And plans change...

I had dreamed up a bunch of body-themed activities to do this week but I think they will be scrapped! First of all, I have a suspicion that Owen knows all the body parts, even the ones that I thought he didn't know (I brought out a picture of a hand and he named it immediately!) which would be fine, I was going to do the activities anyway, but man, this kid is seriously obsessed with Brown Bear. Sooooo, I spent naptime coming up with some Brown Bear things for daddy to print out and today we will do some other stuff.  Here is what we did today:

Filled the sink with water and tons of bubbles! I thought it would be a hit since he loves waterplay so much, but he was kind of nervous (I think) about being up on that chair. (note: those dishes on the counter??? they are actually clean... instead of putting them away like a self-respecting mama, I just moved them to the counter.)

so we brought the water and bubbles down to the floor and it was perfect ;)

later, I brought up our plastic swimming pool and filled it with snow! I thought this would be so much fun... I would like to say that the reason I didn't get us geared up to play outside was because it was raining, but in honesty, I had no idea it was raining. I just didn't want to play outside, so I brought the play to us. I also filled up squirt bottles with water that had food coloring in it and sprayed the water to make it fun colored.

But... he didn't really like it. Perhaps because it was near naptime or he was hungry... Perhaps because I couldn't find his mittens (who taught him the word "cold?" he sure used it appropriately).. But it wasn't as fun as I had hoped. Eventually a mixing spoon *kind of* got him playing along.

While he did that, I was scooping snow with a cup. I imagine it would be so fun for an older kid to make a snow castle (instead of a sand castle).

finally, Owen showed me what he really wanted to do, which was take his books off the shelf, one by one, and read them. and we did.

Make sure to come back tomorrow to check out our Brown Bear activities!

Muffin Tin Monday

This week there is no theme. I was contemplating making my own theme but I decided to just keep it simple and put in some foods he doesn't normally eat. So we have turkey, apple slices, bran flakes, raisins, cheese, and tomatoes. Oh, the excitement, its killing me! (note the sarcasm...)

On a totally unrelated note, we checked out the Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? book from the library this weekend and Owen is absolutely obsessed with it. He carries it around saying "brow bea" constantly and I am quite certain it has been read at least 15 times per day. I know there are tons of ideas on the internets about activities to do with the book, but I was wondering what you might have done or if you have any suggestions! thanks ;)

DIY Advent Calendar: Completed!

I finished the Advent calendar. I can't say that I am 100% in love with it or satisfied but I figure it is ok for this year and I can reevaluate it next year.

Here are all of the ornaments:

Each ornament corresponds with a Bible verse so I figured I would post those in case anyone is looking for ideas.  If you feel intimidated by having so much to do, remember, you only have to make the ornament for the next day--you don't have to make them all at once!

Star--Psalm 147:4 He counts the stars and calls them all by name.

Heart-- Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.

World-- Matthew 5:14 “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.

Easel--Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
 
Eagle--Isaiah 40:31 They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. 
 
Salt Shaker--Matthew 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.” 
 
Bandaid--Psalm 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

Fish--Matthew 4:19 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.”

Bread--John 6:35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

Rose--Song of Solomon 2:1 I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys. 

Sheep--John 1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

Shepherd--John 10:11 “I am the good shepherd.”

Cross--Luke 9:23 Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

Rock--2 Samuel 22:2 He sang: “The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my savior;”

Peace Sign--Numbers 6:24 “ ‘ “The Lord bless you and keep you; 25 the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; 26 the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.” ’

Treasure Chest--Luke 12:34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

Gift--James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

Barbell--Philipians 4:13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength. 

Branch--John 15:5 “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”

House--John 14:2 In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.

Apple--Psalm 17:8 Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings 

Fruit--Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,23 gentleness and self‑control. Against such things there is no law.

Duck--Matthew 6:26 Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? 

Lion--Psalm 34:10 Even strong young lions sometimes go hungry, but those who trust in the Lord will lack no good thing.

Lamp--Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.

And this is what the calendar looks like as a countdown.  The ornaments replace the gifts on the tree.  

Here is the post about phase 1 of my calendar.


