Kids: Mini Pizzas for Lunch

Are you like me when it comes time for lunch? I never have a plan in mind, leaving me standing staring into the fridge hoping something interesting will jump out at me. Usually I'm left with no ideas, moving me to the pantry to sit and stare. And then back to the fridge. After all of that, we end up eating our same old standbys: PB&J, grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, or a turkey sandwich. 

Somedays you have just got to change it up a bit. Hailey had a friend over for lunch last week, so I actually thought ahead and we made it a special occasion. I gave the girls the opportunity to make their own pizzas.

I par baked some crust ahead of time, gave them some toppings and let them go at it. With a little direction from me. :) 

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Notice my child in the background dumping a massive pile of pineapple on her pizza? There was already twice that hiding under the cheese. I think the entire can of pineapple would have ended up on her pizza had I not stopped her.

Delicious pizza. Doesn't it look so good? I really shouldn't be writing this post with a hungry stomach right now...

Ok, now you tell me, what do you like to eat for lunch at your house?

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In need of a recipe for pizza dough? I'm working up a post with a recipe for later this week. Watch for it! Of course, it makes it easy to watch for my next post if you follow along. :) Add this blog to your reader or add me on bloglovin', and check out what finds I'm pinning on pinterest!

[edit: Click the image below to be taken to the recipe!]

Free Printable: Dinosaur Valentines

Admittedly, Valentine's Day is not one of my favorite holidays. It's ok... I know it's fun for kids, so I might try to come up with something special and fun to do with my girls on Valentine's Day. But beyond that, I really just don't get into it. I'll play along, but I don't go all out. And I don't expect Kyle to either. I'd rather do something more extravagant for our anniversary, a day just for us.

That being said, I made some valentine's for Hailey to hand out to her classmates in preschool. The big Valentine's Day party is next week, of course, and she needs valentines to share! I do remember in elementary school having fun spending the time writing my name on them, packaging them up, and sharing them with my classmates. I thought Hailey would enjoy the same, so I elected her to help me assemble some awesome dino valentines.

I grabbed our two dinosaurs, (Yes, we only have two. I think we need to add a few more, they need friends.) and did a little photoshoot. Belle even made an appearance. Lucky us!

I took those pictures into photoshop, did a little photoshop magic and cut the dinosaurs out. I brought them into Illustrator and being playing and creating.

One thing I knew I wanted was Hailey's cute handwritten name on them. So, I had Hailey write her name with a sharpie on a piece of paper for me. I then scanned it into the computer and did some quick photoshop cropping and brought that image into Illustrator as well.

When the design was finished, we printed the cards out on cardstock. Hailey helped me cut the cards out and round the corners- this she loved. We picked up some dinosaur fruit snacks at the store and taped the cards onto the fruit snacks. And now her valentines are ready and waiting for the big day!

Look! Even the dinos like them.

They are already trying to rip into the fruit snacks. Looks like we will have to hide them until next week! :)

Looking for some valentines of your own? Here, try ours. Click on each of the images below to download a PDF file with 8 valentines per page.

Linked up at: the36thavenue.com, blog.peekaboopatternshop.com, roubinek.net

Kids: Play Food from Recyclables

Kids love to be in the kitchen. I think mine could spend their entire day in there just eating. It feels like they are always hungry. I hear a lot of, "Can I have a snack? My tummy is hungry" from Hailey and a lot of "na na na" please signing and pointing to the pantry from Keira. I'm happy they are good eaters, but goodness, let's find something else to do besides eat!

Besides eating, they love to help mom cook. When I am able to take a little bit more time cooking or baking, I do especially love to have Hailey help me in the kitchen. Here are a few recipes we've enjoyed making together:

    

I think play kitchens are a fantastic toy. It opens up so much creativity and provides them with some opportunity to feel big, just like mom. It has it's bonuses for mom too.  Realistically I can't have my girls in the kitchen with me all the time. Some days I think it would take me close to all afternoon just to make dinner. And my patience would be long gone by the time we're ready to eat. When, for my sanity, it just isn't reasonable to have them helping in the kitchen, I love that I can occupy them with their own play kitchen.

