Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary

TTFN- ta ta for now

2010-03-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

I have so many things that I want to share on here, but I will not be posting for a while. I dont know how long, but it will be a while. Blogging has become a chore and that is not what I want this to be. I love the acceptance that you all have made me feel and enthusiasm for the things that I have posted. My enthusiasm for posting has waned lately and that has been reflected in the lesser comments that I've gotten. I have tried and tried to cut down what I put on here and how much time I spend looking at other's blogs, but it's just not enough. My focus needs to be in other places that need attention. I've found my brain is in overdrive all day thinking about what I can post about next and what activities I can do that would appeal to people. I'm just way too stressed out! This blog has served it's purpose in helping M&M and I during the transition from the two of us being at home alone all day, to three of us at home when Bubba was born.

I started this blog to share ideas with other mothers out there, but I've found that the things I am sharing are things that can be found elsewhere. I'm not going to delete my blog so you can still find lots of wonderful links to other bloggers who are defintely a lot more interesting than me! haha!

Well, goodbye for now and thank you all for the kind comments and for sharing the things that you know to help those struggling mothers out there like me. :)

Egg twist letter matching surpise

2010-03-20T15:02:00.000-07:00

I love all of the fun activities that you can make with plastic Easter eggs. There are so many out there on the web right now. I found this one last year and have been waiting to do it for a long time. I found it on Eager Little Mind. I got a big bag of plastic Easter eggs, counted out 26 and wrote each uppercase letter on one side of the egg. On the other side I wrote 5-6 different lowercase letters. The object is to twist the egg and match the uppercase letter to the lowercase letter. As an added bonus I found little toys, etc. to put in each one that start with that certain letter. They can open it and see what is inside after they've matched the letters. It would be ideal to have something that would actually lock until they matched the letters, but oh well, life isn't suppose to be ideal, right? :)

Tube fun

2010-03-18T13:43:00.000-07:00

I was reading a book somewhere a while ago where I found the idea for this activity. I don't know what to call it, but the only supplies are a cardboard tube, small balls and cars, and a couch/chair/small table. I already had a tube from who knows where, but the hole was kind of small so I had to find little balls and cars that could fit through it. I leaned the tube up against the couch and showed Bubba where to put the things in the top so they would roll down.

M&M and Bubba had a great time. M&M learned a lot about taking turns which she has had to learn a lot lately as Bubba gets older and wants to do more things with her. I loved this activity because both kids could do it, it used simple materials and the kids could do it on their own!

Doodlepro discovery

2010-03-11T12:10:00.000-08:00

One day as M&M and I were doing some activities with these vegetable and fruit cards from Homeschool Creations. All of the sudden M&M had to run and get her Doodlepro thing so that she could draw the pictures. She started off drawing them herself like with this broccoli:

Then she discovered that she could trace over the picture and it would still show up on the Doodlepro! She's really into tracing right now and this was a great alternative to using paper and pencil.

Her blueberries:

Springtime

2010-03-10T13:30:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been MIA for a little bit. Springtime weather has been too irresistible. We've been enjoying ourselves outside doing this:

And looking at these:

I'll be back soon with some more posts of things we've been up to. In the meantime check out the header that I created! I'm really excited about learning how to do things like that in Photoshop.

Back to Basics

2010-03-01T12:29:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about this blog. I started this blog almost a year ago, and most of the focus has been on the learning activities I do with M&M, my almost 4 year old. At that time she was almost 3 and I felt the need to spend more time with her during the day on a one-on-one basis. Especially since I just had our second child a few months before, M&M was feeling a little left out and having a hard time adjusting to our new life with a baby. Doing these things with her have made awesome improvements in her development. She surprises me everyday with what she knows. Just in the past few weeks I have seen major changes in her behaviorally. Ever since she was a baby she would just scream....a lot! It has been difficult to know the best way to handle situations and what discipline would work best for her. She is a VERY stubborn child. While I would see other kids her age have a tantrum for a few minutes and get over it she is the one that would hang onto it for hours it seemed like. For three and a half years I've struggled with this and still do, but lately M&M is becoming more and more independent in a positive way. She is listening to what we ask her to do and doing it without tantrums. I've been surprised many times when I ask her to do something and then brace myself for the screaming. All I heard is "Ok, mommy." What?! That's it!? Wow!

It's funny because my baby, who is 14 months old now, used to be the "easy" child. Now him and M&M have almost done a role reversal. It's like they got together one day and made a pact where M&M told Bubba that she has been challenging enough for us, her parents, in her youngest years. She has taught us all we needed to learn in the past 4 years. Now it's his turn to challenge us in another way so that we can learn something else that will help us grow as parents. Now, he's the one screaming. And running away from us. M&M was always attached to us and she would stay near us at church, the park, whereever we went. Bubba just runs...far...away as fast as he can. Maybe what he's trying to teach us is that we need to get into shape so that we can run after him for the next 4 years!

With all of that said, my point is that I don't see the need for doing Tot School and Tot School posts on a weekly basis. This is not to say that I won't be doing learning activities with M&M, because I will, but I'm not going to really plan anything, but rather follow her lead in what she wants to do. She's really into writing and drawing anything right now. I will definitely be doing arts and crafts with her, and as it warms up we will be playing outside, A LOT! I'll post about some of the things we do, but not all of them.

Back in April of last year I wrote this post. The last paragraph says, "My major in college was Home and Family Living. One of the main things that stood out to me in my classes was how to turn everyday, monotonous activities of taking care of the home and family into joyful experiences that we can treasure and remember forever. I want to take the activities of feeding, clothing, cleaning, etc. to the next level. I am at the point in my life where I am just starting to learn and begin to understand how to effectively run a home. This blog will follow me on my journey step-by-step as I try to better my own home through experimenting with new ideas from teaching my children to trying out new recipes."

This is what I want to get back to. Writing short posts about things that I learn that have made my life easier or helped me learn something new in regards to my home. I will also be dabbling into my interests of sewing, crafts, blog design, photography and organization to name a few. I know, I am interested in way too many things! Along with this you will see that I will probably never do a giveaway or a review. Not that I don't like these things, but I started this blog solely to share and learn ideas., and to meet different people with these same interests. I'm also hoping that my sister/sisters will want to add some of the things that they know because they are much more crafty and organized than I am. ;) hint hint

I am in the process of creating my own blog background and header, but it's taking a while because I am learning everything new and having to read all of these tutorials to understand how to do anything. I'm really excited about learning this though!

So if you made it through this, I hope you're as excited about these changes as I am!

Tot School-Letters X&Y

2010-02-22T19:39:00.000-08:00

M&M is 44 months old

Continuing on with our letter of the week activities, we did two this week. X and Y. I decided to combine these because I didn't have a lot of activities for either one. For the letter Y we did an all out search of the house for everything that was yellow. M&M was totally into this and wanted to get every single little thing that had even a speck of yellow on it. I've seen this color hunt on several blogs.
Then we did yarn art. This activity came from Childcareland. M&M just dipped pieces of yarn into glue on a paper plate then stuck it any which way on the paper. I think it turned out kinda cool looking.

For the letter X we did a few worksheets that I printed out. One was about words that ended in X instead of beginning. M&M traced the words. I left for a second while she was doing this and when I came back she had started writing the words again on her own. This one came from Kidzone.We also did this one and this one from the same website. From DLTK M&M colored this X-ray picture. The interesting thing about this one was when she started coloring the vertebrae she did it in a pattern. She continued doing this when she colored in between the ribs. She did this all on her own as well. She never ceases to amaze me with all that she is learning.

M&M also colored this xylophone picture from ABCTeach.

Bubba made up his own fun with spilling the cotton balls out of the bag and pulling them apart. Apparently he needed some sensory work to do. :)

That's it! We are really keeping things simple lately. I've noticed that when I try to do a lot and it stresses me out that we really don't have a lot of fun and that is the whole idea. I'm trying to work up a stash of things for M&M to do because she is asking every day now when she can do "mommy's activities." I just print off a bunch of things for her to color or trace or connect the dots that I can easily pull out when she wants something to do.

Oops!

2010-02-17T10:57:00.000-08:00

I just got onto my e-mail to see that people have been telling me that there is a problem with my comment section. I will work on that, although I'm not sure what to do...
Something must have happened when I changed the template. Mmm. You can e-mail me though through my profile page now. :) Thanks for letting me know!

Yay!

2010-02-16T09:12:00.000-08:00

My Christmas present got here just in time for my birthday! On Christmas morning my hubby gave me three options for my big Christmas present, but it has taken me this long to figure out what I want... and to order it... and for it to arrive in the mail.

I decided to get a laminator. This laminator more specifically. I have a pile of things to laminate and it has been bugging me for a while that I have not done it yet. Call me crazy, but I am so looking forward to laminating stuff today. I could not think of a better way to make myself happy on my birthday...okay, I guess I could think of something better, but this is right up there! lol!

A One Stop Spot

2010-02-15T20:12:00.000-08:00

On a whim I've decided to change the look of my blog. Not that I didn't like the old look, but I just needed a change. With the new additions to blogger it makes it a lot easier to change back and forth. If this one doesn't work out I can easily change back. I didn't lose any of my widgets when I changed and now they have static pages that show up as a navigation bar. I'm thinking since I have so many links to sites on the sidebar that I would just create static pages for each category. I have all of these on here because I am interested in so many different things and love to see the ideas people come up with. It's mostly for my sake so that I can have a one stop spot to look at the title of a new post and see if it's something I want to read about. I also hope that if someone comes to my blog and they are looking for ideas about a certain subject they can go to that page and have access to many different links and they can search from there. One of my favorite things to do is blog surf and find new sites with great ideas. Basically I do all of the work looking for great sites, link to them, and then you can just come here and have access to all of them with a few clicks! A one stop spot!

(It might take me a little while to get them all changed over to static pages so bear with me.)

Tot School

2010-02-15T12:52:00.000-08:00

M&M is currently 44 months old

We didn't do a letter this week, but just some fun Valentine's activities. Our main project was making recycled crayon hearts. These are all over the mommy blogosphere so they aren't a new idea by any means, but they are definitely new to us! I've actually been wanting to do recycled crayons since I first saw them last spring. Yeah, it takes me that long to do stuff sometimes. M&M helped me arrange the crayons in the silicone heart pan that I got in the Target $1 spot. I put them in the oven at 250 degrees for about 8-10 minutes. Then stuck them in the freezer for a little bit. I made these for M&M to give away so I also cut out some hearts out of sandpaper to give with it to do rubbings with.

We also made heart flowers out of construction paper. This idea came from Lucky Me. We stuck green pipe cleaners through three hearts, put either a bead or a button through and then folded it over so it wouldn't come off. For the vase M&M put stickers on a piece of paper that I cut to the size of a toilet paper roll then we glued it onto the roll. It is glued onto a square piece of paper to keep the little rocks in the bottom that we put in to keep it from falling over. It turned out really cute.

We practiced counting and fine motor skills with this activity from Tired, Need Sleep. M&M clipped a clothespin onto the right number of hearts on the card. I found two other Valentine counting cards at Confessions of a Homeschooler and Little Did I Know.

I've been waiting to get these little tin mailboxes from the Target $1 spot ever since I saw someone post about them last year at about this time. I got four of them to use for an activity. (The decorated one was also used for M&M to take to preschool to exchange Valentine's this week.) I taped a little piece of paper with a shape onto the front of each of them. Then I made 4-5 cards with the same shape on them to put in a bag for her. First I had M&M find a "home" for each shape. She put each in a different room of the house. Then she would take a card out of her bag, see what shape it was and deliver it to the right box. We have a lot of tile in our house so she rode her bike around to each room. She had a lot of fun with this. She was done after delivering about half of the "letters". I probably put too many in her bag to deliver with the hopes of keeping her busy for a longer period of time. This is a really adaptable activity that can be used for the alphabet, colors, sight words, etc.

I caught M&M and Bubba playing the drums (and the step stool) in the hallway. We use a formula can for our drum. It works great! Bubba is really starting to do lots of stuff and it's exciting to see him grow and learn new things. My house is never clean now because he is always into one cabinet or drawer tearing it apart. *Sigh*

M&M started a dance class on Saturday and she loves it. She followed instruction really well and could imitate what the teacher did, better than the other kids who have been there longer than her.

We had quite the phenomenom where we live this past week. It snowed all day on Thursday. This is from a place where it never snows. My husband put a ruler in it Friday morning and it came up to 10 inches! I grew up in a place where it snowed all winter so this was a fun thing for me to be able to share that part of my childhood with my kids. We built a snowman and went sledding on big tupperware bin lids!

We used the bottom part of the bin to tow Bubba around in the snow so he wouldn't just keep falling down in it and getting frozen.

Tot School - Letter H

2010-02-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

M&M is 43 months old

I planned doing the letter H this week so that we could do a lot of stuff with hearts for Valentine's Day.

H is for holes. We started out doing some other activities first though. I gave M&M a hole punch so she could make holes in paper. It ended up being to hard for her so I gave her some scrapbooking scissors to cut the paper with. She absolutely loves cutting right now. This idea came from Delightful Learning.

H is for house. I had printed out this piece of paper a long time ago to use for the letter H, but it doesn't have a website address or anything on it so I don't know where it came from. If it looks familiar let me know. Basically M&M went around the house counting the windows, doors, chairs, etc. and then she came back and reported it to me and I added them up for her.

H is for hammer. I found these foam puzzles at the Dollar Tree and loved that they had the lowercase letters. That's what we need to focus on right now because M&M has her uppercase letters down. She used a hammer to pound them in. We've done this before, but the original idea came from 1+1+1=1. (Can't find the exact post.)

H is for Hearts.
I also had this Do-A Dot heart sheet printed out from Childcareland.com.

Since M&M loves cutting so much I knew I had to give her some hearts to cut out on her own. This idea came from Chasing Cheerios.

I found these cute Valentine's Day/Heart worksheets at Super Simple Songs.

I finally found one of these platters at the Dollar Tree. I had been looking in the wrong sections. Anyway we used it to do a simple color sorting activity with conversation hearts.

M&M used tongs to transfer the pom poms to the heart-shaped ice cube tray.

I usually try to do some alphabet, number, and sensory activities as well. This week she worked on her Melissa and Doug See and Spell.

I found this great idea on The Shafer Family of how to separate the letters so they are easier to find. These are little wooden shelves from the Dollar Tree which these Melissa and Doug uppercase and lowercase letters fit perfectly into. I want to make some cards with names of people and things so she can start spelling those out and learning them.

These magnetic foam letters and numbers were in the $1 section in Target and after I popped them out I just couldn't bear the thought of throwing the other part away. (That is what has happened to me since I started blogging and reading other people's blogs. I'm very conscious of what I am about to throw away and think twice about what I could do with it.)

So...I decided to use them as stencils. M&M hasn't tried them out yet but she loves to use other stencils we have so these will be a great addition.

I've been meaning to get this activity out for a while to add to M&M's sensory tub play. I put black beans in this plastic gumball machine and she played with it for half an hour by herself letting them spill out and then scooping them back in. This idea came from All About the Journey. I got this gumball machine at Walmart for $7.50, but then I saw smaller ones which would work at the Dollar Tree.

