20 Creative Writing Ideas for Kids of All Ages

20 Creative Writing Ideas for Kids of All Ages

Just because summer is here doesn’t mean the kids need to stop learning!  I wanted to make learning fun this summer so with the help of some friends I put together a list of 20 Creative Writing Ideas for Kids of All Ages.  My kids are all very creative, and...
Cincinnati Chili Spaghetti Pie

Cincinnati Chili Spaghetti Pie

Growing up in the Greater Cincinnati area makes it hard not to love “Cincinnati Style” Chili.  It’s not like your traditional hearty chili recipes, Cincinnati chili has a bit of sweetness to it and it’s perfect atop noodles and smothered with cheese.  We have our local preference on where to...
Sandusky:  Cedar Point and Hotel Breakers

Sandusky: Cedar Point and Hotel Breakers

Recently we made our first visit to Sandusky, Ohio for a long weekend spent at the Hotel Breakers.  While much of my time was spent learning great things at the Bloggy Conference, we also spent many hours exploring Cedar Point (known as the Roller Coaster Capitol of the World) getting...
Rowe Woods Cincinnati Nature Center

Rowe Woods Cincinnati Nature Center

The Rowe Woods Cincinnati Nature Center is one of my favorite places in the Greater Cincinnati area to spend a day in the woods exploring nature.  There are over sixteen miles of trails in Rowe Woods and they meander past a lake, over bridges, along boardwalks, over hills and through the...
Pesto Cream Cheese Dip

Pesto Cream Cheese Dip

You must know by now how much I love easy appetizer recipes.  Well here’s something you might not know about me, I cannot go to a party empty handed.  That’s where all of my easy appetizers come in…I have a collection of easy appetizers that I can throw together in no...
Spend a Day in Hamilton Ohio

Spend a Day in Hamilton Ohio

Edit:  June 2023 – I have come to realize that this post has some outdated information so I have deleted places that have since closed in Hamilton and will endeavor to make a day trip to Hamilton to make some updates this summer!  That being said, there’s still some good...
Our Chicago Vacation

Our Chicago Vacation

For Spring Break 2014 we took the kids on a mini-vacation to Chicago for three nights and four days. We crammed as much fun as we could into those four days and had adventures all over the Windy City. For our next trip, we may even take a trip to...
Five Easy Appetizers

Five Easy Appetizers

I have lots of favorite easy appetizer recipes, because I love making Hors d’oeuvres for any occasion.  Over the Thanksgiving weekend we had five different events going on!  So I had lots of easy appetizers to make.  I put together five of my favorite easy appetizers this weekend and thought...
Our Favorite Slow Cooker Recipes

Our Favorite Slow Cooker Recipes

My slow cooker is my best friend during a busy school week. I really don’t know what I’d do without it. If you don’t have one, I really recommend buying one! You can browse the best ones at somewhere like https://buyersimpact.co.uk/ to see if there are any that take your...
Cheap Date Nights in Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky

Cheap Date Nights in Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky

My husband and I value our date nights.  We have four children, we love said children, but we also cherish our alone time.  Sometimes we will jump at any chance to have a date night.  While we enjoy having nice dinners in swanky restaurants from time to time, we also...
Family Fun in Siesta Key & Sarasota

Family Fun in Siesta Key & Sarasota

Last year we took our family of six to Siesta Key for a long vacation.  We had so much fun exploring Siesta Key and the surrounding area, that I wanted to share my ideas for family fun in Siesta Key with you.  Our focus was mostly on beach lounging, so...
Getting Organized :: Children & Chores

Getting Organized :: Children & Chores

I am a stay at home mother of four children. I hate housework, but I also hate a messy house. It’s a frustrating way to live. And with five other people in this house with me, keeping up with the housework is a never ending task. My husband and I...
Walt Disney World with Kids :: Tips for a Fun Trip

Walt Disney World with Kids :: Tips for a Fun Trip

For Spring Break last year we took the family to Florida and spent three days at Walt Disney World. It was a blast! I was so thankful to have the tips & advice from friends and family before we went…I felt somewhat prepared for the special kind of chaos that...
Our Favorite Homemade Pizza Recipes

Our Favorite Homemade Pizza Recipes

Homemade Pizza with Salad is a favorite dinner around our house. I would venture to say we have homemade pizza on the menu almost every week. Homemade Pizza When Michael and I were first married he would make the dough and I would make the sauce, and we made some...
LEGO Birthday Party

