Easy, Fast, Snack Ideas For The Kids

Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

We've had a request to post our favourite, fast, healthy snacks and we couldn't be happier than to oblige.  We understand how difficult it can be to continuously come up with healthy snack ideas that the kids will love.  We've got lists, charts, printables and links to supply you with tons of ideas.

Let's just jump right in to healthy, fast, kid approved snacks.

Quite possibly the easiest way to curb the tummy growls is with a tray like this one.  Freshly washed fruit and or dried fruit, vegetables like cherry tomatoes, cucumber, carrots and olives, coupled with some low to no salt nuts and low salt pretzels. 

Serve it up in smaller portions or a larger one for a party idea.  It's so easy.

This fast, easy, healthy snack idea below, has got to be the best one.  I use these canisters to store nuts and dried fruit. It's right out in the middle of our island.  It's easily accessible for all of us and it's kept stocked nice and full with a changing array of various nuts, seeds and dried fruit. I use the stash for in  lunches and school snacks.  I also allow the boys to help themselves to the contents when I'm too busy to prepare them something.  We often say, ''It's that or nothing" and it often stops the whining.  They love having control of what they eat and I don't have to worry about sugar rushes. The image below is hooked up to a great site, healthy snacking, recipes, an amazing supply of delicious snacks that will make your mouth water and much more.



  

A great way to get the veggie haters to eat their veggies is to sneak them in there.  I puree carrots, zucchini, nuts, seeds and dried fruit and add them to a plain muffin recipe with a sugar substitute or low sugar quantity.  They have no idea! I also change it up by using the batter in a donut pan because my boys love donuts.  We've got a darn good Dessert Board on Pinterest where you can find healthier types of sweet treats.  Click on the image to get there and find your family's favourite.

Go further by making the food look fun like we did here.  We use seasonal pumpkin, raisins and sunflower seeds in these muffins and in Halloween spirit, added some crazy eye balls to help distract them from all of the healthy fruit, veg, nuts and seeds in there. 

Don't be put off by adding delicious, dark chocolate chips in your cookies, cakes, waffles and pancakes.  5 grams of dark choclate is actually really healthy for you.  Seriously!  Check out the benefits of dark chocolate right here.  Then consider other snacks with dark chocolate like dark chocolate covered nuts and my favourite, dark chocolate covered raisins.

We've got several blogs dedicated to healthy, fast and easy kid favourites as well as a couple of special entries for special needs children.  Check out this free printable chart with lunch and snack ideas by clicking on the preview.

This is an in depth blog for the parents out there that need help getting their children not only just to eat, but to eat healthy foods as well.  We've got two boys with Autism and they both have a lot of food issues and here we share some of our successful tips to get'em to eat.

Take a gander around nuts.com the blog and our Pinterest and you'll be set with an arsenal of goodies for the lil'uns.

Thanks so much for hanging out with The Cherry and happy snacking!



Digi Hop With The Cherry On Top

Welcome, Happy Hoppers!

I've got another template for you.  You will find both tif and psd versions only.  Scroll further for inspiration, the download and even more free stuff.

THIS TEMPLATE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.

Here's the layout that gave me the inspiration for the template.  I used Over The Fence kit, Around The World In 80 Days.  It's really fabulous.  Find the kit at the Studio by clicking on the layout, below.

Here is a free frickie for you using this fantastic kit.  Click on the preview below to get to the download.  We've got tons of free stuff on our blog, Pinterest and Facebook Page, too.  Check us out daily for new ones.

Here is the link for the free template.  Enjoy and thanks so much for your lovely comments, +, shares and Pins.

If you are looking for the home page of Digi Hop click here.

Happy scrapping!

Beat The Heat With This Healthy 5 Minute Meal

Welcome to another Foodie edition of The Cherry On Top.

We had one heck of a heat wave a couple of days ago and putting the stove on was NOT an option.  Cooking outside is always a good idea.  Fill your crock pot and set it on a table outside and let the heat stay behind.  Grilling is another way to keep the heat outside.  I've made waffles in the iron outside, too.

After many days of extreme heat and no A/C, I needed some fresh ideas. In typical Cherry fashion, I'm looking for fast and healthy.

I chose a deep plate and put some very thinly sliced shrooms in first.

Then added some fresh eggs from the girls.

Whisked the eggs and chucked it in the microwave for 3 minutes.

Of course you can add cheese, meat, herbs...whatever will cook up in a few short minutes.  The bacon was a favourite!

The boys absolutely loved this dish and it was whipped up in minutes.  This kind of meal is great for all three meals, not just for breakfast.

Keeping it fast and healthy is our aim.  Share any speedy healthy meals you might have.

Enjoy!

More Meatless Lunch Ideas For Kids

Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

We understand the challenge of making the kid's lunch.  Not only should it not be time consuming, it should be healthy and of course, the kids need to like it.  Not easy!  Especially, when you want to keep changing things up so you hit all of those vitamins and minerals essential for our kids health.

Here are two more, different lunches I made the last week of school.

To my delight, my oldest is now crazy about potato salad.  Yay!  These were red potatoes with the skin left on in a simple sauce of mayo, sour cream, crushed, dried garlic and herbs.  We had left overs and in place of a sandwich, I put them in a small dish.  Served it up with washed, raw carrots, cherry tomatoes, a box of real juice and one of those lovely fruit compotes without sugar.

Elementary aged children only need a couple of grams of meat in an entire day.  Click here for a graph on nutritional information for kids. Skipping meat in the lunch is always an option.  I put some nice crackers in there with large slices of raw carrots, a fruit compote without sugar or sweeteners and juice also without the sweet stuff.

