Sand and Sea Pudding

This week She-she and I are studying the Sea for preschool, and on today's list was a delicious treat that I am enjoying so much I figured I'd share.

Sand and Sea Pudding - a piece of the Beach.

Sand and Sea Pudding

Auntie and She-she mixing up the jello

Here's the yummo recipe!

Sea Jello
1 small box of blue Jello (We used Berry Blue)
1 small box of green Jello (We used lime)
Your fave berries for "Fishes" - we used 7 strawberries, and 7 cherries, and 1 banana sliced into 7 pieces.  (7 is our number of the week if you hadn't guessed.)

Prepare Jello as instructed on the box, stir the fruit in about 45 minutes in the fridge so there are some under the water and some above and its bumpy like waves.

Sand Pudding

(I honestly eyeballed most of this and it came out fantastic, which is great when you are doing this with young children inevitably some ingredients end up on the counter, the original recipe called for whipped topping too, but I didn't have any so I just cut it - so good and not necessary in my opinion!)

She-she grinding up the sand, we used a rolling pin to crush.

3/4 box of Nilla Wafers (I saved enough for some snacks for the rest of the week, as She-she had never had them)
2-3 Oreos (or black knock off frosted cookies, they're for color more than flavor.)
6-8 oz. whipped cream cheese
1/2 stick butter
2/3 c powdered sugar
1 box of Vanilla pudding
1 box of Coconut cream (You can interchange either flavor as you wish.  I was thinking one butterscotch and one vanilla would be good next time.)
2 3/4 cup milk

Start by putting the cookies and wafers in a zip top bag and letting your preschooler go at it, crush those cookies, crush them! (You can also use a food processor, but so much more fun for the kids to grind it up.)  Once all "sandy" set aside.

Whip together the cream cheese, butter and sugar, set aside.  Prepare the puddings, and mix them into the cream cheese mixture.  This is mostly to keep it nice and smooth.  Then top your set up Sea Jello with the pudding, and pour the "Sand" over that.  Its so good.

Yummy Fruit "Cake"

So my dear She-she turned four in October (thus the painting of a jack-o-lantern on her cheek) her birthday party was on the Saturday after her birthday, but her grammy wasn't able to be there on the day of the party so we wanted to throw a bit of a party on her actual birth day.  We are striving really hard to reduce processed sugar in our diets, striving to make changes with the level of red meat, the level of unhealthy foods, and we already had cupcakes planned for the party, but honestly Grammy was a life-saver in the cake department.

I was concerned; how can you ever say, "no birthday cake" to a young child?  So when Grammy suggested a fruit "cake" we gently asked She-she if she'd be ok with it.  I was floored when she got excited.  Part of it I'm sure was our excitement (even if a bit mocked on my side) and promises that it would be special.  So then we hit Pinterest, hunting for kid's style fruit cakes... I was...less than impressed.  Again Grammy came to the rescue and brought up the idea of a ball gowned princess fruit cake.  Frankly it ended up being adorable.

Watermelon, grapes cut in half, blueberries, strawberries in half, oranges, peaches, and a bit of cream cheese and marshmallow fluff fruit topping, all of it was designed to bring joy to my baby girl and joy it did, with not near so much undesirable calories.