LEGO Birthday Party

Last summer we had a big birthday celebration for all four kids at a local Civic Club. I wanted to find a common theme that they were all interested in, and settled upon a LEGO Birthday Party! They all love their LEGO blocks and especially their Minifigures. When I told...
Thirteen Ways to De-Stress

Thirteen Ways to De-Stress

I have days where I feel stressed & overwhelmed all day. There’s a huge amount of reasons, one is that I’ve just found out that I can get cheaper broadband deals with the help of someone like Usave, but there are many other things that are stressing me out. I’m...
Create Your Own Chihuly Sculpture

Create Your Own Chihuly Sculpture

Our family loves the arts, and we also love creating our own works of art. A few months back I read about a very cool art project for kids on the blog Mary Making and it inspired me to do a similar project with my children. The project was to...
Homemade Spaghetti & Meatballs

Homemade Spaghetti & Meatballs

Spaghetti and Meatballs is a quintessential comfort food, and a favorite at our house.  I found this recipe years and years ago and have tinkered with it over the years until I deemed it perfectly delicious.   This recipe is written for making mass amounts of sauce and meatballs…because I...
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*~* Snow Day! *~*

Our Backyard…December 2012

Nuclear Cowboyz 2013 {GIVEAWAY}

Congrats to Pat S. & Kim Barger!  You won the family four packs of tickets to the show!  Email me within 24 hours to claim your prize :: Katie(at)Cards-by-Katie(dot)com let me know in the email what show time you would like tickets for (Sat. Jan 19 @ 7:30 or Sun Jan 20 @ 2pm) and...

Randomness

just a few random tidbits from my week… I ran errands with Super Henry… I found Dobby’s head on my counter… I happened upon two of my boys hiding in a closet playing video games during a thunderstorm… I savored the fact that my husband keeps a journal filled with funny things our kids have said...

Korean Beef Wonton Appetizer

I have a delicious appetizer recipe to share with you, but before you can make this appetizer, you need to make dinner.  That’s right, dinner.  Right around thanksgiving I had made Korean Beef & Rice from the Lizzy Writes blog for dinner (see picture to the right ).  It’s a family favorite, and soooo very...

Henry & His Cars :: Obsession

Does anyone else out there have a child obsessed with the CARS movies?!?!?    

Nuclear Cowboyz are Coming to Cincinnati!

Almost one year later and I am still regretting that I skipped the Nuclear Cowboyz show last January.  At the time things were crazy for our family, I was teaching on Saturdays, Michael was tirelessly working on our rental property and the kids were involved in different things on the weekends.  Once I heard what an...

Today, In a Nutshell: Holiday Fun in Cincinnati

Today we had a family holiday fun day!  I’m sitting here amazed that we squeezed so much fun into one day with four children in tow. Here’s our day of Holiday Fun in a nutshell :: First up this morning we had breakfast with Santa (hosted by Family Friendly Cincinnati, Downtown Cincinnati Inc, The Cincinnati...

Sewing Projects Fall 2012

This fall I spent quite a bit of time with my sewing machine.  It was hard to carve out time to spend sewing, but I’m so glad that I did!  I worked on several projects that I was quite pleased with! My Sewing Projects :: I made ties for my boys (and my nephew) to wear...

The Otter Family is Complete

Last Christmas Sam was so upset because he had asked Santa for two otters, and only got one.  You see, I don’t think Santa (or his elves) understood that the reason he NEEDED two otters was because he only had four, and wanted a family of six, just like his own.  He was a little...

Menu Plan Monday ~ December 10

It’s Monday…and that means it’s time to plan our menu!  Check out all these great dinners we had last week, and for even more inspiration check out OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday Roundup! One thing I’ve started realizing lately that’s helping to make me feel less stressed while cooking dinner is that when I have classical...
Homemade Playdough

Homemade Playdough

Did you know that making play-dough at home is quite simple to do?  And it keeps for long periods of time, staying soft.  When I was teaching we always had homemade playdough in our classroom.  It is cheap to make and fun to play with!   And now that I’m home with the kids, we always...

Cincinnati – Our City, Our Story {GIVEAWAY CLOSED}

This giveaway is now closed, Unfortunately I never heard from my orignial winner (Maybaby) after more than 24 hours, so I had to choose another winner.  Congrats to Alice Rericha, who said:  We would keep it for our book collection. We don’t have a book about Cincinnati yet.Alice, you have 24 hours to email me...