I love to watch Hailey's imagination work. She can take nothing and make something from it. My boring grown up mind is always astounded at what she comes up with. Though she doesn't really need much to fuel her creativity, it has been fun for her to have some props to encourage her play. Plus, it is so much more awesome when it really is just like mom.

Instead of throwing away (or recycling) the used containers from our pantry and fridge, I like to wash them out and give them to Hailey to use in her kitchen. She loves it! She gets so excited every time I give her a new product, washed and ready for play.

Hailey loves her kitchen. And so do her friends. When Hailey has friends over they always spend a good amount of time "cooking". We have enjoyed many meals of macaroni and cheese soup or some other made up dish, like kayna, whatever that is. Birthday cakes have been baked and complimented with rounds of singing Happy Birthday and pretend candles blown out over, and over, and over again.

Next time you finish off a small plastic container, take a minute to wash it out and give it a second life with your imaginative child. They'll be over the moon excited. Promise.

Love it? Pin it and share the love! And then be sure to follow along with me for more!  

Home: Our Happy Tree on Canvas

In the 6 1/2 years Kyle and I have been married we have moved 8 times. Yes, we've moved twice in one year, two times. We have been pretty transient. College will do that to you. Now that Kyle has a "real" job, we bought a home, and we are grown up people, we are finally settling down in one place for a little bit.

We haven't ever felt compelled to do much decorating in our apartments. We knew we wouldn't be there long, so we just didn't. 1 1/2 years later, our home is still the same way. Most of the walls are bare or have one lonely picture hanging on them. It's time to change that! We're here to stay and we want to make our home feel like we belong there. 

Kyle is a designer. It is his profession, but also it is innate in him. It is what he loves to do. He has a constant flow of ideas running through his head. Not a little trickle, but a real stream of ideas. And it is starting to rub off on me as well. Kyle had an idea to create a large painting of a tree to place above the couch in our living room. 

We wanted it bright and happy. We love color! We went with lime green and as close to cyan as I could find. It is hard to find a good cyan. I was surprised at what a difficult time I had finding just the right blue. P.S. That lime green is the same green Kyle used to put an accent stripe around the sewing desk he made for me last year.

We laid out our canvases, on our guest bed of all places, down in the basement away from child hands. We put on a light coat of gesso to prime the canvas for painting. And then got to work.

I don't have any pictures to show of Kyle actually painting on the tree. My hands were full and I just didn't think to use a tripod. Kyle made a file of the artwork and using our projector, projected the image onto the wall. I held up each of the six canvases while Kyle worked quickly to paint in the image.

It turned out pretty awesome. We both love it. But, it needed a frame. Last summer, Kyle tore down our old decrepit deck, and saved the reusable wood. He took a few pieces and made a frame. 

The frame really finishes it off. What a happy tree! And that is the beginning of the never ending task of decorating our home.

Kids: Sight Word Memory

Confession: I am not very good at pretend play. I just get bored with it and have a hard time coming up with anything to contribute. I do enjoy watching and listening to Hailey imagine a whole world beyond my grown up visibility. One of the best things of Hailey getting older has been the addition of new ways to interact with her. She is now old enough to play games, and she loves it. Oh yay! I love to play games. That I can do. Even slow, easy to play, mind numbing games... I can do that. And am happy to.

Hailey has a pretty good understanding of letters and the sounds they make. She has begun sounding out words and showing some interest in reading. She isn't completely ready to read yet, but on the path to get there. In an attempt to help enlarge her interest in reading I made a memory game using sight words.

My idea is that even if she isn't in the mood to learn to read the words at the moment she will at least be able to start recognizing those words as she is exposed to written words just in the everyday things we do. For example, today at church we were singing out of the hymn book. I pointed at each of the words as we sang and she followed along. She excitedly picked up on the word is a couple of times and pointed it out to me. 

