanksgiving Blocks (Craft With Your Kids!)

For Thanksgiving several years ago, my kids & I made these easy decorative "Give Thanks" Thanksgiving Blocks together. It was a gem of a project & I still use the blocks every year! We originally did this for a sponsored post with products we found at Michaels Arts and Crafts Stores.



It was such a fun project to do together and I wanted to share it again this year so you could give it a try if you'd like. It was from way back in 2013, so re-posting seemed in order! :)

DIY Spider Pops Video Tutorial

Do your kids have Halloween Parties at school and need to bring a snack or treat?

DIY Spider Pops are a really cute treat you can make with your kids that they'll love to hand out to friends at a party, or on Halloween! 

(This is coming at you from a previous year, but it's too good not to share again this year!)

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Katrina woke up sick on Thanksgiving morning so she (& Ken) missed our extended family Thanksgiving dinner. She stayed home from school yesterday to finish recovering even though she was feeling a lot better than she was on Monday. We decided to break up the relaxing on the couch & watching My Little Pony routine with a little Fall crafting.

We gathered our supplies and grabbed some tootsie pops to make these cute (and super simple) Halloween themed treats.