Today I am linking up with my friend, Nicole’s, blog. She invited her fellow blogger friends to participate in her “First Day” postings, where she takes pictures of her daily life on the first day of each month. Here is my first “First Day” post. Thanks Nicole for inviting us all to join in.
Happy March!!!
Click this cute little button to pop on over to Nicole’s blog and check out her first day.
I got a little camera happy the other day while hanging out with the kids. Here are some of my favorite snapshots.
No doubt, they are they best parts of Paul and Me!!
Keeping up with a busy toddler is FULL TIME work. We are always doing activities that are both fun and help to mold his little mind. Today after Tanner asked (for the 50th time) to watch Thomas the Train I knew I had to whip something out of my mom bag of tricks.
(Yes, I do let my children watch TV but in limited amounts and only specific programs- For a while ONLY Sesame street was allowed in our house but now my almost 2 year old has acquired a taste for Thomas and Bob the Builder)
I looked in my pantry and whipped up this sensory bin:
Supplies-
Big container (dish pan or large Rubbermaid work great)
Dry oatmeal (you could also use rice)
Assorted dry pasta (I used large ring noodles, and broken up spaghetti noodles)
A set of measuring spoons
a wooden skewer (with the point cut off)
2 cupcake wrappers
a few favorite toys
This kept Tanner busy for a good 45 minutes. He scooped up the mixture, buried his toys, pretended they were eating, and threaded the ring noodles onto the skewer. I’ve seen fancier versions of sensory bins on Pinterest but honestly this works just as well as those snazzy glittery bins. This also sweeps up in a jiffy. When we were done, I got out my broom, Tanner got his and we cleaned up together. This is a great activity to keep your toddler busy on rainy days or during this home-stretch of winter here in the Northland.
Happy playing!!
As you all know I stay home with my kids everyday and love it…but all that time alone with little people can drive a girl to do some crazy nerdy stuff. I do nerdy things like…
-check facebook 45 times a day to see if my friends posted any new pictures of their kids/babies and/or pregnant bellies.
-DVR “The Bold and the Beautiful” to watch during naptime.
-buy coordinating outfits for my family to wear to functions like weddings, parties, etc.
- read my cookbooks over and over again looking at all the delicious food I aspire to make one day.
-make lists..for just about EVERYTHING
-think my star pajama pants (that I happened to get for $2.99 at the thrift store) are the most comfortable thing in the world. So much so that I have to basically force myself to change out of them and put “real people” clothes on most days.
-do Zumba in my living room and think I am some sort of aspiring Latin Dancer.
-blog about the nerdy things I do
-keep my house abnormally clean for a mother of two very young children
-thinks a “fun day” to myself involves hitting up the local Hallmark and picking out cards for friends and relatives with upcoming birthdays.
-obsess slightly over what activities I should plan for T Fred’s 2nd birthday knowing full well that he will NOT remember it.
I’m a nerdy and proud!!
What are your nerdy qualities?
Here is another project I have done recently that I LOVE!! Tanner loves it too. It gives him a space to practice his letter and numbers, which he loves. Seriously I know it is a little freaky to have a not-even two year old know his alphabet and count up to 12 but the kid just likes it…weird. I have a feeling his interest might go down just a tad. He recently discovered Thomas and Friends and is OBSESSED. Maybe I can make some Thomas Felt shapes…I’ll try. Note: I decided to free hand it but I am sure there are plenty of stencils and silhouettes that can be found online then traced onto felt.
Front :
Back:
1 piece of foam board
1 large piece of black felt
many sheets of multi colored felt
Hot Glue
Clothes pins
baggies
Hours of fun for under $10. I would say this is perfect for 2-5 year olds. Depending on the age of the kids, you can make different cut outs. So far I have just done the letters and the farm. Some ideas I have in the works are: Dinosaurs, Dress the Boy, Food and utensils, Face and parts, Counting sets (ex.1 ball, 2 trees, 3 apples, etc) and Fish/Under the Sea. As I add more, I will just glue more clothes pins on the back to store the sets of felt. Cheap, homemade AND organized!! Love love and LOVE.
Hey all, if there are any friends and family out there that still check this. I have been a complete blog slacker and have been just busy living our life for the last two months. Here’s a quick synopsis of what we have been doing.
Living. Painting. Christmas laughs. HUGE HUGE new years bash. Cleaning up. Hay Rides. Walks through the woods. Playing in puddles (in January-strange). Work. Night School. Paul turned 30. Birthday Party. Cleaning up. Art Work. Letter and numbers. Learning to eat big girl food. Learning to take a bottle. Zumba. Eating Healthy. Losing weight. Cleaning my house…messing it up, cleaning again..you get the picture. Homemade valentine’s. Baking. Shopping. Baths. Vacuuming. Thinking about blogging. Not blogging. Facebooking…LOTS of Facebooking. Texting. Date Nights. Getting spring Fever. Planning a Vegas Vacation. Reading. Coloring. 2nd Birthday Party planning. ECFE Class. Having visitors. Playing. Loving…and the list goes on.
So I figure you won’t be as mad as me if I offered up a peace offering. I bought a new cook book FULL of great recipes to make with kids. Thought I would share what I made today.
Here is the cook book. Got it at Barnes and Noble in the bargain row. I LOVE IT!! And it has lots of pictures which I love as well.
POWER PACKED PUMKIN POTS
If you like Pumpkin Pie you will love this. It is fairly healthy too. I reduced the amount of sugar I put in mine to make it a little healthier.
