Teacher Appreciation

So the school year comes to a close and I am scrambling to put together appreciate gifts for teachers. I scour Pinterest primarily, and came up with gift basics of goodies. Here is my collection:

A snack-size ziplock filled with M&Ms and a card attached:

I happened to have a bunch of cool-colored paper clips, so I bagged these up with a card reading: "Thank you for holding everything together!"

Doesn't everbody need a little fun, too? We added some silly string (Goofy String from the Dollar Store) just cuz...

Got some highlighters? Add a card reading: "You were the highlight of the year!"

I made flower heads from cereal box cardboard (although I'd recommend something heavier next time). My daughter decorated it, then we duct taped it to a skewer.

  
We glued Dove chocolates to each flower petal. Because what teacher can't use a little more chocolate??

Whatever various school supply surplus I had, I added in:

 

We gathered everything into a cute Dollar Store bucket:

A To Do list for my future self

Do you ever tell yourself that you'll take break when all the laundry is over... or you'll sit and read the newspaper when the dishes are done.. but somehow it never seems to happen? Something else always comes up! Well, I thought I'd make a list for my future self. Perhaps I will hold myself accountable to it, perhaps I'll laugh at how naïve I was "back then."

I've got two of my kids in full day elementary school and the last one will not be for 2 more years. It feels now, like when that happens, I should surely have all kinds of free time! Time for a well-deserved break! Here are some of the things to do for myself:

• Sit at a coffee shop, bringing nothing to do. Just sit.
• Sit at a coffee shop with a book to read and all day to read it!
• Meet a friend at the coffee shop.
• Go to the library and read by the fireplace. Don't check out a single children's book.
• Take a long bike ride.
• Go to the park and swing.
• Go to the park and read.
• One week, go to the gym every day, Mon-Fri, and be a workout feign.
• Go to the gym at least 3 times per week regularly.
• Sit in the hot tub at the gym after a good workout.
• Have lunch with a friend at least every few weeks.
• Sit outside in the sun and read.
• Sit outside in the sun and nap.
• Nap.
• Watch The Today Show without needing to pause, turn up the volume, or attend to anyone else's needs.
• Go to Boulder for an errand and stay until I have to pick the kids up.
• Go to Boulder to hike for the day.
• Perhaps I will have a part time day job by then, perhaps not.

I didn't realize how easy it would be to make such a long list! Perhaps I'll keep adding to it over the next two years....

What's on your list?

My Valentines Day

The day started great... David got up and I heard him downstairs with the girls. What made it better was that I could hear that he was feeding the cats, a chore I almost always do. I also knew the girls both signed up for school "hot lunches" today, so I was able to stay in bed a bit longer, not having to pack lunches.

I decided to start our holiday with some festive breakfast. I pulled out the kids' heart-shaped plates and gave them cinnamon toast in shape of hearts. I also pulled out chocolate cheerios and strawberry frosted mini-wheats. As we got started, Hannah came downstairs very sadly. She expected Cupid to have been here already and to start the day with surprises from him. Nothing Daddy and I said made a difference.

This winter we've gotten later and later getting the girls to school. Even when I get everyone headed to the car at 8:30, we still can't seem to make it before the "late car traffic." So once again, I'm approaching the school and see tons of cars. My preference is to make a U-turn to park right by the school. But there is a steady stream of cars exiting the parking lot headed my way, making it difficult. Stupid me, I thought I could do it anyway. Have you ever pulled ahead of a parallel parking spot in preparation of backing into it only to find the car behind you kept driving right up behind you so you can't back in? Well, this happens to me every few times I attempt this maneuver at Red Hawk. I even put on my turn signal as I pulled forward, but apparently this is only helpful from my perspective. Others don't seem to notice it. As I pulled ahead to try for a second spot, I managed success. Sort of. I was honked at by a car who went around me in frustration. I think it was even my neighbor! oops. So we all got out and walked the farther distance to school.

Because of parking a bit farther up the road, we all had to walk through a bit of mud. This is a challenge, since a 3 year old doesn't see mud as a problem. As she and I walked back to the car I started prepping her with instructions to keep her feet down in the car, to not get mud on my carseat. With her size, the back of the seat in front of her is usually her foot rest and I needed to be sure she understood that wasn't okay today. We arrived to the gym/library parking lot and as I went to help Erin out, I saw mud all over the seatback. Yup. You starting to get a feeling for what kind of day this is going to be?

