It was a wonderful morning of pausing the Saturday routine and enjoying just being home together.
growing & learning with him
By Deirdre
It was a wonderful morning of pausing the Saturday routine and enjoying just being home together.
By Deirdre
I need to confess that this in not one of my best muffin tin meals. Things just didn’t come together the way I pictured them in my head. That happens sometimes.
An Earth made of blueberries and green grapes looked amazing in my head. My husband tried to guess what this creation was and couldn’t. Even after pointing out the Florida he was unsure. Telling him it was the Earth seemed to help, but it was still too abstract for him.
So what do you do when your Earth does work, you deconstruct it. The fruit salad Earth became fruit in a muffin tin. Some of the fruit was used to top blueberry yogurt which isn’t really blue by the way. Some went into its own cups and some was used to make blueberry jelly. (I am just kidding.) The jam came right from a jar and was spread on English muffin earthlings. I guess without eyes, a nose and a mouth the Earthlings may look a little abstract too.
I placed homemade granola in the cup between the Earthlings. It was placed there mostly because JDaniel helped me to make it. He is loves to snack on it or have it appear in a meal.
JDaniel didn’t seem to care about how the meal looked. He just dug right in and enjoyed it. Maybe on Earth Day Earthlings really want to eat their favorite foods. It doesn’t matter if they are in abstract or deconstructed forms. It seems to work that way at my house.
By Deirdre
When it comes time to craft and create, one of the best places to find inspiration is to go through your recycling bin. It is filled with cardboard boxes, soda or water bottles, egg cartons, and so much more.
I thought I would share with you some of the crafts JDaniel and I have created using recycled materials.
Soda Bottle Flower
This flower made of the bottom third of a soda bottle, muffin tin liners, a bottle cap and straw was easy to make and looks great with light streaming from behind it.
You may be thinking that you don’t remember seeing this flower featured here before and you would be right. I shared it on a guest post I did for Childhood Beckons. You can visit Childhood Beckons to see how to make this fun flower step by step.
Rained on Pictures Collage
This fun lamb puppet was created using an egg carton for the lamb’s body. He was featured in a guest post I did for Rainbows Within Reach as a part of an egg carton challenge.
Lorax Collage
What have you been creating with recycled materials? Share your ideas or links to your creation in the comment box below.
By Deirdre
Here is what I came up with. It is a bear hugging a box based on the book Big Bear Hug. I will be sharing more about the book and how we used this bear-hugging box on Friday’s Read.Explore.Learn. post.
Here are the Tissue Box Challenge Rules:
<div align="center"><a href="http://www.jdaniel4smom.com" title="JDaniel4's Mom"><img src="http://69.195.124.116/~jdanielf/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/TissueBoxChallenge2012.jpg" alt="JDaniel4's Mom" style="border:none;" /></a></div>
What are the prizes?
The first prize winner will receive a $20.00 Amazon Gift Card.
The second prize winner will win a Plastic Bag Monster Activity Kit!
Please link your creation below!
This event has ended.
By Deirdre
I am a creature of habit and routine. Having a schedule that stays pretty much the same from week to week is something that helps me feel relaxed and more or less stress-free.
The time JDaniel wakes up rarely varies. He tends to be up by 6:00 and is dying to eat breakfast shortly thereafter.
Lunch is a little before of afternoon. It tends to be later on days JDaniel has preschool.
Quiet time in in the early afternoon followed by a small snack.
Crafting, learning activities, brief times of outdoor play, and cooking projects round out the afternoon.
Then it is dinnertime followed by some playtime followed by a bath followed by story reading and a little YouTube with dad.
I try to get most of the housework done on Mondays and Wednesdays.
Blog post writing is done on Thursday mornings while JDaniel is in preschool
This past week during spring breaks our routine changed. The only things that stayed the same were breakfast and dinner times.
My family came to visit me. We loved having them. They were really flexible about meal times and when we did activities, but things changed just because they needed to.
