Happy May Day!!!

Lathey Potts (my Ali girl) and I put together these May baskets yesterday

 She enjoyed the "ring and run" part of delivering them immensely

 Look at those pigtails fly! 

We even got one ourselves from our dear friends and neighbors a block away who brought the whole family of 6 over to deliver this pretty basket made from a scrapbooking paper and ribbon!

Making Mealtime Memories

An orange-themed lunch

Since we were having chicken curry over rice with wheat pitas we decided to make a little tent and eat it on the lawn for a fun family experience!

How to Make GORP

I'm not sure if GORP stands for Good Ol' Raisins and Peanuts or Granola Oats Raisins and Peanuts but it is an excellent snack for hiking, the zoo, the park, cross-country skiing, or traveling, etc.

Add whatever ingredients you like.  Options include: dried fruits and berries, nuts of any kind, granola or oats or granola clusters, crackers or pretzels of any kind, chocolate chips, favorite candies, or dried cereals.

This is what looked good to me when I went shopping for GORP ingredients.  If I wasn't so spacey while pregnant, I would have remembered the box of Rice Chex in my pantry and added it in.  I only added about 1/3 of the bag of marshmallows and half of the bag of pretzels.

Mix thoroughly in a large bowl.

Put about 1-2 cups of GORP in each little plastic bag for an individual portion.  Stash in a safe, kid-free zone and throw them in your backpack for a handy, and delicious snack-on-the-go!  Kids love GORP and mommies and daddies love GORP too!

Depending on what you add into the GORP, it can be fairly inexpensive.  I spent about $10 and was able to make around 12 or 13 large portions that served us very well at the zoo and for snacks in the van.  However, if I had been able to get to Walmart to purchase the ingredients, it would have been a bit cheaper. 

*If you have young children be sure to keep in mind what they are able to handle chewing and watch them carefully lest they choke on a craisin or peanut, etc.*

Lovin' My Little People Recap #3

Our kiddoes with their Boppa and Grammy (my folks).

#21: Shared one of my yummy treats with the kiddoes even though I really didn't want to. After all, if I expect them to share, I should share too!

#22: Loving my kiddoes means teaching them to work HARD, which is a rare thing in today's world. After schoolwork we are going to work on spring cleaning! I wish someone would invent a floor that mops itself to perfection every single day!

#23: Going to sit each child down on my lap and tell them 10 things I love about them.

#24: Making a treasure hunt for the kids with little clues that Alathia can read in order to find the treasure at the end.

#25: Took my kids to the park to run off some energy and play with friends.

#26: Reading aloud to kiddoes is so important. Time to load up with a fresh bunch of books from the library today!

#27: Took the kids to the local grocery store's 50th celebration for games, balloons, free samples, hot dogs, and prizes. They won a cake in the cake walk!

 #28: Got the kids some little gifts that I know will bless them. For A: paper and a box of envelopes (so she'll stop asking to use my computer paper and envelopes) For Jer: a little bug house for collecting bugs and studying them For Just: A shovel for digging in the dirt.

#29: Packing a picnic for them and going to the park at 11 a.m.  My "Weather Man" hubby assures me this is the day to do it this week.

 #30: If my kiddoes expect to get 3 meals and 2 snacks a day, they have to do their chores. No snack until they clean up their things. Love involves preparing your child for adulthood. (2 Thessalonians 3:10 "If a man will not work, he shall not eat.")

#31: Hug 'em. Kiss 'em. Teach them. Train them. Point them to Truth. Affirm them. Encourage them. Special treats and projects sometimes. Quality AND quantity time. Boundaries and consequences. Being thankful for them.

To see #11-20 go here.
To see #1-10 go here.

Fun at Home

Fingerpainting with butterscotch pudding

Dissolving foam capsules in water

(Are we the only family that received tons of these for Christmas?)

A & J made a puppet show and

came up with their own song for it

Painting is Ali's favorite past-time! 

Here she is painting jumbo macaroni shells.

(She did her own hairstyle that day )

On St. Patrick's Day

What happens when little brother wants to stamp with his siblings too

Jer loves the scooter! 

 

Ali loves her new bike!

Window Markers

Alathia begged me to come and draw with her using her new window markers

from Grandpa and Grandma. I didn't realize how much fun they could be!

Don't have a chalkboard in your kitchen like Monica
that you can write fun messages on for visiting company?
Try window markers instead--sold at Walmart.

Cute and Easy Puzzle

A few weeks ago I was having an incredibly rough day with my daughter. I practically begged my mom to take her. While at Grammy's for the afternoon, they made this fun craft together! Ali loves it!

