Advent Season!

I don't know about y'all, but when I was growing up I had an advent calendar for the Christmas season every year. It was one of those that had the chocolates hidden in an image of Santa and every day we got to open a little "window" and eat our one piece for the day... It was great! I had NO idea that, that was a calendar. I had NO idea what it meant. I just knew that during Christmas I got to eat a piece of chocolate with breakfast every day until Christmas morning, it was great!

I have found and implemented a new advent calendar into our lives this year. One that it not chocolate, but one that will help your child grow! I think I originally found this on Pinterest, but I can't be too sure.

Above is a picture of the first 6 days in my advent calendar for Joc. What's inside them you ask? BOOKS! Yes, books! Small, inexpensive, books. I fell in love with this idea when I first saw it, wherever that was, and had to make this happen! I'm not sure I'll do it every single year, but I may do other things with a similar concept to them. This did get a little costly and had a good bit of work into it.

Most of the books I bought were right at $1.00. I would look everywhere I went for books that would interest her! I found a ton of them at Target, in their dollar section and a few of them at Michael's, Walmart, and other random places.

So far she has loved opening these every day! That's something else great about this calendar. You know that once you start putting gifts under the tree the kids start to get super antsy and excited and are dieing to open a present because they are there! Well, this way they get to open a present every day until Christmas!

So, what you need to make this happen for next year is:

25 small books

wrapping paper

tape

marker

tags, paper, stencils... ect. (optional)

1. I started out by organizing my books by what day I wanted her to open them on. I have a special book for the 25th of the month and I had a few others that are Christmas themed, so I wanted her to be able to enjoy those during the season, so I placed those stragically throughout the 25 days. And I had a group of three books that I wanted to give to her continuously.

2. I would then just wrap my books how they were, I did use a few gift bags to mix it up a little.

3. Then I used stencils and a large permanent marker to number the books 1-25 right on the packaging! I did not on my gift bags, however! I stenciled those onto some stock paper and then cut out the number and taped it on the appropriate bag.

 Here is Joc on day one of our calendar!

And here she is day three!

We have been taking pictures everyday of these as well, just to document it as we go! It has been such a fun experience for all of us here so far! We open a new book in the afternoon and then that's what we read before bedtime every night! So far she's opened two My Little Pony books found a Target a while back, a Winnie The Pooh book and Treasure Island! (We are slowly starting to incorporate "big books" into her collection for us to read together here soon!)

I strongly encourage you to try this with your family next Christmas! It was been such a fun blessing so far! The kids love it and it gives them something to do every afternoon, and it's not chocolate! Haha!

- Stephanie

Christmas Food "Hacks"

I hope that you all had and awesome Thanksgiving yesterday with your family and loved ones! I know we sure did at our house. I'm still cleaning up from it! :)

However, it's officially Christmas time!!! I adore this time of year! Everyone is always so cheerful and nice and the weather is wonderful (in my opinion) and then don't get me started on all the Christmas decorations that we get to put up and see!! I love it! Along with all those wonderful things comes a busy, busy few weeks as well... Especially for moms. We are constantly planning and prepping and cleaning and cooking and entertaining and wrapping and the list goes on. 

So, to make lives a smidgen easier this holiday season I've found some pretty creative hacks to share with you all! Some of these we've all seen before and some of them I've never even thought of doing! (And those that I haven't thought of before, were pretty spectacular in my opinion.)

Here you freeze chocolate into tree shapes and then add some icing to the backs and place them on a flat white cake to make it shine a little!

Fill empty condiments bottles with icing for decorating sugar cookies with the kids!

Dip cookie cutters in flour first to help the sugar cookies retain their shapes!

Look at this simple center piece! White candles and peppermints! Love it!

These are frozen dollops of coolwip/whipped cream to put in your mugs of hot cocoa! Such a great idea!

Three small candy canes glued together makes the perfect place card holders for your holiday tables!

Use the bottom of a crystal glass to make a unique design in your sugar cookies.

These were just a sampling of the hacks that I found on Buzzfeed! 

You can check out the rest of them over here: 38 Christmas Hacks

I hope that some of these come in handy throughout your busy holiday season this year and help you cut some corners!

-Stephanie

Snowflakes are falling

I ran across this tutorial for cutting out snowflakes the other day on Pinterest, which is perfect because I was just trying to show Joc how to cut out snowflakes from paper last week! I knew I wasn't doing something quite right with them and since I've found this one we've made a ton more that are really pretty!

