Valentines!

Two big goals this weekend:  start making Valentine's for classmates/friends/cousins, and clean the bathrooms. I was excited because, in fact, we not only started the Valentines, we finished them all!  Whoo!  I was afraid I would wind up doing most of the work myself, but M was quite involved with the process and was able to help considerably.  It was a great mommy/daughter crafting time.

We made two different types, and I wanted to pass them along, since they were both very easy to make, even for a three-year-old:

1.  For folks we could actually hand them to, we made Lollipop Posies.  They turned out to be super easy and cute.  We didn't have floral tape, as the directions call for, but we used scotch tape and it worked just fine.  M stacked each set of the tissue paper circles together in a pattern.  M insisted on "boy colors" for boys and "girl colors" for girls, so we did our best with that...And we finished ours with a heart shape leaf, with the To/From on it.

2.  For those we would not see before V-day, we made these cute Guppy Love cards to go in the postal mail.  Each fish is made up of three hearts, and M loved piecing the hearts together in different color configurations.  Then she colored the backs while I wrote messages on the fronts.  Then, after I addressed the envelopes, M assisted in stuffing, sealing, stamping, and stickering the outsides of the envelopes with hearts.

PS - I cleaned the bathrooms too. ;-)

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Art Area!

I may have a second-calling as a preschool teacher.

We had a miraculous find this week while shopping - I finally found the shelf I have been longing for, to organize M's art supplies.

We already had the little bins, but they were just placed on the table willy-nilly, cluttering it up.  I realized a while back that this was not a convenient display of supplies, and without ease of accessibility, the kids gravitated towards other areas of the room that were easy to access.

However, I had a terrible time finding a shelf that met our needs.  I wanted it to fit easily on the table, and I wanted to be able to use the bins we already had, so that supplies could be changed, reorganized, and added easily (I didn't want to be limited by drawers or slots).  Then we found this - its actually a shoe rack - and it works perfectly!  I couldn't be happier.

 A few finishing touches - I took pictures of the items we have, and made labels for each bin, so that she can put them away easily in the right spots.  I love how everything had a place - all of the scrap paper spiral notebooks fit underneath, the crayons on one shelf, the markers on another, and then painting/pencils/stickers on another.

M is already using it!  She really likes how the bins have pictures on them, so she knows which bins are for which materials.  We did some coloring before bedtime tonight. Yay for organized and clutter-free creative spaces.

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Babies Run Wild

My husband and I stayed up late last night on a date and playing Wii after we got home, so we were not keen on rising at 7am with the kids.  They were both anxious to start the day, so we let them loose in the house so that we could continue dozing.

Perhaps letting the kids run around unsupervised after a late night may not have been our best idea.  We quickly jumped out of bed when C brought us an open bottle of Mike's hard lemonade.  Oh my!  And, he was covered in chocolate pudding.  We had left the living room a bit of a mess, and he thought it'd be a fun place to make some mischief.   At least we were awake enough to close the bathroom door - he has already gotten into the toilet twice this week - ew!

M was a little bit more constructive during her solo time:  she covered two sheets of paper entirely with stickers.  We decided the extra hour of rest was well worth the cost of stickers!

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