This is another thing that I have had printed out and laminated for a while, but just found it again recently and decided that M&M is ready for it. These beginning consonant cards came from Homeschool Creations. There are also a ton of other free printables on the left side of the blog. We didn't finish all of them in one sitting, I didn't want to overwhelm M&M, but this is still a challenge for her which is really good because a lot of the things I give her to do are really easy for her, but she stills love to do them.

Yet another one that I've had ready for a while, but just needed to bring it out for M&M to do. I got these letter building templates from Tired, Need Sleep. I love these because I've always seen the How to Build an A book and really wanted to get it, but I couldn't get myself to buy it yet. This is free if you already have foam sheets!

We used Do-A Dots to do these letter recognition pages, A-F, from PreKinders. Like I said, I'm really into anything right now that helps M&M learn the lowercase letters. I saw somewhere after we had done these to use transparent colored discs to cover up the letters instead so they can be reusable.

I tried a water transfer activity using a dropper with M&M a while back, but she couldn't quite do it yet. I brought it out again and she can do it now.

Whew! We had quite a full week this week which is good because we haven't been able to do that for a while. It felt good.

Find more Tot School ideas at 1+1+1=1.

Winter theme ideas

2010-02-04T10:45:00.000-08:00

I've decided that since I don't get to every fun idea that I want to do for a certain theme that I would still post about them with links. I use Evernote to store all of my ideas and I have TONS of stuff on there that I might never get to, but I would still like to share it with those that would like more ideas. I might make this a regular thing, but we'll see. I guess you could say it's kind of like a round-up. I really like the blog One Pretty Thing and how it is just a bunch of ideas from other blogs.

I won't have any pictures because I don't know exactly how to go about using other people's pictures on my blog and I definitely don't want to do anything that would go against copyright laws, etc. So here's just a list of winter themed ideas.

Cute Marshmallow Snowmen from Frugal Family Fun blog.

Hot Chocolate on a Stick from Giver's Log.

January Ornaments from Home Sweet Home.

Snowflake Building Activity from my Montessori Journey and Making Learning Fun.

There are tons of snowman and winter-themed printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Popsicle Stick Sled Ornament from The Creative Crate.

Snowman Treats from Little Inspirations.

For a winter-themed party there are cute ideas on Little Inspirations.

Lucky Me has some kid's craft ideas like this cute snowman.

These might be a little late for this year, but if you're like me you can save it for next year! I hope I got all of the links correct, if not let me know.

Receipt organizer

2010-01-27T21:01:00.000-08:00

I absolutely despise little pieces of paper piling up on my desk, kitchen counter, and kitchen table. I have tried many things to keep them contained, but nothing has worked yet. A lot of times these are necessary papers like receipts and coupons that I need to keep. I recently came across a tutorial for a VERY simple solution. This envelope organizer pictured below will hopefully save my sanity! Basically you lick (or take off the paper like I did) to moisten the sticky stuff and stick it onto the back of the one above it. Make sense? If you are like me and need a little bit more explanation than that because your afraid to do something wrong even on something as simple as this, then click on the link to go to the tutorial. I like mine even better though because the envelopes are straight across so you can not see what is in them at all.

Snickerdoodle Chex Mix

2010-01-27T13:10:00.000-08:00

We made this very tasty snack today that we found on the back of the Cinnamon Chex box. I also found it on the Chex website.

Snickerdoodle Chex Mix
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 cups Cinnamon Chex cereal
2 cups Chocolate Chex cereal
4 cups popped popcorn
1/4 cup butter or margarine

1. In small bowl, mix sugar and cinnamon; set aside. In large microwavable bowl, mix cereals and popcorn.
2. In 1-cup microwavable measuring cup, microwave butter uncovered on High about 40 seconds or until melted. Pour over cereal mixture, stirring until evenly coated.
3. Microwave uncovered on High 2 minutes, stirring after 1 minute. Sprinkle half of the sugar mixture evenly over cereal mixture; stir. Sprinkle with remaining sugar mixture; stir. Microwave 1 minute longer. Spread on waxed paper or paper towels to cool. Store in airtight container.

I couldn't find the Chocolate Chex so I used Chocolate Cheerios. This is a really yummy snack and I keep grabbing handfuls from the counter....I think it's cool enough now to store away so I don't keep eating it! I just have to keep telling myself it's for the kids!

Dinner Tonight

2010-01-24T21:35:00.000-08:00

For dinner tonight we had an easy and tasty meal. I just thought I would share because we love both of these things and make them often. And I haven't posted a recipe in a while. We had Lemon Garlic Chicken and Herb-baked potatoes.

Lemon Garlic Chicken
Marinade:
1/2 cup of olive oil
Juice of 2 lemons (I used the bottled lemon juice)
3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced (Again, I used the kind from the jar)
Lawry's Seasoned salt

Place chicken in a large marinating dish. In a small bowl mix together lemon and olive oil, then pour over chicken. Lightly sprinkle each piece of chicken with the seasoned salt (both sides) and use a fork to poke holes in the meat so that the flavors can really penetrate. Sprinkle garlic over the marinating chicken.

The original recipe grills the chicken, but I did mine over the stove in a frying pan and they turned out really juicy. I've also marinated it for 30 minutes one time and a couple of hours another time. I always forget to put stuff in the marinade until it's time to make dinner, but obviously the longer you marinade the stronger the flavor.

Herb-baked potatoes
4 medium potatoes (I have also used the small red potatoes)
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2-1 tsp. dried herbs (oregano, thyme, rosemary, basil)
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Wash potatoes and cut into cubes. Place olive oil in large baking sheet, add potatoes and turn over until all sides are well oiled. Sprinkle with herbs. Bake for 20 min. until potatoes are crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.

I actually don't measure anything for this recipe, I just do how many potatoes I need and adapt the oil and herbs to that.

(No Tot School post this week. We had visitors over and we just did a lot of shopping. I'm preparing for this week though!)

Tot School

2010-01-17T21:52:00.000-08:00

M&M is currently 42 months old & Bubba is 13 months old

We finished up our snow/winter theme this week because I didn't get everything done last week that I wanted to do. We've never made homemade playdough before, but I've been wanting to do it for a while. I'm hoping this year to make it once a month to go along with holidays/seasons. We made "snow dough" this month. I got the recipe from Funny Days with Mommy and Maddie. We added glitter as well, but we added a touch of almond extract instead of vanilla to make it smell good. I got this idea and the idea to use cookie cutter letters to make the word snow from Counting Coconuts. M&M had fun using buttons, beans, ribbon, fake jewels, pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks to decorate her snowman. She made a baby and daddy one.

I planned on doing the letter A this week, but didn't get all of the things done that I wanted to again. After a year of blogging about these activities with M&M I've figured out that it's okay if I don't get everything done. I don't have to do something just to blog about it. Maybe we'll get to it this week, maybe not. But either way that's okay.

Anyway, what we did do was an activity with animals. We went on a stuffed animal safari. This idea came from Mom's Marbles. (Can't find the exact post.) We started out by making these binoculars out of toilet paper tubes and wrapping them in construction paper. While M&M was decorating it with stickers I took some of her stuffed animals and placed them around the house. When I told her that she needed to hide in my room while the animals came out and hid, her eyes got so big and she said, "We're just pretending, right?" M&M LOVED this activity! We took turns "hiding" the animals and then finding them. She got a real, but really inexpensive, digital camera for Christmas and she had to take pictures of every single animal. (The elephant is hiding in my, new to me, sewing machine that I just got. I'm so excited to start to use it!)

Another activity that we did involved the alphabet. I saw this on The Activity Mom. I wrote each letter of the alphabet, upper and lowercase, on a paper towel tube. Then M&M would match them by putting the stickers onto the written letter. I just realized that The Activity Mom and I used the same stickers, haha.

I was trying to do some activities with Bubba so I gave M&M a jar of 15 bean soup and told her to

sort the beans. I wanted to just give her a small bowl of them, but she insisted on having the whole jar. Well, this didn't last very long. I'll try it again some other time, some other way.

I introduced Bubba to the sensory tub after seeing it on the early one-year-old page on the Productive Parenting website. He really enjoyed sticking his hands into the beans and putting them back and forth between the jar and the plastic container. Once he did this for a fair amount of time. I stopped him when he started throwing them around the room, though. That was enough fun with the beans for one day.Then I gave him a bag of pom poms to take out of the bag and touch....and then throw. He also helped daddy do the dishes by putting the clean dishes daddy just put away in the cupboard back into the the dishwasher. Then he helped close the dishwasher when daddy was done....well almost. (I realize that beans are a choking hazard for one-year-olds, that is why I was next to him every second, watching his every move.)

This is my year!

2010-01-11T07:38:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of this year I have the same things on my list that I want to do better at that I have had the past 3 years. The difference is I have a plan this year instead of just saying this is what I want to do.

One, I still have about 10 pounds of baby weight that I would like to lose. My baby is now 1 so I think I've procrastinated long enough. My goal though is not necessarily to lose weight, but to live a healthier life. I've gotten away all of my life eating whatever I want whenever I want without the ill effects of gaining weight. That is now different after having two kids. I am not fond of vegetables, but there are some pretty healthy ones that I will eat, problem is I just don't make myself do it. I like fruit, but don't eat enough of it. I like carbs. Bread, pasta, cake, cookies, etc. Not so good for the losing weight side of things. I'm not going to do anything drastic like go on a no-carb diet, but rather just eating the right things and doing portion control for the other things. I will go through a whole day sometimes and realize I've only eaten cereal and a sandwich because I'm so busy getting my kids breakfast and lunch among everything else that needs to get done during the day. Then at dinnertime I binge, eating until I am stuffed. Then eating something again before I go to bed so I can go to sleep without feeling like I'm starving. That is all going to change this year.

This past week I've made a conscious effort to eat fruits and veggies. I also made myself sit down with my kids to eat lunch instead of trying to get stuff done while they are occupied eating. After a small healthy lunch I got a small glimpse of how much energy I could have during the day because I wasn't dragging by late afternoon before my husband gets home. (BTW I hate the last hour before my hubby gets home, it drags on forever! Does anyone else ever feel that way?)

Two, exercise. Obviously this goes along with eating healthy. I'm not one to go to the gym to workout. I almost feel like I have to get in shape before I go workout at the gym so I feel like I fit in and don't pass out in front of everybody. I've found my solution for this as well. Wii Active. This "game" is your personal trainer and has preset workouts with the option of making your own custom workouts. I've never been athletic or into sports or anything so I don't know how to exercise. This tells me what to do and how many reps I should be doing it. And I can do it in the comfort of my own home where my only audience is a 3 1/2 year old who looks even sillier than me doing the exercises. M&M likes to watch and sometimes participate in what I am doing. I also like this because if she sees me exercising everyday she will know that it is an important part of our lives. Caution: Do not do this around children who do not know how to keep out of your way! I thought it was great when both of my kids would just watch me workout so I didn't have to worry about what time of day to workout. There was an incident and I could have seriously hurt my little boy. Don't ask, I already feel like a horrible mother.

Third, coming closer to Christ. I never got into the habit of reading my scriptures everyday growing up, thinking that I could make it a habit later in life when I'm older and have a family of my own. Ha! Little did I know as a teenager that I would be busier now than I was then. As soon as I put Bubba down for his nap the first thing I do is read my scriptures and/or an article in the the Ensign. M&M will sit with me and look at pictures in the Friend or another magazine. This has been especially good because she will ask questions about what is happening in the pictures and that will lead to more questions because she is a 3 year old and that's what they do. I end up spending a lot of my time telling her stories about the gospel. It's been a special time for us as I realize she's getting older and eager to learn all she can. As I come closer to Christ I know that it will help me be better in all other areas of my life, whether it be being a mother, wife, Young Women leader, friend, etc.

Every once in a while I will post updates for my own sake.

Tot School -Snow

2010-01-10T17:43:00.000-08:00

M&M is currently 42 months old

It's good to be back doing Tot School again. I took a 3 month break because I was getting overwhelmed. We also had a lot of things going on during October, November and December so I decided to just do holiday crafts and such.

Anyway to ease ourselves back into doing Tot School again we just did some winter crafts this week.

Our first craft was a snowflake made out of white paper lunch bags. When I saw this idea here I really liked it because it was 3D. They are really big though. I love making things to hang on our light fixture over our kitchen table because that's where we spend most of our time.

We made the button snowflakes that I've seen all over blogworld. The one that inspired me the most was the Funny Days with Mommy and Maddie blog. I don't mind doing something that many others have done especially if it's easy, fun and I already have all of the supplies for it. M&M really liked putting the buttons on in whatever order her heart desired.

I saw this really cute idea on the Frugal Family Fun blog. They put wax paper on their feet to "ice skate" around the house! I knew this was something we had to try. M&M did not want to do it on the carpet though. She insisted on doing it on the tile floor. She would purposefully slide and fall on her behind.

Another craft we did involved paint and tongue depressors. I originally saw this idea in the Oriental Trading Company catalog where they sell kits with all the supplies. I wasn't about to pay for a kit when I already had all of the supplies at home. To make it I taped together 6 tongue depressors, turned it over and had M&M paint it black and white. I drew a line and told her the top needed to be black and the bottom half white. She tried really hard to keep the paint on the right side of the line, but of course some carried over. It doesn't matter though because she then painted one more tongue depressor black and we glued it on over the line. We glued googly eyes on and then used a round sponge brush to paint the mouth on. I drew a carrot shape for the nose and she painted it orange. I try really hard not to do things for her when it comes to crafts because I am such a perfectionist. I resisted the urge to make her put the mouth further down and round it more.

I didn't get to all of the things I wanted to so we might do some more next week. I have a plan to continue with the letter of the week until we get through the rest of the alphabet.

Side note: Bubba (12 months old) decided to do his own activity. He took this bag of crackers out of the box. Then took the crackers out of the bag and put them in the box. He was at this for a little bit just rearranging the crackers from the bag to the box to the floor and back again. He likes rearranging things, but his favorite thing to do right now is walk and try to keep up with M&M. Now that Bubba is able to do more stuff it has me thinking about what I can do with him Tot school-wise. I'm not there yet, but I'm just gathering some ideas. I did find this great site, Productive Parenting.com, with activities for each age group and there are a ton of ideas!

Pencil and notebook holder

2010-01-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

During my little blogging break I made two colored pencil and notebook holders for my nieces. My sister provided this adorable material and she was happy to hand the sewing part over to someone else. With (A LOT) of help from my mom and her amazing sewing machine, we put these together. It really didn't take too long to do. I used the instructions found here, but added a few things like handles and a stitch at the bottom so the pencils wouldn't go down too far. I have some material to make one for M&M, I'm just waiting on a sewing machine. My mom is sending her old one down to me and I'm really excited to have one in my home so I can go and sew whenever I feel like it! When I make one for M&M there are a couple of things I would change from the instructions like putting the ribbon to close it more in the middle and making the pocket inside not as tall.