Ingredients-
1 can (15 oz) solid pack pumpkin
1 can (12oz) evaporated milk
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar (i used about 1/4 cup)
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
Serve with Whipped cream (optional)
1- Preheat oven to 350. Spray 6-8 (4oz) or 4 (7oz) ramekins with nonstick cooking spray
2- Combine pumpkin, evaporated milk, sugar, pumpkin pie spice, vanilla and salt in a large bowl. Whisk until thoroughly blended.
3-Pour into prepared custard cups; place in 9x13 baking pan. Pour hot water into baking pan around cups to a depth of 1 inch.
4-Bake 1 hour. Remove sups to cool. Let stand for 30 minutes. Refrigerate 1-2 hours or over night. Serve with whipped cream if desired.
Seriously delish!!!!
I’m happy to be back. And expect to hear more from us Nyquists up here in the Northwoods!!
I love Christmas!
I mean I really love it!! Like, get giddy when I think about it sort of love!
This year I especially love it. Maybe it is my new surroundings or the fact that I have a wonderful family and friends that I just can’t wait to spend extra time with. Or maybe it is the fact that I am ULTRA prepared for it with all my presents beautifully wrapped and made, just waiting to be distributed. I love being prepared. Just look at my pretty tree.
It has been for 2 weeks now and has so far survived Tanner. He doesn’t even go for unwrapping the presents either. He just picks them up and says how pretty they are, then puts them down (sometimes in different locations around the house).
I usually do a pretty good mix of homemade and store bought presents. This year I feel I have really outdone myself. I won’t give away ALL of my secrets because some of my friends and family who read this will be the lucky recipients of these presents but I did some pretty awesome homemade with LOVE gifts.
I got some freezer meal ideas from the Fabulessly Frugal website! AWESOME! I honestly felt like I had invented the wheel and wondered why I haven’t always done freezer meals. A friend from high school also has a bunch of really great freezer meal recipes HERE on her blog that I just can’t wait to try now! Of course I had to try some of the recipes out before gifting them. Here is the Ham and Cheese Braid…DELICIOUS!!
I also made these little gems- Homemade Brownie mix in a Jar. I think they are so cute!
Whether buying or making your presents, I hope your holiday preparations are going just as well!!
Merry 11 days till Christmas!!
I realize it has been entirely too long since I had a good old post just featuring pictures of 2 out of the 3 of my favorite people on the entire planet. (Paul just isn’t as fun to photograph while he is wearing a tutu or mis-matched shoes) Without further ado…my beautiful babes:
Adventures in Eating!!
So Happy
Concentration
He wears this around and says “SUPER BABY!!” (notice a horse in each hand)
Just playing (again..the horsey)
Graduation board!
AHHHH!!
My boy
Getting sleepy in her jumper.
Hand me downs for Emmy Lu that Tanner couldn’t resist trying on.
Makes my heart melt. So much love I could just explode!!!
Seriously….wasn’t it just Halloween. According to my posts- apparently it was. I guess things have been more than busy around here. I think I just kept waiting for the “summer rush” to settle down and it never did. Between the 3 weddings in Sept, 1 in Oct, buying a house, hunting season-which is 3 weekends in November and Thanksgiving, our lives remain as hectic as they were in August. Weird…or maybe not for a young ambitious family of 4. Here’s a rundown of our lives since I last wrote.
House stuff-
It is going great having our own house. I really love it. My redecorating really stalled out over 3 weeks of having company but has plans of getting back on track the next 2 weeks. My mom and I are going to attempt to tile my backsplash. I have complete faith that I have watched enough HGTV to accomplish this task successfully :)
Kid Stuff-
Emmy Lu turned 5 months old on Sunday. Time is flying!! She is happy, relaxed and cute. She still won’t take a bottle but I have resigned to the fact that she will go straight from nursing to sippy cup. We’ll just skip the whole bottle thing. Tanner is doing great too. He is such a big boy and is talking ALL.THE.TIME. I think it might be a first born thing but he is very vocal and has a vocabulary the is off the charts. He knows most of his alphabet and shapes and we are working on his numbers and colors. We are starting Spanish around here too so hopefully my little amigo will pick that right up.
On-the-go and company-
During the month of November we hosted many many people for MN deer hunting season. Yes my family hunts…but it is more about the company then the actual hunt I feel. Seeing as we only got one deer yet went through countless cases of beer…I would say I know where the priority lies. One weekend I had 22 people at my house for the weekend. I did lots of cooking (which lucky for them all I LOVE to do).
We went down to my sister’s house for Thanksgiving. I had originally planned on staying home but at the last minute we decided to go spend it with my family that I had just seen for 3 weeks straight (good thing I love them or I might get sick of them…) I had my first Black Friday shopping experience that got cut short by Miss Emmy Lu who needed me to come home and feed her. On Black Friday we also did our annual cookie bake. This year we made over 15 types of cookies….which equaled A LOT, A LOT of cookies. We give them to neighbors and friends and of course take some home for ourselves.
We helped my nephew Caiden celebrate his 1st birthday last weekend too. He is a cute, happy little guy that Tanner just LOVES! After coming home Tanner walks around looking for his cousins saying- “Caiden? Jada? Niya?” Poor little guy gets lonely.
Soo that’s a quick rundown of my last month. I have been quite the busy momma. Hope you are surviving the start of the holiday season..I hope to write more frequently in December.
