Busy Bags

A couple of years ago I heard about the idea of busy bags. Basically, busy bags are individual activities for toddlers/preschoolers that keep them busy. They are all educational and teach some sort of valuable skill, but at the same time are very fun for the kids. You can use them in a variety of situations... when a babysitter comes, when going to doctor appointments, to preoccupy younger kids when teaching siblings, etc. Each activity is kept in a ziploc bag and the children can pull out one activity at a time and have fun. I loved the idea and immediately bought this book. They recommend participating in a busy bag swap, so you make 20+ bags of one activity (thus cutting down on cost and time) and swap with other moms, so you end up with a full set. I didn't even know 10 other moms at the time, so my plan was to make a full set myself. But, really, what mother has that time, or that money? Idea dropped.

Fast forward a couple years. One of my friends from college, Kirby, announced on her blog that she was organizing a busy bag swap with a friend. I immediately sent and email about how I had been pining to participate in one for quite a while. I shortly got an email back and I was in. Let me tell you, the wait was worth it!

I was assigned the cupcake busy bag. At the simplest level, you can decorate cupcakes. I included felt numbers, so the kids could also practice their numbers with the icing decorations. I also made cupcake recipe cards the kids could follow to practice their numbers more.

We received 25 busy bags last weekend and the girls have LOVED playing with all of them. It has been such a blast going through all of the bags with the girls. There is a perfect age mix, so both girls have a variety of activities for their age. It has been interesting to see which bags are their favorites.

Emily plays with this clothesline busy bag every day. I give her a big bowl and a rag and she pretends to wash the clothes for her baby doll and hang them up to dry.

And Olivia is captivated by this pipe cleaner activity. I cut the pipe cleaners into smaller pieces, so she they are a little easier to work with. She even figured out how to open the top and empty them out, so it preoccupies her for some time!

I highly recommend participating in a busy bag swap if you have young children. Of course, that means, you will probably have to organize it yourself, but luckily for you, Kirby and Chelsea (the other organizer) have already done all the difficult work. All of the activities are compiled onto one page, so all you have to do is assign the activities. Each picture is linked to the activity's tutorial, pictures, printables, and more. Trust me, if you offer this to your friends, you will probably have to turn people down in the end. I know Kirby and Chelsea did.

Just go to the following page to get all the information... BUSY BAG SWAP

Here is to HOURS of fun!!!

My 3 year old isn't obsessive compulsive, at all

First I was impressed, when at a little over 2.5 years she was producing work like this...

I mean, look at some of those letters...

And then I started picking her up from her little class at church and looked at the other kids' work. The lady actually tried to give me a coloring sheet with scribbles all over it. I wanted to say nicely, "That is not my daughter's." This was...

But I realized things were getting bad when this worksheet took us some time because every sticker had to be perfect.

I have had a slight problem with perfectionism my whole life. Unfortunately, Emily received every gene associated with it. Such a long and frustrating life ahead. She gets so upset, at the ripe age of 3, when she messes up one thing when she is coloring, or now, writing. One wrong move and she wants to throw the whole sheet away.

The next one in line will be a tornado, though. She probably won't care about a thing.

Multitude Mondays - Week Twenty-Four

381. getting to stay home every day and nuzzle on my babes

382. watching Emily's little brain retain more and more information

383. a third little Wetzel growing in my tummy

384. a fun tailgate in Aggieland and taking the girls to see the Aggie band

385. a little cooler weather (sorta)

386. staying busy (This really is a blessing. I have decided I hate the summer. Once we get a pool in our backyard, I will rethink my decision.)

387. the ability to place books on hold at the library (Picking out books at the library is unthinkable with my toddler. Thank you, Lord, for the ability to put books on hold from the security of my own house. Now, I can quickly run in and pick them up without having to worry that Olivia is crawling on a table or ripping a book to shreds.)

388. being able to communicate more and more with Olivia (her vocabulary amazes up daily!)

389. making friends in our homeschooling group

390. all the time the girls have had recently to bond with their daddy

What's on the table

So this was going to be a one-time post, but I realized that there were quite a few recipes I wanted to share, so instead, I am turning this into weekly series (or probably bi-monthly, at the rate I post).