Catch up on Christmas stuff

2009-12-15T18:22:00.001-08:00

I found this post that I had saved from last month and forgot to post it. I plan on making a book out of this blog one day and so I would like to have all the activities that we have done on here so that they can get into that book.

M&M is REALLY into puzzles lately and she is very good at them. The Dollar Tree and the $1 spot at Target are great places to find perfect-sized puzzles for 3-year-olds If I do the edges she can most likely do the inside all by herself. She just needs a little guidance once in a while.

We also made gingerbread cookies and decorated them. We had A LOT of fun decorating them and I loved to see the creations M&M came up with. (If you look hard enough you will find one that is very inappropriate. My husband and I had a good laugh over that one.)

We made jingle bell bracelets and necklaces as well. These were a hit. Anything that makes noise is good to go with M&M.

Thinking about the New Year

2009-12-10T10:37:00.000-08:00

I stopped doing Tot School with M&M back in October and decided to just do holiday crafts and activities until the beginning of the year. I want to start up again on January 4th. This means that I need to be planning now so that I can be prepared. My problem last time was that I was trying to plan a week at a time every weekend. I've built up a stash of go to activities, and I have more I want to make and get supplies together for. I just need to organize them now and plan out which weeks I'm going to do what theme. I'll continue with the letter of the week because once I start something I can't stop halfway through. I'm took M&M out of the preschool she just had once a week and will use that money to get her in a dance class because I just think she would just LOVE that. She still goes to a preschool two mornings a week. I need to keep her in some sort of school until she goes to Kindergarten in two years so it's not such a shock to her to be away from home especially since where we live doesn't give us the option of going half day. It's an all day kindergarten.

I'm really excited to start up Tot School again! Since Bubba isn't sleeping as much during the day as he used to and he really likes to get into everything that we are doing now, we will probably end up doing Tot School during his naps. We'll also continue with holiday and seasonal arts and crafts.

Although most of this blog will center around activities for toddlers there will still be recipes, crafts and photography mixed in. I'm actually working on something right now, but I can't post about it until after Christmas. I'm just looking ahead because we will be out of town for Christmas and when we get back it will be the New Year and there will be new goals and resolutions to start up!

DIY Christmas Chimes

2009-12-08T08:27:00.001-08:00

A few years ago my sister-in-law introduced us to Christmas chimes. We had a lot of fun with them trying to play the songs together. This past Christmas my dad made a set of chimes for each of us kids and our families. I've been so excited to use them this year.

What are they you ask? Well, I will try to explain them the best that I can. They are pipes cut to different lengths. When hit with a stick they make different keys. A picture may help at this point.
My dad has them labeled as to what key they will play. They are also labeled with a number.
Each sheet of music has the numbers on it that need to be played for the song. Make sense? I hope so. The picture below will probably help.

These are a lot of fun to do in a group even with young kids. You can either copy the songs and hand them out or I have seen them transferred onto one of those huge pads of paper that are used in classrooms. My dad even made the sticks with the red balls on the ends.

I have many Christmas songs to go with the chimes but there are also other songs as well. (See below)

Now, my mom sent the directions to me over e-mail, but I have never shared anything over the blog before and I don't know how to do it. Can anyone tell me what to do? I will update this post once I figure out how to do that. Then if there is enough interest I can see if my parents have a digital copy of the songs so that I can post those as well.

Our first advent activities

2009-12-04T20:51:00.001-08:00

For our first advent activity M&M "wrote" a letter to Santa. Since she can't really read or write I gave her some old toy magazines for her to cut out pictures of things she wants. This was a great activity for her because she loves to use scissors. It was also great because she did it all by herself for a good amount of time! It was sweet because she cut out pictures not just for herself, but for mommy, daddy, and Bubba. She made sure Santa knew what we wanted too. After she cut them all out I gave her a gluestick to glue the pictures onto paper. She's not actually getting the things that she cut out, but I don't think she'll remember what she glued on, she just wants anything to do with princesses.

Our next activity were these swirled paint ornaments. M&M liked squeezing the paint into the bulb and then shaking them around. I really liked how these turned out. I might have to make some more of my own.

M&M loved doing these Santa handprints because I painted her hands and she said that it tickled. Anything that allows her to get messy is always a hit. Mmm, I guess I forgot to put mouths on them. I used acrylic paint for both of these crafts.

I need to go to the store to get more supplies for our activities for the next two weeks. I'm really excited about doing them, I hope M&M has fun doing them as well.

Our Advent plans

2009-12-04T09:25:00.000-08:00

I am very lucky to have gotten a very cute advent calendar from my mother-in-law the first year we were married. In each pocket is a little ornament to hang on the tree.

I've added something new this year though. I made out a list of Christmas crafts that M&M and I can do each day (red words) and also a list of fun family activities we can do after daddy gets home from work (green words). One from each pile will go into a pocket with an ornament.

I don't have 25 of either of these lists because we are going to Grandma's house for Christmas. We'll have plenty to do when we get there!

In no particular order, our Christmas crafts:

1. "Write" letter to Santa
2. Handprint Santas
3. Paint swirled ornaments
4. Visit Santa at the mall (we'll see if M&M will actually sit on his lap this year)
5. Make gift bags
6. Cinnamon dough ornaments
7. Pipe cleaner/bead ornaments
8. Star ornament
9. Hands and feet reindeer
10. Foam craft kits
11 Craft stick Christmas tree
12. Stained glass Christmas tree
13. Jingle bell jewelry
14. Make cookies for neighbors
15. Decorate gingerbread cookies
16. Paper activities

Family activities:
1. Eat popcorn and drink hot chocolate
2. Make Christmas cards for family
3. Couples Christmas party (if we can find a babysitter)
4. Make graham cracker gingerbread houses
5. Tell Nativity Story
6. Walmart tree gift giving
7. Take gift bags around
8. Deliver cookies to neighbors
9. Family Game night
10. Go to Santa's village
11. Sing Christmas carols
12. Take drive to see Christmas lights
13. Read Christmas books
14. Play with Christmas chimes (more on this later, you don't want to miss it! I might actually have my own tutorial to share on how to make them.)

Quiet book pages

2009-11-30T08:50:00.000-08:00

The past two weeks have consisted of trying to make a quiet book. I found many blogs that had pictures of the quiet books they have made, but not a lot of them had patterns for the pages I wanted to do. So I first had to draw out all of the patterns myself before we (my mom and I) could even think about putting it together. That's why it's taken me so long. I read other blogs where they say they see a cute idea on a blog and then whip it up that night and post about it the next day. I've decided I am not one of those people that can do that, which is okay. It just takes me longer to get anything done. And well, the fact of the matter is the quiet book is far from being done, but it is done enough to post pictures because I just couldn't wait. I will have to finish it when I go home for Christmas in a few weeks. But here are some pictures of 6 of the pages.

Color matching balloons and button on flowers

Clothesline with mini clothespins and dress-up people

Noah's Ark zipper, shoelace tying, and buckleAs you can see I still have some minor details like a face for the little people and a shoelace for the shoe, but it's getting there. The animal finger puppets for the Noah's Ark came from IKEA.

If anyone wants to put one of these together sometime and needs patterns or help, just let me know because the patterns were the biggest headache and took the longest time.

Here are the links that I used to get ideas from:
http://craftingchicks.blogspot.com/2009/09/quiet-book-ii.html
http://craftingchicks.blogspot.com/2009/09/quiet-book-i.html
http://craftingchicks.blogspot.com/2009/09/tiffanys-quiet-books.html
http://www.quietbook.blogspot.com/
http://itybtyfrogcreations.blogspot.com/2008/02/some-more-quiet-book-pics.html
http://itybtyfrogcreations.blogspot.com/2008/02/my-quiet-book_25.html
http://itybtyfrogcreations.blogspot.com/2008/02/more-quiet-book-pics.html
http://naptimejournal.blogspot.com/2009/05/quiet-book-pagesyou-asked-for-them.html

I was featured!

2009-11-21T07:15:00.000-08:00

I was featured on Someday Crafts! I'm so excited! This is my very first feature and what a great site to be featured on. Check it out here.

Playdough mats

2009-11-18T12:50:00.000-08:00

I found these playdough mats on the Sparklebox website and thought they were really cute. M&M likes to play with playdough as much as the next child so I printed some out, laminated them and we made these creations. There are a lot of them on the website, but most of them use up a lot of ink. There are some black and white ones though. There are a lot of other printables on the site, but like I said they take up some colored ink.

A little R&R

2009-11-12T15:31:00.000-08:00

So it´s been awhile since I last posted, but I have good reason...a vacation with my hubby to Mexico for a little rest and relaxation and rejuvenation. I will be back to the blogging world next week sometime to start blogging about the quiet book my mom and I will be making. Also M&M has had a lot of fun making a dollhouse with grandpa this past week. I haven´t seen it yet, but I´m really excited! Be back soon!

The Princess and the Puppy

2009-11-03T20:25:00.000-08:00

So Halloween's been over for a few days, but I'm just barely getting this up. I am so proud of myself for making my kid's costumes this year for Halloween. I never thought I would be one of those mom's to do that, but then again I never knew how easy it was!

Bubba was a little puppy dog. Since he's only 10 months old I didn't go all out for his costume (that's what happens when the second kid comes around). I cut "spots" and ears out of light brown felt and stuck them on a brown zip-up jacket using pieces of double stick tape. He was so cute! The best part is he needed a jacket anyway and the spots were removable!

I've seen so many posts done about no-sew tutus and I knew I had to make one for M&M because, well, it was no-sew! I got the tulle spools from the wedding section of Joann's. I used three different colors: light purple, dark purple and light blue. I didn't use any particular tutorial, but I got ideas about how to make it from several websites. I can't link to the tutorials right now because I'm not on my home computer, sorry. I wrapped a satin ribbon around the waistband and tied it in a bow in front for extra cuteness. I found that idea here. I'm sure there's a tutorial around that website for a tutu. M&M liked it. I was trying to get her to say she was a ballerina, but she insisted that she was a princess. Oh well.

I'll be shoe shopping tomorrow.....

2009-10-29T18:41:00.000-07:00

I just saw this great coupon offer on another blog and I thought I would pass it on. It's awesome! It's 50% off everything at Payless Shoes. Check it out here to print off a coupon.

Boo sign craft

2009-10-29T10:14:00.001-07:00

This is a Halloween craft that I did for myself. I used Mod Podge for the first time ever! I admit that I was a little scared at first because I didn't know what to expect, but now that I've done it, I'm hooked. If was so easy and I loved the result.

I made this Boo sign because it seemed really simple and I already had some of the supplies. I found the idea here. This is as far as I have gotten because I'm a little stuck.

The letters are just sitting on the plaques right now because I don't know how to attach them together. The blog doesn't say exactly how to do it. I'm guessing some sort of glue, but what kind? Wood glue, tacky glue? I also don't know what to put it on to hang it up. Does anyone have any ideas?

Soft Sugar Cookies

2009-10-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

Last year I wanted to make sugar cookies for Halloween. When that didn't happen I said Christmas. That didn't happen either, probably because I just had a baby. My last attempt was Valentine's Day. Did it happen then? Um, no. So here we are to Halloween again and I finally made them! They aren't hard to make, just time consuming so I would always tell myself, oh I can't start them now, I don't have time to mix them up, roll and cut them out, bake them all and then frost and decorate them. This year I told myself If you want to do something, Just do it!

M&M and I made these cookies using this recipe: (from my sister-in-law)

Soft Sugar Cookies
1 c. shortening
2 c. sugar
4 eggs
1 (16 oz.) tub sour cream
2 tsp. vanilla
8 c. flour (reserve 1 c. to work in as you roll out and knead a few times)
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking soda
3 tsp. baking powder

Cream shortening and sugar, beat in eggs one at a time. Beat in sour cream and add vanilla. Add flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Roll as thin as you can. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. I didn't count them, but I would say that they make about 4 dozen.

M&M really liked using the spatula to scoop the cut cookies off of the counter.

These cookies are SO soft. They aren't too sugary tasting, but the frosting that you put on them will surely make up for that! I made them Monday and they are still soft.

Halloween sensory/I Spy tub

2009-10-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

I saw a few of these Halloween sensory tubs on several blogs and I wanted to try it with M&M. I just used dried black beans, but you could also mix in some orange colored rice like this one. To give it just one more element of fun I threw in some orange, yellow, green and purple odds and ends to make it an I Spy tub as well. I took a picture of all the things I put in so that she could have a reference of what to look for.

I'd like to say that she had so much fun with the I Spy part, but I have to admit that it was like pulling teeth to get her to finish picking everything out. Once everything was out she had fun scooping the beans into the little pumpkins though. It might have to do with the fact that we are all pretty cranky around here from colds getting us down for about 5-6 days. M&M is actually feeling fine, but the rest of us have no energy and we just feel yucky. We have a few more Halloween activities yet to do.

More Halloween crafts

2009-10-23T07:05:00.000-07:00

We are having a blast doing Halloween crafts. Here's some really fun and easy things that we have been doing.

Hand/footprint ghosts. Saw the idea here. M&M really liked doing this one because she got to put her hands and feet in the paint.

Torn paper candy corns. This idea came from here. M&M didn't want to do this one alone. I usually have to do the things I plan with her. It'll be nice when Bubba is old enough to do stuff with us because then M&M won't feel so 'alone' when doing stuff like this when mommy needs a few minutes to get other things done.

Aren't these yarn and pipe cleaner spiders so cute? I got the idea for these guys here. M&M liked playing with them after they were done.

Tissue ghosts. Idea from here. We hung them from our light over our kitchen table.

Yarn pumpkin. This one I did on my own, but older kids would have an easy time doing it. I found the idea here. They did apples, but I just used orange yarn instead for a pumpkin.

I don't know if you've noticed a trend with these. They are all fast, easy, and affordable using things you probably have around the house. That's my motto when it comes to kids crafts. Stay tuned for more kid's Halloween crafts and activities.

Stuffed Pizza Rolls

2009-10-20T20:26:00.001-07:00

Friday nights usually consist of pizza (either frozen, take-out or semi-homemade) and a movie as a family before the kids go to bed, but this past Friday I decided to make a slight change. I found a recipe for Stuffed Pizza Rolls. These were so easy and fun to make with M&M and they tasted really good as well. They are a great alternative to the other pizza choices out there. I'm feeling lazy so I am just going to link up to the recipe instead of typing it all out. Check it out here.

A few Fall/Halloween activities

2009-10-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

We've done a few activities in the last week or so, most of them have been Fall related and I thought I would share.

Well this first one isn't fall related, but M&M really enjoyed doing it. M&M often asks to play with the pennies in her piggy bank, but they are really dirty so I really didn't like her to. So we cleaned all of the coins in there. I got the idea from here. They use a mixture of water, salt and vinegar to "magically" make the pennies shinier. It's really cool to watch! M&M separated the pennies from the other coins using a spoon (her idea.) We just washed the other coins in a tub of soapy water.

Shiny pennies.

This paper plate 'leaf wreath' (say that 5 times fast) came from the idea here. I cut leaves out of red, orange, and yellow construction paper using a template I got online. I'm thinking of having M&M use some glitter glue to make it sparkle a little more.

