Fall Dress

Last year I made H this pumpkin shirt for our trip to the pumpkin patch. Well this year it is to short so I made it into a dress. I just add fabric to the bottom and a ribbon on top to hide my mess lol and now she is ready to wear it again. I made it a little long so she may be able to wear it next year too.

Apple Dumplings

My husband made this the other night OMG they were amazing! He got the recipe from all recipes and I am not going to lie when he told me there was Mountain dew in it I was not to sure, especially since that is the one soda I really dislike. but turns out it was amazing. Here is what you will need:

Ingredients

• 2 large Granny Smith apples, peeled and cored (I used honeycrisp apples)
  
• 2 (10 ounce) cans refrigerated crescent roll dough
• 1 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 (12 fluid ounce) can or bottle Mountain Dew

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9x13 inch baking dish.
Cut each apple into 8 wedges and set aside. Separate the crescent roll dough into triangles. Roll each apple wedge in crescent roll dough starting at the smallest end. Pinch to seal and place in the baking dish.

Melt butter in a small saucepan and stir in the sugar and cinnamon. Pour over the apple dumplings. Pour Mountain Dew™ over the dumplings.
Bake for 35 to 45 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown.

Simple Halloween decor

So I am all about cheap and homemade decorations. Here are some of the things that I have made and my little one has helped in making. She helps with EVERYTHING which I love but there is nothing getting past her. LOL

These are ghost that we made from styrofoam balls from the dollar tree and cheese cloth. I have these hanging from the chandler in the dinning room and then some outside in the trees. My daughter thinks they have there mouths open like that cause they are hungry and they want some of our food.
This is a mummy we made using an empty pickle jar and cheese cloth I cut into strips then hot glued to the jar. H wrapped it and told me where she wanted me to glue. Then we attached googly eyes to the jar.
And finally these are bats cut from foam I got at Hobby Lobby half off it was really cheap and they are from last year and still work great this year. We just have sticky tack on back of them. I put the sticky take on and let H hang them where ever she wanted. they came out really cute.

Decorating Pumpkins

At our Halloween party for MOPS the kids got to paint a pumpkin. They had so much fun and for 2 children it was there first time painting so it was extra special. Here is the way H's pumpkin came out. We used tempra paint I would not recommend that type of paint because the paint started to pile off as soon as it dried I think next year I will use craft paint, but it is about the process not the product and they all had a blast.

Halloween treats

Today we had a small Halloween get together for my MOPS group and here are a few of the things we had to eat. My friend made some amazing spinach dip with witches fingers. I unfortchantly don't have the recipe for the dip but the fingers were really easy to do. She just took carrots and added an almond to the tip with a little bit of cream cheese. Super cute. Then we had Mummy dogs YUMM. Me and other mom made them at the party cause the kids where busy playing but they were such a hit that my daughter wanted them for dinner too. All it is is hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls.I cut the crescents into strips with a pizza cutter. Then my friend made brown tomes. She made a batch of brownies and cut them into rectangles and half a Milano cookie for the tome. She used gel icing to write RIP on it and then used gel to stick the mini pumpkin candy on the tome. Super cut idea. We all had a lot of fun and the kids had fun painting pumpkins.

Halloween art

SO here is some of the art that we did this week. Both very simple to do and what kid doesn't just love playing with glue:) in this first one I cut out a pumpkin shape out of orange construction paper and gave her pumpkin seeds and glue. She had fun counting the drops of glue she dotted on the paper and at one point made an eye but then it ended up blending in with all the other things. Before we did the project we talked about what was inside a pumpkin and what it may look like. I used store bought seeds for this only cause we didn't carve the pumpkins yet that will be fridays project and we just had seeds at the house. The other one I just gave her green paper and some open ended materials buttons, eyes, straw pieces, pom poms and sequence. We read the book Go Away Big Green Monster this week and we talked about what a monster would look like so she created her version of a monster. I think he is pretty cute. Love how she gave him eyebrows and a spider nose. very creepy

Homemade lava lamp

Thank you Martha Stewart Halloween special! I saw this and just had to try it. Fill bottom of container with 1 to 2 inches of water. Add food coloring until desired color is reached. Tilt bottle slightly, and carefully pour vegetable oil into container, creating a layer on top of water, filling to about 1 to 2 inches below the opening of the container. Break Alka-Seltzer tablets in half and drop into container as desired. They will sink directly through the oil layer and begin bubbling in the water layer, drawing the colored water up through the oil like a lava lamp! It is so AWESOME!