Once upon a time I had a cooking blog, but that all changed when we had kids and life started getting busy. Plus, I started this family blog and I couldn't keep up with two (much less one). I still love cooking and we really try a lot of new recipes at this house. I honestly don't know how people have meals they cook weekly. The most I can cook any recipe is twice a month, and that is for very few meals. I would get really tired of eating the same thing. When I am on top of things, we generally eat 2 old recipes a week and the rest are new. Obviously, some turn out to be losers, but when you find a winner it is nice adding a new recipe to your repertoire.

I know I have said many times recently how much I ADORE pinterest. Really, if you are not on, you should change that immediately. Go to pinterest.com and sign-up and start pinning any craft, fashion, decor, or recipe idea that catches your fancy. And, oh the recipes!!! Although one or two have been serious disappointments, most of the recipes we have tried have exceeded our expectations. Here are some things we have tried around here lately that we have LOVED...

I would have to say this has been the biggest winner. We love wings around here and I have tired numerous recipes for baked wings. (I refuse to fry things.) So many have been flops and haven't been what we were expecting. This recipe, however, has become an all-time winner. We have made it with actual wings, but we also cooked it for a big group on the grill with drumsticks. Both were incredible! Please try IMMEDIATELY.

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Daniel does not like eating hearty dishes in the summertime, and although it is now fall, with the weather the way it has been I thought he wouldn't go for a vegetable chowder. But, hey, I am the pregnant lady with all the cravings, so I made it anyway. It was EXACTLY what I wanted and he couldn't stop raving about it. I suggest you try this soon and feel healthy for all the vegetables you are eating (but you must forget about the butter, milk, and cheese).

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We made these breaded shrimp for the shrimp parmigiana sandwich from the same food blog. Although the sandwich was good, we are more shrimp po-boy type of people. We will definitely be keeping this recipe for breaded shrimp, though. I cannot tell you how easy they were and how fast they disappeared!

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This loaded pasta salad is a wonderful lunchtime meal for the summertime, although it will stay on our menu all winter around here. And talk about healthy! It definitely won awards all around.

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MOPS and a creation craft

Today was the first day of MOPS (Mother of Preschoolers) and I have really been looking forward to getting back to this wonderful group. All MOPS programs are set up differently and ours is speaker-based, which I love. We had some really good speakers come this past year and I cannot wait to hear everyone who is currently lined up to come speak to us, including a personal suggestion I had. Living in Houston, we really have a lot of powerful speakers at our fingertips!

Unfortunately, I did not get to participate at this week's meeting because they needed someone to help out in childcare. It was probably for the best, though, because I somehow got suckered into doing the curriculum for the kids program and I wanted to make sure everything went smoothly for all the classes. My husband keeps telling me that I didn't get suckered in because I sort of volunteered, but what was I suppose to say when at a leadership meeting they told us all to start praying about someone to do the kids curriculum because we were in desperate need of someone and I had just been looking at stuff online that was appropriate? Maybe I can say God suckered me into it? It was sort of a right place at the right time sort of situation. Someone had to step up. I came up with all the ideas and have people who are willing to get them all together -- that really is all the help I think I will need. Although, I am also the service coordinator. We will see how sane I am by the end of the year.

This year, the kids are going through stories in the Old Testament, so of course we started with creation today. We read the story, went over an applicable Bible verse a couple of times, then everyone got to do the craft. I think it was quite a hit and I even heard some mothers raving about it. Score! Let's just hope that the other crafts go over just as well.

The older kids made a tissue paper earth sun catcher. Emily's is above. I decided I LOVE contact paper and will be buying a lot for crafts around here. Talk about a mess-less activity!

For the little kids, I figured tissue paper would be too difficult to work with, so we did a similar activity with construction paper. It is based off of an idea Emily did at mother's day out once when she was 18 months, so I knew it was doable. Olivia gets to participate in craft time this year, so it is fun seeing her first creations, as well.

Letter C

I figured I should get letter C pictures up here before we got any further. It was a slow week and we took a couple days off here and there -- that is the nice thing about homeschooling. We ended up finishing our week on Saturday, which didn't seem to bother anyone, since Daddy was at work all day. I didn't take as many pictures, which was nice because I really got to enjoy each activity with Emily. I know a few certain people are interested in what we are doing, but maybe from now on, I will only show a few highlights. And we don't tend to get out of our pajamas until after the school day is over. Sorry about that.

