That time where paint was everywhere, and bottle beads.

Okay, I am thinking paint is not the best thing for a little one who LIKES being dirty. Today we did another cross painting for Gigi, and decided to do things a little differently than last time.
I got a plastic table cloth and lay it out on the floor, hoping that it would keep paint off of the floor. (Which it did)
We also bought N a little easel, thinking that she would paint easier on that than with it flat...I am not sure she enjoyed that anymore than painting herself!

Things started out well, I kept trying to get her to paint on the canvas and not the floor. Which worked for oh- two seconds. Oh did I mention she even tasted the paint?! First thing she did was stick the brush in her mouth!

Here is where she realized that hey- this stuff changes my skin color! SAWEET!

Oh here we go. At least there is paint on the canvas! She gave up on the easel. :)

Then she was done with the canvas all together. Here is her "I'm going to paint my body" picture. I am glad to see that the apron really helps.

Here is the end result, yes I helped. Isn't it purty?! She did most of it, with my hand covering hers. But if I didn't help, it would have never gotten done!


When we got tired of paint, we got out our tray activity. Bottle beads. This one is easy peasy- empty bottle...plastic beads.... 30 minutes of fun!

She got them into the bottle, first try! She was proud!

She was pretty funny when the beads were on the floor, she tried to pick them all up at once.

Here she is trying her hardest to put the top on the bottle.

We spent a while longer playing with the beads, helping clean up and making all kinds of sounds.
Since we are learning our eyes and ears, it was a good lesson to show that the beads make noise. :)
Then we read a book, and pointed out all the eyes and ears.
I then decided to hide my phone with it playing "What Does the Fox Say." We went on a hunt to find it with only our ears. She FOUND it!!
She doesn't quite have where her ears and eyes are, but she is getting there. Everything is still a nose.
I am proud to say that school lasted almost an hour today, with cleaning of the paint included.
Now that nap time is over, it's time to head outside and play with our soccer ball before lunch. :)

Until next time.

Tot school bust.

You see that little bit of blue in her mouth?!
Yea, that would be our lesson for the day.
She ate her school work.
GO Nat!
I can't really blame her though, I did make her lesson out of PEEPS!
I made some Peep playdough. Super simple.
3 peeps
1 tablespoon coconut oil
3-6 tablespoons powdered sugar. 
I found that 1 tablespoon of coconut oil made it VERY oily, so I kept adding powdered sugar.

I tried to get her to do anything with it, besides put it in her mouth. But I am guessing her breakfast just didn't fill her up.

We did make an "A" with a cookie cutter, but the second "A" we tried to make, she wanted to eat.

This is why I say we are a bust. I don't think we quite understand play dough just yet. WE WILL WORK ON IT!

This week we are learning "eyes" and "ears." Every time I say ear and point to mine, she laughs her bottom off- so either my ears are TOO funny, or ... I have no idea. Haha.

With recent events, I wasn't able to plan our week out too extensively, so I think tomorrow we may take a trip to the library and grab a few books. Other than that- you will just have to stay tuned to see what we get in to. :)

Until next time.

Hey Victor.

You know how most friends have a "song?" Well, my sister and I have a song too! It's called Victor Vito. Here is the link to watch the video. Yes, I know that it is a child's song, and yes I know it's probably the silliest song ever... but that is what makes it ours. We both know the song frontwards and backwards. Every time we ate spaghetti together, this was our go to song. Most times in the car, we played this song. JUST BECAUSE!!!

You see those two girls ^^ we ARE silly, and that is why this song works for us!! You wouldn't expect anything less from us!

I've come to really love this girl! She has turned into my best friend over the last four months, to an extreme I never would have imagined.

I hate seeing that girl move away on me, but I know she will be back!

We have had some fun times the last few months, a few arguments, but a ton of laughs. She was the biggest support for me when I had some venting to do. :)

One thing she was amazing at doing- getting my beautiful girl to sleep!
AND if there is one thing I know- it's that this little girl LOVEs her some Aunt Dede!!!

No one else can make Natalie smile this big! :) She may not understand what is going on right now, but I know that she loves her Dede and already misses her so much!
Pretty soon Dede will have her education done, and move back home. Then we will be able to get into a lot more trouble. I'll miss her like crazy until then, but good thing we have technology!!


I love you Destiny! See you soon!!

Cross Painting

Today marks our third day of Tot school! I am so excited that I started this with Natalie. Granted she may be too young for some of the activities we are doing, I still want to try them. I can kind of gauge what she can do, and next week I can try something different. :) 

Today we painted on a canvas. Which I think I need to get more of- and also an easel. 