We had a pretty uneventful Friday morning doing our usual routine - dropped Erin in the Rec Center's Kid Station so I could work out. Picked her up and had a snack in the Rec Center's lobby, then walked across the courtyard to the library for "Music & Movement" class, then library time. When I was getting hungry for lunch I had trouble getting Erin out of there. Small hiccup, but a pain nonetheless. This resistance lost her the chance to watch tv while I made lunch later. We finally got home and I parked in the driveway, planning to wash my car a bit later, since there's no sign of snow for the week ahead.

As I was about to help Erin out of the car, I discovered Hannah's wallet on the car floor with money she had intended to take to school for a contest/fundraiser that ended today. Change of plans - hooked Erin back in and off to Red Hawk we drove.

In the office I was starting to explain the situation when I saw Kelcie walking towards the office looking very sad. Lunch time had just started and she couldn't eat due to feeling nauseous. We took her into the nurse's office to sit for awhile and see how she felt. I took Erin to the cafeteria to tell Hannah we'd dropped off her money (which I don't think she even realized she'd forgotten). Back to the office, where it was decided we'd take Kelcie home. Signed her out, got her backpack and on our way. I found out later that Kelcie did indeed buy her school lunch and sat down with it before realizing she was sick. Bummer about the wasted lunch money spent.

As we pulled into the garage (this time given up on my hope for a clean car), a florist delivery was awaiting us. A vase of beautiful pink tulips arrived to cheer up my mediocre day. Thanks, Mom!!

Kelcie went up to her room to rest and I started lunch. Erin was messing with my delicate sheer curtains and of course asking her to leave them alone fell on deaf ears. I found all the curtain ties on the stairs. Erg. Erin spilled her glass of of water at lunch. Par for the course.

Miracle of the day - Erin actually napped. Considering that Kelcie was resting in her room, I had lost any hope of Erin napping! After a bit I checked on Kelcie, to discover poop smeared in various spots of the bathroom and having to change the stinky poopy trash. But at least there was a good-sized stool in the potty! Luckily Kelcie was better with a bit of rest and time. No vomiting. No fever. No need for a doctor appointment.

I was prepared for picking Hannah up from school to be another challenge, knowing that many parents attended the late-afternoon Valentine parties so many extra cars would fill the neighborhood. Miracle of the day #2 - I found a spot on the edge of the parking lot! I left Kelcie and Erin in the car to get Hannah. The perk to having two children at school is that if one is home sick, the other can bring their things home. Hannah came home with both Valentine boxes, goodies and flowers delivered from Daddy. Now to go home and trash the house in order to check out all their cards and loot. Sigh.

The day ended nicely with heart-shaped strawberry pink pancakes for dinner, Daddy coming to the rescue bringing treats from Cupid and time spent reading books together before watching some Olympics.

All in all, drama not unlike most days around here. But in the midst of it all, it sure feels pretty bad.

Keeping Your House Reasonably Clean Without Spending Hours at aTime

Setting up a cleaning schedule with no more than one task per day has made such a difference and helped me to feel much less busy and stressed. Maybe this is old news to most of you - and kudos if it is - but it was enlightening to me and improved my life so much!

Start by brainstorming what tasks need to be done at least once a month in your home. Mark each task by how often each must be done for you to feel your home is reasonably clean. I use the term "reasonably clean" loosely, because if this is going to work, you need to let go of sparkling clean. Be willing to have some cleaning tasks done less frequently, knowing everything important will be done this month at some point. Group your listed tasks by their frequency. Here's a sample list:

 

Daily:

Wipe kitchen counters

Wipe dining table
Sweep floor under dining table

 

Weekly:

Vacuum living room

Wipe down bathroom counters

 

Bi-weekly or Monthly:

Dust house

Vacuum bedrooms

Clean toilets

 

Now, even though you are creating a daily cleaning schedule, everyone needs a few days off. And you need to account for things coming up.

Here's my final list, as a starting place:

 

Valentine Garland

Here is a simple garland you can make with your preschooler.

Cut a set of small colored papers. Decorate them with whatever you have - glitter, stamps, stickers, etc.

Punch a hole in both top corners of each page.

String ribbon through them all and hang up.

Simple!

Wonton Meal Cups

There are so many things you can do with wonton wrappers beyond making wontons. You could fill them with all kinds of things from making raviolis to meatballs, seal the edges and bake. One of my newest favorites is making filled cups. While you can press refrigerated biscuits into muffin tins and do similar recipes, it can be tricky to be sure they don't come out doughy. Besides, sometimes you want a deep dish pizza and sometimes you want thin and crispy.....