Halloween wreath

I have made a couple of these tips of wreaths in the past for friends having babies and they are so easy to make. This year I decided to make a Halloween wreath. All it is about 2 yards of fabric cut in to 1 in wide and 6 inch long pieces of different colors and patterns. and you just tie it on the wreath. I go the wire wreath basic that has 4 layers of wire wide so it is fuller you can get it a hobby lobby for $1.99. I should have taken a picture of the base first but didn't think about it till just now. After you material is cut you just start to tie it onto the base it really is just that simple. I made the plaque in the middle with a unfinished piece of wood that I painted orange and used puff paint and free handed the black dots, ghost and words. The whole thing cause me like $3 cause I used scraps of material I already had at the house.

Fall goodie bags

The leader of my MOPS (moms of preschoolers) group made these little goodie bags for all the ladies at our table and I thought they were so adorable and just had to share this. it is just an orange bag filled with candy and twisted at the top and tyed with floral tape and a pipe cleaner. so simple and super cute. great favor for a party or just to surprise teachers, friends or coworkers.

Apple slices

I saw this in a magazine and it looked good so I just had to try it. All it is is an apple slice with peanut butter on top and raisins on top. It was so easy and the kids can do it. We loved it! a must try

Magic Pumpkin Seeds

Yep it is still 100 degrees here in Arizona so we are still in shorts and totally jealous of everyone having nice weather and light jackets. My Mother-in-law did this with H when she was visiting earlier this year with a flower and H loved it so I recreated it for pumpkins. I just took pumpkin seeds and put them in a small ziploc bag and scrapbook paper and a stick and glued it on to make the bag. I thought about painting the seeds with some sparkly glitter to give them whimsey but decided to just go with the plain. Then I mailed it to her, and let her open her own mail. We then when outside and dug a hole and buried the seeds just like any other seed and watered them in a nice sunny place. We talked about all the things that a seed needed to grow and how long it would take to grow, ect. She said 100 days LOL. Then that evening when her daddy got home from work she went to help him pick out clothes to change into and I replaced the seeds with this little pumpkins. (I wanted the really little cute ones but they didn't have them at store so these would have to work) After dinner he asked her what she did that day and she grabbed a flashlight and told him to came see. She was so surprised to find little pumpkins there it was adorable she told her daddy, "Wow they really are magic seeds it only took one day to grow." over all it was really fun and magical experience. We are going to be decorating them with buttons, glitter, and of course googly eyes tomorrow.

Muffin Tin Monday Jack-o-lantern

We have been talking about pumpkins and Jack-o-lantern. So I made a fall/Jack-o-lantern theme: peach yogurt with Halloween colored sprinkles, apple cinnamon straws, water, bugles, pumpkin shaped sandwich with mini M&Ms for face, and loaded mash potatoes. H had fun decorating her sandwich like she did her pancakes yesterday.

Jack-o-lantern pumpkin pancakes

OK so I posted a recipe for pumpkin pancakes the other day and we had some left over pumpkin and my little one asked if we could make the pancakes again. So this time I reserved about a tablespoon of batter before the pumpkin was mix and put it in a ziploc bag with one drop of green food coloring. After I made the circles for the pumpkin base I added a small green stem. and when it was done cooking I let H decorate it with mini M&Ms to make a jack-o-lantern. SHE LOVED IT!!!

Halloween toe nails

My daughter loves having her toe nails painted, she is the type that will sit still to have them done since she was about 11 months old. I started doing polka dots for her at the beginning of the summer it is so easy to do. You just take a tooth pick and cut it in half then dip the cut side in the nail polish.

Pumpkin Pancakes

cutest little pumpkin pancakes ever:) (well bugs are not that fall friendly but my little princess really wanted buggy pancakes) I just used regular pancake mix and added 1/2 can pumpkin, pumpkin spice, cinnamon and sugar, brown sugar and added a little more water to loosen it back up cause it got thick. I made these for the first time last year and they are a family favorite.