Mom took an old chocolate box of ours which she had bought us for Valentine's Day (they were sooooo yummy!) and made some shapes with foam and foam stickers she had on hand.
She traced around each of the foam shapes with a marker so that it is a puzzle. Ali has to try to match the "candies" to the shapes.
Frugal fun!

Frugal Friday--Fast and Frugal Snack

I was making healthy smoothies almost every day during the first couple of months of my hubby's injury. However, since he's healed up and we've gotten busier with springtime activities, I've gotten out of the habit and don't make them as often. But my kids love smoothies and I want them to be getting the benefits of yogurt in their diet. So, the other day I filled one of their tupperware cups half-full of plain homemade yogurt and half full of grape juice. I put my finger over the hole in the lid and shook it up. Instant smoothie without the work of pulling out the blender! You can throw in some flax meal, veggie puree, or wheat germ if it's handy. These are much healthier than the sugar-loaded smoothie drinks you can buy in the store.

My kids also enjoy plain yogurt with some fresh or frozen fruit mixed in but I have found that when they drink their yogurt in a smoothie instead of eating it, there is MUCH less mess to clean up!

These quick-smoothies are very frugal for us considering we get milk (which I make into yogurt) and juice through WIC. However, even if we were paying for the milk and juice, with some good sales on these items, these drinks would still fit our budget and they help fill up those bottomless-pit-tummies that my kiddoes have!

For more Frugal Friday Ideas, visit Life as Mom today!

Family Fun

Every now and then we get tired of trucks and racecars and embrace our feminine side!
Resurrection Eggs that Ali made in her preschool class
A page attached to the front tells what each thing symbolizes. The kids love looking at these and I plan to go over them several times with them this month.

The unleavened bread

The sponge

The guaze

The little growing pot kits were in the dollar section of Target. The kids had fun planting them with me and after only a few days they've already sprouted! We're trying to grow chives and basil. The Target dollar section had tons of neat gardening tools/projects for kids.

Grammy gave the kids this sugar cookie kit. The kids had great fun with their friends Carsen and Kennedy making snake and snowman cookies with brightly colored dough. I didn't get pics of their cookies though!

Having fun with the paint pages Grammy gave her

Just wet a Q-tip or a sponge and paint your page!

I think my mom found these at Hobby Lobby in Billings.

New Activitiy Tubs and Preserving Memories

Some of you may remember that when Crystal posted about her Quiet Time Activity Tubs for her 4 year old daughter, I copied the idea and made some up for my daughter too. Only, I couldn't squeeze buying plastic tubs into the budget then because of our temporary scarcity so I just put some pretty paper on the front of cardboard boxes.

I was able to score a great deal on tubs at Target this week and excitedly filled up these neat and orderly plastic tubs. They are a little small and don't fit puzzles, and I have to slightly bend coloring books, but they hold most of the odds and ends I have to fill them with and the price was right at $1 a box. I put the puzzle pieces in the box and then have the puzzle board resting on top of the lid of the box they coordinate with. We have a variety of things in them: magnetic paper princess doll and clothes, beads, lacing cards, foam beads and foam crafts, giant dice, fancy markers and notebook, books on tape for kids, flashcards, small toys, etc.

I also snagged 3 bigger-size tubs for keepsake boxes for the kids. I don't want to go overboard saving everything for my kids, but I think it's special that my mom saved a few of our favorite baby outfits/toys/things for our kids to look at. I have been looking for about a year for vintage metal boxes or chests that would work for this, but I came to the conclusion that tubs will keep the dust out, will stack neatly, and will work fine, though they aren't fancy.

Ali's box holds her "macaroni" doll that has Ali embroidered on it's foot (we found this in a grocery store in Utah!) and her favorite lamb "Baby" from her infancy. It holds the curtain skirt I made her that she nearly wore to rags and a couple of her favorite t-shirts from toddlerhood. Also a thumbprint book that Grammy made with her and her favorite songbook containing her favorite song from age one "I Must Tell Jesus All of My Trials."

Justus' box holds some darling overalls he wore all the time, his wooden baby block, first paci, newborn diaper, and newborn shoes. Jeremiah's box (didn't get a pic of his) holds some favorite baby outfits, leather shoes I made for him that he wore constantly, a plaster handprint from when he was 3 weeks old, and his favorite story from age one "Oh Where Oh Where Has my Little Bear Gone?"

As they grow I will add more to the boxes, special papers, projects, their Duckie blankies (if they ever stop sleeping with them) and little odds and ends. I may also save a bag of a few of the special hand-crocheted, hand-made quilts that they have as family heirlooms. I also hope to learn to make videos of their pictures and put these in. I have a baby scrapbook for each of them for the first year of their lives and regular albums to hold pics after age one. I'm thinking that a DVD or CD set to music of their baby/toddler/preschool age pics might be more fun and more easy to do than having to remember to print off photos a few times a year to fill their album with. What do you think? Any tips on how to make these?

