...because...

...I couldn't have the discussion ONE MORE TIME of WHO would sit WHERE for meals. It is official assigned seating and it has helped with the bickering between the siblings.

Old Mother Hubbard

I have been avoiding the store. Trying to use what I have in the cupboards and not buy a bunch of things when I have perfectly good food that needs to be used up. So after I served cereal and ramen for a few days, I have resorted to getting more creative. Last night we had 2 kinds of pasta, found some meat balls in the freezer and mixed it with a jar of sauce. I served that with corn and green beans from the farm produce. It was a great meal and didn't seem odd at all.

This morning I am serving muffins and hot cocoa. Now, lunch might get a little more creative and I haven't given too much thought to our dinner. I want to use up the produce before it goes bad and I hate to waste food. It kind of is a game. To see how long I can go with out going to the store for food. Now the snack food like chips and crackers ended days ago, but we might be better off with out it.

This morning, the girls were thrilled to have muffins. They love muffin mornings. My mom used to make muffins when we were little and we loved it too. We even had a very unique tradition of hiding coins in the muffins cups. Has anyone else heard of that? I am assuming my mom would clean the coin and then drop them in the bottom of the paper liner before the batter went in. I haven't done it yet with my girls because I haven't taken the time to sanitize the money. Just wondered if anyone else has heard of that idea.

So, just call me Old Mother Hubbard...I am going to try and pick these cupboards bare.

lacing cards

Here is a quick and easy craft to make with your kids (or to make FOR your kids). Find cardboard boxes with cute bright pictures on them (save them from cereal boxes, toy packaging, snack boxes, juice pouch boxes). Cut out fun shapes or objects on the box and punch holes on the sides. Tie some yarn to each lacing card.
This post was for my friend Lea who is looking for creative ideas for her toddler and preschooler. I used to teach preschool and loved it, and still have lots of ideas for little ones. I am a fan of rotating out toys each day. When I was teaching preschool each day the kids came in to the room I had something different on the table. Play dough, puzzles, counting bears, lacing cards...and I changed it every day. It encouraged them to play with something that they wouldn't choose off the toy shelf themselves.

More ideas to come.

Birthday Treasure Hunt

Here we are, just one week in our new home and we get to celebrate a birthday. My little one is 9 today. Wow. It has flown by and I feel like it was just yesterday that I was posting this post about her (HERE) with some cute old pictures.

With the rush of moving and this birthday so close to moving in, we decided to rely on a family tradition of doing a birthday treasure hunt. We hide her gifts and give her clues to find them. Now that she is getting to be so mature, we made the clues a bit more difficult. So if you want to join us on the hunt...here we go. A little info on this hunt: she had to figure these out on her own. She was given 2 "shout outs" for help. One family shout out and one mobile/cell phone shout out. That is when she was able to ask for help from someone in the family and then ask anyone on the cell phone. This is what the hunt started with...

9 is the number of the day
9 clues will lead you on your way
to find 9 gifts around our place
and put a smile on your face

Happy 9th Birthday, Tristen!!!

Our family has four of these
You have the smallest one
It's basket is the place to look
To start the birthday fun.

You'll find your next gift in a bed
Where you wouldn't want to sleep
How will you know what bed it is?
It's METAL, RED, and DEEP.

This one really stumped her. She used a family shout out and asked Tally for help. Tally helped her figure it out. She needed to figure out that the bed was the truck bed.


It's icy cold inside of here
Your words might freeze if you shout.
When you look inside of me
Don't let the penguins out!I always tell the girls to shut the fridge or freezer door otherwise they will let all the penguins out. Just something goofy I say, but she knew that this meant the freezer.


There's a big black cave that's made of steel
where a stranger leaves us things.
Open the door to see inside...
what did your birthday bring?
Here is Tissy reading her birthday cards from family that is scattered all over the country.

Rabbit ears will point the way
but NOT the ears on Clover
The V they make points to a place
That the ears are watching over.

This one was hard for her too, but she figured it out without any help. Since we haven't hooked up any TV, we have been using an antenna so the girls can watch a bit of PBS at lunch time.

Sit on the phone book while you eat
and get a drink of water
Underneath is where you'll find
another gift, our daughter

This one took her to Clover's cage (where she like to sit on top of an old phone book and scratch and nibble)

Flip a switch to start the flame
Then sit and raise your feet
Now that you've raised your piggys up
Look underneath your seat

Now this clue also stumped Tissy. She decided to use her mobile shout out and call Grammy for help. Good thing Grammy could help her figure out that she had to sit on the couch before she put her feet up.Climb to the top, then drop & flop
The way you do each day.
4 BROWN doors will look at you
The bottom 2 guide the way.
This took her to the bonus room (at the top of the stairs above the garage where they flop on the bean bag chairs).