Getting inspiration from here, we used cookie cutters to make Halloween shapes on paper. M&M had to use a different piece of paper for each one. I'm thinking about making a decoration out of these somehow, we'll see.

Today some cousins came over and we had a craft day. It was much needed because we haven't been able to play outside in a while. They painted pumpkins first. This is M&M's pumpkin. I don't know if you can tell, but she used a house cookie cutter to get the basic shape of a house and then painted windows on it.

They also made pasta skeletons. I found the idea here (scroll down). I loved how she put the fingers and toes on. There's also a Q-tip skeleton here. The pumpkin is one of those packaged foam crafts. Not homemade, but I think it would be easy enough to do with sticky back foam sheets cut out into the shapes you want, like I did with my felt pumpkin.

A side note: I am really impressed with M&M's handwriting ability. She can write the whole alphabet with me writing a few of them first so she can copy it. I'd like to say that I've spent countless hours working with her, but I haven't. I don't know what is average for a 3-year-old, not that it matters, but I'm just curious. Maybe it's just that she's my first child and I can't believe she's writing already! Can you find all of the letters on this page? :)
That's all for now, but there's more to come. I have a bunch of leaf activities that I've been wanting to do, but we haven't been able to go outside and gather them because it wouldn't STOP RAINING! It's going to be clear the next few days so we will head to the park and pick up some leaves and enjoy some wonderful fresh fall air. I can't wait.

Art area

2009-10-10T17:32:00.000-07:00

I've had all of M&M's art supplies put up in a closet on high shelves because I didn't want her getting into the stuff and making a mess. I would just get out everything I needed for a project. After seeing all of these cool art areas on other blogs I decided that M&M is old enough to take responsibility and have some freedom.

In one corner our playroom is an art area. There is a table and chairs, of course. I don't care if she writes on the table or chairs. (You'll have to excuse the blinding whiteness of the walls. We moved into our house a year and a half ago, but are still working on getting all of the rooms painted.)

On the wall I've put hooks so that I can hang up little buckets. One bucket has crayons and another one has washable markers and colored pencils. The third one has a dry erase marker, eraser, tape, gluestick and safety scissors. (I saw the idea for the use of buckets somewhere, but it was one of those that I didn't save to Evernote so I don't remember where it came from. If it was you please leave a comment.)

The other wall has these Post-It Pockets on it. One with paper and the other with stickers that I've peeled the backing off of so that it's easier for her to get the stickers off. It came in a three pack and I've used the other one by my computer to put all of my lists in. Now I don't have papers all over the place. Okay, I still do, but they aren't lists!

We had this shelf from when we lived in an apartment so we put it up high to keep other stuff like beads, coloring books, etc. that I don't want Bubba getting into. He's pulling himself up on everything and it's driving me nuts! I've had to reconfigure everything in my house now. Oh well, he's cute so I'll keep him.

When we have cousins or friends over to play I take the buckets off and put them on the shelf so they can't reach them.

Favorite Photo Friday

2009-10-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

I actually remembered to do a Favorite Photo Friday post today. I usually do it along with my Tot School posts, but since I'm not doing Tot School posts right now I forgot to do this one. I am probably the most forgetful person you know. Oh well, here it is.

This isn't a photo using a lot of photographic elements, but I really like it because it tells a story. This was October of last year. We went to the pumpkin patch and M&M had a wagon she was pulling around. Well the pumpkins got in the way so with all of her might she rolled them out of the way.

I can not believe that this was a year ago. This was during the beginning of my third trimester and I felt like, October, November and December lasted SO long! Now this year has gone by SO fast. My baby is almost 10 months old! Does it seem like time goes faster the older you get? It sure seems like it.

Projects Galore

2009-10-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

I made a list of things that I want to make in the side column. This is mostly for my benefit. I like having a list of things in one place that I can refer to easily and what I want to see is just a click away.

I love scouring blogs and websites for cute, easy and for the most part cheap projects. The problem is most of these things require sewing and, well, I can't sew and I don't have a sewing machine. I have come up with solutions to both of these problems. My mom is coming next month, like I've mentioned before, and she is bringing her brand new sewing machine so that she can teach me how to sew. We will be working on Quiet books. My project for now is to cut everything out to get it ready to sew when she comes. I really want a sewing machine for Christmas. That would solve problem #2. We'll see if I get it. ;)

Here is a copy of the list on the sidebar:
Quiet Book here, here and here
Play Garden
Felt food here, here and here
Felt ribbon ball
Mail Center
Car Cozie
Crayon Roll
I Spy bag
Mini I Spy quilt
Table Playhouse
Tutu
Camera Strap Cover
Decorative Balls
Gutter bookshelves

Maybe someone else will be inspired by these and be able to just whip them up quickly. These things are going to take me a long time to make. A few of them may happen in the coming months, but I'm sure it will take me years to do all of these.

Felt Jack-o-lantern

2009-10-06T09:54:00.000-07:00

I have a bunch of felt that I've been stocking up on for a big project I will be doing with my mom next month. I decided to take a little bit of it and make a Halloween activity for M&M. I cut a pumpkin shape out of orange felt. Then I cut out different mouths, noses and eyes from black felt.
She can mix and match and make different faces on the pumpkin. At least that was the objective until I gave it to her, she made one face and then said, "Okay, that's what a pumpkin looks like" and was finished. *sigh*

(The eyes are on the left side, the noses on the bottom and the mouths on the right.)

Apple Prints and painting tips

2009-10-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

Even though I won't be doing Tot School posts right now I will still post about the fun activities that we do.

Today we tried apple prints. I've seen this activity all over blogworld. M&M was very intrigued by the idea of painting with apples. We used red and green paint and stamped away. When we do an activity like this I usually have to do one of my own because M&M will always want me to do hers. This way she will do her own project. It was a short, but successful activity.

There are a couple of things that have made painting projects with M&M go more smoothly. I put down a plastic tablecloth underneath the project instead of using newspaper. This helps the sliding factor and covers the whole table instead of a small part. I also use plastic formula can lids to put the paint on. The paint comes off very easily. Both of these things are reusable. I've been inspired by all of the blogger moms out there that are trying to reuse and recycle.

Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats

2009-09-30T19:13:00.000-07:00

So I've been reminded by a couple comments about the recipe I promised to post. I'm glad to be reminded because I'm very forgetful like that. So here it is.

Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats
1/2 cup margarine or butter
10 oz. mini marshmallows
1/2-1 cup peanut butter
6-8 cups rice krispies

In large saucepan melt butter and marshmallows. Remove from heat. Add peanut butter, stir until smooth. Stir in rice krispies. Press mixture into well buttered 9x13 pan. (I used cooking spray, it worked just fine.) Cut into 24 squares.

I thought that this would be really fun to make with M&M, but as I started I realized she wouldn't be able to help much because most of it was on the stove, but she did love to stir everything when I took it off of the stove. Enjoy!

Tot school - three weeks worth!

2009-09-20T15:32:00.000-07:00

Oh my, it's been three weeks since I've done a Tot School post. With M&M being in school three mornings, playgroup once a week, going to the library, the park, grocery shopping and doctor appointments our weeks are pretty busy. We aren't used to being this busy so it's just a matter of settling into a new schedule. I've found that my focus has changed from Tot School mode all of the time to wanting to do crafts during my free time.

I've also been wrestling with the decision to keep doing a letter a week. I think I've decided to postpone doing the rest of the letters until the beginning of next year. (With the exception of this next week because we are going to do a lot of apple activities.) We just have a lot of things planned in the next three months and I will probably end up doing a lot of arts and crafts for Autumn, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I've got the craft itch BAD! My mom is coming in November with her sewing machine to help me do some projects, but there is a lot of prep work that I need to do for the projects before then. Considering October starts this week (can you believe it?) November really isn't that far away. I haven't decided if I'm going to continue with Tot School posts until the beginning of the year or not either. We'll see. I might just end up posting about certain activities that we do without having one long post which seems to take forever. I'm really trying to simplify my life right now.

Anyway, it's been great weather here so M&M and I spent an afternoon on the back porch with sidewalk chalk. She started drawing some letters and then I drew a roadway for her to drive a little car on.

We made Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats using my mother-in-law's recipe. (I'll post the recipe in a separate post.)

We also did these sound eggs that I've been meaning to do forever. This idea came from Chasing Cheerios. I filled each set of eggs with beans, small seashells, rice, lentils, overhead counters (I think that's what they are), and stones. Then she shakes one of them and tries to find the match in the other color just by listening to the sound. She kept wanting to open them and cheat, but she did a really good job at recognizing the differences.

I've set up an art area in our playroom for M&M. (more about that in another post) I've set out stickers for her to use and this is what she did with them. She put them into "families". Everything that has big and little things are mommies, daddies, and babies.
M&M also painted one of those packaged ceramic figure kits from the craft store. The kit only comes with red, blue, yellow, and white. Once she used all of those colors she wanted more colors and mentioned that we can mix them together to make new colors. I pulled out the color wheel puzzle from the Target dollar spot and used it as a reference. We made green, orange, purple and pink.

When I first got these lacing cards M&M wasn't really interested in them so I put them away for awhile and just brought them back out. She only did one, but at least she went until the string was all done.

I got this doll from the dollar store and it was a great transition from the last activity because you have to lace on the doll's clothes and hats.

This community helper tools match game is from Kelly's Kindergarten. (Scroll down on the link.) M&M really liked this, but she needed a lot of help the first time.

I also got this game at the dollar store after seeing it on several blogs. M&M put the pegs in several times.

She wanted to hammer them in one of the times.

She also put marbles on top of them. I saw this on a blog, but I can't remember where, sorry.

I made these tongue depressor shapes a while ago, put them away and then found them recently. I got the idea for these from My Two Happy Homeschoolers.

With these popsicle sticks she is matching uppercase letters to lowercase letters. I've posted about this activity before here.

There was also renewed interest in this dry erase book. She is doing really good at tracing letters.

We made bug racers. Got the idea from here. It's made out of the cups from an egg carton, put faces on them and pipe cleaners for antennas. Make a ramp, put marbles under them and race!

Ours aren't nearly as cute as the ones on the link.

This counting activity came from Childcareland. Using clothespins M&M put the correct amount on the circles. These plastic clothespins are a lot easier for M&M to squeeze.

This is a syllable count game. I did this one not knowing if M&M would understand. I tried to explain it to her, but she didn't get it. Maybe 3 is too young to teach syllables? I don't know. Has anyone else tried something like this with toddlers?

I loved these color matching pictures from Homeschool Creations. I printed them out, laminated them and had M&M match them using these pocket charts from the Target $1 spot.

I saw this idea somewhere to take the backing off of stickers and then have kids take the stickers off and match them up with the holes. We tried this, but it didn't last very long.

Sometimes when M&M plays on the computer on Nick Jr. or PBSkids.com she will print out stuff. She printed this Yo Gabba Gabba thing and then wanted to cut them out. I gave her the scissors and was expecting little cuts all over the edges like she usually does. Not this time! She actually cut around each card. I was amazed. My lesson learned during Tot School this week was never underestimate your kids!

I made these 5 frogs and monkey posters from the idea I saw at Izzie, Mac and Me. The graphics for the monkey posters came from Kizclub.com. The frog ones came from Childcareland. M&M loves pulling the monkeys and frogs off to match them to the number we are on.

One craft project down....

2009-09-16T08:10:00.000-07:00

who knows how many left.

This painting project has been in the works for months now. I got an unfinished wooden hook rack and painted it all white. That's the way it was sitting for a while. I've gotten the crafty itch lately with looking for holiday crafts and I just had to do something. I haven't gotten it out before because of excuses like, Oh I don't want M&M to get into it, I'll wait until she goes to bed. By the time she's in bed I find something else to do, yadda yadda yadda. Last night I told myself, "Just do it!" I pulled out all of my painting stuff and went to work. I had no idea what I was going to do with it.

My creative wheels got turning...slowly...because they are a little rusty, and this is what I came up with. (Please don't look too closely and see how often I painted out of the lines.) :)

I will be putting this up in the playroom for M&M to use in her dress-up area to hang hats, dresses, bags, whatever she wants. I used a stencil to randomly draw the flowers on and then just used a very tiny brush to paint it in. There probably is an easier way I could have done it, but I actually really like to do the small detail painting. Painting like this is like a therapy for me. I haven't done it in a LONG time and it feels so good to do it again. I made many projects when I was a teenager that are sitting on top of my kitchen cabinets. Someone in the neighborhood I grew up in taught Tole Painting classes and me and my friends would go over there after school every Wednesday. Sorry, I'm just rambling now, but it's kind of nostalgic for me.

I'll take another picture when I have her dress-up area finished.

Oh to be crafty again....*sigh*. More to come!

Big Changes

2009-09-15T07:44:00.000-07:00

So you might notice some changes on my blog. Jennifer over at My Two Happy Homeschoolers did this new look for me and I love it! I love the simplicity of it and the new features like the navigation bar and especially the new header. She came up with this idea. All I told her was that I wanted "something" to change from ordinary into extraordinary. I would have never thought of this. There isn't anything under the craft section yet, but there will be! I'm already planning a ton of craft projects for Hallowen, Autumn, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have to plan now or I'd spend all my time planning and never getting anything done when it gets to close to the actual holiday. There will be crafts for kids and for me to do. Yay! It seems like it takes me months to do something that would just take me a couple of days because of all of the other wife and mother responsibilities that come first. I'm learning how to get and keep organized though which is very helpful in all aspects of my life.

i heart faces - Contemplative

2009-09-14T08:02:00.001-07:00

This picture is of my daughter this past spring. It was starting to warm up outside, my 4 month old was asleep and so I did a photo shoot with her in our backyard. I can only wonder what it is she is thinking about right here. Oh, the mystery of a child's mind.

My thoughts on school

2009-09-12T11:25:00.001-07:00

It seemed as if I was the only one in the bloggy world that I knew of that was deciding NOT to homeschool my children. I have since found those that aren't as well. Ever since starting this blog and reading others, I have given homeschool more thought. Even after doing this though it does not feel right for me to homeschool. The thing is I still have 2 years until M&M is old enough to go to Kindergarten. But I do have her in two preschools right now for a total of 3 mornings a week. One of them is at a local church 1 day a week where she knows no one. The other is at somebody's home that I go to church with where she is with kids that she knows from nursery class on Sunday.

With this decision in mind I am still going to evaluate our situation again and again to make sure I am doing the right thing. It is nice to know that I have an alternative if things go really sour in school. (or I don't like the school schedule in the district we are in like where we are now. They have elementary kids starting school at 8:00 a.m. and high school kids starting at 9. The high school kids don't get out until like 4:00 in the afternoon. I think this is ludicris. Is this normal for across the country now or is it just where we live? Where I grew up elementary started at 9 and high school started at 8. In high school we got out at 2:30 p.m. Enough time to do extracurricular activities and still be home to help make dinner or whatever.) Sorry a little tangent there, I could go on with that, but I won't.

