Wordless Wednesday -- Snow

San Diego and Snow

I had a wonderful weekend away all by myself in San Diego visiting friends. Sadly through the sun didn't shine while I was down there and the whole weekend I was just plain cold. I would have been even colder though if I was at home because it snowed all weekend while I was gone.

It was an odd feeling to be away with out kiddos or a Husband. It felt weird to sit on an airplane all by myself and do whatever I wanted. It felt weird to be able to wake up in the morning when ever I wanted (though it was super difficult to actually sleep-in) and to be able to lay down and nap/rest if I felt the urge. 

I did very much enjoy my time away. Visiting with friends, eating out (In-N-Out was a highlight!), reading, surfing the web, sitting around and watching television. Just doing nothing of much felt good. Coming home and being greeted with hugs and loves felt really good, too.

Absence really does make the heart grown fonder or maybe it just reminds the heart how much love there is. Being away for a couple days is refreshing and renewing. It makes those days that can become dull and boring exciting and fun again.

Shane and Kenny had a fabulous weekend together hanging out. The snow did kinda change up their plans, but was fun in its own right. Adalyn, Mema and Papa had a wonderful weekend spending time together, too. She did fabulous on her first visit to their house all by herself.

All around it was a great weekend for the whole family. Now it looks like we will have a few more fun snow days ahead of us.

Close To My Heart January Updates

Here is what is happening in the world of Close To My Heart:

Rock the Block
January Constant Campaign
 

When you place a minimum order of $25 from the Autumn/Winter 2011 Idea Book, you can get two valuable new products for just $15: the My Creations Collage Cubes (a Spring/Summer 2012 sneak-peek product!) and the exclusive My Acrylix Rock the Block E-size stamp set (available only during this promotion). This Rock the Block promotion represents a retail savings of almost $30! You're going to love the collage cubes and the Rock the Block stamp set, which work together for interactive, fashionable fun! This offer is ends January 31st.

 

There are SO many ways to use this cute set. Check out this blog hop for some great ideas.

 

A Perfect 10!
January Studio J Members-Only Constant Campaign

January is free layout month for Studio J members! For every 9 custom-printed Studio J layouts you buy, you’ll receive the 10th layout free. To receive the discount, just add 10 or more layouts to your cart. You’ll see a discount reflected in your order total. And you can totally take advantage of this promotion by ordering in multiples of 10. Buy 9, get 1 free. Buy 18, get 2 free. Buy 27, get 3 free. And so on! If you’re not a member yet, now’s a great time to join! This offer ends January 31st

Visit here to get more information on becoming a Studio J memeber.



 
January Stamp of the Month
Little Reminder
When you spend $50 on any CTMH products you can purchase the Stamp of the Month for just $5!
 



The Spring/Summer Idea Book arrives February 1st! There are 8 new paper packets and I am in love with just about every single one of them. Place an order of $50 or more and you get one for FREE.

Activities for Younger Toddlers

It hit me the other day that we no longer have a baby in the house....we have a full on toddler. She was pushing boundaries the other day and doing all kinds of climbing.

She still pretty much just wants to run around the house tearing things up though and it is starting to drive me crazy. The amount of picking up I do during the day is amazing. Little Miss Almost 14 months old won't return to play with any overturned items/messy toys. I have to pick it back up for her to play with them more.

The other hard part has been finding activities that Shane and Adalyn can happily do together. One of my goals for this year is to make sure I have prepared activities for both kiddos on a regular basis. This helps to pass the time for me and helps add some excitement to our days. Productive Parenting has a lot of great ideas including the younger set.

These are two games we played yesterday.

Toss The Sock:
I found two containers (medium and small) and grabbed the balled up socks from Adalyn's drawer. I put the containers in the middle of the floor and put the socks around the room. Then the kiddos "tossed the socks" into the bins. Pretty darn simple, but they both had fun and could play together! I had Shane toss from further away. Adalyn loved tossing and then dumping.

Adalyn and Shane playing.

They were into it for about 15+ minutes, 

which I thought was great for such a simple game.

 Shane and Arli playing.

Arli gave it about 1 round and then moved onto other things.

Find the Animal:
I had Shane line up a bunch of stuff animals. Then with a flash light he pointed to one and asked Adalyn to "find the bear" or "find the baby", etc. She loved finding the baby and then kissing it. But she wasn't so into finding any of the other animals. Shane loved telling his Sister what to do.

Both of these activities target:

• following directions
• large gross motor skills
• eye and hand coordination
• cooperation
• simple fun!

