My love for grazing boards is boundless, and they’re one of my very favorite entertaining tricks to wow guests! They also happen to be one of my favorite tricks for getting my picky toddler to eat well. I probably get asked for “snacks” about 40 times a day by Jane — one of our biggest food challenges is that she would much rather eat snacks than meals. Instead of having this ongoing battle over snacks, I have embraced it and made a kid-friendly snack spread that rivals some of my best grown-up grazing boards, with the help of a few of my favorite Cascadian Farm ingredients.
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I can’t believe how fast the month of August has been flying by! Summer is fleeting, so I’m very grateful for a weekend ahead with no plans. Going to soak it all up, get my toes sandy, and maybe make some s’mores with Jane (one of the last items we haven’t tackled on our summer bucket list!). Before I hunt down my marshmallow and graham crackers, I have a round up of new recipes, recent reads, and a few other random tidbits to send us into the weekend — happy reading!
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Toddlers and meal time, it’s a tumultuous relationship! Some weeks we hit our stride and meal times go like clockwork, and other weeks I have to try just about every trick up my sleeve to get Jane to eat anything at all. One of my very best tricks though, is giving her a few options. I love giving her bento box style lunches with a variety of ingredients to keep her engaged at mealtime. It’s been something that’s worked really well for us at lunchtime, and I even assemble a bento box style dinner for eating outside on the patio or on a summer picnic. Since this has been such a success for us at other meal times, I thought I’d try a breakfast bento box to get us out of a morning rut, using some of my favorite Cascadian Farm organic granolas and cereals.
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A few weeks ago, we checked an item off of our summer bucket list with a perfect warm-weather date night at Fenway Park, thanks to our friends at Nellie’s Free Range Eggs! We are big fans of Nellie’s and enjoy their free-range eggs nearly every morning for breakfast and are even bigger fans after our fun night at The Red Sox game, where we celebrated Free Range Egg Day in support of nutritious, Certified Humane eggs that come from happy, healthy hens. 
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Even though it’s been a whirlwind few days catching up on work after our vacation, I’m still really feeling the summer vibes this week. We took Jane to a fun outdoor concert and had a picnic dinner (and tested out these cute new bento lunch boxes!). I shared a fun mermaid-themed movie night on the blog. And I brought home this sweet beach painting by Ashley Provencher from Elburne Home Decor on the Cape and styled it next to some pretty hydrangeas. It’s all that good summer stuff and it makes me so happy. The summer fun continues this weekend with some birthday celebrations for my dad and my husband – picnics, boat rides, and margaritas! See more of what’s been happening around here below: 
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Please note: This post is created in partnership with Christmas Tree Shops andThat!. All opinions, images and content are my own.
I have been checking items off my summer bucket list – lots of beach days, working on my garden, eating al fresco and perfecting my margarita recipe! One big item on my bucket list was to have an outdoor movie night with Jane, and maybe make some tasty s’mores to go along with our viewing party. 
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I am eating up every last bit of summer this month. We had a perfect 4th of July weekend with some beach time, meals by the water, and a friend’s pool party to top it all off (Jane put those toddler swim lessons to the test and was paddling around like a fish!). This week we’ve been eating from our veggie garden every night and I’m loving it; it turns out the way to get me to eat my veggies was by growing them (and occasionally by mixing them with pasta). And there’s more summer fun in the mix coming up: I’m tackling the outdoor movie night from summer bucket list, gearing up for more beach time, and packing a picnic for a summer concert series at our local library! Summer is sweet, and I’ve got a few more warm-weather updates for you below: 
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It was a beautiful, 80-degree, perfect weather day last Sunday and I woke up with some very serious determination to have the BEST summer day. I swear that toddlers have a sixth sense for this kind of mental planning and they just love to throw a wrench in those plans. We had a tough morning of grumpiness with a certain unnamed toddler, we never made it to the beach like I planned, and I was so deflated by the time she went down for a nap. Summer is fleeting in New England, and I put so much pressure on those short weeks to make the most of it. After Jane woke up from her nap I knew we both needed to reset the day and I asked her what she wanted to do. She answered without hesitation: ICE CREAM!
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What is it about summer that makes reading so enjoyable? In the good ol’ days I could sit on the beach during a vacation and make my way through 3 books a week! Of course life with a toddler has definitely changed my reading pace, but I have found I’ve been reading a ton this summer thanks to picking up books at night instead of flipping on the TV. I have a big stack I’ve been collecting for my summer line-up and thought I’d share my 2019 summer reading list to spark some inspiration if you’re looking for a good beach read of your own:
It’s been a wild couple of weeks and I have lots to share — from fun events and projects, to summer finds, new recipes and lots of updates on my reading list! Scroll down to read more in this week’s download:
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