I know the reasons that some people homeschool or don't have to do with religious, social and even personal reasons. I know of some people that really like to have their kids home. But I don't believe I love my child any less because I am sending her off to school. I do worry sometimes about the things my children will encounter and learn about in school, but I know that if I teach them correct princples at home that they will be a shining light in the midst of darkness and evil that surrounds them in the world.

I used to be one of those that thought people that were homeschooled were socially awkward, and all of that stigma. But that's what happens when we are young and we don't have all the information for both sides of a situation. I will say though that two of my best friends (sisters) were homeschooled and they are A LOT more social then me, during school years and in college. I am a very reserved person.

I do have to mention some of the things that intrigue me about homeschooling. I like the flexibility that goes along with it. I learned somewhere and I think it's true in most cases that you can get more done in a shorter amount of time because of the one-on-one attention that children get. You don't have to worry about kids missing school if there is a family emergency or you want to take a trip during off-peak seasons.

I think I have found a new hobby in looking for and implementing new activities for M&M and I to do together in Tot School. I've learned SO much. I'm in the process of putting together a binder of all the activities that I've found so that I can use these ideas for future children like Bubba and any more that come along in later years. I look forward to being home when my kids get home, having a snack ready for them and helping them with their homework or doing an art project with them. This time will be dedicated to them because I will have hopefully had enough time during the day to do anything I need to do for myself or around the house.

So as with everything I write it this is just my opinion and I love that we can all write our own opinions and learn from one another through these blogs.

Favorite Photo Friday

2009-09-11T12:45:00.001-07:00

So here's my second Favorite Photo Friday. It's another flower/nature picture. I took these pictures right after getting my new Nikon D40 camera a couple of years ago. I loved being able to focus on something and having the rest of it be blurry.

Since I decided a little bit ago that I wasn't going to put pictures of my kids on here I've decided to break down and do it. I've since learned how to do a "watermark" of sorts so I can at least have my stamp on it.

Someone asked last week what editing program I use. I use Picasa 3. I have Photoshop as well, but not the most recent one. I think it's CS? Is that an actual one? haha. I haven't taken the time yet to learn Photoshop yet, but I do like the free actions you can find online! I've just downloaded some actions for Photoshop and I'm really excited to use them.

Tot School Aug 31-Sept. 4

2009-09-06T20:48:00.000-07:00

M&M is 39 months old

We didn't do a letter this week, but our theme was centered around camping. It's been too hot here to go camping for real (at least for me) so I thought we'd "camp" in the family room this week. First we made Smore's Galore. The recipe can be found here. (The actual recipe came from my sister-in-law's sister-in-law.)

Then we set up a fort/tent made of chairs and blankets. M&M set up a bed in there and we had a lantern for light.

We had a campfire....

and pretended to roast marshmallows over it. I found the idea for these on familycorner.com.

M&M's little furry friends joined us in our tent.

I hope to go camping for real in the next month or so when it cools down. It's more fun to camp when there's a slight chill out than sweating up a storm in a hot tent.

The rest of the week she played with her Melissa and Doug alphabet magnetic board.

She pulled the stamps out of the closet. I tried to teach her to remember to wipe off the stamp after she uses it.

This was a new one. I think I got these stencils at the dollar store or $1 section at Target. M&M really liked to color in the openings with a pencil. I think these would make a great activity bag. I hope to put togther some activity bags here pretty soon.

Then just some classic watercoloring. I had forgotten about our watercolors because I always just pull out the crayola washable paints. She likes the water colors because it involves water!

Not a lot of stuff accomplished, but we had a lot of fun "camping!"

Favorite Photo Friday

2009-09-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

Before blogging came into my life learning about photography was one of my main hobbies. I also love to edit photos. So I wanted to combine two of my hobbies with what I will call "Favorite Photo Friday." I will either choose a picture that I have taken that week and edited or I will go into my archives of thousands of pictures that I have and post it. This is just something that I want to do because I have so many pictures from before I started blogging that I never got to post. ;)
If I ever make a book out of my blog I want those in there, etc.
Anyway, I know there's similar memes out there and I'm doing this for myself, but if anyone else wants to join in let me know so I can come check it out! I love looking at all kinds of photography; portraits, landscapes, any and all. I get inspired by looking at other people's pictures.

So here's the first one. This is one from my archives.

Yummies!

2009-09-02T15:39:00.000-07:00

I've made 2 desserts in the past 3 days. They are totally different, one is fruity, the other one is chocolatey. I thought I'd share the recipes since they are so yummy!

I made this first one in honor of my most favorite time of year, Fall! Peach Cobbler always reminds me of Autumn. This recipe is one I've eaten my whole life. It's so easy and so good! (Oh, it's actually a Crisp, not a cobbler, but I think it's even better than cobbler.)

Peach Crisp
2 cans (16 oz. each) peaches, drained
3/4 cup Bisquick baking mix
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3 Tbsp. margarine or butter, softened
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Arrange peaches in 8x8x2 inch dish. Mix remaining ingredients until crumbly; sprinkle over peaches. Bake until peaches are tender, 30-35 minutes.

This recipe doesn't make a whole lot. I haven't tried it yet, but I think next time I make it I'll double it because it is always gone way too fast!

I love to go camping during the summer, but that was when I lived in my home state in the mountains. It is way too hot where I am now to sleep outside. (I really don't know how I've lasted these last 3 summers.) Anyway, I hope we go camping later on this month or the beginning of next month when it is cooler. So instead of roasting marshmallows over a campfire I decided to make this next recipe instead. (There's a lot of instructions, but it's really not that hard to make.)
Smore's Galore
20 graham crackers
6 Hershey chocolate bars or 2 1/2 c. chocolate chips
1 pkg. small marshmallows
6 Tbsp. butter
3 Tbsp. milk

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. In an 11x14 inch. pan lay 12 graham crackers on bottom, filling in any holes with broken up pieces. Toast 2 minutes in oven, let cool. In microwave-safe bowl combine 3 cup marshmallows, 3 Tbsp. butter and 3 Tbsp. milk. Melt in microwave for 1 minute. Stir and add 3 chocolate bars. Whisk really good. Spread mixture over graham crackers.

In another bowl, break up the rest of the graham crackers into quarter/nickel size. Melt 3 Tbsp. butter in microwave and the pour over broken up graham crackers. Mix up with hands. Add the rest of the bag of marshmallows. Spread over chocolate mixture. Sprinkle 1 1/2 c. chocolate chips or the rest of the hershey bars broken up. Bake @ 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Cut with pizza cutter.

Zesty Roasted Chicken and Potatoes

2009-08-31T08:16:00.000-07:00

We had this for dinner last night and it is so good. I love red potatoes. This is one I had in my recipe box from a while ago. Both hubby and M&M gobbled it up.

Zesty Roasted Chicken and Potatoes
6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 lb. small red potatoes, cut into fourths
1/3 c. mayonnaise or salad dressing
3 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp. pepper
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
chopped fresh chives, if desired

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 15X10X1-inch pan with cooking spray.
2. Place chicken and potatoes in pan. In small bowl, mix remaining ingredients except chives; brush over chicken and potatoes.
3. Bake uncovered 30-35 minutes or until potatoes are tender and juice of chicken is clear when center of thickest part is cut (170 degrees). Sprinkle with chives.

I had a few variations with this recipe. I only used 3 or 4 chicken breasts because that is all the people we need to feed around here and we don't eat leftovers very well. I don't know how many potatoes I used, I just guessed at how many looked like could fit in the pan. I usually use dijon mustard, but realized I only had honey mustard last night. I like the Dijon better. I'm not one to chop up garlic cloves so I used the already chopped kind in a jar. I also just used a 13x9 pan because that's what was easiest.

We also had a salad that is our favorite. There's no recipe, just ingredients that we put together that we really like.

Spring mix salad greens
feta cheese
cashews
chopped green apples
chopped green onions
poppyseed dressing

My husband doesn't like the green onions so I rarely put that in. I saw this great idea somewhere on how to chop up green onions. Instead of using a knife, use kitchen scissors! Okay, so many of you probably are like, duh, I knew that already. I'm still a budding chef so anything that makes my life and making dinner easier and faster is wonderful news!

Tot School - Letter M

2009-08-29T16:45:00.001-07:00

M&M is currently 38 1/2 months old

We did the letter M this week for Tot School. I've gathered a lot of ideas over the past few months and I've realized that I need to scale Tot School down and simplify it for myself. With M&M being in preschool and MDO for 3 days a week I won't have as much time to actually do Tot School with her, but I will have more time to prepare! Maybe it won't be as chaotic because I will have everything set and ready to go when we do have Tot School time here at home. My goal is to at least do the whole alphabet. We've only done 7 letters. Mmm...I thought we've done a lot more than that. We have done Tot School 18 times, but I haven't been prepared with a letter each of those times. We'll see what happens.

On to our activities for the week.
M is for Monkeys. We couldn't do the letter M without doing something with monkeys. This is a mask I found at Ziggity Zoom.

We also did this Monkey M. I got the idea from here. Ours doesn't look as good because I am trying to allow M&M to do more things by herself instead of me trying to make everything look perfect.

M is for Mountain. We also did a Mountain M. This idea came from No Time for Flashcards. There are also some other good M activities on the link as well.

Oh, I just had to showcase one of M&M's lunchtime creations from the week. I just had to laugh at the broccoli on top of the toothpick. Needless to say she didn't eat a lot for that meal, but she sure had fun!

M is for Measure. I knew I had to do something with measuring because M&M is always helping daddy hold the tape measure when he measures things for projects around the house. This idea came from Walking by the Way, a more recent blog find. You can find the cards here and read about how to do the activity on the first link. I think this was too easy for M&M or she just wasn't in a good mood at the time because she didn't enjoy it as much as I thought she would.

M is for Monkey Bread. I found this easy recipe for Monkey bread so I've been saving making it just for this week. It was really good and the recipe I used can be found here.

M is for M&M's. Considering her nickname is M&M for this blog we had to do something with M&M's. This rainbow sheet came from Making Learning Fun. This page would also be good to go with a rainbow theme. This activity didn't get much done on it because the pieces kept disappearing for some reason. Mmm....

M is also for Magnet. I've been saving this activity for a long time. I printed this sheet off a while ago and so I didn't save where I got it from. I got most of the items on the list, but didn't have a few of them. M&M really got into this activity and she loved to circle the correct answer. There were a few of them that had some parts that were magnetic and others that weren't. I didn't think she would understand the concept of how some things are magnetic and other's aren't so I just used this as a fun science experiment (like Sid the Science Kid) and left it at that. She did take the magnetic wand around the house for a little bit after she was done to see what else she could find that was magnetic.

How do you clean?

2009-08-27T07:51:00.000-07:00

This is a question for anyone! I'm desperate. I feel like my house is always a pigsty. Stuff is everywhere, counters have caked on food, there's always dirty dishes in the sink and counter and papers everywhere on my computer desk. I've tried many things to lessen the mess, but it doesn't seem to be helping. See, I would consider myself a neat freak, but you would never know that if you walked into my house...ever.

The premise of my blog is that I would share tips on how to run a household and raise kids, etc. to help mother's out there in my same situation. But right now I need advice. I've tried to set up a schedule where I would do one big chore a day, vacuum on Tuesday, sweep on Wed. etc. The problem is I can't seem to get to those chores because I spend all of my cleaning time just trying to get everything back to the places and rooms they are suppose to be in. I run around the house like a madman getting my exercise for the day because I take something to one room, come back and realize I forgot something else. *sigh*

I try to get my 3 year old involved and she loves to help, but after a while she gets bored and wants me to play, but the task isn't finished yet. My husband helps as much as he can after he gets home from work, but he also likes to play with the kids and then we have to give them baths and get them ready for bed. By the time the kids are in bed we don't want to clean we want a couple of hours to ourselves to spend together or do projects of our own.

Growing up, Saturday mornings were always reserved for deep cleaning. I've tried to implement that in my own family, but the kids, 3 years and 8 months, get really bored after a couple of hours of this. We also like to do something fun as a family on Saturday or have other commitments as well. (As a side note: as part of our religion we try not to work on Sundays as we believe this is a day of rest. We like to reserve it for church meetings, scripture study, family time in the home/visiting other family in the area, etc. That is why we'd like to get it all done on Saturday.)

Anyway this is a long explanation of my little problem. Do I have too high of expectations or am I stressing out way too much like my husband thinks? This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but I'm desperate for ideas.

My question is: How do you get cleaning done in your home?

Tackle it Tuesday

2009-08-25T13:10:00.001-07:00

I did half or some of many projects this week. One thing that I started on (and could have finished) this week was putting labels on the canisters in the pantry. My husband brought home an older label maker from work and I started to get the labels printed out, but then it ran out of paper. So I couldn't finish. It was a good start though. Starting is always the hardest part right? Hopefully I will get a bigger project done for next week. I might just have to buy a label maker, too.

Tot School

2009-08-23T20:24:00.000-07:00

M&M is currently 38 months old

M&M did a lot of things on her own this week using her imagination. Everyday her imagination is building and I love to see the things she comes up with. First of all she made a boat out of a laundry basket and stocked it full of toys.

Then she made her own picnic.

Our first activity was this styrofoam and toothpick shape/fine motor skill activity. I got this idea from Chasing Cheerios.

She did most of each of the shapes, but then it ended up like this because she was playing mommy, daddy and baby with them and they needed to lay down because they were going to sleep. Anything small turns into people these days.

I've been meaning to do this one for a while now, but had a hard time finding the suction cup things for a good price until I went to the dollar store. It is a Montessori activity using tongs to put the marbles onto the suction cups. This one came from My Montessori Journey. M&M really liked this activity and asked to do it again after using the tongs to put them back in the bowl. This is great because usually once she finishes something, if she finishes it, she will be all done and won't want to do it again.

For a treat this week we made pink popcorn balls. This would have been a great treat to make last week for P week, but alas I did not find it until later on. I saw it on The Frugal Family Fun blog and I knew it was something we had to make. The recipe is on the link. Ours didn't pour very well and so not all of the popcorn was covered in it. It made it a lot less sweet though which is a good thing! (If you haven't noticed I'm not really good at doing how-to's, tutorials, etc. but I'm good about linking to places that do have them!)

Nice action shot of the popcorn, eh?

M&M had renewed interest in her musical instruments this week. Here she is using her rhythm sticks as drumsticks. We made a drum out of an oat canister since we didn't have one. We'll probably decorate it sometime. You can't see it very well, but she has a microphone in between her legs that she is singing into. She wanted to sing and drum at the same time so that's the solution she came up with!
I thought M&M might like this next activity because it involves water. I found this idea here. I cut the top off of a cleaned out milk carton and a hole in the side. She was suppose to scoop the water out from the hole on the side and put it it the funnel on top. Most of it ended up on the ground. She didn't stick with this very long. I think I cut too much off of the side hole so not a lot of water could fit into it.

Not a lot this week, but we are doing the letter M this week. To check out what others have done in Tot School click here.