 

Tot Book 2

I had a lot of fun putting this together, plus its not very much work and its a great way to reinforce our little "lessons" in a fun way that Owen loves.

The left side is a flap book, the middle just a diagram of a house, and the right side is like a big accordian. Of course, his favorite part is the yellow car. car? vroom, vroom. Car? Vroom, Vroom. Car? Vroom, Vroom. etc. etc. etc.

Sangria Cranberry Sauce

Ok, so I know this post is late for the purposes of using this recipe for Thanksgiving, but in my opinion, cranberries should be a year 'round food. mmmmm. If you want your whole house to smell delicious and everyone to love your cranberries, this is the recipe for you!

Ingredients: 1 lemon, lime and orange; 12 oz. cranberries; 16 oz. frozen strawberries in sugar (thawed); 1 C. red wine; 1 C sugar

note: I used plain strawberries because they were what they sold at Target and I did not feel I needed extra sugar in this recipe when I tasted it.

First, measure out the wine and pour some for yourself because you deserve it.

Next, grate 1 tsp. each of lemon and lime rind, and 1/2 tsp. orange rind.

Combine the grated rinds with strawberries, cranberries, wine and sugar in a pan.

Cook on high until boiling.

Once the mixture boils, reduce to medium for 15 minutes or until the sauce thickens.

Stir in 3 tbsp. of lemon juice, 2 tbsp. lime juice, 1/4 C. orange juice. If you have one of those handy juicing machines, now is the time to use it. If not, cut the fruit in half, jam a fork into it, and squeeze the juice into a bowl. If any seeds end up in the bowl, remove them.

Spoon the mixture into a serving bowl and refrigerate for at least four hours. And actually spoon it in. I poured it in, and it splattered everywhere.

Unphotographed steps:
1. Ignore that your son is chasing the dog around the house threatening him with his ball popper.
2. Realizing that you haven't had breakfast or lunch and the wine is going straight to your head....

PS. The cranberries may turn your wood spoon red ;)

Happy Thanksgiving!

  

House Fun!

Well I was thinking of playing with color today but that kind of failed miserably so we moved onto bigger and better things! We made another contact paper craft; I cut out shapes of a house, trees, sun and had Owen help put them onto the contact paper. He loves to help "pat, pat, PAT!" (if that makes no sense to you, he helps "pat" the papers down.) I had put double sided tape onto the windows and doors to get them to stick. We had a lot of fun putting the cotton snow down.

I wanted to put this up on the wall next to the house from yesterday, but knew from our experience with the red collage that Owen was going to touch it and get his fingers stuck to the page and get dog hair on it and pull off the shapes and just make a big mess. soooo... I put saran wrap on it. Weird, I know. And probably there was a better solution but that was the one I tried. So here is our saran-wrapped finished product:

Since he enjoyed muffin tin monday so much I decided to make a house-themed lunch, which I thought was pretty cute.

But Owen pretty much made a mess of it and asked for cheese crackers. Isn't that just how it goes??

We also tried putting straws into a Parmesan cheese container because, well, all the other bloggers are doing it but that was only fun for about two seconds.

Things that were more fun:
--throwing the Parmesan container
--running with the Parmesan container
--chasing the dog with the Parmesan container
--getting tiny boy fingers stuck in the holes of the Parmesan container (several times, lol).
--leaving straws all over the house
Anyway, hope you are having fun getting ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow! If I am lucky maybe we will do another fun craft. OH, and I should definitely post my MIL's sangria cranberries recipe. YUM.

turkey turkey!

So I decided that I had to do a hand turkey craft with Owen after seeing a blogger (ack, I don't remember who) saying they do them every year to see the hand grow. I really loved this turkey craft and decided to do it. I was shocked by how tiny Owen's hand is!!! I had planned on decorating the fingers with pompoms because we don't have feathers but the pompoms were way too big! So I cut the hair off of the pompoms and had Owen help me glue them down.

Well thats about as far as we got as a group project, he was not interested in helping, so I just got out my gluegun instead and finished it off myself. And then I made another one for Owen to play with because he sure ain't touching mine! Ha. who said crafts were for the kids?

