Painting strips

Ok so I decided to paint strips on my daughters walls. that was well A LOT OF WORK!!! I painted a base coat then marked the a dot at the top and bottom of the wall. I used a long board to make how I wanted the strips to look then used the board to mark the wall it went a lot faster that just measuring every time I need to make a mark. I drew arrows so that I know where to paint. it was a lot of work but when we pulled the strips off the wall it was so worth it.

Pancakes with bacon in it!

So I saw this recipe and my mouth started watering. I cooked and drained the bacon, I used maple bacon, then poured the pancaked mix right on top. I added a pecans and a little maple syrup to the pancake batter. My husband and daughter loved it.

Clutter busting

I am so tired of clutter and things looking messy. I always have things piling up at the end of the bar at my house and it drives me nuts. We save all our receipts for sales tax for our taxes so receipts pile up everywhere. So I got a cute basket with a lid to put all the things that pile up in that spot in that way they are at least more organized and cleaner looking. I plan to go through the basket once a month to sort out the trash and put things away.

Bored Jar

So I have seen a bunch of people make "Bored Jars" and I thought that it was a really good idea. So here is what I have come up with for ours go my inspiration here http://mushkiloves.blogspot.com/2011/05/potty-prize-jar.html
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Reuse egg cartons

I loved this idea for reusing egg cartons for paint trays,I can't remember where I saw it. but I thought it was a good idea I also use yogurt cups, baby food jars ect. I love reusing things.

Push board

I made a push board that I made for a friends little girl for her birthday. I just took a push aboard and hot glued the fabric to it. then ribbons and feather boa. It was really easy.

Jewelry Math

I found these really cool shapes the make jewelry at the the dollar tree by linking together. I dumped them out on the table and had H sort them into 3 piles stars, flowers, and hearts. then we counted them to see which ones had more shapes then the other shape. I continued with sorting by color, and then making patterns with the jewelry. we made an all heart bracelet and a color pattern necklace. she had so much fun she didn't even know she was learning.

My daughter helping me make twice baked potatoes for dinner. I love including her in cooking. She has her own knife from pampered chef. she cut the broccoli, mixed and mashed the potatoes, filled and added the cheese to the top. How do you include your kids in your meals?

Muffin Tin Monday

Today H had her last day of this session of dance class and had a small party after. The class is from 9-10am so I made banana muffins and made these cute little toppers for all the girls. I had it printed at Office Max for 29cents. If I would have thought about it I would have had them shrink it a little but they still came out cute and the girls loved them.
For muffin tin Monday we had a left over banana muffin, pomegranate apple sauce, fresh peaches, string cheese , hot dogs and of course ketchup and trail mix with peanuts, raisins, and goldfish.

I am so excited about my Goodwill finds today. I got all of this for $11:) I just love getting a great deal for things and I have no shame in second hand stuff. Kids us things such a short amount of time.

learning upper and lower case letters

I found these at Target in the $$ section in the front of the store. I think it is a great way to show the difference in upper and lower case letters.

Muffin Tin Monday

I am so excited that summer is almost over and we can start getting back into the swing of things. we are doing Muffin tin Monday again hopefully every week like before. Summer time is so hectic so it is nice to get back to slow pace again. Today we had chocolate pudding, grapes and blueberries, cherry tomatoes, California roll sushi, and a ritz peanut butter cracker she made herself. She eat everything but the chocolate pudding of all things.

Muffin Tin Monday

Muffin tin Monday yesterday was grapes, apple sauce, baby carrots, pizza, and homemade chicken noodle soup. This is the first MTM I have done in a really long time cause of vacations, summer movies, and back to back activities, H was so excited to see it back.

Ice treasure hunt

I recently had a group of kids over for the evening and wanted to have something for them all to do. I used a medium size bowl and froze water in layers. each time I froze a layer I would add different things like shells, marbles, plastic bracelets, small sea life toys ect. (all from the dollar tree) it took the entire day to do layers. It took the kids at least 30 minutes to get all the treasures out. I gave the kids scoops, cups, spoons, warm water, and salt. They has fun experimenting with how to get it melt faster and everyone had there own idea it really got there little minds working.

WHY we don't say SORRY!