Works for Me Wednesday

2009-08-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

M&M has always been a momma's girl. She wants to be anywhere I am, doing anything I am doing. Having a shadow all day can get a little bit old at times even though I love my daughter immensely! I just need some breathing room and space every once in a while. I saw a great idea on the Let's Explore blog. She got a little bucket and small pieces of paper where she wrote down all of the toys and craft supplies that they had. Then when the kids get bored they pick out a piece of paper and play with whatever they pick out! She calls them Idea Cards. I gave this a try this past week and it worked out so well. I actually have two buckets. One bucket is for things that M&M has to do alone and the other one is "mommy and me" activities. M&M asks to pick things out now. Examples of some of the things that I put on the cards are:

Color in coloring books, playdough, doll house, blocks, stuffed animals, foam stickers, puzzles, etc. These are all things that are not messy and she can do on her own. It's so funny because if I just suggest these things when she gets bored she says, no! But when she picks it out of the bucket she gets excited and plays by herself for a good amount of time. This has worked really well for us!

(This is another blog carnival that I really like, but I probably won't do it every week.)

Tackle It Tuesday

2009-08-18T08:14:00.000-07:00

This is my very first Tackle It Tuesday post and I'm so excited because it means that I actually got something organized in my house. My pantry needed major re-organization. It is way too small for my needs so we decided to turn our coat closet into a makeshift food storage area. As I was sick a few weeks ago my hubby cleaned out the closet and set up shelves for me to put extra food on that didn't necessarily need to be in the pantry. (Maybe I should be sick more often because my husband hates to stay at home all day and get nothing done so he usually tackles some sort of project. ) :)

The before:

I started taking things off the shelf before I took a picture so just imagine the stuff in the pictures below on that third shelf from the bottom.
What I did: I bought some organizational containers at The Container Store (love that place!) to put packaged snacks in so that I wouldn't have a bunch of boxes. I also got the 3-tiered shelf there to put bottles and jars on. The most important and most effective thing that I got was the can roller shelf. I still need to get one more for the other cans. I also put my rice and pasta stuff in plastic containers. Doing this actually took up more room, but I like it a lot better still. The first two pictures are my pantry shelves, the third picture is the coat closet turned food storage and the last picture is the floor of the pantry where I bought some bins, at The Container Store where I put unopened flour and sugar bags, potatoes and onions and the third is for bags of chips because those are really annoying to store on the shelf because they take up too much room.

The after:

Menu Plan Monday

2009-08-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

This is my first time joining up with Menu Plan Monday. I'm really excited about doing this and getting better at doing it and following through on making the meals I plan. For right now I will just be putting main dishes down for dinner because I have a really hard time putting together side dishes beforehand...*sigh*. I will get better though, that's why I'm doing this. (Recipes to follow.)

Monday: Cheese-filled Jumbo Shells

Tuesday: Orange Chicken with bacon

Wednesday: Baked potatoes

Thursday: Tater Tot Casserole

Friday: Pizza

Cheese-filled Jumbo Shells
12 oz. Jumbo Shells
4 cups ricotta or cottage cheese
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
3/4 cup parmesan cheese
3 eggs
1 Tbsp. chopped parsley
3/4 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
3 1/2 cups spaghetti sauce

Cook jumbo shells according to pkg. directions for about 10 minutes; drain well. Cool in a single layer on wax paper to prevent sticking together. Mix together cheeses, eggs, parsley, oregano, salt and pepper. Fill each shell with about 2 Tbsp. of cheese mixture. Spread thin layer of sauce on bottom of 9x13-inch baking pan. Place the shells, open side down, in a single layer in the pan; over with remaining sauce. Sprinkle with additional parmesan cheese, if desired. Cover with aluminum foil; bake at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes or until hot and bubbly. Fills about 36 shells.

Orange Chicken with bacon
8 unskinned chicken breasts
Grated rind of 1 orange
3 Tbsp. white vinegar
3 Tbsp. soy sauce
3 cloves fresh garlic, pressed
1/3 c. fresh orange juice
1 finely chopped onion
16 slices of bacon

Marinate chicken in all ingredients except for the bacon overnight. Before cooking wrap two slices of bacon around each breast and secure with a toothpick. Grill over medium hot coals for approximately 35 minutes or until moist but firm. Chicken can also be baked in the oven at 375 degrees for 40 minutes.
Source: www.funcraftsandrecipes.com

Tater Tot Casserole
1 lb. ground beef
1 onion, diced
1 can of cream of mushroom (or celery) soup
1/4 cup sour cream or 1/4 cup milk
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 bag of frozen tater tots

In a skillet, brown ground beef. When beef is nearly done, toss in diced onion and cook until meat is done. Remove from heat, stir in soup and sour cream/milk. Taste, and add salt and pepper if needed. Spread in square (8 or 9-inch) casserole dish. Top with grated cheese and as many tater tots as can possibly fit (in one layer). Bake at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes, until bubbly and hot in the center.
Source: www.dinnersonme.blogspot.com

Muffin Tin Monday

2009-08-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

This is my first time joining up with Muffin Tin Monday. There is no theme this week so I just put together a quick lunch with what I had on hand.

In the cups: whipped yogurt with sprinkles, sliced cheese stick, ham roll-ups, broken up granola bar, ranch dressing, carrot sticks.

The ham roll-ups are a slice of ham with cream cheese spread on them, rolled-up and then cut with a toothpick in them. M&M loved these! She wouldn't eat the yogurt. The first year and a half of M&M's life she had a milk allergy so the only "dairy" she got was from soy milk. She grew out of this allergy, but will not drink milk or eat yogurt. I've tried different ways to present it to her to entice her to eat and drink them, but nothing has worked. I've tried giving her chocolate milk, different kinds of yogurt (whipped, yogurt sticks, etc.). The good thing is she does like cheese. She didn't like the granola bar either, but gobbled up the carrot sticks as usual.

Having the food in little pieces and in a muffin tin made it fun for M&M so I will definitely be continuing with Muffin Tin Monday!

Head on over to Her Cup Overfloweth for more fun ideas!

Tot School - Letter P week

2009-08-16T14:54:00.000-07:00

M&M is currently 38 months old

We finally had a week of organized Tot School, well at least as organized as I can be. We did the letter P this week and I had a lot of fun things planned.

P is for Playdough. We couldn't have a letter P week without playing with playdough. M&M loves playdough. I used some ideas from a post I found called, "What can we do with playdough?"
I'll probably get this out a lot more because it's a good thing for M&M to do at the table while I am making dinner. Now that she's older she can do it by herself and be creative with what she does.

P is for Puzzle. We made a puzzle P using construction paper. I got this idea from here. We also did a P princess paper craft as well that I don't have a picture of, but I got the idea from here that has pictures of the process.

P is for Peanut Butter. I wanted to make Peanut Butter cookies, but when I told M&M we were making cookies she wouldn't get the idea out of her head that we were going to do Chocolate chip cookies. Toddlers can be pretty convincing so that's what we did. We actually ended up doing the letter P for two weeks and so we did end up making Peanut Butter cookies using this recipe.

While we made the peanut butter cookies M&M was in charge of turning the mixer on. Well she was doing great at turning it on just a little bit up until the point that I put the flour on. That's when the mixer got to speed #10 and poof! there was white everywhere. I thought it was really funny, but M&M was embarrassed and kept saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I told her it was okay and once she saw me laughing she was fine.
P is for Pasta. I've been re-organizing our pantry (more on that in my Tackle it Tuesday post). While I was putting some pasta from boxes into plastic containers M&M wanted to help. It went along great with our letter P! Later on in the week I mixed a handful of different pastas (rotini, fiori, penne, macaroni, etc.) into a bowl and had M&M sort them. She loved this activity. Even though it's so easy for her she stayed with it until it was all done. That is a rarity for her.

P is for Princess. I got this miniature princess set for M&M for a $1 and she has played with it all week long. I can give her any little animal or figurine of any sort and she will sit there and play and talk for a long tim.
She also loves the wild animal figure set that I got for her at Target for $10. It came with a bunch of animals and trees. (I love our new Target that they built just down the street, Yay!)

P is for Puppets. I got these puppets on clearance from the Martha Stewart Craft section at Walmart. I really wanted to have get the puppet theater made that I have been planning on doing all summer long. I made progress, but didn't get it all done. I got the idea from here for those that would be interested in making one. I got my cardboard display board at Michaels for like $6.00.

P is for Pom Pom. I got these little mini silicone muffin tin things fro IKEA and M&M used tongs to put the pom poms into each of the cups. I got this idea from here.

More playdough fun. This is M&M's crocodile (I think). I love how she's starting to try and "sculpt" things out of playdough now. I love to see her creations.

P is for Puffy Paint. A few weeks ago Puffy paint was going around the mommy blog world like wildfire and I'm on the slow side of things so we just did it this last week. I've seen this on many blogs, but I used the recipe from here. I can't find the exact post, but the recipe I used is: 1 cup flour, 1 cup salt, 1 cup water. Basically equal parts of all three ingredients. We used Purple and Pink colors. And green, but for some reason that bottle wouldn't squeeze so we didn't use it. When we do projects like this M&M always wants me to do it too so our creations are pictured below.

I got these grow on your own princess and castle things. M&M likes to watch these grow, but I think they feel too slimey.

More ideas:
Popsicle Stick picture frames
Princess castle
Eat pudding, popcorn, pizza, pancakes.
Have a pillow fight
Put pennies in a piggy bank
Have a pajama party

Our potty-training journey

2009-08-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

Well, back in June I did this post and mentioned that we were in the middle of potty-training M&M. Well it's been about two months now and M&M is doing AWESOME!! I am so excited with her progress. As of the last three days she has been in underwear 24/7, even at night, and no accidents!

I first started thinking about potty-training last summer when I was pregnant with Bubba. I had three goals for M&M being: 1)getting her totally off of her binky/pacifier (at 18 months she only got it at night and for naps) 2) get her in a big-girl bed, and 3) potty-train. Even though I wanted to do all of them right then, I knew that wasn't feasible so I started with the binky. Surprisingly one day I told her she was a big girl and didn't need it anymore, she agreed and threw it away herself. Whew! That was easy. Then I waited for a while to get her into a bed because I was enoying being able to put her in her crib for naps so that I could take a nap during the day being very pregnant and tired. We had a twin bed that we put into her room and let her choose where she wanted to sleep. After one night on the bed she chose the crib. I think it made her feel safe. My mom suggested getting a toddler bed so we did. This worked. My mom really helped in this transition while she was here prior to my having the baby in December.

Sorry, got side-tracked, onto potty-training. People had told me to wait until after the baby came to potty-train M&M because even if she made progress she would probably regress. I think they would have been right because she DID NOT take the change with Bubba being born very well. It was a horrendous transition, actually, but that's another story. I was also breast-feeding and I didn't want to be potty-training at the same time because there would have been those times that I was feeding Bubba and M&M would need my help to go to the bathroom. So I waited until I had weaned Bubba and she turned 3. That was in June.

I started out just telling her to try throughout the day and eventually had to set a timer for every hour to remind myself because I would forget. I gave her M&M's for a reward and would put a sticker on a chart. When she got a certain amount of stickers on the chart she would get a prize from the prize bag, which I just filled with $1 toys, etc. that I got from Michaels, Target and Walmart. We went to see my family for a week last month and again my mom worked with her a ton and she made a lot of progress. We got to the point where she was pooping in the potty every time so she was just in pull-ups for a few weeks. I don't really know how we got from that point to now because I really didn't have to do much. She just took charge and said she wanted to wear big girl underwear. Of course we had accidents and messes, luckily no poopy messes though! I think that's all part of it because she needed to realize what would happen if she didn't go on the potty. In the last week or so she has been going all by herself without even telling me. For a while public bathrooms were a problem, but she got over that too.

All I can say now is, HURRAY!!! All of these things that I thought were going to be horrible turned out not to be that bad. I'm glad we waited until she was 3 to do the potty-training because after only two months, it's done! She didn't seem ready before anyways because she is VERY stubborn (she gets that from her dad, hehe) and with Bubba being born it would have been too much for her to handle all at once.

So, there's our journey. I figured if I said something about M&M being potty-trained I might have some questions about how I did it, so I decided to just do a whole post about it.

As for the memes that I posted about earlier, they won't be happening this week because I came down with the flu this past weekend and didn't do squat for three days. We started the letter P for Tot school last week, didn't get everything done so we will continue on this week. I have a lot of fun things planned!

My plans

2009-08-05T18:34:00.000-07:00

So this is my 50th post. Not a real big milestone, but it has me thinking about where I want this blog to go. Most of my blog thus far has centered on Tot School, recipes and Picnic table talk. So far this has kept me pretty busy. I have had a lot of goals in mind as I look at other amazing blogs. Some of these being:

Learn how to design my own layout or have someone make it for me
Learn how to make a button or have someone make it for me
Host a meme/carnival (are those the same things? I'm still learning a lot)
Host a Giveaway
Win a giveaway
Someone will want me to review their products and get my expert motherly opinion. haha.

These are on the back burner right now though as I have more important things in mind. And I realize that some of these are out of my control. These are things that might take years to accomplish, but it's always good to have goals.

There are things that I hope to achieve in the near future. I'm trying to add more things to this blog without adding more work on myself, per se. There are things that I need to add to my life to help my days/life go more smoothly anyway. I want to incorporate these things into my blog in order to motivate myself in doing them. I've just recently added weekly menu planning to my repertoire so I am thinking about doing Menu Plan Monday at orgjunkie.com.

Another meme I want to join up with is Tackle It Tuesday.

I have so many areas of my house and life that need attention and I have the organizing bug biting me. We moved into a newly built home a year ago and even though we were able to spread out from a 900 sq. ft. apartment to a 2400 sq. ft. house things don't all have their own place. I need more containers, shelves, and time to deal with it. I also need to set aside a certain time to do it. Tuesday works out great for me because at the end of the month M&M starts back up with the Mother's Day Out program. I have 5 hours to get things done. Hopefully I will use that time at home and not just out shopping like I have been doing the past few Tuesdays. I can't help myself when a new Target just opened up right down the street! hehe.

Anywho, I also want to start with Muffin Tin Monday.
This I will hopefully use as a tool to get M&M, and myself for that matter, to eat better lunches and to entice her to eat new things by putting them in a muffin tin!

I think it would be fun to come up with my own meme/carnival, but it seems like anything I could think of has already been done. These are my thoughts for now. I may come up with some new ones as well, but for now these will do.

One other thing that I would like to incorporate into my blog is another one of my loves....photography and photo editing. I would love to showcase some of my favorite pictures that I have taken over the years because I just have them stored up on my computer doing nothing. Mmmm.....maybe that would make a good meme....

Tot School

2009-08-02T19:38:00.000-07:00

M&M is currently 37.5 months old

As I was printing out a counting template that I found at Rockermom's blog, M&M came in, saw it and immediately wanted to use it. I was personally going to laminate it first, but who am I to miss a chance to work on numbers. I told her go to her playroom and find one of something. She came back with a princess crown. Then a pair of gloves for two and so on. I helped her a little bit in getting the same thing for each number.