Activities for Older Kids?

Blogreader Sheila asked if I might have some ideas for activities to do indoors with older kids (preteen age). It got me thinking back to what my brothers and I used to do. Here is a list of things we did and if you have older kids, or ideas from your own childhood, please add them in the comments:

Balloon Volleyball--this is even fun for adults!

Board games

Beginner's sewing projects (fleece hats and mittens and socks)

Being involved in 4-H groups

Learn to play an instrument (Can't afford lessons? Get a book or video from the library and teach yourself the basics)

Drawing (How many thousands of hours did we spend tracing and drawing from different books we had on How to Draw?)

Fashion Plate Girls--I wish I could remember what this was called but someone gave me a kit where you traced different ladies and then you could choose what outfit to put on them and trace and then you could use different textures for the fabric of her outfit and use colored pencils to color her outfit and you could trace various accesories for her. My friends and I used this simple kit for YEARS on end, always designing new outfits with new colors and variations. Something like this is wonderful for preteen girls

Scrapbooking--Some of my preteen cousins make the most amazing albums and really enjoy this!

Write a newsletter for Grandparents (either and e-mail version or a snail-mail copy to mail out) Pretend to be a journalist and make it a "news"paper

Create a music video or write a play and film it

Make a movie about life at your house and the routines you have--This would be fun to look back on later!

Water balloon babies (My friend and I did the egg babies in 5th grade until one broke a few days later in my fanny pack and left a nasty rotten egg smell that wouldn't come out! From then on it was water balloon babies for us and we had endless fun mothering our little balloons. Not surprisingly, we both have 3 kids now!)

Build bridges out of toothpicks and glue (we did this in 5th and 6th grade at school and had competitions to see which team could build the strongest bridge)

Craft books from the library (learn origami, learn how to be a good photographer, learn to crochet, learn to decorate your room

Plan an adventure. My friend and I decided we wanted to live off the land in 5th grade like a girl in a book we read about (Naya Nuki, Girl Who Ran). So we planned a camping adventure in our pasture and lived in a tent for a week (age 11 or 12) and cooked our own Ramen over a fire and swam in the creek and we even made our own matching skirts out of an old sheet for the adventure. We even tried eating roasted grasshopper. Planning it together was half the fun! Of course my brother and his friend begged to join us on the adventure.

Start a club. In my preteen years, my friends and I started a club for girls who loved horses and we rode my horse, Rebel, all the time after school. We called ourselves "Rebel's Girls."

I recently posted on doing a treasure hunt for your kids. My husband says he and his sisters loved to do these even as teens and the clues their dad made them were very difficult to solve and took a lot of time to figure out.

Serve others--Go visit at a nursing home, volunteer as a mother's helper, take a homemade card to someone going through a tough time, bake bread for someone who is sick, etc. Kids love to do this sort of thing.

Etiquette classes--take time to teach your kids etiquette and proper grooming and how to be a lady or a gentleman. Kids this age are soaking it up and have fun "practicing" this kind of stuff. My mom had me go through the "Christian Girls Charm Course" at age 11 with a couple of my girl friends. My brothers went through a similar course for boys.

Make a scoot game--similar to air hockey without the air--a large wooden box and a little door on each end where a wooden puck can be knocked in--simple for most guys to create from wood, use a small board as your puck paddle to try to shoot the puck into the other person's door.

Look for table tennis, air hockey, or pool tables at yard sales

Bowl using plastic water bottles and any kind of ball or buy an inexpensive toy set at the local discount store

Read aloud together as a family--kids of all ages enjoy this

Listen to Family Radio Theatre broadcasts or podcasts of Adventures in Odyssey or other kids' programs

Anyone else have great ideas???

Indoor Activities for Kids--More Ideas

After a couple of weeks of showing you things you can do with your children, I realized that this series could go on forever so I decided to condense my remaining ideas in one last post. If I come across new and unique ideas I will feature them but for now, this is the end of this particular series.

Things we enjoy doing on a cold day that I haven't already featured in my posts:


Children's Puzzles

Reading Aloud (Extra fun if Mommy crawls in the tent to read to the kids)

Playing School or Church or Grocery Shopping (the kids are always playing things like this together)

Cutting and pasting

Making playdough/Playing with Playdough

Helping me bake new things or cook up interesting recipes (try making homemade crackers, mini-pizzas, Stone Soup, fruit pizza, colored pancakes, etc.)