Since I didn't figure she would be able to paint a cross, I just did the ole' tape it off method. I taped off a cross onto a canvas and let her go at it! 

But first! We have to paint our hand! 

She liked to hit it with the brush. At least it's on the canvas... right? 

A little finger painting came into the picture. 

Then she painted the sponge.

She turned around and thought hey! this blue looks really good on this black chair!

(This is why I think we need an easel.)

She did, after her painting of the chair, paint on the canvas that I held up for her.

This is how my table looked after it was all said and done. -What you don't get to see is all the blue paint I found under the plate and canvas, and all the yellow paint that was on the floor!!!

Our final product!!! I think it's beautiful!! I am hoping Lee can do something to let me hang it on the wall. :) 

Then we moved onto our tray activity: Magnetic pom poms!

If you haven't seen the trend this week, I really like pom poms. But it was easy activities to do to see how she would react to everything. This was very easy to put together too, even though N didn't really understand that they were stuck to the tray. I took pom poms and glued magnets on to them. DONE. Yup, told you it was easy. :)

I gave her the bowl thinking she may want to do a little transferring. She did. For a minute. 

Then she took off! If you look closely you can see a cute little heart on her tush- Yeah, she painted herself. I am guessing the apron doesn't help when she wants to paint her back! 

I let her play by herself for a few minutes while I cleaned up all of the paint- turned around to see her sitting on the tray. Silly girl.

After school was over N thought she would watch the trash get picked up, in comfort of the dog bed. :) 

I cannot wait until tomorrow- we aren't having school but we are planning on dyeing Easter Eggs and baking some cakes. 

We also just got a new book- and I mean it is a big book! It's called The Complete Resource Book for Toddlers and Two's. It has over 2000 ideas to help teach toddlers and twos everything they need to know! We are starting on the body parts next week! She's got nose down pact, I hope it's as easy to do all the others. 

Until next time.

Easter Egg Collage

Please Please Please ignore the blurriness of the pictures today. N wasn't super excited about today's activities in Tot School, so I took pictures as I could.

In loo of Easter being this Sunday we made an Easter Egg collage. Which is simply this:

Strips of paper in different colors
Strips of tissue paper in different colors
Glue
Egg cutout.

I cut an egg out of white cardstock, and put glue all over it. I tried to get N to tear up the paper, but apparently since it wasn't anything I actually needed, she decided it wasn't as fun. Then just threw it on the floor.

 I put a few starting pieces of paper on to the egg, hoping she would catch on, but once she felt the glue...it was almost over!

 N tried her hardest to get that sticky stuff off of her hands!!! After I got it off she helped put paper on the egg, and I patted it down to stay on there.

 She quickly was over her egg collage, but I feel like it came out okay. :)

More on my new display frame in a few minutes! Next we moved on to our tray activity. The pom pom drop. All I did was take a plastic container, got the hubby to cut a hole in the top and stuck a paper towel roll through. I am glad I thought to tape it on, because N liked to throw and hit it on things! I covered it with some card stock to just make it a bit prettier. :)

 She got the idea alright. For a few minutes at least. She wanted to play with the tray more. OFF WITH THE TRAY!

 Then we shook it!

 And explored it.

 Even had to sniff it.

 This shot would have been amazing if it was so blurry! She tried her hardest to get that little hand in there!!! After chasing Sophie around the room for a few minutes with the drop, she was over it. Even tried to clean up, by putting the poms on the book case.

Tomorrow is an off day, with hopes of making it to a bible study at church. Then we will be back at it Thursday!

Now to my new "Look What I Made" frame! I bought the window frame a few months ago with intentions of doing SOMETHING with it. It ended up in storage. Then Lee cleaned it up and got all the old paint off of it, in the process breaking some of the glass. I was devastated. NOW what was I to do with it!? After rearranging the dining room, we had put it up on the wall just to get it out of the way. Well it looked really good just hanging there! I then thought- why not string some string through it and display Natalie's work?!!? We did just that! I made a paper cone and attached it to hold my mini clothespins, and VOILA! Display frame! Once I get my vinyl I will put "Look what I made" over it- or something to that effect! 

Yay for my frame! :) Can you tell I am EXCITED!


Until next time.

Tot school for Natalie.

Most of you that know me will know that I am a starter and not a finisher. My husband makes fun of me all the time because I will start a project, get bored or hit a snag and I am over it. It isn't the best quality to have, especially on a tight budget and very limited space. Nevertheless, he supports any and all things that I have taken on. :)

My new adventure WILL be different!! I plan to follow this one all the way thru to the end!