We did counted some more with ocean-themed beads...

and the rest of the things in these containers
M&M played with the lentil tray for a little bit while I did some stuff in the playroom.

I've been meaning to make some popsicles for a while now like I've seen all over mommy blogworld. Before I made these I had seen somewhere to put the popsicle sticks into slices of banana so they would stay upright. Well.....it was a good idea, but it didn't work for us. The choice of juice for M&M was orange juice so we tried that. It wasn't the best popsicle I've ever had, but M&M liked it.

I have a lot of ideas stocked up on different ways to paint. I was waiting to use them for our P week, but as I started planning it I realized that it would be too much so I decided to do some of them this week. While I was getting the rest of the supplies M&M sorted out all of the paints.

We started off with bubblewrap painting. I first saw this on the Childcareland website. We also did cookie cutter name stamping, also on the Childcareland website. That's about all we got through though because M&M didn't want to do anymore. Oh well, I'll save the rest for another time.
I've seen the idea for Ice Treasures on several blogs including here and here. I did mine in three layers so that there would be things throughout the whole ice block. I put this out on the backporch and asked M&M what she thought we should use to get the things out. I gave her the spray bottle with hot water in it, but that wasn't fast enough for her. Then she tried with her fingernails, a piece of paper and a hammer. Eventually we got cups of hot water and poured it on. that worked for a while, but M&M got bored with it. I think this would be a lot of fun with someone else. We ended up leaving it in the sun and when we came back they were all free!

M&M asked to fish for letters so we did this activity again. I don't think I ever gave the link to where I found these fish, so here it is.

We tried ice cube painting these week as well. I found this idea on Chasing Cheerios. When we made them M&M put plenty of food coloring in them so we didn't have a problem getting the color to show up on the paper. I think it turned out really pretty actually. We still have some left over so we can do it again. Just refreeze it! Oh, like in the link I used cut up straws to put in them so we would have something to hold on to while painting.

Picnic Table Talk-Physical Activity

2009-07-30T09:06:00.001-07:00

This weeks topic at ABC and 123 is about physical activity. M&M has so much pent up energy that she has to do something physical everyday or else she will scream and cry to get out the energy that she needs to at the end of the day. During the spring we went outside to our backyard a lot, but now that it's soooo hot and muggy I just can't stand to be outside for very long before I'm drenched in sweat. M&M doesn't like to be out there for very long either. It really just drains you.

I think the most important part of getting children to do physical activity is doing it yourself to set an example. Now, as I say this I have to admit that I have not been very good at it. Being in some sort of pain whether it be related to pregnancy, knees or backs, I have not been able to exercise like I want to. I hurt my back on Friday and it's been hurting since then. Just today I've been in so much pain that I had to ask my mother-in-law to help take care of my kids. This is a very hard thing for me to do since I hate imposing on people.

But anyway, enough about me. I'd have to say that M&M's favorite physical activity is swimming. She thinks she is just having fun, but really she is constantly moving her body and exercising whilst she jumps in or tries to get from one side of the pool to the other. We have a trampoline with a safety net and M&M loves to jump on it. Although she hasn't recently because of the heat. I'm hoping once it cools down a bit this activity will pick up a little bit more. I remember growing up and jumping on the tramp was the way I got exercise, trying to do flips and such.

During the spring when the weather was nice M&M and I would play in our backyard. One of her favorite things to do is blow bubbles. Even though this is not a physical activity in and of itself, it can be for the one trying to pop the bubbles, especially if there is a slight breeze and one has to run all over the yard to catch them. M&M also loves to play soccer with her daddy, kicking a ball around and running after it.

Inside, one of M&M's favorite activities is dancing. Even if she's watching a show on T.V. or a movie she will dance to the songs. Her favorite movie right now is Mary Poppins and she watches this everyday, (shhh...don't tell). Everyday she will come and show me a new dance move she has learned. She's gotten to the point where she just wants me to fast forward to the parts where someone is singing and dancing. I will also turn on some music and we will just dance together whether it be slower music or fast. M&M loves to do somersaults as well and she's really good at them! I think next year I am going to put her into a dance class or gymnastics for her to be able to develop these talents that she is exibiting.

Other than that we take walks, go to the park and play on the playground, etc. Maybe when M&M is older we will set more time aside for structured active play, but for now she is constantly moving anyway so it works out!

My First.....and second award.

2009-07-29T07:25:00.000-07:00

Mouse Learns, Mouse Grows has given me my first and second awards. The first one is the Lovely Blog Award where I have to pass it on to 15 newly discovered blogs that I enjoy reading.

The second award comes from Mouse Learns, Mouse Grows as well. This blog requires me to tell ten things about me that readers might not know. Since I don't divulge much information about myself on here this should be pretty easy. Then I have to send it on to 10 other blogs. I am going to simplify matters like the blog I got this from and send it on to the same blogs.

So here's ten things about me:

1. My name is Sheena. My mom got the name from the singer, Sheena Easton.

2. I do not like hot humid weather, but that is what I am stuck in right now!

3. I am 25 years old.

4. I LOVE to travel.

5. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, i.e. a Mormon.

6. I was born and raised in Utah, but my husband brought me back to his home state because of a great job opportunity. (I miss my family, sniff sniff.) But I love it here as well.

7. I got my associates degree, started on my bachelor's at a different school and then met my husband. Got married, got pregnant, dropped out of school because of sickness and I only have 9 more classes to take to graduate. I wish I could have finished, but I might still do it.

8. I feel like I am a creative/crafty person, but just lack the time and energy to sew, paint, or make anything. I hope to soon change that because I have found it is a great outlet for me and I love all of the fun things I am finding on blogs to make.

9. I played the piano when I was a kid, stopped playing it as a teenager and now I wish we had a piano so I could play again. I'm hoping we will get one here pretty soon so that I can bring more music into our home.

10. My newfound favorite color is red.

There ya go. Now you know a little bit more about me than you did before if you even bothered to read this far down. :)

I am passing these awards along to:

Izzie, Mac, and Me

My Two Happy Homeschoolers

Taking Off My Shoes

Spinners End Nursery School

Tot School

Teach Mama

The Work of Childhood

Teaching Heart Mom

Live Learn Love

Frugal Family Fun Blog

Funny Days with Mommy and Maddie

Life of a Dairy Queen

Chocolate on my Cranium

One Crafty Mumma

Tot School July 20-24

2009-07-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

Yet another week without any plans. But I have a good excuse. I am focusing more of my attention on planning and organizing a lot of things in my life. I have all of these great ideas saved up on Evernote, but I have a hard time getting them off of the computer and into real life. I have found a way that works for me and hopefully I will be putting the system into work later on this week. I am also totally reorganizing my playroom because there is entirely too much stuff in there right now. See this post to see what it looks like now. I want to make more of a creative space for M&M to play on her own because that is something she really needs to work on and I really need her to work on that as well. She is getting really clingy right now and I need a little space. But just a little. ;)

On to Tot School. As M&M brought her baby doll's highchair into the kitchen this week one of the legs fell off. So being the clever little girl she is she went back to her playroom and got her toolbox to fix it. She spent a fair amount of time using all of her tools to pound and screw the leg back on. We then proceeded to fix her tricycle. I was the mechanic for this one and she kept saying, "Sir" will you please do this or that to the bike.

I saw this idea for English muffin pizzas on this blog. We made them for lunch one day.

Then we made a homemade ring toss game. I got the idea for this here. We poured dry rice into an empty water bottle and then used pipe cleaners to make circles and throw them over the top of the bottle.

M&M had a hard time with the smaller circles so she suggested making them bigger. I just twisted two of them together to make them bigger. This made it a lot easier for her.

Then M&M asked what else we could do with these so I got different size balls and I held one of the circles while she tried to throw the ball into it. She said, "We're playing basketball!" I was impressed because I didn't think she really knew what basketball was.
I'm really getting into these homemade games and activities. They seem to spark a lot more imagination than store bought toys and they're cheap!

That's it for this week, but I have big plans for the coming weeks. More letter of the week activities.

Family Traditions and a recipe

2009-07-24T09:32:00.001-07:00

Growing up my family had many traditions for holidays, etc. We also had things that we didn't do at a certain date and time, but we just did whenever we felt like it. One of these things was watching "Sound of Music" while eating Abelskievers. I loved doing this and couldn't wait to do it with my own family. At three years old, M&M loves loves loves Mary Poppins. She'd watch it everyday if I would let her. She loves the singing and dancing in it and so I thought maybe she'd like the Sound of Music as well. On Monday night, our family night, I broke out the Abelskiever pan (AKA Pancake Puff pan) and the Sound of Music DVD. M&M really liked the song parts of course, but wanted us to "pause to the next song" as she put it. It was really fun implementing a tradition I used to do as a kid into my own family now.

Warning: This recipe is not healthy in any way, shape, or form.

Abelskievers

Separate egg whites of 3 eggs, beat to high peaks. Set aside. Beat 3 egg yolks.
Add 2 c. buttermilk.
To buttermilk mixture add: (then beat well)
2 1/2 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. nutmeg

Fold in egg whites and then add 2 Tbsp. melted butter. Drop mixture into Abelskiever pan in which hot shortening has melted. (Put in more shortening each time you add new batter) Cook, then roll in powdered sugar. Eat them while their hot!

F.Y.I. The Sound of Music is based in Austria. Abelskievers are Scandinavian. These do not correlate in any way. It's just something we did as a family and I wanted to continue it.

Side note: As I was looking on the internet about the Sound of Music I saw that they are going to do a remake of it. I don't know how I feel about that.....Mmmmm. If you're a Sound of Music fan, what do you think?

Ultimate Chicken Fingers

2009-07-24T09:22:00.001-07:00

In my quest to ensure that my family has dinner on the table every night I have been in the search for more recipes as I am only in possession of a handful. I found this recipe on the box of Bisquick.
My daughter doesn't really like chicken except chicken nuggets, but anytime I make these she gobbles them down. It's definitely a keeper.

Ultimate Chicken Fingers

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch strips
2/3 c. Original Bisquick mix
1/2 c. grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp. salt or garlic salt (I use garlic powder)
1/2 tsp. paprika
1 egg, slightly beaten
3 Tbsp. butter or margarine, melted

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Line cookie sheet with foil; spray with cooking spray. In 1-gallon resealable plastic bag, mix Bisquick, cheese, salt and paprika. Dip half of chicken strips into egg; place in bag. Seal bag; shake to coat. Place chicken on cookie sheet. Repeat with rest of chicken. Drizzle butter over chicken. Bake 12-14 min., turning halfway through bake time with pancake turner, until no longer pink in center. (I don't turn mine over and it works just fine.)

I love how it's shaken in a bag because my daughter loves to help me make dinner and this is something that is fun for her to do.

Picnic Table Talk-Organization

2009-07-22T09:53:00.000-07:00

I'm so happy about the topic this week at ABC & 123. It's organization! I've come to find out over the past year of being in our own house that I am an organizational freak. At least I aspire to be one. If you came to my house you probably wouldn't be able to tell. I am on a journey to organization as well as everything else in my life. I could spend entirely too much money at IKEA and The Container Store if my husband would let me. He's been really good though about letting me get my supplies for Tot School and stuff to organize them in.

I've been meaning to do a post about organization for some time now, but I was waiting to be all the way organized so I could post about everything. Then this topic came up and I realized that it will be a long time until I am all the way organized so I might as well post what I have done.

Organizing Stuff:
To start off I have organized all of my Tot school supplies which extends from paints to workbooks to puzzles and beads, etc. We are fortunate to have an extra bedroom in our home that we have turned into a playroom. We could have made it an office/craft room for me, but we decided that will come at a later time and a place to store toys would be more beneficial. I am in the process of reorganizing this room with more storage options and getting more stuff off of the floor.

Any ideas??

To start this organization my hubby put up this shelf for me which I have stored puzzles and games on.
I use the closet in this room to store all of the Tot school stuff.
The other side of the closet has an old bedside table that I store craft supplies in.

Organizing Schedules:
When I think of organizing I think of how I organize ideas as well. I made a schedule board for M&M and posted about it here. In that post I said that I wanted to make a schedule for me as well so that M&M would see what mommy has to get done during the day. Well that was back in May and I finally got it done today. It isn't an exact schedule, but it's a check list that I can show M&M what mommy needs to get done. I have not implemented this yet so we will see what happens. It's nothing fancy either. It's just posterboard, sharpies and clipart pictures from Word. I don't know how to put together anything like this on the computer. I know a lot of people use Publisher, but I don't have that. It works for me though!
I also got the idea to make a calendar with interchangeable numbers and pictures on Blissful Moments. This way M&M can see what is upcoming in the week and look forward to it and when she keeps asking me about something we are doing I can turn to the calendar to show her how many days away it is. She doesn't fully understand the concept of days, but she will grow into it.

Confession time! I am so bad at cleaning my house and most of the time it just gets straightened, dishes are washed and laundry is done and then I don't have time for anything else. I made a schedule with one chore for each day. Again I made it out of posterboard, sharpies, and clipart. This one is mostly for me, but I did pictures so that M&M would know what needs to be done each day. She can either help me or play in her playroom/watch a movie, etc. For instance, she will not help me vacuum because she is terrified of the the loud noise it makes! Silly girl.

Organizing Ideas:
Next up is how I organize my ideas that I get for Tot school. This is the process. When I find an idea on the internet I use Evernote. This way I can highlight what I want and click and it will save it in one of my notebooks. I have made different notebooks for different areas of learning like: shapes, colors, arts and crafts, etc. I also have some for ideas that I get for organization, home decorating, projects I want to do myself or recipes. Once I get an idea in there I will periodically go through each notebook and most likely make a list of the activities in them. I recently found this Lesson Plan Book in the dollar spot at Target. I usually do a letter of the week as the basis for each week of Tot School. Each page as a different letter on it and I write ideas that I want to do on there and which notebook I can find it in on Evernote. The green sticky note as a bunch of words that start with the letter I am using. This allows me to think of ideas I can use for each of the words. I found these words on this website. From those words I go to DLTK and Making Learning Fun to find ideas, as well as the rest of the sites I have listed as resources on the right sidebar. Of course I use ideas that I have found from all of you wonderful bloggers our there.

When I find a paper activity, something that I can print out, I print it out and then put it in this file folder box. Each folder corresponds with a letter of the alphabet. I can just slip that into which letter it goes with and take it out at a later time when I am planning for a certain week to cut out or whatever needs to be done with it. When an activity has several pieces I use all different sizes of ziploc bags to keep all of the pieces together. I'm not very crafty so I just write the title of the activity on masking tape and stick it to the bag. It works!

When I am in the middle of making something I use this hanging file organizer from IKEA to store pieces for the project as well as other odds and ends.
Organizing recipes:
Another thing I am bad at is making dinner. Ever since having Bubba 7 months ago and even before that when I was so pregnant and miserable, I have not felt like cooking dinner or have not had the time to. My poor husband....

