Rachel

Rachel is a Mother Goose Club producer and former teacher based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She enjoys hosting celebrations for all ages centered around crafts and activities. Rachel is excited to share her favorite things with you, and hopes to inspire your family to get creative!

I seriously love these broccoli cheddar egg bites. They’re so flavorful (I think it’s all about the lemon zest), the recipe is simple and it yields so many yummy bites – they’re great fresh out the oven for brunch (great for showers, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day) or reheated on weekday mornings for easy, no-mess energy when you’re on the go. I’ve been making these free form on a baking sheet, but you can do muffin tins too (see how in the recipe I originally found that started this whole love affair).

• 4 cups broccoli
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup bread, torn in small pieces
• 1/4 cup onion, grated
• 1/4 cup mayo
• 1 cup sharp shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 teaspoons lemon zest
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Preheat your oven to 350, steam 4 cups of broccoli (I like to do this in my glass measuring cup in the microwave while I’m doing other things with the stove) and chop those florets up real good.

Beat your eggs and then add the torn bread, grated onion, cheese, mayo, lemon zest, salt, pepper and broccoli.

Line a large baking sheet with tin foil and coat with olive oil. Line heaping tablespoon bites on the sheet and bake at 350 for about 25 minutes until slightly golden on top. Remove the bites from the tin foil immediately.

When they’re warm, they’ll come up fairly easily – wait too long and the foil can stick to the bottom (which is one of the most delicious parts).

Rachel

Rachel is a Mother Goose Club producer and former teacher based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She enjoys hosting celebrations for all ages centered around crafts and activities. Rachel is excited to share her favorite things with you, and hopes to inspire your family to get creative!

I needed another activity for my Easter party, and literally whipped up this Pin the Tail on the Bunny craft in 15 minutes. The kids had fun playing it (more than once) and I think I like it enough to roll it up and bring it out next year! It’s also just a really fun spring/animal themed game in general, so even if you don’t celebrate Easter, it might be a fun one to try (this bunny was easier to paint than a donkey, let me tell you)!

Materials are below, and you can definitely improvise here to make it simpler or more eggstravagant (see what I did there?)! I hope you have a wonderful time creating and playing with your kids this spring and #mothergooseclub when you do so we can all join in the fun!

Materials

• Butcher/mailing paper, or backside of some wrapping paper
• Paper plate
• Permanent marker
• Scissors
• Cotton balls
• Masking tape
• Glue gun
• Paints

Tips

I quickly drew some puffy cloud shapes for tails – about three to a plate and cut them out. Then, I glued on my cotton balls for some fun texture and put a ring of masking tape on the back so it will stick to my bunny poster when the kids try to pin the tail.

I used my trusty acrylic paints from Michael’s again for the poster. Two circles for the body and head, two long shapes for the ears and two short shapes for the feet and you have a cute bunny backside! I didn’t worry about making my lines perfect, and am happy with my cute shabby chic result.

I added some text (I’ve been practicing my hand lettering lately – maybe that’s a blog post for another day) and daisies to give a cheerful spring feel.

Rachel

Rachel is a Mother Goose Club producer and former teacher based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She enjoys hosting celebrations for all ages centered around crafts and activities. Rachel is excited to share her favorite things with you, and hopes to inspire your family to get creative!

Happy Easter, everyone! As a Mother Goose Club producer, I can’t help but be inspired by the colorful characters, stripes and playful designs I spend so much time with every day, and so – I decided to do a MGC themed Easter basket this year! The designs work almost too well on an egg shape. I hope your family will enjoy my take on an MGC Easter basket and get inspired to create some MGC Easter eggs of your own! I’ve included a few tips and tricks below. Share your designs on social media using #mothergooseclub!

• Allow hard boiled eggs to cool and make sure they feel dry.
• I’ve found that Crayola crayons work best for egg dyeing projects – the wax sticks to the egg unlike some crayon brands I’ve tried.
• Set a towel down for kids to color on (pressing onto the table can break the egg).
• Dye will not stick to the crayon wax, so color where you want color and decide what color you want the white space to be.