My beautiful one year old (yes ONE) and I started "Tot school" today! There are many many places to get ideas for tot school. One of my new favorites is 1+1+1=1. She has ALL kinds of tot trays.
Since N is quite a bit younger than her tots, I have to search around for things I believe she can handle.

I also decided that we will only do tot school three days a week for now. After I saw how long short N's attention span was, three days will be enough! I was thinking it would be a 30 minute venture, but it only took us about 15? Maybe. I am not complaining. When she was involved she seemed to be having a GREAT time! That is all that matters right now!

Today marks the first day::

Of course N can't understand what my board says, but I like it. :) For the flower painting, I just taped a sheet of paper down (Dollar Tree paper pad) drew a flower on it and let her go.

She seemed to catch on pretty quickly, and actually was putting sponge to paper. (The sponge is a Dollar Tree handled sponge- which means no pieces in the mouth, and a neat handle for little hands to grasp)

LOOK how grown up she looks!? SO BIG!!!

Then we had to explore the sponge. I don't think she understood how the paint went from that to the paper. :)

She also had to explore the plate that the paint was on, she would stick her fingers in and then try to get the paint off. I am surprised none of the paint went into her mouth!!!

Here is the final project. I have decided I am a very bad flower draw-er. :/ Oh well. It's still cute.



For the pom pom transfer I just took some pom poms and put them in a plastic bowl, along side another bowl. The idea was that she would transfer the poms from one bowl to the other and back again.

She started doing what I had planned.

Seemed to quite enjoy the idea...

Then thought it would be fun to pour them all over the floor. :)
She figured out that the tray made noises and was kind of done with the poms.
So after taking the tray away and dealing with a little fit- she went back at it.

She didn't think it was very fun to help me clean up though, and after I would put a few in the bowl she took the bowl and poured them out. We had a great time though, I can't wait until tomorrow! :)

Busy busy bees

Boy oh boy have we been busy!! I know I left off with us planning on having another baby- well, I decided after a long month of thinking- that I just wasn't ready for number two just yet. Not saying that if it does happen I would be terribly upset, but I just don't want to "try" right now.

THEN we decided out of the blue that we wanted to sell our house and move! So we have been busy busy trying to figure out what we need to do to get that done. We looked at a few houses and found one that we both completely fell in love with! So that being said:: we were ready to get it done! We went in with guns blazing! This past week I have been cleaning my bottom off, getting each and every room clutter free and have gotten rid of things we do not need anymore. Then we sat down with our realtor to only find out that we have A LOT of work ahead of us- and that we will lose at LEAST $2400 to just sell our house! Well, we were okay with it- at first. Headed to Home Depot and got a ton of supplies to start updating our house. After going full force with that, I got to thinking... We can't afford this. Truly truly, we can't. We were going to make it work. But there is no need to diminish our savings to just get out of here. Also, who would watch Natalie grow up!?

Already from the de-cluttering and cleaning I've done the last week, I felt like I was ignoring Nat, and this is just not acceptable! So, we aren't moving. At least not for the next year. We will take our time and do some updates to the house, then this time next year, we will visit the idea again. Unless something happens, of course.

To start our updating, we have already done quite a bit! We have purchased the door frame that needs to be replaced, our old dog chewed it to pieces. I have started painting some of our light fixtures that were brass, to a satin nickel to tie thru the house. We have gotten 2 inch blinds on the other front windows of the house (Natalie's room was the only one with them) We have gotten the new light fixtures for our bathroom, ours weren't bad, but it was one of the things our realtor suggested we change. Although, we still kept our "ball" lights. :P We have also gotten this window film put on our back door. I LOVE the natural light that our house has, but the blinds on the door, made it difficult to maneuver. We picked up a cracked glass looking film and put on the window, so now we don't need the blinds. We have also... I know I know, we have done a lot in just a weekend, I told you we went in with guns blazing! We've painted the hallway, and gotten the baseboards primed and ready to be fixed. That is for another day! :)

Anyway, we have have had a busy busy last month, and I am ready to sit down and relax... but someone is turning ONE soon and I have to get busy for that!! :)

At 11 months old Natalie is amazing! Even more personality then we ever thought she could have at this age! She can point to a nose, not on herself yet, but anyone else and her bear. She can clap now, she can high five, and say thank you when handed something! She has been sleeping in her own room the last few weeks, and it's been amazing! We are also trying to get her off bottles, and she has only had one bottle in the last week! I've been mixing some of her formula with whole milk to get ready for the switch, and I cannot wait until that happens!!

I better go get her down for a nap, until next time.