Games! Memory, Candy Land, sorting foam alphabet letters, alphabet Bingo, regular Bingo, Don't Break the Ice, Ants in the Pants, Barrel of Monkeys, large dominoes, and that one where the Alligator bites you are all ones that come to mind as being good for young children.

Painting (I featured finger painting but my kids love all kinds of painting!)

Stamping (I've found washable paints work much better than trying to teach them to stamp using an ink pad. Ask me how I know this.............)

Sorting and matching games using everyday objects (buttons, coins, magnets, pencils and pens, socks, etc.)

Balloon volleyball (a favorite with my brothers and I growing up; use a piece of yarn stretched between two walls as the net and play for hours!)

Beach party (blow up an inflatable pool and some beach balls and floaties and let the kids have a dry swim party indoors)

Stacking canned goods or blocks

Magna-doodles--Ali received one from each of her Grandmas this year for Christmas so we have two and this toy has been the #1 most educational toy around our home and they are used throughout the day, every day and on car trips!

Designing roads and cities for matchbox cars on large rolls of newsprint (my kids won't get to do this much since they got a road and city rug for Christmas)

Lacing cards

Stringing beads on a shoestring

Exercise cards (my friend Heather gave us these last year and they are tons of fun for squirrely kids. My former neighbor girls begged to do these every day!)

Tub of beans (just like the tub of cornmeal, this keeps them entertained for a long time!)

Playing with pots and pans and kitchen utensils (I admit I do not do this much since I hate washing extra dishes but kids love to look at your kitchen tools)

Making picture books out of magazines and construction paper

Going to the Children's Museum or library

Singing together and learning to use musical instruments. If you don't have any, make some! An oatmeal container makes a nice drum!

Arts and Crafts (I could list dozens of projects, but instead I'll lump them together and just say that if things are really bad at your house, maybe it's time to whip out a quick project or start doing a collage or tile picture or learning how to make origami frogs and balloons)

Chores (My kids are still young enough to enjoy doing them! Yes, it takes a lot longer with them "helping" but it does keep them busy!)

Dancing to music

Having a tea party

Doing pilates together

Look through photo albums

Beanbag or hackey sack toss

Playing with Puppets

Making up a play to perform for Daddy or grandparents

Playing Garage Sale


Growing up, I enjoyed looking through this book for fun ideas:
365 TV-Free Activities You Can Do with Your Child


This is just a small sampling of all the fun you can have in spite of being home-bound! The more activities you plan for, the less likely the kids will be to make you bonkers!

Indoor Activities for Kids #10--Treasure Hunt

Beware! This activity will definitely be a favorite with your kids and will be constantly requested! It's a favorite game I used to do with the kids I babysat. Make clues (older kids can have clues written with words and can have harder clues, little kids need picture clues and lots of help) and hide them around the house in order, with the last one being the place where the treasure is hidden.

These chocolate gold coins were on Christmas Clearance at K-Mart and are perfect for the treasure! I wish I had gotten a picture of the delight on their faces when they found the clues and figured them out!

Indoor Activities for Kids #9

We've made a lot of tents to play in this week. The quickest way to make a nice tent is to take two chairs, suspend a mop or broom across them and put a large sheet over it, pulling out the sides so that it looks like a real camping tent.

Indoor Activities for Kids #8

While Ali was at preschool and Mama was baking bread, Jeremiah played in cornmeal for over an hour. He loved it and the mess and clean-up really wasn't bad at all! Next time I may use a shallow cardboard box so he has more room to drive his vehicles around in it. He loves hats and wore this goofy summer hat that is too small for him now.

Indoor Activities for Kids #7

We put all 50 of the Christmas cards we received this year in this cute shoebox and we are going to pull one out and pray for the family each day at supper. A variation on this idea would be making a giant poster to hang on the wall above the table with each family's pic trimmed into a circle and glued onto the poster and you could draw a line from the one you prayed for to the one you are going to pray for, creating a big spider web of sorts!

With blueberries being on such a good sale this week, we made blueberry pancakes and Daddy read the kids our story about blueberry pancakes, "Curious George Makes Pancakes."

Indoor Activities for Kids #6

Some frosting Sister flung landed on my head!

Ali and Jer did most of the decorating and had so much fun! We got to eat one of the walls later, after supper.

Remember when I mentioned getting some Christmas clearance stuff at K-Mart for 75% off? It was a gingerbread house kit! I had been planning to buy one before Christmas and make one with Ali at the cabin, but totally forgot about it in my busy month. I'm so glad I didn't! Instead of paying $12 for a kit here in town, I got two kits for only $2.50 each! The one kit we did provided tons of fun for the kids and minimal work for Mommy. Of course if you're feeling really ambitious you could make one from scratch like my friend Heather.