Taco Cups

Lightly grease muffin tins.

Arrange your wonton wrappers across each muffin cup. If your filling is greasy or watery, you may want to use two layers of wonton wrappers.

Put about 1 tablespoon of seasoned taco meat in the middle of each wrapper and lightly push them down into the cup.

Cover with shredded cheddar cheese.

Bake @ 350 for about 10 minutes, or until lightly brown.

 

 

Sorry my pic doesn't show full muffin tins....I was in such a hurry to start gobbling these up, I almost forgot to take the picture!

Other ideas of what you could fill them with:

• Sloppy Joe mix
• Layer with lasagna ingredients

Please comment on this post if you have other ideas or have tried other Wonton meal cups - I'd appreciate it!

Wonton Art Turned Snack

There are so many things you can do with wonton wrappers beyond making wontons. You could fill them with all kinds of things from making raviolis to meatballs, seal the edges and bake.

Edible Crispy Snowflakes
This was a great activity for my kindergarteners when friends were over to play on a winter day. Square-shaped wraps work great for folding into a triangle once and maybe twice. Use scissors to cut into snowflake shapes however you wish. You can also forgo the folding and simply cut as you desire. Either way, cutting with food is fun for kids!

Spray lightly with cooking spray, then sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

Bake @ 350 for 8-10 minutes - but keep an eye on it, as it can go from lightly brown to burned fast!

 

 

Once finished, the kids get to eat their art! A crunchy, lightly sweet snack. 

I'm having a bad, bad day...

I'm having a bad bad day.  It's about time that I get my way. Steam rolling whatever I see, uh -  Despicable me.

This morning I hung out with my daughter and a few of her classmates as they waited to walk into school. I greeted two of her friends and one looked completely miserable. I thought I'd take a moment to help her change her mood. She began to vent. But she didn't seem to feel better. As I tried to think of what to say to her next, the other child started going into what was wrong about her morning. Wow! It became clear to me they weren't interested in a grown-up trying to smooth it over, patch them up or fix it. They wanted to commiserate and unload - and just have their moment of grumpiness. And hey, we adults need that too, don't we? I was glad to be reminded of this lesson by a couple of 6 year olds this morning!

My kids know, sing and dance to the "Despicable Me" song. I like it as a diversion when we hit a rough patch. But for when that doesn't work, I want to hold onto this reminder that kids sometimes need to stay in their miserable moments too.

Bronco Fever!! Homemade Custom Shirts!!

 

Being a proud Broncos fan for years, I'm always keeping my eye out for a shirt at the thrift store or on clearance. Sadly, they don't ever seem to become cheap after the season finishes. And now, with the Super Bowl coming up, I was determined to get my own shirts. Here's what we did:

 

I searched the internet for free clip art, broncos logos, and followed all kinds of links to find what I wanted. I saved a folder of images. Then I found shirts we already had in the house for myself and my girls (plus one last-minute trip to thrift store). We had a package of "iron-on transfer" paper for our printer. It is a bit pricey, but the package of 6 sheets is much cheaper than buying new shirts!

 

I printed up all our pics, put them on our "upcycle" shirts, and now this family of Broncos fans have new gear to sport on February 2! Gooooo Broncos!!  :0)

 

Princess Belle Birthday Cake

Finished Princess Belle Birthday Cake

Here is the Princess Belle Birthday cake I made for my daughters' 6th birthday.

Thanks to a cake decorating class, I had the skills to make a few of the pretty extras. You could always buy the flowers in the cake decorating aisle of a craft store and stick them on with icing, so don't be intimidating by this if you don't have any formal cake decorating skills.

I started by making my boxed cake mix and pouring into one round pan and baking part of it in a pyrex mixing bowl. I am still a novice, so you can see I had some trouble getting my bowl piece just right.

(L) my pink flowers, which needed to dry out overnight first; (c) bowl cake piece; (r) round cake

While my two cake pieces were not perfect, the best way to fix cake mistakes is icing, icing, and more icing! Fill in all your holes, smooth out the rough sides, whatever you can.

Next, adding your doll. I was lucky that I had a Belle doll that had clothes painted on. I was able to saran wrap her body and simply put her down into the middle of the cake. If your doll needs clothing added, you may need to dress her and then wrap in saran wrap. Experiment to see what works best.