More of the girls room to come later, but for now...

We concluded the week by reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and doing a few activities. It was so much fun! I can see how a curriculum like Five in a Row can be so loved. It just feels like it would be a lot of work to me, though. We already had the book and Confessions of a Homeschooler already had all the printables we used. To do the year-long curriculum, though, it would require me to go to the library each week and then plan out activities, and a lot more activities at that. An ideal curriculum would allow me to have everything together before the school year starts. I do like the idea of stART projects (story + art). This seems like something easy that could be added to any curriculum.

Hungry Caterpillar graphing...

Hungry Caterpillar lacing...

And, of course, we had to make our own hungry caterpillar.

The Girls' Room, Part 1

I have been absolutely exhausted this past week FINALLY getting the girls room together. It isn't anywhere close to being done, but Daniel and I made a lot of progress. I cannot wait to show everyone the finished project, but as for now, here is is the background...

It all started right after Olivia was born and my mother-in-law was visiting. I think we had the television on HGTV the whole time she was staying with us. It was during that time that I fell in love with Sarah Richardson -- I had never seen her show, Sarah's House, before. Every once in a while I like what a designer does on HGTV, but Sarah is different. There really isn't a room of hers that I have seen that I don't drool over. I went absolutely crazy over her style.

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It has really become the inspirations for decorating the house we are in. Then I ran across the following room from Jenny at Little Green Notebook. I absolutely loved what she did with her girls' room. Those headboards! Suddenly, our girls' room was starting to take form in my head. It must have layering of fabrics, great color, and two upholstered headboards.

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I am also a little obsessive compulsive about things matching. I just knew, given my children's ages, that they would be bringing all kinds of treasures into their room to showcase. I wanted there to be a lot of colors in their room so that whatever they brought in would match.

Once we knew we were moving to Houston, I found some upholstered headboards for sale on craigslist and jumped on them. Literally. I lined things up as we packed up our house in NC and told the guy to wait until we got to Houston. Looking back, it was probably a waste because we could have easily made them ourselves, since they were going to be reupholstered anyway. Whatever. You win some, you lose some.

Once we got to Houston and the headboards were in our hands (more like my in-laws garage, since we were still homeless) we went to search for the perfect starting fabric. I wanted a large-print, floral design that had lots of girly colors in it, including turquoise. Unfortunately, when you get something like that stuck in your head, you aren't going to find it. I found one print at Calico Corners I liked, but at $54/yard (and needing 4 yards) it would be too pricey of a project. Luckily, my mother-in-law had some luck on the remnant table at Hancock Fabrics.

The fabric was exactly what I was looking for, but there was only 2 yards of it. My mother-in-law suggested I use a solid fabric for the headboards and make large pillows out of the floral. Sold. So we had a room that was painted the wrong color, headboards that were in the wrong fabric, and a base fabric to work off of. Funny enough, though, the room and the headboards happened to match. The previous occupant of the room was a little girl who loved pink bows, apparently. Emily insisted on taking every new person into her room to show it off as I stood by and made a lot of excuses. Everyone always thought I had planned it that way. It had a LONG way to go!

I knew I wanted a striped fabric with all the colors for the bed skirts, but when my mother-in-law pointed out how much yardage was needed for bed skirts, I knew that was a no-go. I was stuck. And then the room just sat... for about a year....

Dinnertime mischief

This is what generally happens when I am trying to cook dinner and my children are not sitting in front of the TV. They distribute the 200+ candles that we received from Daniel's grandparents all over our house.

Why can't that be the time they are quietly reading books on their own?

Haircuts

We decided to take a risk and venture down to our local Supercuts to get the girls' locks trimmed. Did you know they have feathers? It sold us. None were installed on this trip, but maybe next time? I hear it is all the rage for 18 month olds. Olivia got her rat's nest of a head shaped up and Emily got adult-like treatment. Both girls seem to enjoy the trip, and we are very happy with the final products.

Olivia all cleaned up...