• I purchased a Paas set and followed their recipe for vinegar, water and color tablets – you can supplement with food coloring and other containers to mix colors for variety.
• Test your colors – drop a plain white egg in each color and use a spoon to lift the egg out every few seconds to see how the color develops so you get the desired shade each time you dye (i.e. a sky blue will be ready before ocean blue).
• Dip and dye (with your egg carton or a plate with paper towel over it handy when they’re done)!

• I filled this basket with some bubble wrap and a plastic shopping bag, then covered it in paper grass and arranged the eggs.
• I made a jester hat for Humpty Dumpty with construction paper, crayons and scissors, then attached with hot glue.
• I made the Johnny Johnny monster’s ears by wrapping a corner of pink construction paper around the tip of a crayon, hot glued it closed, colored the stripes with purple crayon and hot glued each ear in place.

Rachel

Rachel is a Mother Goose Club producer and former teacher based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She enjoys hosting celebrations for all ages centered around crafts and activities. Rachel is excited to share her favorite things with you, and hopes to inspire your family to get creative!

I’m hosting a small Easter celebration with some of my favorite people and kids this weekend. This playful dessert is sure to delight them and work as festive decor! I really enjoyed making these because piping the grass frosting isn’t hard and you can have kids help each step of the way if you want (we’ve got lots of other activities planned for this gathering, so I’ll keep the baking to a minimum day of – I’ll have kids who want to feel involved add their own jelly bean eggs).

I’ve outlined some tips below! Be sure to use #mothergooseclub on social media to share pictures and videos of your Easter baking adventures – can’t wait to see what you come up with!

• Place your stencil at the top fold and when you cut out your bunny, make sure the ears stay connected at the top, giving you two sides -front and back (though I just opted for doing bunny backs on each side since a tail is easier to draw than a face!).
• Use a crayon in a slightly darker shade to outline your bunny and add a tail – the outline really makes them pop and the tail is just so cute.
• Use hot glue to attach your craft stick between each side of your bunny and then add a few small dots to connect the paper bunny edges completely.

• Bake chocolate cupcakes with your favorite recipe – I just used a box from the supermarket.
• Add drops of food coloring to your frosting until you get your desired shade of green – I wanted mine to feel a little pastel and used about 12 drops.

• I placed the plastic frosting tip in the piping bag first to see where the frosting would come out, made a cut across the bag there and squeezed to get the tip in place.
• Spoon/spatula your frosting into your bag and frost.
• As you gently squeeze the piping bag, pull up and away to get the frosting to disconnect and create the grass effect.
• Finish with a few colorful jellybeans for Easter eggs!

Happy spring, everyone! It’s SO time to dust off the furniture, move some stuff around and get ready for the light and new life on it’s way with the season. My grandma used to clean with a solution similar to the one I’m sharing with you today – she always made a point to tell me all you really need is water – essentially, you don’t need to buy products with chemicals, fragrances or dyes.

Today, I use this non-toxic, all-purpose cleaning spray throughout the house – I keep one generic plastic spray bottle under each bathroom sink and have one in the kitchen as well. This solution cuts through grease and minerals in water and best of all, it doesn’t leave streaks. I’ve outlined the basic and super inexpensive ingredients below. Don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment – maybe try a different essential oil or apple cider vinegar (I do prefer white vinegar for this recipe especially for the overall solution scent). I would love to hear what you try!

• Reusable spray bottle(s), like this one on Amazon
• 1 and 1/2 cups water
• 1 cup white vinegar
• 1/2 cup rubbing alcohol
• 1 teaspoon dish soap
• 1 cap-full tea tree oil

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! Today I’m celebrating with a super easy green smoothie recipe (as well as my emerald green eye shadow, lime green nails and green cheetah print jacket – I’m ready)! It’s got a light and fresh flavor with some natural sweetness (not to mention a great green color to get you in the St. Paddy’s Day spirit). This recipe yields about one and a half servings, so adjust portions as needed!

