Birthday Thank You Postcards

Remember Lucas' 5th birthday party extravaganza a few weeks ago? It was super fun and wild and I'm so happy it's over! Lucas is a lucky kid -- he received so much love and so many gifts from friends and family. For Lucas' 3rd birthday, I made the mistake of letting him go to town with opening his presents. He ripped through each one and tossed them to the side only to make room to grab the next one. I was appalled -- but really, what did I expect?

Since then, I've learned my lesson and now Lucas gets to open two presents a day, starting with the card. After thoroughly enjoying and appreciating each gift, we write a thank you note. I write and Lucas signs it in his signature block lettering.

I designed these double sided double thick thank you postcards to show our appreciation -- similar to the ones from last year's Superhero 4th Birthday Party. The front of the postcard has a collage of photos from the party and the back has the animal print pattern from the invitations I designed. I personally love postcards rather than cards when writing thank you notes for parties because they're more casual, as well as save money on postage and envelopes.

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Recipe: Simple Homemade Ice Cream and Chocolate Hard Shell

Growing up I remember having a bowl of ice cream for dessert right after dinner nearly every night. My mom always stocked our freezer with various flavors that were on sale -- orange sherbet, plain vanilla, neopolitan, and my all-time favorite chocolate chip (but only if it was on sale).

Lately, I've been really into making my own ice cream at home not only because it saves money and it's "healthier", but because I have the easiest four-ingredient recipe that can be made in less than 30 minutes. I got this simple recipe from my friend's mom about five years ago and have been making it ever since.

If you're like me and loved Magic Shell chocolate topping over your ice cream since you were a kid, you'll be happy to know it's super easy to make and requires two ingredients.

I'd love to know if you make this ice cream and/or chocolate hard shell. Enjoy!

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Lucas' 5th Birthday Party

For the last two years, I've been asking Lucas what kind of birthday party he would like to have. He didn't have much of a say for his 1st or 2nd birthdays, but starting with his Superhero 4th birthday last year, he's been very clear about what he wants. Of course, he gets the modernized version of it because that's how I roll.

This year Lucas turned five (can't believe I have a 5-year old!) and without hesitation, he said he wanted a "Wild Kratts" party. If you haven't seen this show, it's worth checking out. It's an educational animated series on PBS, created by and starring brothers Chris and Martin Kratt.  The show is full of fun facts about animals, ranging from polar bears to geckos, and each episode features a particular critter's unique "creature power". Lucas gets really excited learning about animal powers and defenses, and I love when he enlightens me with new animal facts! This year we decided to throw a joint animal-themed birthday party with Judah, Lucas' good friend from school, who turned five the day before.

This year I partnered up with Whole Foods Market, which provided the amazing appetizers, entrees, beverages and desserts for our party. The super-talented catering teams from the two Berkeley locations created a delicious picnic style meal that included fried chicken, mac 'n' cheese, deviled eggs, strawberry/spinach salad, a yummy cabbage crunch salad, "turtle sandwiches" and cupcakes in two flavors. In addition to the lunch menu, they created some amazing food sculptures to go along with our animal theme.  Mice out of lemons? Porcupines out of watermelons? Chickens out of eggs? Crazy cool and fun, right? And as a special added touch, the team at the Gilman store location were kind enough to make us custom paletas in three flavors -- blueberry cream, apple/pineapple and fresh strawberry.

To modernize Lucas' vision of a "Wild Kratts" party, I decided to go for a more generalized animal theme, with "Go Wild" as a primary graphic element. Starting with the invitation design, I painted abstract animal patterns using simple black watercolor paint, and hand wrote "Go Wild" which would later become a logo for the party. I took a cute photo of Lucas and Judah and used it as a custom envelope liner. The envelopes were finished with matching wraparound address labels. The invitations, liner and envelopes were made with recycled paper.

For dessert, I baked a yummy red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, decorated with rainbow sprinkles and five wild animals on top.

If you've seen our other birthday parties, you know that donut holes are a Jackson family  tradition. This year's donut cones were made with the animal printed recycled paper.

Judah's parents got each birthday boy a Wild Kratts "creature power" suit as a gift. Lucas started off as "Chris" (green), but by the end of the party had traded with Judah to be "Martin" (blue).

I love this photo of Lucas testing out the t-shirt favors.  He wasn't crazy about having his photo taken, hence the pouty face. I couldn't resist. 

For the party favors, I made a giant rubber stamp of the "Go Wild" logo, and hand stamped white t-shirts in various sizes that I ordered online. Each friend got a t-shirt to wear at the party and take home. (The shirts were also handy as a change of clothes for several kids who got grubby or cake-covered during the party). 