Things like cleaning and laundry got set aside because spending time with family while they were at our house was more important. My nephews are growing into teens to quickly. My sister’s life at home is busy with work, driving her children to activities, and managing her home. Time to chat with her is hard to come by at times.
Blog writing wasn’t done. I did keep up with most of the comments and a little social media. My family was more important for the reasons stated above.
This past weekend we went to visit my husband’s mom for the first part of the weekend and had my mom over for the day on Easter. Both were wonderful times of family fellowship. We are so blessed to have them both living nearby. Spending time with them was so worth changing our schedule.
This week our regular schedule is starting to fall into place and while I am glad we got to spend time with special people in our lives having our regular schedule back is so restful.
Knowing that the laundry is already caught up, the kitchen floor is clean, there are no dishes in the sink and a few other things household things are done is such a stress release. Watching things pile up last week was hard at times.
Changing our schedule from time to time is wonderful. It shakes things up and makes them focus on things beyond dust bunnies and laundry piles. It helps to focus on people that are important to us. With that said it was great to pause in our lives for a moment, but I am glad to be moving back to the regular routine.
This post is linked to Happy Family Times.
By Deirdre
When I think I Easter, it isn’t the bunny that comes to mind, but the lamb. My mom used to make lamb cakes for Easter when I was growing up and lambs have remained my favorite symbol of Easter. Below you will find my lamb lunch and if you visit Rainbows Within Reach you will find a lamb I made for a guest post there made of egg cartons. I hope you enjoy both of them.
Yesterday I shared a rooster crowing, “Jesus has risen.” Today the lamb is responding by saying,” He has risen indeed!”
I don’t normally serve Cheerios on bread with olives, but they came to gather to make a really cute lamb.
The ground is covered with celery and pickle grass with jelly beans hidden in it.
Every meal must have cheese in it if JDaniel is helping plan it. The sun is the cheese element in this meal and it has shredded cheese rays along with mandarin orange pieces!
I hope you had a wonderful Easter!
This post is linked to Muffin Tin Monday!
By Deirdre
Mid March through the end of April brings an interesting scenario to our lives. Each child’s Spring Break fell in different weeks. My husband’s still buried in Tax Season, so pulling one child out to go on a family Spring Break during the other child’s break won’t work. And to top it off, because of Tax Season, we’ve planned our family trip for late April, when neither child will be off. Confused yet? Yeah, me too. And a little put-out, frankly. While my husband was chugging away at his job in a time when he’s at his busiest (read: never home), I’m going to lose a ton of productivity not one week, but two! And then after that, comes our family vacation. Another week lost.
Until I realized that I’d been given a gift. A gift of private, quality time with each child, individually, for an entire week. A week where we could either go where the wind blew us or carefully plan what THAT child wanted to do without any input (read: vocal objections) from her sister.
And a gift it’s turning out to be. In ways I didn’t really expect.
For example, both of my children picked the zoo as a special place to go on their week off. One child wanted to stay for less than one hour when we went. She just wasn’t feeling it that day. At all. And guess what? If her sister had been along, we would have never been able to leave within the hour. Because her sister? We will be there 5 hours, easily. And I’ll STILL have to cut short some of the things she wants to do.
And the movie The Lorax. We saw it as a family. Then my youngest wanted to see it again as her “movie day.” We had a great time together, just she and I. No jockeying over who’s sitting where, who had their arm on the seat, who gets what snack. And guess what? This week when my oldest is off? She wants to see The Lorax again too!
I’m tempted to say, “Good Heavens, this is ridiculous. I’m doing the same things with each child on their week off that I could be doing with both of them to save time!”
I could easily say that because it would be true.
But instead, I’m treasuring each moment, replay that it is for me, with each child. Alone. Because I don’t often get private time with just one of them. And I get to appreciate each girl in a way that SHE needs to be appreciated, not in a way that’s balancing between their two needs simultaneously.
And when we (finally!) take our family trip at the end of April, both of their emotional tanks will be full because I’ll have been able to spend not just a moment, but an entire week pausing with them. Drinking them in. Loving them for their unique qualities.
