The Doughnut Conundrum

The doughnut conundrum stemmed from our decision to hold Family Home Evening on Sunday nights instead of Monday nights. Between t-ball games and baseball practices we could no longer even pretend that FHE was going to happen on Mondays. All was going well until Spencer wanted doughnuts for the treat last week. We don't shop on Sundays, nobody wanted day old doughnuts, and I am afraid of yeast - hence the conundrum. As I pondered the situation, I recalled a friend mentioning that they made "doughnuts" with refrigerated biscuit dough. So I got a couple of cans and last night we gave it a shot. I must say it was awesome. They were fun, easy, yummy, the perfect size, and there's not much cuter than miniature doughnut holes. The only part that added a little extra effort and clean up was the request for glazed and chocolate donuts as well as powdered sugar and cinnamon sugar donut holes. But since the rest was so simple, I felt I could oblige.

Here are a few pictures of the process and the results. (It wasn't my best work aesthetically, but I am getting over strep throat so I was just thrilled that it happened and that everybody loved them.)

A couple of tips if you try this: make sure the oil is very hot so they don't get greasy - ours ended up being around 400 degrees; watch them closely - they took only 15-20 seconds to cook; using the spoon-like spatula really helped with the holes since they had to be put in separately and gathered up within about about 10 seconds.

Easter FHE Idea

Ok - so maybe I am a little behind the times, but I thought I would post this idea just in case I am not the only one that didn't already know about it. "It" would be what apparently is commonly referred to as "Resurrection Eggs". You put little symbols of the Easter story in numbered plastic eggs and have the kids hunt for them. Then open the eggs in order and talk about each one of the symbols and how it represents part of the story. There are scripture references to go with each egg.

There are many versions of this floating around the web - click here to download the one that I like.

Stranger Danger FHE

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a friend and asked her if she had any good Family Home Evening ideas. She told me that her kids' favorite was their Stranger Danger FHE. We had talked to our kids about strangers, but had never done a formal sit-down kind of thing. So I decided we would do our own Stranger Danger FHE, and it looks like it is going to be a favorite at our house too. Matthew is already asking for a repeat performance. Since it was one of our more successful FHE's, I thought I would share.

We started with a little slide show with pictures of family and friends and also pictures of strangers. (My friend did this portion with family photos and pictures from magazine. I kind of liked the slide show route since we can use it over and over without more paper to store.) For each slide, the kids had to answer the question "Is this a stanger?" Some of the strangers looked scary and some of them looked nice to illustrate the concept that anyone you don't is a stranger regardless of how they look.

We went over some stranger danger rules. The kids especially like practicing the one where they get to scream, kick and even bite if someone tries to grab them. Then we did some role play scenarios. Finally, we read "The Berenstain Bears Learn About Stangers".

Although I didn't do this, an idea that I got from the Berenstain Bears book was to make a treat that looked really yummy, but tasted terrible - again to illustrate that you can't judge something/someone just by appearances. Perhaps some chocolate chip cookies using way too much salt. Since Matthew wants to do this lesson again next week, I'll probably try it then. (I'll make some good cookies too of course.)

Click here to download the slideshow. I took out our family pictures, but left in the strangers. Hope somebody else can get some use out of it.

(It is saved in MS PowerPoint 97/xp/2000 format. If you don't have PowerPoint, you can download Open Office as I did. Perhaps I'll do a quick post about Open Office since it would make Bruce oh-so-happy.)