We originally scheduled the party for Saturday, and had all the invitations printed up. We later changed it to Sunday due to Little League conflicts. I didn't want to waste the old invitations, so I cut off the old RSVP information, and used the top half to make "creature power" trading cards that accompanied each t-shirt. Each trading card had fun facts about different animals. Cute AND educational! The bottom of the invitations were used to create name tags. Big thanks to Jocelyn, Judah's mom, for ironing and packaging each shirt with a custom hand written tag!

Jeremiah (Judah's little bro) and Theo!

We also set out a bunch of animal masks which the kids loved!

Partnering up with Whole Foods Market to provide all the food and desserts was a dream! The catering team was fabulous to work with.

How cute are these "turtle sandwiches" made of turkey, cheese, cucumbers and fresh bread baked especially for us by Whole Foods Market Gilman?

As the party's main event, we had Lick Your Eyeballs present a fun, informative and hands-on animal show. They were amazing! From geckos and frogs, to a kingsnake and caiman lizard, the kids were very brave and gentle with the animals.

Elsa holds a jar of gecko egg shells.

One of my favorite ideas for the party was to make "polar bear ice," aka popsicles. There's a Wild Kratts episode called "Polar Bears Don't Dance," and I wanted the "polar bear ice" to tie into that.

The team at Whole Foods Market Gilman made custom paletas in three fruity flavors (blueberry cream, apple/pineapple and fresh strawberry). All were a huge hit on the warm day.

I designed some packaging for the pops using wax food bags, snipped at the bottom and  sealed on top with a hand lettered label. The package kept the pops from sticking together in the cooler, and also doubled as a place for the melty drips to fall. But as you can see, the package was ripped right off. Devoured in seconds!

Birthday boys waiting patiently to blow candles.

I had no idea Whole Foods Market catered kids' parties, but now I'm spreading the word because the food was spectacular, and the catering team was open to my ideas, accommodating, easy to work with, and even delivered onsite (including compostable plates, utensils, napkins and adorable cups and straws from Susty Party). Special thanks to Lizzie at Whole Foods Market Berkeley for collaborating with me, to Jocelyn and Aaron (Judah's parents), and to my husband Nick, all of whom helped make Lucas' 5th birthday party a smash! For more information about Whole Foods Market catering you can contact the team here.

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My Work: Picnic Logo Design + Branding

I'm really excited to share some recent logo design/branding I did for my friend Lisa Fontaine's company and blog, Picnic. Lisa wanted a new identity for her small business and blog where she shares crafts, style, recipes and more. She has an Etsy shop, a print shop, and a boutique film production company. There is more to be done in the future but I wanted to share some of the progress. The business cards were letterpress printed in black on cotton paper by Spark Letterpress. The hang tags were letterpress printed onto kraft chipboard for a more crafty feel.

I also designed a custom rubber stamp with a coordinating logo for Camp Picnic, a super cute arts and crafts camp that Lisa will be teaching to children during the summer months. Campers explore weaving, natural dye, vegetable prints, bead making, cooking, painting, collage, and some basic sewing techniques. The camp is already sold out for this summer but If you know any kids (ages 6-11) in the Bay Area who love art and crafting, sign up to get on Camp Picnic's mailing list.

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Favorites: Lucas' Creativity Lately

For the longest time, Lucas' art file at school was always empty. It secretly broke my heart that he didn't do much drawing, crafting and creating and would rather perfect those gross motor skills. But this past year something changed and Lucas was ready for art. Really really ready. His art file started overflowing and all he wanted to do was draw, cut, color, fuse beads, make books, write letters, words, names. Do you know how happy this makes me? I just love seeing his creative mind explode. He recently started drawing block letters -- I honestly had no idea he could do that but I'm totally in love with them.

Of course, there's still plenty of running, jumping and climbing, but it just melts my heart to see him express himself through art.

Lucas has also been asking me to draw some of his favorite cars so he could color them in.

Lots of pattern making. LOVE that!

Symmetry on the left and a little drawing of Theo and Lucas on the right -- brother love!

We like to make books for friends.

A little apology note from Lucas for some mean words he said to me in anger one day.

Apparently Lucas is a scissor expert. Look at those curves!

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Spring Break Trip to Legoland

The kids were on spring break last week and I decided to take Lucas on a mama and me trip to LEGOLAND. The last mama and me trip was last summer when I took Lucas to la to visit our friends Joy, Bonnie and Christine. We had a blast. We are incredibly lucky and thankful for my mom who took care of Theo while we went on our trip and nick worked.