These are another of those fun activities your kids could be doing while you're cooking this week for Thanksgiving and you could lay them out around the tables or on your buffet as cute hand made decorations for your guests to see!

The kids will love that, it'll bring them into the center of the attention for a short period of time during the day while their grandparents, aunts, uncles... comment on the snowflakes they made!

Here is the link for the print out of the tutorials:

Winter Is Coming!

 

This is a view of what the print out looks like... And who doesn't love Elsa and Olaf!

- Stephanie

Christmas is Coming....

So.... I promise y'all that I'm not one of those people that completely skips over Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving! It's one of my favorite holidays. I don't have my tree up already, I don't have a single decoration out yet for Christmas. I do have tons of pumpkins and pilgrims and scarecrows around, though! :)

All that being said, I'm sharing some fun looking Christmas themed activities for the kiddos to do in the coming days and weeks of no school for the holidays!

Here is the link for the activities: Christmas Time is Here You'll remembering doing some of these things from when you were a kid, too! But while you're slaving away in the kitchen preparing dishes for Thanksgiving in a few weeks the kids can entertain themselves while watching the Macy's parade that morning instead of complaining about being bored!

Here are a few of the crafts from this post:

Giant Popsicle snowflakes! 

These look really fun to make with your kids! I honestly can't wait to make these with Joc and hang them up around the house this season!

I made these when I was a kid! 

Super easy Christmas tree ornaments they can make (while you're cooking!) Just lay down some paper for them to work on and give them plenty of pretties to decorate with and then they can make tons of them! Not a bad idea for a handmade present for friends and family members from them either! :)

Cinnamon applesauce heart ornaments! 

I can NOT wait to make these! I bet they smell AMAZING while you're baking them!! These would make great gifts for some family members as well! I'm thinking of making them with Joc one day in mid December and then tying them onto gifts for people! 

Here is the direct link to make these heavenly things: Katy Elliott

There are so many more than just these to go and check out and do with your kids or have them do while you're working on other things!

Enjoy! :D

-Stephanie

Night Night... Sleep Tight

Do you ever have issues getting your little ones to go to bed or sleep? I do, some times. She's gotten a TON better over the years, now that she's realized that she doesn't miss out on anything while she's sleeping, and since she's realized she NEEDS her sleep, she no longer cares too much!

However, this particular blog, Kid's Activity Blog, would have been pretty handy to have had back in the day of fighting a monster of a child while putting her to bed. She lists some truly great ideas for helping to calm your children down during bed time to ease them off to dream land.

Among these really awesome ideas was this:

A glowing sensory bottle!

How cute is that?! I love this idea. Mainly because it's not a game or anything that they have to play with to calm them down. They can keep this by their beds and play with it as they fall asleep, and it still eases their minds as they stare into the stars and glitter!

So, here's the website on how to make this super awesome bed time object:

Glowing Sensory Bottle

What you'll need:

1. DURABLE plastic bottle
2. Hair Gel, fill the bottle to nearly full bottle.
3. Glitter Glue, use a squirt.
4. Glow in the dark paint, another squirt.
5. Super Glue, for the lid!
6. Glow-in-the-dark mini stars. (I have found some of these at Wal-mart.)

 Mix it all up and give it a good shake, after you glue the top on of course, and watch the magic! :)

My sweet girl might be a smidgen too old for this, but I still plan on making it with her! I think she'll love it and it'll still be helpful for her to fall asleep on those nights where she really fights it still.

-Stephanie

Cute and Creepy Holiday Doors

Check out these super cute Halloween door decorations! I can't wait for fall you guys! It's my FAVORITE time of the year! Hot chocolate, beautiful colors, cooler weather, pumpkin everything, sweaters and jackets! Oh, and HOLIDAYS!!! :D

I'm so ready for the holidays to be here. I know, it's still only August, but school's back in session and (here anyway) it's been a bit cooler feeling in the early mornings and such and I'm just ready!

So... to help keep me calm until it's an appropriate time to start decorating I've been planning my decorating. (I totally asked my husband if I could go on and start decorating for the fall... I got a big no, of course.)

Here is a cute idea I found that I'm adding to my list of decorations for this year's Halloween:

 

I just love these guys! And, I mean, how much easier could they be to make... All you need is some streamers of your color choice and construction paper/paper plates, and some good tape!