Apple prints

We have been talking about apples and pumpkins this week. The other day I let my little make apple prints. you take an apple and cut it in the middle and just let them paint with it and make prints.I think I put to much paint on the foil (which I reused from making biscuits for breakfast I like to try to reuse anything I can) The prints didn't come out the way I had planned for them to look but I have a strong philsophy that kids art should turn out the way they want it to be not the way we have it in mind. By the end of the project she had the two pieces of apple mixing the colors together and just swirling it on the page and then finger painting. To me it is not about the end result it is about the process. She loved it and that is all that mattered.

Pumpkin Cranberry Bread

I am making this Pumpkin Cranberry Breadhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif for my MOPS meeting tomorrow morning. I made a loaf and then muffins for my daughter and husband with the left overs. There are only 8 women in my group. I really love the bread however the next time I make it I am either going to try dried cranberries or none at all. I used defrosted frozen ones and they where really tart and I didn't care for that part however the pumpkin part was amazing.

So filling mini muffins is kinda tricky so put a ziploc in a cup to hold the bag for me and poured the batter in.

Then cut a small corner and use like a pastry bag

Muffin Tin Monday: more ocean theme

today for Muffin Tin Monday H wanted another ocean theme. We had a really busy week last week and didn't get to do all the things I wanted to do for our ocean theme so I am continuing it into this week. She had goldfish, yogurt colored blue and has crumbled animal cracker and blue sprinkles for beach and ocean, sail boat made out of an apple sliced in half and then a fourth on top for sail with a toothpick holding it up, and dolphin nutella and jelly sandwiches. in the bottom middle there is also a half of baby bell cheese that is hard to see.

Fishing for letters

For part of our ocean theme last week I found this cool idea from pinterest to use magnet ABC letters in the bath tub to go fishing for letters. I add some sea life things like fish, crab, shells, glass rocks, ect. to show the ocean part and to find out what was magnetic and what was not. I used her fishing pole and a magnet from an old name tag from work where I used to work(just tied it one and put a line of hot glue on string to keep it from coming off. She had so much fun, and keep doing it over and over for an hour! She even started to see how many she could catch at once. Her high score was four. Oh I used two drops of blue food coloring to make water blue

Homemade Menu

My daughter is always asking me, "Mommy, what do you want to eat." she wants to take my order like at a restaurant. Only problem is no matter what I order she is out of that. lol so I said to myself I'll fix that, I can get her to make a menu for her restaurant from grocery store ads. That way I have to pick something on the menu. So I got some old ads and let her cut out what she wanted on her menu. She did fantastic cutting them out but I did have to trim them up a little to make them all fit on the page. I wrote Menu on top and what each thing was under the picture so she could see the written for of the word as well. then put it in a clear protector page and taped the top with packing tape. She loved it and loved cutting and helping me glue. I let her put the glue on and I put it on the page just to make sure it would all fit. Then she used the leftover ads to make a food collage.

Oh and by the way my first order was pasta salad and they ran out she already served it to daddy and it was to late to make more I had to chose something else. Oh well I tried.

Rainbow fish

We started talking about oceans and fish today after a fun fishing trip to the lake last night with daddy. We used worms, and caught live crawfish and minnows for bait. H loved helping daddy catch the bait and play with the worms lol. Who needs a boy lol just kidding. So today she was asking me a lot of questions about fish so I decided to do a ocean theme week. We looked on the computer at different parts of the fish. so we did art today with the idea of rainbow fish after reading a Rainbow fish book. She love added the sequins and tin foil to the paper plate fish and was so proud to show daddy when he woke up.


Here she is last night with one of the minnows her and her daddy caught

Lower case and Upper case puzzle

A while back I posted about these letters I found at Target in the $1 section. I decided to make a game out of it and put them in a big circle in the middle of the living room. I separated the lower case from the upper case letters, by leaving the upper case on the floor and the lower case in a bowl in the middle. I had H pick a lower case letter from the pile and then find the match in the upper case letters and put the puzzle back together. We talked about the sound each letter made and the things that started with that letter as she pulled them out of the bowl.

Muffin Tin Monday

Today we had apples, cheese stick, celery, pretzels, and peanut butter and jelly shaped like dolphins and a heart. we started talking about Oceans and fish this week. and will continue to talk about it through next week. I am excited about all the activities I have planned for the week.

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.