Lucas has been obsessed with LEGOS for the past year and a half so I thought LEGOLAND would be a perfect mini trip. A quick 1.5 hour flight (the length of The Incredibles movie on the Kindle Fire) to San Diego, and we were practically there. I thought about staying at the LEGOLAND Hotel but it was too pricey and I didn't think it would be worth it. Instead we stayed at the Grand Pacific Palisades Hotel and Resort across the street from LEGOLAND. It was awesome! They had a pool, a restaurant on the premises and comfortable clean rooms with a cozy king bed (all that room yet Lucas wanted to sleep right up against me --- I suppose that was sweet and all but admittedly I was looking forward to sprawling out!). We were also able to walk to LEGOLAND in 10 minutes via a pedestrian path.

LEGOLAND was pretty awesome -- well laid out and had lots of benches and other shady spots for resting. The weather was a perfect 70 with a light breeze. Our first stop was Build & Test in the Imagination Zone where where Lucas spent some time building his own race car and then racing it against other kids' creations. Super fun!

I was especially impressed by the Miniland USA section which included mini versions of cities like San Francisco and New York complete with moving vehicles and sound effects. We also loved the new Star Wars Area with tiny versions of scenes from various episodes. So much detail and precision went into building these models.

After lunch Lucas went on a little horsey ride at Castletown and then climbed a burning building at Fun Town. We didn't go on a lot of rides because Lucas would look at a line and say it was too long. I was secretly happy not to have to wait in any long lines but was a little surprised at the same time that Lucas wasn't that disappointed about it.

Our favorite thing in Fun Town was the Lego Clubhouse where Lucas built and customized three Lego minis for $9.99. What a deal! He got to choose a head, a body, a set of legs and then choose a free accessory for each one. Lucas loves these little guys and to be able to create his own was even more special. Highly recommended!

It's funny because Lucas didn't seem as amazed as I expected he would be. He was perfectly happy playing on benches and shady rest spots with his little guys. He absolutely loved the dinosaur sand pit in the Explorer Island section. He spent over an hour and a half digging and again playing with his little guys.

We also saw Emmett from the LEGO movie and toured the movie set which was super cool.

We spent our last night in the hotel on our king sized bed building an Iron Man vs Ultron Lego set.

Two things that saved me on this trip were my fanny pack (yes, I sported one the whole time and I'm not ashamed one bit!) and the Kindle Fire/headphones.

Here's a money-saving tip: Head over to Target. You could buy a mini LEGO Chima figure at the checkout for $5. On the back of the package there's a coupon for buy one adult ticket get a child ticket free to LEGOLAND. That's a $79 savings!

All in all we had a great time. Of course there were moody moments and a few fits thrown in to keep me on my toes, but when I asked Lucas what his favorite part about LEGOLAND was, he said, "You. Hanging out with you, Mama." That made my day. 

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This and That Lately - All About T Ball

When we signed up Lucas for T Ball, little did I know how much time it involved. From Nick being an assistant coach, the little league parade/carnival, to banner making and games/practices every Saturday, our lives are about to be consumed in T Ball for the next two months -- and he hasn't even played his first game yet! But Lucas' excitement to be "a baseball man" is pretty priceless. Plus, a huge part of Lucas' Team Express consists of his friends from school - he's making new ones too. I love that he's learning about safety, being part of a team and what it means to be a good winner and a good loser. 

Um, how cute are 5-year old warm ups?

The Albany Little League Parade and Carnival is an annual tradition that's no joke. We're talking closed off streets led by the Albany Fire Department, banner contests, carnival with a dunk tank. Scroll down to see who gets dunked!

What a good sport Nick was to volunteer himself for the dunk tank! We were so proud of him for being such a positive force on the team and getting dunked in that freezing brown water.

GOOOOOO TEAM EXPRESS!!! WOO WOO!!!

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Giveaway: The 52 New Foods Challenge Book

When I met Jennifer Tyler Lee a couple of weeks ago at her book party and dinner event at Williams-Sonoma (thanks again for the invite Jeanne!), I was really inspired by her dedication to healthy eating and making it fun for kids to try new foods. Lucas eats a variety of foods and will try many new things, but he doesn't eat much and would rather play than eat. I lucked out with Theo, on the other hand, who eats like a champ most of the time. No stranger to mealtime battles, I was really inspired by Jennifer and her latest book, The 52 New Foods Challenge which is full of fun tips and simple recipes.