Candy Cane Hearts

I had a box of candy canes left over from Christmas and after seeing some hearts made out of candy canes filled with chocolate on Pinterest, I knew we needed to make  a revised version for Valentines Day.

Aren't they cute?! I hung them from the chandelier in our dining room. Shane supervised the project and put the candy canes on the plate for me to hot glue. Then I strung ribbon through them. It took longer to get the hot glue gun warmed up then it did to make these.

Got any left over candy canes laying around in your house?

2012 Goals

I have had some goals for the new year wondering around in my head the last couple weeks. I wasn't sure if I was going to share them, but I decided getting them down here is the best place to keep my goals and it removes them from taking up space in my mind.

Crafting:

• Make a list of the events that need to get scrapbooked.
• Get pictures backed up on CDs from the last couple years.
• Put completed pages into their proper scrapbook home by year.
• Complete my monthly craft project.
• Complete Project 52

 Kiddos:

• Continue to rotate toys weekly (by theme if possible: animals, transportation, instruments, etc).
• Each week provide Shane with new activities to work on (mostly for Tuesday and Thursdays).
• Have a new activity for Adalyn (and Arli) to do at least 3x's a week. 
• Work on Shane's speech activities 3x's a week (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday).

Household:

• Deep clean and reorganize a room as needed. (Just last week I did both kid bedrooms).
• Continue to meal plan weekly, potentially adding a lunch plan to each week.

Close To My Heart:

• Plan and prep monthly Close To My Heart workshops.  
• Send monthly newsletter by the 3rd of each month.

Blog:

• Consider ways of adding revenue through the blog.

Personal:

• Monthly date night using a babysitter (this is the scariest one of all of them because of the babysitter part). 

Menu Monday

Monday -- Left over Lasagna from last night (sadly it wasn't fabulous, but there was a lot of it, so half went in the freezer for another time and we'll have plenty for tonight's dinner)

Tuesday -- Halibut and rice (I'll bake it with a little layer of mayo and dill on the top...yummy!)

Wednesday -- Baked Oatmeal

Thursday -- Crepes (as requested by Kenny)

Friday -- Hold on to your seat....I'll be out of town for the weekend! Yep, just me all by myself in the awesome town of San Diego. Where I'll get to visit my friend Michelle and soak up a few rays of sun!! I CAN'T wait to sit on an airplane all by myself for hours!! And not get woken up by a 14 month old who is still not sleeping through the night.

A gigantic thanks to Kenny for letting me go on this adventure. And to Mema and Papa for taking Adalyn for the weekend, so Kenny can enjoy some one-on-one time with Shane.

Saturday and Sunday -- It's up to the boys to fend for themselves. I think they'll manage just fine.

31 Day Food Challenge

Teaching "Good" Eaters is hosting a 31 Day Food Challenge in January. We recently realized with Shane how much food plays a part in his daily behavior. We hit rock bottom about a month ago with our wonderful active 4.5 year old and were seeking anything that would help us get out a a terrible behavior rut. Food became one of the major answers.

He is a picky eater (like most preschoolers out there). When I stepped up and took some time to really figure out what I could get him to eat AND stopped pushing him on eating, we saw a 180 degree turn in his behavior.

Just last week at my MOPS group we had a guest speaker on picky eaters. She was AMAZING. I mean truly amazing. The top three things I took away from her talk were:

• Our job as a parent is to provide healthy nutritional choices. It's the kiddos job to get it into their mouths. Bargaining, bribing, counting bits, etc does no good at all. Allowing them to decide what they want to eat and when is the health way to feed a kid.

• Let all the walls go around eating. Don't be a wall that your kiddo can push against. Put all the power in their hands. Which means here is dinner, Kiddo, eat what you would like, try what you would like, or don't eat anything. It's all in your hands. 

• By always having a "safe" food choice at meal time, your kid will eat. Yes, that may be bread or green beans, or olives. What ever a "safe" food is for your child. But, as they learn to take the power of eating into their hands, they will begin to want to try other things and you'll most likely see your child start to eat what is on the table all on their own free will.

Back to the food challenge. Here is what we accomplished this week:

Day 1: Establish Accountability -- We eat made a list of our favorite foods. Over the week we have been adding to it.

Day 2: One Family, One Meal -- We generally ate one family meal at dinner time, but had gotten a little off track. This week I've focused on having a "safe" food each night for Shane, as well as making sure we are at the table together and eating (or sitting nicely) for about 15 minutes every night. Dinners this week have been a lot less hectic!