And that gift may not come again next year. So this year I’m appreciating every minute of it.
By Deirdre
I am super lucky that JDaniel eats vegetables and I don’t have to sneak them into foods he likes. There are a number of moms I know that have to sneak in veggies through purees of vegetables or baby food.
With Easter right around the corner, I thought I would try creating two sneaky recipes using carrots in muffin tin meals that any bunny or child would love.
The first meal contained whole grain rabbit sandwiches with cream cheese mixed with carrot baby food spread on top. JDaniel loved them. He enjoyed licking the cream cheese mixing spoon of much that I placed some into celery bites.
JDaniel is not big on celery. It is too strong for his taste. He was willing to eat it with the special cream cheese in it.
The rest of the tin contained foods rabbits would love to nibble. Strawberries, cauliflower, veggies straws, and kiwi grass were all placed in the tin.
My growing bunny loved all of them.
The second muffin sneaking carrot lunch has carrots hidden in two foods. The macaroni and cheese have carrot baby food mixed into it. The grilled cheese sandwich has shredded carrots hidden inside.
Actually, when you bite into this special grilled cheese sandwich you don’t notice the shredded carrots in it. The carrots are mixed with a small amount of mayonnaise and a 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese. The shredded cheddar looks just like the shredded carrots.
I served this sandwich to JDanie and his friend Jake and they both loved it.
The meal is rounded out with a small fruit salad.
By Deirdre
I wanted us to do something big…something that would take a lot of effort for us to make happen. I wanted something that would bring us together and keep us close…close in our hearts and close in our thoughts. I wanted it to be something that we all didn’t need but would want.
We want them to learn how to pause life for a moment when they are young so that when they are older it will become a natural thing, not something they have to put on their calendar like a dental appointment. We want them to know that with just a short amount of time in a place that is surrounded not only with beauty but created with love that there is always a safe place to land…just like this garden will be for a butterfly.
By Deirdre
I am trying to help JDaniel learn more about money. When I had the opportunity to try a Coinstar at my local Bi-Lo, I decided it would be a great way to help JDaniel learn a little bit more about money. It is right beside the machine with the claw that picks up toys that JDAniel would love to try, but I had never used the Coinstar before. Using it meant paying a fee and I just didn’t what to pay it. Well, the Coinstar is now no-fee if you select a Bi-Lo gift card as the way to
When I explained to JDaniel that we would be shopping with a gift card after using the Coinstar, he was thrilled.
We have a coin jar that has been been sitting in the cabinet since he started potty training. The idea was he could earn money by remembering to use the pottty. It was a great idea, but not want ultimately helped him learn. It took a lot of time and practice.
The jar has just been sitting in the cabinet for months gathering dust. He reminded me that we could use those coins for this project.
We also looked under cushions and in my purse and found a little change.
Once we had all the coins gathered, we dumped out his jar. There were some stray items in his jar and we set them aside. When there were only coins left, we sorted them by type.
After exploring them, we put them in a plastic container and headed off to Bi-Lo. The Coinstar machine was right in the front of the store right near the games I try to avoid. When I asked JDaniel to find it, he knew right where it was.
JDaniel was eager to dump them right in the machine and start the coin conversion process, but we read all the directions before doing so.
It was so easy to follow the directions on the screen telling me how to use the Coinstar.
When I was done reading, JDaniel finally got to dump the coins in.
It took no time for the Coinstar to tell us what coins we had dumped in.
The receipt and gift card came out quickly.
JDaniel was ready to shop for the food items of his dreams. He ended up with a box of Trix and one of Vanilla Wafers. He was in heaven until he realized the cereal would have to wait until breakfast and the Vanilla Wafer had to wait until after dinner.
It was so easy to follow the steps in the coin conversion process by reading the messages on the screen. I will definitely use the Coinstar again even if it is near the “claw” machine.
Disclosure: I have been paid (at Coinstar’s request) to try and blog about Coinstar’s
products/services as part of a Collective Bias ( #CBias) shopper insights study . All
opinions are my own.”