I love to read. Always have. Doesn’t matter what form, books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, I’ll read just about anything.

So when we had children, I was determined to pass my love of reading on to them. I even read to them while they were in the womb (TMI?). When they were little, we read to them constantly and starting taking them to the public library.

Now that they are both in school, they visit the school library once a week and are always excited to show me the books they bring home. And they love going to our local library to pick out even more books.

We also read together as a family. My kids would much rather sit at the kitchen table and listen to an audiobook while colouring, than sit in front of the tv. It’s an activity we all enjoy. In fact, our son likes to read so much, he has read the entire Harry Potter series and he’s only 8!

January 27th is Family Literacy Day and Jessica Roy, the librarian at the Main Branch, asked me to share this with all of you:

Families are invited to celebrate Family Literacy Day at the Ottawa Public Library, Main branch at 120 Metcalfe this Sunday, January 22nd from 2-3pm. Children’s entertainer, Suzanne Pinel will help present literacy awards followed by a fun and highly interactive performance by children’s musician, Doug Barr. The event is free and no registration is required.

You can find more information on our website here:

http://biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/main/program?eid=36455

So if you are looking for things to do this weekend or a place to warm up after a skate on the canal, drop by the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library. Sounds like a lot of fun and great way to further a love of reading in your own children.

I have always been a big fan of Jamie Oliver’s, it started in his days of the Naked Chef. When I heard about his new show Food Revolution, I knew I would watch it and I also knew we would watch it together as a family. As much as I try to tell my kids how important it is to eat healthy, I thought it would help reinforce that idea if they watched the show.

As a family, we have taken Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution to heart and are trying hard to eat less processed food and eat more homemade things. We were already avoiding most processed foods but have taken it a step further and are making more things from scratch. I like knowing what is in my food and my kids are much happier with Mommy and Daddy’s cooking rather than boxed things from the store.

Making things from scratch may take a bit more time, but the effort is worth it to see my kids happily tucking in to their food. Even my son’s lunch box is coming home empty which is a huge feat!

The first big change we made was making all our bread from scratch. My husband is a wonderful baker, a trade he learned at the hands of his father. Watching him whip up a batch of homemade bread is amazing and our kids love to help him mix and knead the dough. In fact he loves making bread so much that he has built himself a bread oven for the backyard and sells homemade loaves at our annual garage sale, but I digress.

The next change we have made is to get rid of our boxed granola bars in favour of homemade ones. I thought I was giving my kids “healthy” granola bars, until I read the ingredients list. If I couldn’t actually pronounce some of the ingredients, why on earth was I giving them to my kids! So I searched the internet and found this recipe that is a winner with everyone (including my husband’s co-workers!). I did however tweek it a bit substituting whole wheat flour in place of all purpose, 1/2 tsp of cinnamon (instead of 1/4) and the first time I made it, I used 1 cup of chocolate chips instead of the dried fruit. I love the versatility of the recipe and plan to keep tweeking it to get my kids to try new things.

Homemade cookies, muffins and granola bars

So now we have baking Sundays at our house where we whip up batches of bread, muffins, cookies and granola bars for the week. Now instead of my pantry bulging with boxed, processed food, the freezer is bursting with yummy baked goods. When we need a snack on the go, we just grab a couple granola bars out of the freezer and they are good to go in 15 minutes.

These small changes are just the start of what I hope will be my own family’s Food Revolution. Are you watching the show and making changes too? Would love to know what other families are doing to eat healthier.

I love the holidays.  Always have but now that I have children I love it even more.  The one thing I don’t love is the stress involved in getting ready.  Every year I vow to be more organized when it comes to getting ready for Christmas and every year I fail, especially since having children.  But since I want the holidays to be happy memories for my children, full of family time and traditions, I am determined to be organized and ready to go by December 1st.  This way we can all enjoy the month of December without being stressed!

In our house we have always had an advent calendar and not a character one with chocolate, but one with the whole nativity scene.  It’s always been important to me to teach my children the real meaning of Christmas and to include Santa as an extra bonus.

I first came across the idea of the Family Activity Advent Calendar when I saw it in the November issue of Canadian Family.  Then I got more excited about the idea when I read Andrea (aka @missfish) at a peek inside the fishbowl ‘s post on the 25 Days of Christmas Challenge.  I thought it was a great way to enjoy all the days leading up to the big one, while at the same time teaching my kids that Christmas is not all about Santa!

I have already made up all the little envelopes and am ready to fill them up with these activities (in no particular order):

1. Go to the market and pick out our Christmas tree

2. Decorate our tree and house

3. Write and mail letters to Santa

4. Think of 10 things we are thankful for and post them where we can seem them

5. Take the new toys we have bought to Toy Mountain

6. Make paper chains and snowflakes to decorate the kids tree

7. Decorate a gingerbread house

8. Make kitchen gifts to give to family

9. Take a trip to see the lights on Parliament Hill

10. Make Christmas cookies

11. Light the 2nd candle on the Advent Wreath and read the story that goes with it

12. Snuggle up with some hot chocolate and read Christmas stores under the tree

13. Make bread for our neighbours and deliver

14. Watch a Christmas Movie for Family Movie Night

15. Sing and dance to Christmas music

16. Visit Santa at the mall

17. Hang outside lights and decorations

18 Light the 3rd candle on the Advent Wreath and read the story that goes with it

19. Attend a Christmas service at Church

20. Do a special Christmas craft

21. Make snow angels

22. Buy food and bring it to the Food Bank

23. Set up the Creche

24. Enjoy Christmas Eve dinner and presents at Oma’s, then set out cookies and milk for Santa and carrots and water for the reindeer.

25. Christmas Day!  Remember you have a family who loves you. And that’s the most important gift of all.

Most of these activities are ones my family and I already do during the month of December and others are “borrowed” from others lists.  Check out these list from A little bit of Momsense, and Thoughts from a Lite Mocha Mom .

Would love to know if you are going to take the challenge.