Here is the website to check out a few more ideas other than these creepy guys: Spooky Doors

Y'all, enjoy the end of the summer months while they're here! I'll try to make the most of them! :P

-Stephanie

A Little Summer Treat

I came across this fun treat that you can make with your little ones the other day. They're called Ice Cream Pops! We actually made ours yesterday and they turned out fantastic! They were SO yummy! And, of course, very fun to make. Joc enjoyed doing all of the sprinkling.

What you need:

1. Ice cream, we used vanilla. But I was informed next time we have to use chocolate. :)
2. Chocolate syrup or Nutella. We used the syrup for ours.
3. Caramel sauce.
4. Crunched up toffee bits or hazelnuts. I found a bag of Hershey's/Toll House toffee and chocolate for baking that I used. It worked great.
5. Chopped up chocolate bits. We used Hershey's morsels.
6. Chopped almonds.
7. Paper cups.
8. Popsicle sticks.

Once you have all the ingredients that you want for your pops, alternate each dry ingredient with a layer or your ice cream of choice into the cups. Once filled to the top, stick in your popsicle stick and then place them on a tray in your freezer. Keep them in there for about two hours and they should be ready to enjoy!
And, of course, you don't have to follow my ingredients. Be creative and use your own set of tasty ingredients for your pops! I think next time we're doing a chocolate themed one with all chocolate ingredients! Chocolate ice cream, chocolate syrup, chocolate sprinkles, chocolate chips... ect. I can't wait!

It's Coming... SUMMER!

Either summer has already started for you and your busy family or it's on the brink... We have one week left and then we're done for a few months. I'm SO not ready! I've been compiling a list of things to do this summer with our little one. In the process I've found a lot of really great websites to go off of for local events and such!
Maybe you're in the same boat... Looking for things to do. And lets face it, you can't go and do something every single day to keep your kids occupied! (If you can, go you!) Everything costs so much these days. We're planning on going to do something really great, like, once a week. On the other days we may just go to the park or the zoo, we have a membership so it's free to go at this point for us. (By the way, I HIGHLY recommend getting a membership at your local zoo or park. It is an amazing way to go kill time, do something fun, and get out doors! We LOVE our zoo membership, and the price was fantastic!)
Anyway, we also have a brand new splash-pad opening up this summer, which I fully plan on visiting often! 

If you live in the Birmingham, AL area or those around here this is a great website that I check out all the time to find fun things to do around here for me and my love and my little one.
Check it out: Birmingham365 This website is pretty up to date on anything and everything going on in our great city! I urge you, if you don't live near here, to go look for a similar website for your area... This has been a life saver for us here!

Maybe you already know what you and your family will be doing this summer, maybe your calendar is FULL of exciting things to do... Bravo! (I envy you, please give me your list :D)
If you're that mom, or dad, and you have your summer planned but still are missing something here is a list for you! I found this recently, it's a list of websites for kids to use to keep their brains going over the summer. To keep them going and learning. A lot of kids NEED this during the summer! That long gap can really hinder some children with their learning, they forget things and don't continue to learn and then they get back into school in the fall and they're playing a small game of catch up.

 

Here is a more comprehensive list, briefly explaining what your kids can do on each website: (sorry it's a little blurry. :/)

These websites are excellent resources to use during the summer to keep your kiddos interesting in learning and broadening their horizons!

I plan on using these with Joc a couple of times a week. Maybe while I'm cooking dinner or needing to do some cleaning, I'll set her up with one of these websites to keep her occupied until I'm finished with whatever it is that I'm doing! I found this wonderful list over on A Year of My Firsts blog... Lots of other neat things to peruse through over there! :)

I hope I could help you with some of your summer planning, if you needed it! The most important thing is to just spend time with your little ones while you can! They cherish that more than anything while they're young!

-Stephanie

Bare Feet Welcome

I found a picture of a spring time wreath on Pinterest a while back... it was adorable! I couldn't wait to make it! And now that I finally have, I've been dieing to share it with all of y'all! :)

Here is my finished wreath:

Isn't it cute???!!