Check out the giveaway details at the end of the post.

One tip that really resonated with me was to cook with your kids, not for them. I know it's easier said than done, but I love how Jennifer suggested trying it out just once a week. From simply going to the grocery store/farmer's market and having your kid choose one new vegetable to getting their hands dirty in the kitchen, once a week sounded pretty doable. She also said it wasn't about getting the kids to eat the end product but inspiring curiosity and building confidence.

To my surprise, I EASILY got Lucas and Theo to help me peel leaves off brussels sprouts to make her simple and delicious Brussels Sprouts Chips recipe. When they were done, Lucas complained that he didn't get his own bowl of chips. Yeah, these were amazing and inhaled in a flash. And we've made them several times already so this one's a winner.

We even roasted some asparagus the following week and I asked Lucas if he wanted to snap them apart for me and he couldn't have been more excited. And all I had to do was ask!

Another tip from Jennifer was to go to the grocery store or farmers market and have your kid pick out anything from the vegetable aisle -- bonus points for something new. I headed to Whole Foods and told Lucas to pick out anything he wanted from the vegetable aisle. His eyes lit up and he seemed so empowered by this. He immediately chose carrots and I said, "That's awesome, I know you love carrots." As I put them in the cart, he said, "Okay, I'm going to try something else. How about that? What's that?" He pointed to the prettiest bunch of radishes and we both got super excited to try them out. He carried them on his lap on the car ride home. Side note: he instantly forgot about them when we got home but that's not the point, right?

In hopes of inspiring curiosity, building confidence, reducing dinnertime battles and spending more time with my kids, I'm definitely going to try getting them in the kitchen with me more often. I know it won't always work but it's worth a try!

I was so inspired by Jennifer that I would love to give away one of her books!

Here's how to enter:

• Follow @good_on_paper and @crunchacolor on Instagram, leave a comment and tag a friend with a kid(s).

• If you don't have Instagram you can leave your email in the comments below

• Please comment by Friday, April 3rd, 12pm PST

• This giveaway is for U.S. residents only

• I will announce a winner selected by random number generator by Monday, April 6th

Best of luck!

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CONGRATS to Michele of @cakewalkbaking for being the randomly selected winner!
This giveaway is now CLOSED.

Favorites: The 52 New Foods Challenge Book and Williams-Sonoma Event

Last week I got a super sweet invitation from my friend Jeanne of Shop Sweet Things (one of my favorite lifestyle blogs) to attend a private dinner at Williams-Sonoma in San Francisco's Union Square to celebrate the latest book by Jennifer Tyler Lee, an award-winning author, game creator (Crunch a Color), and healthy eating advocate. The 52 New Foods Challenge book launch party was so much fun! And even more fun was meeting Jennifer, watching her cook and getting totally inspired by her tips on how to make it fun and playful for kids to eat healthier and try new foods.

Stay tuned for an Instagram giveaway next week!

The Williams-Sonoma team really brought it together with a beautifully simple tablescape that included fresh and pickled jarred vegetables and along with fresh flowers.

Here's the lovely Jeanne introducing Jennifer. That gigantic open kitchen is a total dream!

Another highlight of the night was meeting Amanda Haas, Director of Culinary at Williams-Sonoma, founder of One Family One Meal and author of Cooking Light Real Family Food. We follow each other on Instagram so it was nice to finally meet her in person. She's such an inspiration and a total sweetie with laid back style and humor.

These Quinoa Crumble Cakes were surprisingly one of my favorite dishes of the night. I made quinoa cakes before and they did not taste anything like these! Ha! I had about 9 of these that night.

Also loved the Clay Pot (but not made in a Clay Pot) Chicken Fried Rice. Super easy to make and so good! My kids would love it so it's on my list to make soon (like this week!).

Remember to check in next week as I'll be doing an Instagram giveaway for the book!

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Recipe: Almond Date Vanilla Shake

Last week's weather here in Berkeley was amazing and I was craving a refreshing drink. I whipped up this easy thrown-together (think a dash of this and a bunch of that) Almond Date Vanilla shake -- so refreshing and healthy on a warm day. Reminds me a bit of Mexican horchata. Lucas and Theo love it -- it's gluten free and vegan to boot! Enjoy!

Oh, and just a note about the almond milk. I absolutely LOVE all the ones from Califia Farms. I used the unsweetened one here. It's the only brand of almond milk I can drink plain. I must admit I initially bought it for its cute packaging!

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+ Photo taken with my iPhone 5
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