I added extra flowers in the end to cover this up. I also squeezed extra icing around her legs to hold her steady in the cake. As you can see, my Belle ended up being taller than I had predicted for my cake. In the end I added extra flowers to resolve this.

After icing the cake, I "glued" all my flowers on with icing and added more flourish to pretty up her dress. My little princesses were happy with the cake and I was pretty proud.

Family Thankful Tree

When Thanksgiving rolls around, it is traditional for a lot of people to spend extra time thinking of all the things they're thankful for. This year I decided to make a Thankful Tree.

I have saved a good stash of the brown paper used in packaging. It worked well for making a tree trunk. I then ripped it into stripped and let my kids twist it and tape it on the wall for branches.

Our family's Thankful Tree

close up of our bag of leaves

I collected some of my kids paintings and traced their hands all over it. Together we all cut out the hands. We gathered them all into a bag I taped at the bottom of the tree. Whenever someone wanted to recognize something they were thankful for, we'd grab a hand from the bag, write on it and tape it onto a tree branch.

 

I'm sorry I forgot to take a picture of the tree full of our thankful branches.

Upcycling Cereal Boxes

When my imaginative daughter asks me to do a craft project, I often hesitate and think of all the chores I need to finish. But this year during our Christmas break I was full of creative energy. She clearly hit me during one of my more creative moments, when she asked me to make her a laptop. And how wonderful that my daughter thought so highly of my skills, to even ask, right? So here we go...

laptops, closed

A small priority mail box and a cereal box are perfect size for a laptop. The priority mail box even has a perfect closure already. With a cereal box, I just use an exacto knife to slice one cover leaving one edge in tact. I wrapped duct tape around all the cut edges. I also used it to tape white paper inside the cover as the screen. My children enjoyed drawing their "desktop icons" on the screen.

laptops, opened

I keep miscellaneous pieces of cardboard around, and this was one of those days when I had a use. You'll need to tape something across the open cereal box, to lay the keyboard on top of.

Now, to add the keyboard. You can find numerous templates on the internet to print. The one I used was  http://typingforchildren.com/printable-keyboard.html. Printing about 70% gives about the right size for the boxes I used.

If you look closely below the keyboard, you'll see my mousepad created from a square of duct tape. But if your child wants a traditional mouse and you can find a spare one in your house, you can easily create a USB hole on the side of your laptop to "plug in" the mouse.

The funnest part was after these were finished and my girls sat across the room from each other typing and sending emails to each other. Adorable!

Homemade Rapunzel Hat/Hair

Close up of hat made for Kelcie. Bling includes an applique "K."

Full view of Kelcie's hat.

These hats were super easy to make. I purchased basic kid winter hats. Then I searched the sewing section and found a handful of cute applique "bling" that I hand sewn onto the hat. Since I was making these for my twin daughters, I used an applique "H" and "K" to denote their names. Finally, I purchased a skein of bright yellow yard for the braids.

 After hand sewing the appliques to the hat, I started working on the braids. I started with about a 3-4  foot length (if you make it long enough to touch the ground for your child, it can serve as a scarf wrapped around their neck) and wound it back and forth until I had a very thick section to work with, that I thought would give me 3 fat braid sections. I used a small piece of the yellow yard to tie one end altogether. Then I cut the loops at the other end and separated into my 3 braid pieces and got braiding. I simply tacked down the braids to the inside of the hat to attach them. Viola!



younger sister loves the extra long hair!

My girls demonstrating how the long braids can be used as scarves!

 

 

Kelcie showing how fun the braids are for twirling!

 

Frozen

Frozen. Since before we saw the movie, it was already a craze in our house. Once our December weekends were freed up after Hannah's play, we could see it. The girls kept counting down the days until Frozen. Christmas Day. I must say, it held up to it's anticipation, too! I wish I would have taken a photo of the girls at the theater - they wore their new Christmas Frozen PJs and Frozen lockets.We all really enjoyed it.

But the excitement hasn't dwindled yet! Last weekend we acquired the soundtrack! The girls quickly changed into their PJs and acted/danced out the songs as we listened to the music at least 5 times over! Hannah later explained this was their rehearsal for the big performance the next day - when cousins would be here! The final chapter of our "Christmas."

Saturday was the big performance - what fun!

We're still roaming in our home and out in the world, with "Do you want to build a snowman" and "let it go" playing on repeat in our heads, in all that we do.