Unhealthy Picnic Date

Sometimes in life I think you just have to say "screw it" and make yourself a very unhealthy lunch...

I'm talking with sugar, white bread, white flour, and jelly...lots of oozy and goozy jelly.  

What do you do with this lunch?

Why would you commit such a diet sin?  

Well today I did it so I could sit on the living room floor on a blanket a little boy named Cal tried his best to spread out.  We put our lunches on the floor and had a little picnic.  

Emma was at art class so it was just the two of us.  

I got a jelly kiss from a little boy whose face was covered with it.

I'm in love.  

And today I made a memory with a little boy who got to eat junk food...on the floor!  With his Mama!  On a picnic date!!!

Be still my heart...eating white sugar and flour it totally worth it for this! 

DIY: Valentine's Day Wreath

Every year I loathe the day Nick tells me that I have to take down the tree. 

I really wish I could be one of those crazy cat lady people who keep it up all year. 

That's not weird, right?

But alas Cal's Birthday is the 7th of January and we like to have a party and so I have to get all of the Christmas items cleaned up before people come.

This year in an effort to not cry everysingle.day after the tree is gone, I've decided to decorate for Valentine's Day early.  Usually Valentine's decorations consist of me throwing stuff up about a week before the day. 

But not this year my friends, not this year! 

But alas I found, I had no wreath!  How can one not have a Valentine's Day wreath? So I decided to make one!!!  (Impressed aren't you???) Here it is friends:

What do you think?  Cute? 

 I started with these items.  I am considering this a free craft because I didn't go out and buy anything for it...but of course I had to of bought them at some time, right? I bought the wreath form a huge long while back, but then could never figure out what to do with it. 

<Update> You do not need to have one of these forms!  You can fashion a wire hanger into a circle, cut out a circle from an ice-cream bucket, anything.  Get creative!

The yarn I bought from Goodwill when Emma had a kitty cat party and we hung yarn from the ceiling...I got a trash bag of yarn for $2.00.  Not bad for yarn I never really had a use for...until now!

 So I wrapped the yarn around the hoop thing (was that some type of pioneer game?  No?)  for what felt like a kajillion nights of tv.  until the darn thing was done. 

By the way, I know you're loving my pjs...cooking utensils on pajama pants are hot, let me tell ya. 

 Then I simply free-styled some felt hearts and hot glued those puppies on.  Just felt pieces I had left over from other projects. 

I hung it with some sweet lace that Nick's Aunt gave us.  I love when people bring me huge boxes of remnants and say "here"  LOVE that...it's like a treasure!

So voila!  Look around and see what you can create today!  Has anyone made any fun (and maybe cheap) crafts for Heart Day??? 

How I Cook with Kids

I've had a lot of people ask me how on earth I cook with the kids.

Don't they make a mess? Doesn't it take so much time?

Definitely yes to both questions. I do not cook with the kids all of the time because quite frankly, it would be a disaster. I don't want to cook with the kids when I am stressed or running on a strict schedule, because I don't want it to be something they remember as me screaming at them or herding them away.

Today though was a day of freezing cold weather so we are staying in all day. Why not make cookies? Better yet, gingerbread cookies. Here are some of my pointers for cooking with little ones:

Tip #1: Be patient and breathe: just lower your expectations from the beginning. You can be sure not all of the ingredients will make it into the bowl...there will be a lot of unhygienic practices, and probably not a lot of sharing. Just know that going into it.

Tip #2: If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. I think that rings true here too. The kids are not patient people so them waiting for me to get the chair to climb to the tippy-toppy shelf to look for some forelorn ingredient usually is a recipe for disaster. So I've gone to measuring everything out ahead of time so we can just dump and mix. A lot of times we will measure out because that is good of course for math and all that, but with the two kids and just one Momma, I often time just pre-measure...especially when the recipe has a lot of ingredients as this one did.

Tip #3. Laugh. I found humor in our "friends" baking with us today. I know some people think this to be gross but the cookies are just for us, and for Cal it helped him stay involved longer...let the toys bake too :)

Tip #4: Have the kids be prepared. I put the kids in their own aprons so they feel ready and excited. Thanks to my very generous Aunt Jan the kids have a great variety of cooking tools, pot holders, and all kinds of fun things, just for them. I think these help keep their attention a little longer and keep them excited

Chef #2!

Tip #5: Find age appropriate jobs: I've learned this one through a lot of trial and error. Emma loves to cook but I've often given her jobs that were just too hard. She's frustrated, I'm frustrated, and then it's just no fun. I try to give the kids things they can do and feel a sense of accomplishment from doing.

Cook with your kids...you'll be glad you did :)

The Art Institute

Emma and Baby Grace...isn't she an adorable Momma?

Thoroughly enjoying smores!

Emma and I making smores...somehow we slaved away while the boys enjoyed the fruits of our labor...teehee!

I think he has too many marshmallows in that cute mouth

My cuties in the museum

Here we are!

Daddy and Emma

Today we visited the Art Institute and had such a wonderful time! We truly are blessed by our family and we always have such a great time together. It amazes me how funny our children are. We have such well behaved children, it always amazes me!

We also ate at a restaurant which served smores you could make at the table and had a great time! Afterwards we did a bit of shopping where Emma took Baby Grace with her...so cute!

All in all it was a wonderful day of beginning cultural experiences for the children. While at the museum we discussed which colors make us feel happy and the textures of the paintings...how Vangogh used a skinny brush and monet used a lot of oil paint and it looks very chunky...who knows if they wull ever use this info but at least I will know it is in their cute little brains somewhere!

A Week in Pictures

Here's the way this last week looked.

We did a little sledding at our neighborhood hill, which I LOVE:

As you can see they loved to sled. Then we went to Lowes. What do you do when you're bored with Lowes? You're silly of course!

And maybe a little contemplative of if your family MIGHT have gone off the deep end. Especially when you look in the rearview mirror to see....

'Sup?

And then there's our little diva, Miss Kazoo

Also we are not really keeping Gingerbread house kind of people...

We also like to play dress up althought to Aunt Jan's chagrin, this is no dress...

I have no idea what in the world is going on here. Do I even try to ask?

So that's us in a nutshell. Enjoy!

My New Home!

So I am going to be blogging here. Unless I absolutely am hating this, and then maybe I will move back. Either way, here I am right now. Well this weekend went well. I think that I am really liking this whole, cool weather thing going on this October. At first I was freezing, but once your body gets used to it, its not so bad. We went and got a pumkin at the pumpkin farm. As you can see, Emma is not too sure that she wants to share her wagon with a pumpkin.

We went to Babies R Us today and I can now say that we have all of the bedding for Baby Calvin. It is going to be cute. When we got home, Nick primed the walls and Emma and I booked it to the library (ha, gotta love puns!) He is now officially done with sanding the drywall so I was even able to hang some of Calvin's clothes in his closet. Here's a question for you...how is it he still isn't even born and yet Calvin has more clothes than me? Life is just odd. So I hope you enjoy this blog. Let me know what you think with comments. Love you all!