Kid-Friendly New Year's Eve Ideas From Kidstir!

Look what we are doing for New Year's Eve! Kidstir has put together some fun things for families with kids to ring in the New Year and you can join in the fun. Teach your kids how to say cheers from countries around the globe with this downloadable print out for some around-the-world fun.

Kidstir also has a healthy drink recipe for your kids to toast the New Year called Grape Fizz! Yum! 

And don't forget to put on some Silly 'Staches & Smiles while you count down to midnight! You can even add them to your straw for fun while you drink.

Zari with her silly stash 😁

About Kidstir
Kidstir is a unique cooking kit subscription service for children that can be joined or given as a gift, or you can send one of the single kits, as well. Each month, Kidstir will send your child a box filled with three delicious, nutritious recipes, kid-size cooking tools, games and activities! This subscription focuses on nutrition and hands-on fun. Created by moms who know that through cooking, children will gain important life skills in the kitchen — and cook up some fun family memories through the process.

Monthly, 3 month, 6 month, and 12 month subscriptions are available with free shipping. Plus, Kidstir will debut a new surprise kit which will be revealed on the 21st of each month! All subscribers receive a 2 year magazine subscription to Real Simple, Parents or All Recipes magazines as a thank you bonus. A Cookbook Binder and Sibling cooking tools & creative materials can be added at checkout.

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: I received this information and images for this post. I wrote this blog post because I thought you might be interested in knowing this information and taking part of the fun. My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I will be receiving samples later to try out and review.

The Harvest - September and October 2012

During the month of September and October we were very busy picking, harvesting, foraging, gathering and wildcrafting. We picked apples and pears off our trees and grapes off our vines. We picked plums from the neighbors trees that they wanted us to help ourselves to and I gathered up fallen walnuts from both our many Black Walnut and English Walnut trees. I have also been trying to educate myself about the flora and fauna in and around Portland and Rainier Oregon, where I live. I am learning a lot about canning and dehydrating too.

We made Golden Plum fruit leather in my dehydrator and it turned out a to have a gorgeous stain glass look to it. All I did was wash them, peal the skins off, pit them and mush up the plum fruit in a bowl or if they were really ripe I just mushed them with my fingers and spread the mush out on the fruit leather tray somewhat. It is fine if it has juice in the tray with it because that will get dried also. So yummy and without any additives or extras.

We canned pear sauce and dehydrated pears too. I don't have a proper water bath canner or a good canning rack, but we used what we had and got the job done. The dried pears turned out really chewy, but still really good.

I have a handy dandy Pampered Chef apple peeler that gets the job done quickly if I want apples peeled and cored. My Nesco American Harvest Food Dehydrator is perfect for making yummy apple chips! The kids helped load them onto the trays and then they were dried. We like to bag them up and freeze them. They stay crispier this way.

We have different varieties of grapes that grow on our grape arbor. The grapes are really good straight off the vine too. We made both white and red grape juice. After we plucked a bucketful of each variety off of our grape vines we washed, sorted and de-stemmed them. I used my Vitamix to blend it a little in batches then we placed it all in a big pot on the stove to boil while stirring. Then we strained it all through our strainer (we don't yet have a food mill) and bottled it.

We gathered and foraged loads of walnuts from our trees that had fallen to the ground too. I don't have pictures of the walnuts yet, but I will get some.

We also love to visit local orchards, farms and "u-pick your own" places to get things we haven't yet grown at our place. Since I am still learning I love to take photographs of plants and identify them to see if they are edible or medicinal or useful in another way. This is a fun hobby of mine that I want to soon get really good at.

What have you picked, harvested, foraged, gathered and/or wildcrafted this year? Have you made anything special out of the things you got? How have you preserved your harvest?