Ok so some of my friends have noticed that I do not make my daughter say sorry. I feel like it offends my friends a little that they do not hear the actual word "sorry". Well here is why. I feel like the word is way over used and means nothing to a child other than that is what I have to do to get out of trouble. The child does something wrong, weather it be accidental or intentional, and then says a quick and un-meaningful “sorry” to fix the problem. I feel like it is just to make the parents happy, and teaches the child nothing and is empty.
Of course I want my child to apologize. However, there needs to be more empathy, and understanding then just mumbling "sorry". I am trying to teach her to acknowledge her mistake and show remorse and learn to think of other ways to handle the problem so that it will not happen again. I feel like this will help her now and later in life when she does make a mistake to try to do right by it and not just brush it off or avoid it with a quick empty sorry.

What do you do when your child does something wrong?

Wordless Wednesday in Garden with NaNa and PawPaw

Practing writin her name

Today was the first day we worked on writing and spelling her last name. She is doing really good she can already spell it by her self and this was her first attempt of writing it. I found this dry erase writing board at Target for $1. I don't do a lot of formal teaching, it is mostly learned in play or normal situations, but i couldn't resist. I think the most important thing when teaching kids at young ages keep it simple short and sweet. I never force of make her do sit down learning. I introduce the technique and go along her interest and mood. As she gets older it will be more structured. But fun for now, and she loves playing school.

Color changing

I took a Ziploc bag and put blue finger paint on one side and yellow paint on the other side. I sealed it good and gave H a Q~tip to move the paint around. She used her hand as well. We talked about what we thought would happen to the colors when they mixed. Once it was mixed she started to use her fingers and Q~tip to draw and to write letters. she loved practicing writing letters in the bag. We made hand prints and pictures in the bag. Then we talked about if you could see through the bag and if it was translucent, transparent or opaque.Then we talked about examples of things that were all of the different types. She has asked me to do this project over and over.

Painting Fairy Maska

For some fun summer projects I got a couple of crafts at Micheal's. H had a lot of fun painting the fairy. At first she was really focusing on staying in the lines and then she started mixing colors and telling me about the new colors she was making on her fairy. All in all she had a ton of fun and it kept her busy for almost an hour

Making voids

For art/science experiment we took a few objects we found around the house. We used two sponges, and a glove (in the future if I do this again I will not pick objects that absorb water lesson learn by mommy)it still worked but not as nice as I would have liked it too. I added food coloring to water and let her spray the paper. then we removed the objects to see the shape on the paper. before we started we talked about what she thought would happen when she sprayed it, and if the paper would change and how. when she was finished she used to squirt bottle to see how far she could squirt the water. H would stand in one place and squirt the water and try to hit the deck then she would back up to see if she could still hit the deck.

I heart faces: Bright and vivid

So I just found this new photo challenge website. I have a passion for taking pictures especially of my little girl! so I decided to start entering in it. I have NO professional training just a really nice camera and a good eye for taking picturhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifes. Please let me know what you think and if you could give any feed back to help me get better. Here is my entry for the Bright and Vivid challenge my daughter loves to blow bubbles.






http://www.iheartfaces.com/

Muffin Tin Monday: the letter B

We did MTM on Sunday night due to a really busy Monday. This week we are going to be focusing on the letter B. My best friend is having a baby boy this week as well so there will be lots of B's this week. For Muffin Tin Monday we had blueberries, teddy grahams 'bears', bananas, buns on our burgers, and broccoli, and all the utensils where blue. I wrote the word of each food item above or below the food so she could see the word that starts with the letter B.

Dance recital

H had her first dance recital this past weekend. It was so adorable. She did so good! for being one of the youngest in the class we were so proud to say she was one of the best. They danced to munchkin land from Wizard of Oz.

Tracing shapes

I recently made a tracing folder for H. I just used clear protector pages and but a dashed line picture of different shapes and the word of the shape under it for word recognition. I let her use a washable marker to trace the shapes and letters of the word that way I can reuse the page over and over. I just learned that tracing is a skill needed for kindergarten so I thought if would be fun to practice.

todays lunch

Today for lunch we had apple sauce, strawberries and quesadilla. H really loved the lunch today so I thought I would share.