October 2014

Tags

camping party, Gardening, Huntsville State Park, husband

One year has come and gone since I last posted on here. Obviously I cannot keep up with my New Years Resolutions. Anyway, since I last posted, Big Sister has turned 4, Little Guy is on his way to two and Husband and I just celebrated being together 8 years! We just took the kids on our first vacation as a family. Husband and I took the kids camping at Huntsville State Park. We were fortunate enough to have perfect weather all weekend and we ended up hiking a little over 7 miles! Big Sister did great and loved it, Little Guy happens to be afraid of bugs(found this out while hiking) and had to be carried the entire way. We still had fun and got a good workout.

We through Big Sister a Barbie/Camping themed birthday party. We had boys and girls at the party and didn’t want to be pink/purple everything so we had a camping party. Everyone had a ton of fun and the house looked great! We ended the party with a Wii U bowling/tennis tournament.

Our garden was hit and miss this year. We decided to try growing bell peppers this year, which took much longer to grow than I thought they would, so the plant is just now giving us peppers. Our tomato plant also took a while to flower, so we have gotten a few tomatoes, but the plant is already dying. We did get a few cucumbers, and the few that weren’t good to eat ended up rotting in the flower bed and growing new plants. I had a few herbs, but I did not keep up with watering regularly and those died too. I am not a good gardener. I will try again next year and see if I can actually get enough stuff to make pico de gallo or dress a salad.

Now Big Sister is already asking to see Santa and is ready to put up our Christmas tree and we haven’t even bought their Halloween costumes yet. Big Sister wants to be Elsa and Little Guy wants to be Hulk.

I have broken my own rules and have gotten a ton of books this year. I won’t even try to figure out how many I have gotten or how much I have spent(although remember, I never pay full price for a book, I always buy second-hand so it’s not as much as you think), but I now have 5 shelves full of books that I need to read. My goal was to read 30 books this year, which I have met that goal, so next year I will bump it up to 40. My other goal is to stop buying books because eventually Husband will notice that we are up to our eyeballs in books and probably leave me.

Anyway, I hope to keep up with this better, as always. Hope all is well with you and thanks for stopping by. :)

 

October 2013

Tags

Big Sister, Halloween, Home, October

Busy busy bees! October is so busy for us with all the birthday parties and Halloween/Fall activities we have planned. For the first week of October, we are working on the letter “O” and the color Orange. We will probably be working with the letter orange all month in the spirit of Halloween, and because Big Sister gets orange and red mixed up since they are so similar. We will also work on the letter “I” and the letter “U” this month. We might work on a fourth letter, but I have not decided on that yet. Of course we will be making tons of Halloween crafts and decorations for the house and for grandparents(they LOVE that stuff!). I will have to put the pictures up in a few days of our recent letter animal crafts. We have had a slight not-enough-memory problem, on my computer, so I have to move a bunch of stuff to my external memory to put new stuff on my computer. Big Sister is so into animals, so we do most of our letter practicing with animal words and pictures to make things more fun. For the letter “O” we made and owl, and we are doing octopus writing practice printables. Here in Houston, the leaves are just now starting to turn yellow and orange so we are finally going to start our fall activities. (In my opinion, it is no fun to do fall nature activities with green leaves.) We also have Big Sisters birthday party planned for this weekend! She loves fairies, her favorite is Vidia, so she asked for a fairy birthday party. We have a few boys coming to the birthday party, so I don’t think we will be doing any fairy activities at the party. Actually, I am not really sure what we are going to do, but I do have all the decorations purchased and the food planned. I just have to find a dress for Big Sisters party, she requested a pretty dress(not a skirt or a tutu, it must be a dress). We have a lot going on, but I hope to get some pictures up in just a few days. Thanks for stopping by! What do you have going on this month? 