It was so simple to make! Here is what you'll need:

1. Hot glue (of course!)

2. Flower "lace" found at Walmart for nearly nothing! I think I had them cut about 20 flowers in length.

3. Long ball point pins. Use the pink tipped ones!

4. Hard foam wreath.

5. Green feather boas. I got the fuzzier ones to make it appear more as grass. Also, I only got two boas and I ended up having to kinda stretch them pretty far in between loops, I'd recommend getting three for yours!! I found these at Hancock Fabrics, they were a little pricy, but I REALLY wanted to make this wreath! :)

Take the end of the boa and glue it to the wreath for stability. Then just wrap it all around until the end of the line. Glue the end down and then repeat with your second and third boas. DO NOT glue the boa anywhere else around the wreath!!! It'll just end up being a huge mess!

 

Cut the flowers so that they are individual flowers now, instead of a rope of them. Then take your pink tipped pins and push them through the middles of the flowers and place them where you like around your wreath. 

Be sure to push a few in through the boa's centers so that they won't move around as much anymore!

 Here is my wreath with all my flowers pinned down!

I also added a little sign that I made! It reads "Bare feet welcome!"

It's made out of a toothpick and some card stock cut out into a "flag" shape. I did the flag shape double sided and then folded it over the toothpick so it would hold better and glued the two sides together around the toothpick.

Here is my completed wreath! Just needs a pretty little ribbon! My Walmart currently has all their spring ribbon on sale, as well! :D

 

I love this wreath!! Even on gloomy days or cold days even, it makes it feel like spring time around my home!! And my 5-year-old think it's just "the most prettiest" thing ever! (Wait till she sees my Easter wreath I'm working on!)

Happy spring y'all!!

-Stephanie

A Pirate Party for a Princess

So, my little princess turned five last month and we had a great party for her! She LOVES Jake and the Neverland Pirates that comes on Disney Jr (check it out if you have little ones, it's incredibly cute!) and she was Izzy, from the show, for Halloween. So it only made sense to have a pirate birthday for her this year, too!!

After the photos I'll share how this was put together for y'all!

 The kids "dug" for buried treasure.

 Shark bait.

 Eye patches and pirate hooks!

 These were for all the treasure the kids found!

 They decorated them all, too!

We also had a pinata that the kids had a lot of fun with!

1. I found the eye patches at Party City for around $3 and the hooks I actually found at a thrift store here in town! It was right after Halloween and the were about to get rid of all of them so I grabbed every last one they had for the party! (I was incredibly happy! They were a steal, too!!)

Some of these ideas I found on Pinterest. Here is a link to my Pirate Party board for you all to check out for more ideas, as well: Argh mateys!

2. The Pirate ships were very easy to make! I bought a couple of boxes of the blue jello and made it into the cups (and you HAVE to use the tumblers of the cups are way too big! I bought them at Party City for around $10.) The next day I sliced up my oranges and then put toothpick pirate flags in them!

3. For the printables I used two different sites. Catch My Party Pirates is one site I downloaded from. I used one of their templates to make my labels out of. I ended up copy and pasting them into word and then again into your PAINT program. In there you can select and area and then delete it. So I deleted the inner text and then copied it back into Microsoft word. After that I added a "text box" and typed up what I needed in a pirate font! (That was probably the hardest and most complex part of this process.)

Pirate Sales is where I found the sales for the orange ships. I sliced two lines into the top and bottom of each sale using an exacto knife and then slid in my tooth picks.

4. The rum floats were simple vanilla ice cream with the option of coke or rootbeer and the skewers were tropical fruits placed on the long sword toothpicks!

5. The treasure dig I used an old wash bin that I have and bought a bag of sand and filled it up with treasures! I used dollar store beaded necklaces, gold coins, some well wrapped candy, and other little party toys I had come across.

6. The last thing we did was to send all the kids on a real treasure hunt to find all their goody bags! They had a blast. We just sent them off in a direction... It was completely wrong at first, of course and then they had some clues that we gave them to help them along! They had a blast!

I hope you enjoyed these photos and the tips I shared with you all! As well, I hope that your pirate parties turn out to be just as much fun as mine was!! (And you if you have any questions regarding point number three please don't hesitate to ask! I'll help as best I can!!)

- Stephanie

Soap was surprisingly gross!

Who here still washes their kid's mouths out with soap when they say a "bad word"?? I remember it happening to me once as a child... I never said another word I wasn't supposed to say again! Soap, was, and still is, surprisingly GROSS!!!