I have a bunch of recipes stored up in Evernote and finally got some of them printed out to put in plastic pages in a 3-ring binder with tabs to separate different sections. I found this wonderful menu planning form at The Project Girl website which I use to plan out menus for each week. The planner has a grocery list template on it divided into sections. This is a plus for me so I don't have to have another piece of paper that I could lose. She has some other great forms as well. I have to plan out menus or it will hit 4 o'clock and panic sets in as I scramble around figuring out what to make for dinner.

One more thing:
When all of those Tot school activities are done and we need a place to hang them up we put them on the wall in the playroom. They are actually bath rugs from IKEA that I've tacked up onto the wall. My original idea was to put corkboard behind it, but that project hasn't gotten done yet.

This turned out to be a really long post, but I hope somebody gets some good ideas from it to use in their home to get organized.

It may look like I have life pretty much sorted out, but that is far from the truth. I am really good at putting these things together, but not so good about following them. I am taking steps forward and making progress though and that's what counts, right?

I look forward to looking at everyone else's posts to get some more good ideas!

Tot School July 13-17

2009-07-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

This week in Tot School was a tough week trying to get back into the swing of things after being on vacation. Again no time to organize anything so we played a lot of games. I got some of these games on our trip at an education store I went to. I could have spent A LOT of money there, but my husband was with me so I had to keep it to a minimum, hehehe.

Love the $ spot at Target right now with all of the education stuff. I got 7 puzzles and we put them all together this week. M&M is starting to understand how to put regular/jigsaw puzzles together. I love the color one that shows how the two colors mix to make another color.

To go along with the puzzle theme we put together these shape puzzles from Infantino that we got M&M for Christmas. She wasn't ready for them in December, but she is really good at them now.

M&M was really good at these opposite cards. She knows the names of most of them.

M&M is good at saying which things, "match the same", but we learned about the word different this week with these cards. She kept saying "not the same", but eventually she got it.

We also did these cards for three-letter words, but she just put the pictures in order and I showed her that it used letters to spell a word.

That's about it. I hope to get more organized in the near future so we can do some more letter weeks.

Life School

2009-07-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

This is really late, but I wanted to post it anyway for my own purposes of memories. On the 4th of July we left to visit my family for a week.

As a little bit of background, all of my family live in one area and all growing up I thought that I would live there as well for the rest of my life. Then I met my husband. He was from another state. When we were first married I didn't even want him to mention the idea of us moving to his state. He still had to finish school, but then a chance came up for a job after he graduated with opportunities that we just couldn't pass it up. God has a way of softening our hearts so that we will follow His will.

Anyway, my husband promised that he would take me back to see my family at least once a year. It was such a treat to go and see everyone and for M&M to play with her cousins from the other side of the family. She actually ended up playing with cousins from my side of the family and from both sides of my husband's family. There was a lot of play going on that week. That's why this week of Tot school was more like Life School.

M&M had the chance to be a princess for a night with the rest of her girl cousins. They wore dresses that my mom made for all of them. They danced the night away with their daddies after a day of getting their hair and nails done.

We had the great opportunity to take her through an open house of a temple of our faith. It was such a wonderful experience and probably the best teaching tool to teach her about the most important thing in her life. We also saw the outside of another temple as well.

(I don't plan on talking a lot about my religion on this blog, but as it is such a big part of our lives the topic will come up once in a while as it relates to teaching M&M in Tot School.)

It was M&M's first time at a Children's Museum where she dressed up as a firefighter, played in a little store and house, and with a Melissa and Doug magnetic maze, and built things with her daddy.

The rest of the time was spent playing with A LOT of cousins on playgrounds while getting really dirty.

iHeart faces week 28: Feet

2009-07-20T07:03:00.000-07:00

I have seen the blog I heart faces and loved the idea, but never thought I had anything worthwhile, but when I saw the theme for this week I knew I had to enter.

I love this picture because it shows my daughter's feet after she's played with sidewalk chalk for about an hour. I love all of the details and lines you can see in her feet.

Check out I Heart Faces for more fun feet!

Picnic Table Talk - Imagination

2009-07-16T06:25:00.000-07:00

I wasn't able to do last week's Picnic Table Talk because we were on vacation so I'm excited to be back this week.

I really don't have to do much to get M&M to pretend play. We got her a play kitchen 2 Christmas's ago with some plastic play food and that has kept her busy as I sit with her in her play room. She cooks everything and then brings it over to me to eat. I've noticed that I don't need a lot of props for her because she will just pretend to have whatever it is that she wants to play with or pretend to be.

I do have a few dress-up clothes, but they are mostly the fake store-bought skirts and dresses to be a princess. I have a plastic set of make-up (which was very hard to find actually because most make-up sets have real stuff in them even for little girls) that we use to put make-up on each other. I am in the process of re-organizing my playroom right now and I will be setting up an area just for dress-up. I'm trying to think of ways of getting stuff out in the open because for some reason M&M won't dig through boxes, etc. to find any toys, she will only go for the ones that are already out. I need to get things out without it being cluttery. I've painted some wooden hooks to hang up hats and purses and I have a mirror that I'm going to put up so she can see herself all dressed up.

Thanks to my mom and her mad sewing skills, M&M has her own purple princess dress with sparkles and a tiara. I have to brag a little bit because my mom actually made 5 of these dresses for her granddaughters and then she put on a daddy/daughter dance . Earlier in the day the girls, who range in age from 3-5, got their hair done and nails painted at a beauty school. M&M was in heaven as she twirled and danced the night away while sneaking mini cupcakes from the snack table. This was the ultimate pretend play night because she got to be a real princess for a night.

I've noticed that when M&M pretends she doesn't need fancy props and tons of toys, she just uses regular everyday household materials. M&M loves it when I join in on the fun. I let this time be a time where she gets to do and make up whatever she wants. Most of the time I end up being the daughter and she is the mommy so she gets to boss me around. I notice that a lot of what husband and I do comes out in her play. My mom would call this play therapy. She used to do therapy with children and letting them play and act out helped her to see what problems there were when kids didn't want to talk about something. I have to be careful what I do and say because M&M is going to act it out! It also helps me to see what areas I need to improve on and gives me time to think about what I can do better next time when a certain situation comes up.

I have one concern of late with M&M's imagination and that is she is picking up things from other children as she plays with them and her new thing is "killing" things and people. Of course I don't even want her to act this out or even talk about it, but I don't know how to make her see how serious it is. I don't think she understands what it is, but that is something I really don't want her to pretend.

As you can see I don't have a lot to offer in this area, but I am excited to look at what others do so that I can get some great ideas and maybe have some structured time set apart for pretend play. I know M&M would love it!

Tot School -Letter F

2009-07-04T18:30:00.000-07:00

M&M is 37 months old

We did A LOT this week.

(I am not on my own computer and I can't get into Evernote which I use to store all of my ideas, so I can't link up where I got them, but I will do the best I can.)

We painted with feathers.

And fingerpainted.

We read the book The Rainbow Fish, by Marcus Pfister.

To go along with the book we made our own rainbow fish using a template from, I think, DLTK and tissue paper and tinfoil.

We sorted goldfish crackers by color and then ate them for a snack. I saw this on another blog, but of course don't remember, sorry.

This doesn't have to do with the letter F, but we also did this Melissa and Doug See and Spell puzzle that I got for $10 at a consignment store. I think it is the older version, but that doesn't matter to me!

I laid out all of the letters in alphabetical order and then M&M would pick the letters out that she needed and then I would have her put them back where they belonged. This was a great lesson in alphabetical order for M&M because she just knows how to sing the song, but doesn't know where each letter comes in the alphabet.

We made this cute fish aquarium that I saw, I think, on the Crafts-n-Things blog.

We also glued feathers on the letter F. This idea came from the No Time For Flashcards blog.

We also did several things with foam beads, but this is a picture of what happens when I have to feed Bubba in the middle of an activity.

I taught M&M about patterns with the foam beads. I got this idea and template on the paper from Childcareland.com.

After that M&M wanted to make letters out of the beads, because everything is about letters these days. I remembered I had these printouts of each letter from, I think, Childcareland.com so again, thinking fast to accommodate M&M's ideas I brought these out and we did each letter in her name.

I also saw this snack idea on another blog, but I don't remember. When I get home in a week I will put the links up for all of these things. This is a cup with vanilla pudding topped with crushed Nilla wafers for the beach and blue sprinkles for the ocean. Swedish fish, of course, are the fish. M&M did NOT like the swedish fish at all.

We did flowers with do-a dot paints.

Also did fingerprint flowers.

I found a template for the alphabet, capital and lowercase, on little fish so we went fishing with these cards. I made a fishing pole out of a small dowel, string and a magnet that I hot glued onto the end of the string. Then I put paperclips on all of the lowercase letter cards. When M&M picked one up she would look at it, say what the letter was, and then find the capital letter that matched, which were lined up next to her.

We got out her Lets Go Fishin game and played for a little bit.

But mostly she just wanted to take them out and play with them.

Since it was 4th of July week I remembered that I had this game, 10 days in the USA. The game board is a map of the US and each card has a state on it. We matched a few of the states, but this was too hard for her to do since a lot of them look the same.

We made fireworks by drawing an outline with chalk on black paper and then going over it with glitter glue. The first one is mine and the second one is M&M's.

We were cutting out something and M&M made a mess on the floor so we did a practical life activity of learning how to use a broom and dustpan!
We of course made an American flag with construction paper and silver star stickers. We talked about how the flag is made up of shapes and three colors. This suggestion came from Teaching my little bookworm blog.

As an original idea of my own we made our own flag of shapes and colors.

We gathered up these paint chip samples shaped like Mickey Mouse from Home Depot and made a matching game out of them. I've seen this on several blogs.

Short explanations, but hey, I'm on vacation!

Bubba's new trick

2009-07-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

Bubba (my six month old) is army crawling already! I did not think it was going to happen so soon. We have to totally baby proof our house again. M&M didn't start crawling this soon so it kind of just snuck up on me. He's even trying to get up on his knees. He's bound and determined to keep up with his sister. We have tile in most of the house so I don't know if he's gonna want to crawl on that though. He did this just in time to show grandma this weekend.

It's so different with him. With M&M I wanted her to grow up fast so that we could do fun stuff together. With Bubba I want him to stay my sweet, smiley baby forever! I'm excited and sad at the same time because he's growing up too fast.

Any babyproofing advice? It's been a while and we are in a different house than when M&M was a baby.

Easy Chicken Enchiladas

2009-07-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

I found the time to try out a new recipe. I will be doing this a lot more because I'm getting back into the swing of things. It only took me 6 months after having a baby, but oh well.

I found a recipe for Easy Chicken Enchiladas on the Make and Takes website. I've had this recipe for a while now and I should have made it sooner because it really is easy. I made it even easier on myself by getting a rotisserie chicken.

I don't really have an actual recipe with actual amounts for things, but here are the ingredients you will need:

Chicken (cooked and shredded)
Tortillas (flour)
Enchilada sauce
Cheese

As simple as this. You can go to the link to find out how they did it, but I will tell you what I did.

I shredded the meat from one side of the chicken because we only have 3 people to feed here. Added half of the can of enchilada sauce to the chicken and then added as much cheese as I saw fit. Spooned the meat mixture onto tortillas, rolled them and placed them in a small pan. (They used an 8x8) I used a smaller version of a 9x13 pan. I poured the rest of the sauce over the top of the enchiladas and sprinkled cheese, again just how much I thought was good. I baked it at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

It was super easy and my husband LOVED it. Even M&M ate some, which is a miracle in and of itself. Once more tip. I used the medium sauce and even though is was a little hot for me it was still good, I just put some sour cream over the top of mine to cool the sauce down. If you don't like spicy you can get the mild kind. More recipes to come!

Tot School- Letter D week

2009-06-27T18:15:00.000-07:00

M&M is 36 months old

I had a lot of ideas that I had saved for the letter D that I wanted to do it this week. That's how I decide what letter to do. It just depends on how many ideas I have for a certain letter. :)

We did a lot with dinosaurs. Since my first child was a girl I never got any dinosaur figures for her to play with. Little did I know that it doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl, kids are just fascinated with dinosaurs. I got a pack of three figures to do one of our activities and for her to play with.

This first activity doesn't apply to the letter D, but that's okay. I have seen several blogs with an open and close activity so I don't know who to accredit this to. I just went around and looked for little things that open and close. I put them all in a cute little suitcase that we got at the hotel we stayed at for our family reunion. I put fun little things in each of the containers for her to play with. I tried to get her to play with the things in free play, seeing how the different things could fit into different containers, etc. but it didn't work out so well.

I got some foam dinosaur models at Michaels that we put together. She played with these as well as the other dinosaur figures while I got the other activities ready. I'm still working on getting everything put together before we start school so that M&M doesn't have to wait.

We also made discovery bottles. I found this idea on the childcareland website. We made an ocean wave bottle and a slow motion confetti bottle. Honestly these were more fun to make then they are to play with. M&M wasn't that interested.

For a snack one day we dipped graham crackers in milk. This is a treat that my mom and I would do all the time while I was growing up. It was fun to do it with my own daughter.

We used the do-a-dot paint sticks to make dots on a dinosaur. The dinosaur template can be found here.
With the template linked above comes some smaller versions of the dinosaur which M&M painted and on a whim I decided that they need a home so I cut grass, tree and mountain out of construction paper.

With the dinosaur figures that I got M&M made dino footprints on the letter D. I got this idea from the Totally Tots, now I know my ABC's section. The letter D template can be found here.

I got this dino egg from the dollar store, but it took forever to hatch and M&M wasn't very patient. I found her many a time trying to help him out. The dinosaur inside actually felt pretty disgusting and slimy.

Daddy was a dinosaur doctor while he fixed the dino models. I don't have a picture, but we also played with M&M's doctor kit this week. She loves to do this switching between being the patient and the doctor.

I saw this activity on the Homeschool Creations blog about decorating donuts. I cut out a piece of brown paper in the shape of a donut and then I put some glue in a cup, put one drop of red food coloring in it and then mixed it up. This made pink "frosting" for M&M to put on the donut with a paintbrush and then sprinkle glitter on for sprinkles.

We also made semi-homemade donuts. This recipe just uses pillsbury biscuit dough fried in oil. They were okay for our first try at making donuts. I want to make some real donuts sometime, probably this fall. M&M enjoyed sprinkling the cinnamon and sugar on the donuts after they were cooked.

We played some dinosaur games on the Land Before Time website. Then I printed out this mask for her to play with.

Then just a few other activities that don't have to do with the letter D. Again I had so much more planned, but didn't get to it all.

M&M is really into writing her letters right now and so she asks me to tell her a name and then I spell it for her. Here is her writing of "mommy". I love it!!

I got this magnetic wand and balls at the education store the other day. They were suppose to be one of the discovery bottles, but M&M wanted to take them out and play with them. I think I will pull these out again because she had a lot of fun with them.

She saw these Martha Stewart puppets in the closet which I was saving for later. She really wanted to make it though so we did one of them. I got these on clearance at Walmart and will be a great addition to the puppet theater that I plan on making sometime in the future.

Next week we are going to do the letter F which will be for the Fourth of July, Fireworks, and Flags among other things. I'm excited for it.