Day 3: Try a New Food Tuesday -- This was a success after Shane cried for about 5 minutes. But I really wanted him to try a half of a garbanzo bean. When he did it, he discovered it was just fine and life went one. Since then he has been super open to at least taking a bite of something new.

Day 4: Eat a Fun Lunch -- This isn't the funniest looking lunch, but Shane really gets into having things in small sizes, toothpicks and fun plates. He ate this all up. That is all that matters to me! A happy eater equals a happy kid.

Day 5: Read Labels -- I happened to buy Adalyn some Gerber Puffs and she was eating them for a snack. I normally just feed them Pirates Booty. I read the Gerber Puff label and it had a handful of off items in it. I headed over to the Pirates Booty bag and it just had a couple ingredients. No point in buying the expensive baby puffs!I'll be sticking to Costco sized Pirate Booty bags.

Day 6: Plan a Food Adventure -- Still working on this one....

Day 7: One Small Change -- We needed new ketchup and I bought the new kind by Heinz that has no corn syrup in it!

Cinnamon and Apple Sauce Hearts

We actually made these cute and wonderfully smelling Cinnamon and Apple Sauce hearts during the holidays. I was thinking ahead though and had Shane use heart shape cutters. Then I strung some pretty red string through them. Now they are hanging around our house making it smell yummy and festive for Valentine's Day.

Wanna make some of your own! Here's how what you will need:

2 cups of apple sauce
2 cups of cinnamon
Straw (to make a hole in the top for the string)
Cookie Cutters
Ribbon

• Mix together cinnamon and apple sauce. If the mixture is too saucy add more cinnamon. Or if it is to hard add more apple sauce. It will be messy!

• Sprinkle cinnamon on your counter tops to prevent them from sticking.

• Knead "dough" until you have a firm, pasty consistency.

• Roll dough out to 3/4-1 inch thick. From my past experience thicker is better. It may take longer to dry, but when it is to thin they crack and crumble and don't turn out well.

• Cut out shapes with cookie cutters.

• With a straw, poke a hole at the top of each shape, so you can string it with ribbon later.

• Bake on a baking sheet at 175 to 200 degree oven for a LONG time. Some where between 3-6 hours depending on the thickness of your shapes. Flipping them every hour or so will help with the drying. 

• I turned my oven off when I went to bed (after about 4 hours of baking) and let them sit in there over night. Then I pulled them out and let them sit on the counter in the sun for most of the day. You can tell they are dry when they are hard and change color from dark (moist) to light (dry). 

They truly smell so good, especially while baking!

Learning is Fun.

Meet Z.Z., the newest member of our family. 

Z.Z. is a zebra and she eats carrot letters and cabbage numbers.

Shane loves her and asks to feed her every day. 

He is getting so good at feeding her basic letters and numbers, 

I need to come up with some new food for Z.Z. to eat. 

I am thinking tomorrow she may need to eat some math facts.

Our zebra friend is made out of a tissue box, white and black paper and some wiggly eyes.

Shane keeps asking for a tail for Z.Z. and I keep forgetting to make one. 

I love when we can have so much fun together laughing and learning. 

Project 52 {1:52}

This year I am going to take a little photography challenge in the form of Project 52. I have created a list of 52 themes (one for each week of the year). Then each week I will take a picture with that theme in mind.

My theme for the first week of the year was {time}.

When I went to check out my list for this week I knew just what I was going to do. Shane has been obsessed with his practice time clock and "matching" it with our clock. He even woke up at 3:30am one morning to tell me his clock wasn't "on point". I reassured him we could deal with it in the morning.

Now this picture was quite challenging for me to take in a photography kind of way. It possessed problems to me that make me want to take more and more photography classes. I couldn't use my flash because it created a terrible glare on the glass. BUT the lighting inside was low on top of it being dark and gray outside. I did the best I could with my very small amount of knowledge regarding lighting and pictures.

I've never played with editing on my pictures before, but I did a little on this one. I don't know that it helped much though. It's not a good picture in the photography sense, but it fits the theme really well.

If you'd like to participate in Project 52 here are the next 4 weeks of themes:

1. Blanket
2. Snow/Cold
3. Cup
4. Hearts/Love

Wordless Wednesday -- Odd Choice

12 Projects for 2012

My mind in constantly whirling and swirling with ideas. Projects for me, projects for the kids, things to do around the house, stuff I want to make in the kitchen, etc. Sometimes these ideas get completed and sometimes they get swallowed up by more ideas. I thought it would be a good way to start out the new year with a month by month list of projects I would like to complete this year.