Ingredients

• 1 cup Greek yogurt (I use Fage 2%)
• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 avocado
• 1 overflowing handful of baby spinach
• 1/2 honey crisp apple
• 1/2 cup blueberries
• 1/2 cup to 1 cup ice to taste
• Juice from 1/2 a lime squeezed
• 2 tablespoons chia seeds
• Honey to taste (optional)

Simply add all the ingredients to your blender (I recommend adding in the order listed especially if like mine, your blender isn’t the strongest). Add the ice after everything else is pretty well blended and save the sweetness for the end. Pour into a glass where you can enjoy the pretty light green color and use a straw or not. I love straws, but I know they’re not great for the planet, so I opt for stainless steel straws I can wash and reuse – talk about green living!

Smoothies are a great way to get your fruits and vegetables (with their fibrous skins) in for the day, and taking 15 minutes to handle the beautiful ingredients to whip up something yummy is a treat in and of itself.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Rachel

Rachel is a Mother Goose Club producer and former teacher based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She enjoys hosting celebrations for all ages centered around crafts and activities. Rachel is excited to share her favorite things with you, and hopes to inspire your family to get creative!

Each year, right around this time (maybe I get a little stir crazy in winter), I usually find myself looking for a creative outlet. Crafts are a great solution and there’s never a bad time to infuse your time and space with creativity and color.

If you’re feeling the creative itch, but aren’t sure exactly what you’ll make yet, consider my five favorite (family friendly) craft materials and see what inspires you! With just these items, you can make almost anything and get a ton of use out of them year round. A lot of Mother Goose Club’s crafts use similar materials, so you can get some inspiration from their blog posts as well!

1. Non-toxic acrylic paints and brushes

I got this (now, beautifully messy) set of paints at Michael’s along with these brushes on Christmas Eve on sale. I splurged for an extra bottle of white paint, which I highly recommend, so you can use it as a base, or lighten all the other colors as desired without worrying about running out.

I love incorporating painting into almost every gathering where we’ve got kids coming over (ornaments for the holidays, making Valentine’s etc.) – it often sends shyness right out the window since kids are naturally confident painters (and mess makers!) and it keeps them engaged for hours. The grown-ups are usually down too, and who can blame them – the colors, the textures (who needs those brushes when you have fingers?). What’s not to love?!

2. Glue gun

This one, I got from Michael’s for three bucks is doing the trick for me for now. Requires a grown-up when crafting with kiddos, but hot glue is my go-to for how fast and strong it is. If I’m hosting a crafternoon, we can’t be waiting long for things to dry, and it even comes in handy around the house.

3. Butcher paper

Newspaper or wrapping paper works too – I’m pretty sure this is just some postal paper from Target I used as Christmas wrapping paper last year (you know, brown paper packages tied up with strings…). I love that it’s a craft within a craft – honestly, you can have the most exciting thing to paint set out, and kids might just prefer the table. The result can be art in and of itself, so embrace it! Try changing up the surfaces you cover. Putting paper on walls offers great pre-handwriting practice (I recommend the bathroom, since the surfaces are easiest to clean).

4. Undefined materials

Get kids started manipulating, building and creating with undefined materials like craft sticks, clay (I like Model Magic) or fruit! Kids get comfortable and imaginative fast (some can get too comfortable – keep an eye out for kids trying to eat the painted fruit)! These materials engage kids in conversation, imaginative play, problem solving and good old fashioned fun.

5. Glitter

If you’re like me and couldn’t find a reasonable glitter set on your last craft run, go for a no-fail clear/white glitter to highlight the color of whatever it is you’re making. You can’t go wrong. This here’s a non-toxic sparkling glitter from Target.

I know celebrities like James Vanderbeek and even Ellen have spoken out against glitter, but listen. It may have magical flying properties. But, seriously, it’s the cherry on top of so many of my most favorite crafts because of the joy and wonder it brings. Consider getting a hand vacuum. You’ll be fine.