Pin Food: Spinach Artichoke Feta Quesadillas

Tags

Chicken, Cook, football food, Home, Onion, Spinach

Thank you to Kaitlin, from The Garden Grazer, for sharing her Spinach Artichoke Feta Quesadillas! I found them on pinterest and had to check them out. The recipe is so easy and the prep time for these was fast! I added chicken to mine since I had a chicken breast left over from dinner the other night. I also used white onion instead of green onion because I forgot to buy green onion. They probably would have been better with the green onion, but they were still pretty good with the white onion. The tortillas came out crunchy which makes these more delicious and I added a ton of mozzarella to make them extra gooey. I wanted a quick snack to eat while watching the Houston Texans kick the stinky Ravens butts(haha) and this was perfect! You should definitely check out Kaitlin recipes, these Spinach Artichoke Feta Quesadillas(+ chicken!) were so yummy!

New Crafts

Tags

Children, crafts, DIY, hobbies

With all of my research for home school and toddler activities, I have found a ton of new things I want to make. I also had a few things that I have made recently that I had not been able to share yet. Here is what has been going on in my workshop:

1. Thanks to Anna at The Imagination Tree for sharing her idea of Fairy Dust. Big Sister and I are practicing letters and this is one way to practice letters with a fun twist. When Big Sister sees this I know she will love it because she is obsessed with fairies right now. I made purple and pink fairy dust with pink glitter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. I also dyed noodles for lacing practice. I have seen these at many blogs and I believe I got the idea from a book I bought, I do not remember which book at the moment. I wanted Big Sister to lace beads, but they are so tiny and Husband is not a fan of teeny-tiny things and with Little Guy scooting every where, we want to be careful of what ends up on the floor during play. When I saw these giant noodles, I knew I had to dye them for Big Sister. They will be easier for her to hold until she learns how to lace them better, and Husband will not have to worry about little pieces all over. I colored ours pink, purple, and blue for right now. We might make a few more colors later if I can find a different kind of large pasta.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. I also finished most of Big Sisters peg dolls. I had originally painted 16, but 4 of the little men looked sort of weird after I painted ties on them. I think I saw a pin about these little wooden dolls and I loved them instantly. I tried to finish them by Christmas, but with Little Guy on the way and my other projects they were done in February. Big Sister loves all her little dolls and they are just big enough that Husband didn’t freak out when he saw them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. This little chicken….is so cute! I found a pin which I followed to The Imagination Tree again, who gave instructions for an easy and fun game for toddlers. She also had a link for the instructions for the little chicken bean bag her daughter uses for the game. When I saw these I knew I would be making them in every color I have. They are super easy to make and Big Sister loves the first one I made her. She and Husband played with the chicken for a while and then she asked for chickens in every color! So I had to make a bunch more, I love how they turned out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. I also made a popsicle stick puzzle for Big Sister. I got the idea for the puzzle here(scroll down a bit and the pictures will take you to the instructions on a different blog, but I just saw the picture and guessed how to make them myself), and decided to make a fairy puzzle since Big Sister loves Tinkerbell and friends. It was super easy to make. You will need some big popsicle sticks, any picture your child would like, glue, tape, and an exacto knife. I mod-podged my sticks after I cut them apart just to keep the picture clean and help keep it attached to the sticks, but that was just my preference. The picture still looks really good after being sliced up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am working on more stuff and hope to be able to share them with you soon!

Our playroom construction, put on hold.

Tags

Garage, Home, Home Office, Home School

A few weeks ago, Husband and I came up with the BRILLIANT plan to turn a large part of our garage into a room. Our house is not very big and our attached garage is a big underutilized space.  (It is considered a two-car garage, if you are the proud owner of two smart cars, which we are not.) We have the regular house repair tools and lawn equipment in the garage, but not much else. We thought about putting the kids in the same room, but Big Sister has a ton of toys and is used to her own space and Little Guys current room would be kind of small for our playroom/school room idea. So we cleaned out the garage, got rid of a ton of junk, and made plans for our new room. We had a slight glitch in our plan, right after Husband put the frames up for the room, we remembered that we might need a permit for the work we were doing. Husband solved that problem pretty quickly though and got a $30 permit at the county office. So he set off again and got the sheet rock up, the wall taped/floated, and the wall painted and then my car started acting up. Now a week and a half has gone by and no construction. We were hoping to get this done in a month, but with one car out of commission, I am not sure when it will be finished. As soon as the room is done, I will post plenty of pictures. Until then, we are stuck doing school activities in our living room. Hope you have a great day!