January: Family Photo Wreath -- This will go in my new laundry room, so it won't be Valentine themed. COMPLETED!

February: Treat Stands -- I saw something like this on Rachel Ray and was dying to make them. COMPLETED!

March: Hand Print Canvas Art -- This will also go into my laundry room.

April: Yarn Wreath with Felt Flowers -- A friend of mine made one of these for our Craft Club Christmas Exchange Party. I just LOVED it. There are tons of examples of them on Pinterest. 

May: Felt Flower Barrettes -- Adalyn really needs these. 

June: Pillowcase Dress -- Now that Addie is walking she can wear dresses and this will be perfect for the summer.

July: Toilet Paper Tube Wreath or Star Wreath I am hosting Craft Club at my house in July. I really want to do a Christmas in July theme. Since last year I felt like I didn't have enough time to make all the things I wanted to. This may change but right now these are the two ideas in my head.

August: Homemade Vanilla Extract -- I use vanilla all the time. I can't wait to make this!

September: Homemade Apple Butter -- I love Apple Butter, but I think it's hard to find good stuff at the store.

October: Peacock Tutu -- This just has to be Adalyn's Halloween costume this year.

November: Homemade Shaped Crayons and Soap Crayons -- Shane will love these.

December: Button Christmas Tree Ornaments -- Just to cute!

Man, this was a hard list to complete because there are just so many cool things out there to make. Hopefully this will keep my wondering mind focused and I can at least get these done and maybe more!

I'll keep you up-to-date on my progress. Have you been motivated to try any new projects this year??

Menu Monday

After not eating at on all Friday I seem to be making up for it now. All I seem to think about is food and what I am going to eat next. I am very much looking forward to making some yummy dinners this week.

Monday -- Salad and Salmon (as requested by Kenny...have I mentioned how much I LOVE when family members request dinner meals!?! It makes my life just that much easier.)

Tuesday -- Tacos and Spanish Rice

Wednesday -- Steak, Potatoes and Corn in the Crock-Pot (I am going to make a revised version of this)

Thursday -- leftovers

Friday -- Lasagna (requested by Shane after we watched an episode of The Chew. He loves watching cooking shows and I like to encouraged any thing that has to do with eating)

Saturday -- leftovers

Sunday -- Really, no matter what I plan this day is just generally a fend for yourself, whatever is quick/easy or left in the refrigerator kind of dinner.

Happy Birthday?!?

This post was suppose to go up on Friday, December 30th....my 35th birthday. I was so looking forward to waking up to a bunch of exciting birthday plans: going shopping (all by myself), hanging with the family, eating cake and spending the night out with 5 fabulous girlfriends having dinner and watching the show at a local piano bar.

Instead I was woken up at 1am by my dear Daughter (a very normal event in my life) to discover that I felt quite nauseous. Adalyn then spent the next 2 hours waking up every 20 minutes or so (also very normal) and I spent those 2 hours in and out of bed making my rounds from her room, the bathroom and my bed. All the while praying that this 1. was just a dream or 2. I would feel magically better come the morning.

Morning rolled around and I came to terms with the fact it was NOT a dream and I was NOT feeling any better. It seemed that my birthday plans were also NOT going to be what I had in mind. I certainly got a lot of Me-Time on my birthday, but it was by being banished to the bedroom (so that I wouldn't infect any other family members with my stomach bug), where we have no TV and spotty internet connection. Where I was unable to sleep because my body hurt so bad and I had no attention span to focus on a book or anything that required mind power.

Around 4pm I was allowed out of the bedroom and access to the couch, TV, internet and family. The worst had come and gone by that point, but I was weak and tired. My evening plans had been canceled and I had no interest in eating the cake I made from scratch.

The cake that just a day before I had been so excited to make. For Christmas I had received a bunch of decorating supplies (tips, pastry bags, cake pans, etc) and I was dying to try them out. I made a very basic yellow cake, but fancied it up by cutting it in half and put strawberry jam in the middle of it. Then I went to town decorating. I really just wanted to try as many tips as I could. Hence the "sampler" cake look.

Shane and Kenny had some on my birthday after singing me the sweetest "Happy Birthday". Shane said it was the "best cake ever". 

A birthday come and gone. Certainly now how I had pictured or planned my big 35th birthday to be, but I am oh so happy to be back on my toes feeling better and able to wish you all a Happy New Year. Here's to a healthy 2012.