Some other things we did today:
--these fun house activities I posted about yesterday

--we took a walk outside and down the street pointing at the other houses, trees and snow on the street. We also looked in the windows of our house. Owen definitely has house, tree and door down; window--not so much.

--since crayons really aren't that fun for Owen to color with (he's just not that good at them) I got out a pastel set and had him color a picture I drew of a house and trees. It was fun, but a warning is that pastels are pretty messy and they break when dropped. Sure are fun, though!

We hung the picture on the wall. Since I didn't have anything to "fix" the color with to prevent tiny hands from smudging it all over I took two page protectors (like from a binder) and put the picture in them. Instant frame!

Muffin Tin Monday!

This week's theme is Thanksgiving, and I was wracking my brain to come up with something I could do with food we already had. So I made a turkey! It kind of looks like a severed hand, no? Anyway, the contents are bread body, turkey dog feathers, pretzel head, raisin eyes, cheese cracker beak, and turkey pepperoni wattle. I was just putting a small amount of cheese and grapes in the other sections because Owen is in that barely eating toddler phase and I noticed I could make little flowers out of them. So there is no symbolism there, just cuteness ;)

He actually ate a lot of it, success!

DIY Advent Calendar, Phase 1

I've been seeing lots of homemade advent calendars the past few days and I decided I wanted to have one too. I had a very hard time figuring out what I wanted to do.. I wanted it to be cute and colorful as well as meaningful.  Also, I didn't want to have to buy any supplies.  Well, I just so happen to have a ton of felt because I am working on this awesome car mat and I decided to do my own take on this advent calendar.  But... I didn't want to do any sewing of any kind and had a few other ideas in mind.  So I got out my glue gun and came up with this:

The pocket presents are velcroed onto the picture.  My plan is to make an ornament for each day that will replace the pocket so eventually the tree is made of ornaments instead of pocket presents.  When I was a kid, we had a wooden calendar with presents hanging from it. The presents were ornaments for the tree and corresponded with a Bible verse for each day.   I really like this idea and hope to do it as well...  I have a lot of online homework to do--I only remember one or two of the ones from when I was a kid.

I'm a bit of a non-perfectionist so I cut all the numbers and shapes and whatnots without tracing anything, so nothing is really even or uniform but I'm cool with it being that way.  Plus, I don't like my projects taking me too long since I have the baby running around. 

So I love it! 
If you have any suggestions on where to get ideas of what to put inside let me know!

One box, many uses

This week's theme is "out the window" because I suspect there are a few things out there that Owen doesn't know the name of (have we ever talked about trees?  Does he know the name of a house?).   I made three fun projects out of a moving box and am pretty excited about them.

The first was this peekaboo house.  I got the idea from this post at I Can Teach My Child.  It was fun and easy to make (although if you make it, make sure to put the pictures down before you put on the windows... so hard the other way!)

Inside the windows are pictures of his grandparents and his parents.  Owen loves looking at it and naming them.  And opening all the "doors."  Next up: learning that a window is not a door ;) "door, door, door, door"

Then I decided it would be fun to have a flannel board.  There are tons of tutorials out there so I'm not going to go into depth with this, but I basically duct-taped two pieces of cardboard together, repurposed a receiving blanket by hot-gluing it onto the cardboard, and duct taped the ends onto the back.  Easy peasy flannel board.  At the time, I didn't have any felt so I cut out shapes to make a house, trees, etc and reinforced them with packing tape.  To make them stick, I tore off the velcro tabs on Owen's disposable diapers and taped them onto the back.  Oh, and the cotton is snow!  I plan on propping this up by the window and comparing what is on the  board to what is outside.

So then I saw that I had the rest of this box and was wondering what to do with it.  Well I turned it into a house.  Fun!  I did not spend much time on it because I know it will be destroyed within the next day or two, but I made a roof and cut doors and windows.

From the inside of the house, I drew pictures of what you can see out the window; one of the pictures resembles what our picture window looks like. 

 From the outside, you can open the tabs and see inside the house.. I used some pictures of Dora and Diego that my husband prints out every once in a while.  I just missed taking a picture of Owen trying to shove his head through the door, it was so cute, hopefully he will do it again!

And there you have it, three easy things to do with one cardboard box!