My little one just turned five last month, pictures of party decor are coming soon! :) 
But ever since then she's been severely testing the waters lately to see what she can get away with now that she's five... She's slowly learning that it's pretty much nothing! About a week after turning the year older she informed me that since she was five now she could say "cuss words". I quickly informed her of her mistaken thought, but since then she has said TWO!!!! TWO dirty, foul, awful, words that no five-year-old should know, much less say! 
The first incident we had a long discussion of why that word wasn't to be said, along with other words that she knows not to say. And today she used another word!!! A different word.... A much, much more foul word!! Ugh... 
I'm beginning to wonder if she's hearing these things at school. We watch out language around her and I have no idea where she would have heard that she could say cuss words now that she's five except school.

I pulled this little excerpt from: When Young Children Use Profanity: How to Handle Cursing and Name Calling written by Timothy Jay, Ph. D.

The ABCs of Cursing
If you have established why the child cursed, you have established the antecedentconditions (i.e., cause). Antecedent is the A in ABC. Behavior is the B in ABC. Address the behavior itself-that is, the word(s) used. Did you hear mild speech (e.g., doo-doo head) or offensive speech (e.g., shit head)? Offensive language should result in more immediate and severe consequences than milder language. Consequences usually means applying behavior modification techniques (discussed later in this article).
 
To eliminate cursing and bad language, treat each cursing episode with the ABCs. Be consistent with all children at all times. Act quickly when cursing occurs and deal directly with the child who used the bad language.

I like this, I think this could be a great start to handling a situation like this. It makes sense and maybe could stop the profane speech quickly. But... Next time there will be soap! (There better not be a next time! :D)

You can check out the rest of the article on children using profanity here: Children and Profanity

-Stephanie 

A Fun Cheeseball!

Have you ever been sucked into the black hole that is called Netflix?? You have!!???! Then you'll understand me when I say I'm sorry for my extended absence, because that's exactly what happened. Netflix.

I am going to try and do better. My time management skills have been severely lax these days... SEVERELY!!!

So, here is something I found recently that I couldn't pass up sharing with you all:

This looks divine!! And I plan on trying it soon!

All it is, is that wonderful funfetti cake mix, butter, cream cheese, and a fair amount of sugar! You mix all the ingredients together, freeze the ball for a few hours and then roll any color sprinkles on it for fun!! 

Serve with graham crackers, fruits, or vanilla wafers like the picture suggests!! SO ingenious! 

This would be perfect for a birthday or maybe a girls night or book club meeting!! Give it a try! I know I am!

Here is the link for the full set of instructions for this amazing looking cheese ball:

Colorful Cheeseball

Go check it out and try it at your next hosting gig!! :)

-Stephanie

BBQ Shrimp... Looks too amazing!

Seriously, this shrimp recipe looks incredible! I have yet to make it, but it is certainly on my 2014 list of recipes to try! Please enjoy! :)

Ruth’s Chris New Orleans-Style BBQ Shrimp: 
Ingredients:
-Makes 4 servings
-20 large (16/20) shrimp, peeled and deveined
-1 ounce canola oil
-1 tablespoon plus 5 teaspoons green onions, chopped
-2 ounces dry white wine
-1 teaspoon fresh chopped garlic
-4 tablespoons Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce
-1 teaspoon Tabasco
-1/2 teaspoon cayenne
-1/2 teaspoon paprika
-8 ounces (2 sticks) salted butter

Directions:
Place a large cast iron skillet on a burner and heat over high heat. Add oil and cook shrimp until they are just done. It’s best to prepare shrimp in batches if you do not have large skillet. Remove shrimp and set aside on a large platter.

Add green onions to the oil in the skillet and cook for 1 minute. Add white wine and let simmer until it is reduced by half.

When the wine is reduced by half, add chopped garlic, Worcestershire, Tabasco. cayenne pepper and paprika. Shake the pan well and cook for 1 minute. Reduce the heat to low.

Cut butter into small chunks with the knife and slowly add into pan, shaking fast to melt butter.

Continue to add butter and shake until all butter is melted. Add shrimp back to pan and toss well to coat shrimp with butter and seasonings and to heat the shrimp. Place shrimp on four plates and enjoy.

-Stephanie

A little new year organization

Let's start off the new year in the right with... with getting organized!! I've found a great assortment of organizational printables to share with you all! 

They have 15 printables to help with your budget, dates and planning, and important family information to keep on hand! Give these pages a look through and get a family planning binder started with all your important information in one place this year! You never know when you'll need it in a hurry.

You can find these printables here: Family Planner

Happy New Year to you all!!

-Stephanie