Now look around and you will see
2 teeny tiny doors.
One is empty, one is not
to look, get down on all fours.
That was the end of the treasure hunt. It was really fun to watch her figure out the clues and find her gifts. Then Tally gave her a gift that was the hit of the gifts (calico critters). Tissy was thrilled with it.Then we went to our favorite lunch...Japanese steakhouse. We all love this food and of course love to watch the show of cooking at the table. We have discovered they have a lunch price which makes it more affordable.



It was a great day and loads of fun. Tristen is such a sweet spirited girl and we are so blessed to have her as part of our family. I am enjoying her determination and the drive that she has. It is a joy to watch becoming such a lovely young lady. Happy Birthday to our sweet little "pinkie".

one of our favorite subjects

We actually have been doing art from that art site that I found a few weeks ago. I am pretty impressed with that art blog and I am also pretty (um...actually VERY) impressed that we have followed through with doing it. I find that we are always disciplined to get the 3 Rs done for school. No problem there. It is easy to drop the extras. And sure enough, it is the extra things that my kids love the most.
The best way for me to remember to follow through with doing these artsy projects is to save them as my background on my computer and then it is right there, staring me in the face as a "friendly reminder". And as a reference when we are ready to draw them. When there is a project we want to do, I click on the picture to make it larger then right click to save as background. I did order some pastels for the last of our supplies. A year ago I took my weekly coupon to the art store and picked up some basics to have on hand for when the moment strikes.
We use a flattened out cardboard box as our safe surface to paint on. SO much easier than newspaper. When we are done, you can even hide it behind the couch for next time.

Bookmarks from food boxes

We have a collection in our home of home made bookmarks cut from food boxes. I have to give Chuck the credit for these creative little things. Though we try not to eat a lot of junk, there are times we get items at the grocery store as a treat for the kids when the are on sale (like fruit chews for example). When we get those kinds of kid treats, we always check out the box and find where we can cut out a cute bookmark. Some ideas are boxed cereal, granola bars, fruit chews, frozen waffles, snack cakes or graham crackers or gold fish crackers.


It is great to have bookmarks that are "OK" if you loose them. The card stock/cardboard seems to be just the right thickness for a bookmark. Just look for cute or creative or colorful patterns on boxes of cereal, or frozen food products or even from a box of tea (sleepy time bear). We have even cut them from the cover of coloring books or workbooks for school. We keep them in a bag in a desk drawer and we are always grabbing a new one when we start a new book (I have passed on the habit of reading more than one book at a time to my kids...at least they are readers).

What are we going to do with all this candy???

I am glad Chuck is home this weekend so we can off load some of this candy onto him. I am really not sure what to do with it all. (I will never let them eat it all). The girls did have a fun time trick or treating and the next morning activity found them sorting the candy. They dumped it all into a common container right off the bat so it became "family property" (they always would ask first before they take a piece).

The sorting was too cute. Had to get a picture. Grouping like candies together.

Then I had to scan the list. I just thought it was cute to take an inventory of the candy.
Aside from sorting the candy (sounds like a math game to me), the girls also made towers out of it. Kind of like building blocks. We also reuse our candy when we make our gingerbread house at Christmas time. We save the candy and decorate the house with it. A great way to USE it with out having to EAT it. There is NO WAY I would let my kids eat all that SUGAR. Tough Mommy kicks in and doesn't let them eat it all. The sticky candy is bad for their teeth and the sugar is just not good in general.


We have always given out toys and treats for trick or treating. (Don't need more candy for me to say NO to). I have ordered things from oriental trading and then I save any extra "happy meal" style toy or birthday goody bag toy for my treat basket (pencils, stickers, rings, trinkets). It is a great way to recycle those toys. I also use that same treasure basket for treats for kids when I tutor. I am all about this kind of "re-gifting".

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On a totally different note, we are showing the house again this morning. One of these times it will follow with a contract.

Astronaut Costumes

To finish off the space theme that we have going on here, we decided to make space girl costumes. I thought it would be pretty easy to find some ideas on line, but alas, I didn't like the few ideas I found. So...I figured I could make them up myself.

We hit the local Goodwill for some old clothes that I thought might take the spray paint pretty well. Took them in to make them fit the girls and then...sprayed them with lots of shiny metallic silver. (Good thing Chuck is here to do all the spraying, I got a finger cramp after one can of spray paint). I saved some soda bottles for their air-packs and finished them off with air tubes. The helmets were really giving me troubles. Chuck came up with the idea of covering their bike helmets with foil. Add a few "patches" and ta-da...space girl to the rescue.

Homemade Crayons

I got this idea from my friend Debi who watched my girls last week. They had such a nice time there and I was so impressed that the girls did some crafts while they were there. They made crayons out of broken pieces. We gave it a try tonight and it worked pretty well.

We pealed and broke the crayons and put them in muffin cups (I would have used double cup liners next time or better yet, foil muffin liners). We melted them in the 325 oven for 5-8 min. and let them cool for a few hours. ( would link to Debi's post on this but I think her blog is private ~ hers turned out really cute).


I think these would be great for little fingers (pre-school age). The colors are so pretty. And, a great way to use up old broken crayons.