Our kids also get snacks at school.  So, this meal isn't the only thing he'll be eating in the 8 hours he's at school.  The chunks of meat often come back because he eats all of the other things first.  Cheese chunks are also a nice touch.

Just a couple more lunches to add to your repertoire.  If you're looking for more ideas check out our other entries like this one as well as our Pinterest board, Lunch For The Lil' Ones.

Feel free to share your lunch ideas.

Free Fabulous Templates From The Cherry On Top

Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

We've got another scrappy edition for you with a free template, inspiration and ideas on how to use this very versatile, geometric shape.

I used A-Manda Creation's Succulent Summer kit.  Such gorgeous colours and I needed a kit that is full of fabulous papers.  Amanda always comes to mind first for that.  Find her goodies over at our favourite shop, the Digital Scrapbooking Studio.

Keep reading to find out more about this free template and the different ways you can use it.

This template is no longer available.

Here's a peek at the kit, Succulent Summer.

All right, it isn't perfect.  I just eyeballed the thing because my computer skills are still a bit lacking.  They say that perfection is in the imperfection, right?  Well, I say that!  Hehehe...

So this is how it started.  Just a bunch of different sized circles in this configuration.  I left the template in tiff/psd/png format so you can do a lot of different designs with it, in most programs.

You can use an effect on the entire template and design something like pictured here.  I used one paper for the entire thing and used a glitter effect on it.  You could use your paint tool as well and choose any colour you'd like.  No paper required.

Or you go through one by one and do each circle with a different paper.  You could also do the bottom layer in one paper and the second layer in another  and make the top circle in yet another.

The top circle helped as a guide to form this floral frame.  You hardly see it underneath and the shape is quite ok.

You could place your photo on top or behind the template.

To download the free geometric template in tiff/psd/png format, click here.

I've got a couple of other free templates up my sleeve.  So make sure you're staying in touch with The Cherry On Top.  I'll get the above layout in a template for you as well.

We don't make a penny here and storage space is at a minimum because we only use the free space offered.  We would love to keep the freebies available longer, but we run out of space.  Grab them while you can!

Soon, you'll find these lovely templates available for free, too!

All of the freebies you find here are for PERSONAL USE ONLY.  They may not be resold or claimed as your own.  

Thanks so much for your lovely comments and sharing our links.

Have a super scrappy day!

Win A Free Kit and Grab A Freebie

Welcome to a Win It edition of The Cherry On Top.

Touched By A Butterfly has designed a kit especially for my son, JJ.  He has Autism and like a lot of kids with Autism, he also has dyslexia.  I recently found a free font that supposedly helps kids with dyslexia. Having dyslexia makes reading very, very difficult and in turn makes reading not fun.  I'm out to try and fix that with JJ's Dragon Story kit and the new font.

I wanted to make JJ a book all about himself, using simple sentences, some of his favourite things and this open dyslexic font.  If you are interested in the font, you can find it here.

I'm sharing just a couple of pages of the book and will share the entire book and the hybrid project on another blog.  

Keep reading to find out how you can win this kit, pick up a freebie and get ideas so you can scrap up your favourite pictures with JJ's Dragon Story.

There are a lot of goodies in this kit.  Check out all of the different kinds of dragons, their eggs, fun scenery and so much more.  115 Elements and 35 papers are all included.

Use any of Touched By A Butterfly's kits to create a layout and share it here in the comments or on our Facebook Page for a chance to win this kit.

Here is a more traditional style Digi Scrap page.

I've got a couple of other layouts I've made with Touched By A Butterfly's kit so you can get a feel for all of the different kinds of designs there are at the store.  From whimsical to realistic and chic to fun.

If you don't have any kits from Touched By A Butterfly then you are missing a serious hook up!  Celeste has awesome prices for her kits and is also generous with her freebies, too.  Head over to her blog and see what you can find.  There's a freebie available from MyMemories for a limited time and a Facebook freebie, too.  Find it here.

Now, go through your digital stash and see what stuff you can find for TBAB or head over to the store and grab something, then come back here and show us what you designed and you could win the new kit.

Of course we've got a little goody for you for stopping by and Celeste has a freebie on her Facebook Page.  Find it here.  We hope you play along and show off your work and get the chance to win JJ's Dragon Story!

All of our goodies are for PERSONAL USE ONLY and there's no better way to say thanks than leaving us some love, +ing, sharing or Pinning.

Happy Scrapping!

Delicious and Ready in 5 Minutes?!

Welcome to a Foodie edition of The Cherry On Top.

Here, at The Cherry we are all about easy and healthy or healthy-ish.  This meal is whipped up in about 5 minutes.  It fills the gut and is totally kid friendly, too.

Often when we make pasta, we make extra and keep it in the refrigerator without sauce, for future use.  You can throw it in a salad, cold or heat it up with some sautéed veggies or even drizzle some olive oil over it and add dried Italian herbs and a dash of garlic salt for a quick tummy filler.

I had this lovely spiral pasta left over.  I heated a pan, added a pack of cream cheese, stirred until melted, added the pasta and some tuna and cooked until heated through.  Then sprinkled some fresh window herbs, salt pepper and was ready to eat.  You could use some chicken or just about anything in there.  Salmon would be lovely!

 For a healthier meal, you could substitute quinoa pasta or wheat pasta.

A sprinkle of fresh parmesan over the top would be yummy, too.

There ya go!  Another meal made on the fly.

Bon appetit!