The game is played just like any other game of memory. There are 36 total cards, 18 matching sets. Flip over the cards two at a time, if they match keep them and go again. If they don't, flip them back over and it is the next person's turn.

To make things a little easier, while we're still learning to recognize each of the words, instead of turning the cards back over when they don't match we leave them flipped up. I find it can take too long the other way and she loses steam. This way the game goes a little quicker, but she is still able to pick out matches. The more we play it, the more words she will learn to recognize.

Follow the links below to download your own copy. There is one file for the fronts, another for the back. Print the fronts out on cardstock. Reload them back into your printer and print the back on them (you will need to enter in 6 copies for the back, there is only 1 page in the file.) Each printer is different on whether the already printed side goes face up or face down. On my printer, Canon MP970, it is down.

Sight Word Memory Front

Sight Word Memory Back

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Looking for more sight word games? Check out sightwords.com for more fun games to play with your beginning reader! There you will also find strategies for teaching sight words to your child and master lists of sight words, including flash cards to print out to assist in teaching your budding reader to learn how to read.

Linked up at:
We Made That
The Life of Jennifer Dawn
Peek-a-Boo Pattern Shop
The 36th Avenue

Kids: Edible Apple Igloos

Brains are funny. Funny amazing. It baffles me how much information is stored away for another day. Sometimes we really have no clue that our experiences have been carefully tagged, organized, and tucked away. That is until that tag pops up again and our brain jumps into action, "Look, here! Remember this. Or this..." And then we are shot back into time.

My brain went to work one day when Hailey brought home from preschool a picture of an igloo she had colored. Instant memory: I was sent back to when I was about her same age (four). I have a distinct memory of making igloos out of apples, peanut butter, and marshmallows. I mentioned that to my mom, "I remember making igloos, did we do that?" Baffled, she said, "You remember that!?" Nice work brain. (High five!)

So... what did Hailey and I do? We made igloos!

Here is what you need:

• peanut butter
• marshmallows
• apple
• cutting board
• knife (one for cutting, one for spreading peanut butter)

step 1: Core and cut your apple in half. If you have a handy-dandy apple corer that would be ideal. I don't, so I just cut away the core as best as I could with a knife.

step 2: Spread peanut butter on the outside of the apple.

step 3: Stick marshmallows to the peanut butter all over the apple.

Ta-da! An igloo. Now go eat it!

Linked up at:
We Made That
The Life of Jennifer Dawn
The 36th Avenue

Home: Painting the Front Door

We bought our house 1 1/2 years ago. It was built in 1987, which really isn't that old. I was born before then, so it can't be old! But, it has reached the age of needing updates. Mostly what it needs is a good coat of paint everywhere. One of the first places to start was our front door. Take a look at the before.

It's just so blaaaaah... and the paint is chipped to the metal. 

 I hated that when people came to our home, the first thing they saw was our old beat up front door.

The inside wasn't much better. When the previous homeowners painted the walls and trim they did a pretty sloppy job of it. They painted right on the door and the hinge! 

 I'm not a fan of the wall color, but that has to stay for now. But look, the front door is the same color. It sinks right into the wall. So boring...

My husband is awesome. Seriously awesome. He spent 1 1/2 days painting that front door. It took quite a bit longer than we originally thought it would. But it was so worth the effort. 

To start with, since the paint was chipped down to the metal, we had to strip all of the paint off the door. There it is, bare, right down to the metal. The red spots are areas where Kyle filled in a couple of larger dents in the door with some bondo (auto body filler).

Then came priming.

And then painting. Look at that bright red! We really wanted a red-orange, which it is. But it is heavier on the red side than we originally wanted. I still love it though! The color we chose was Grenadine by Behr. It was nice and bright and happy. And definitely not boring.

Now look at that happy door! Isn't that more inviting?  

We even painted the inside the same color. I love the pop of color it adds. It was definitely needed.

And now our house is easier to find. It's the one with the bright red door! (Yes, we still need to paint the trim. It's somewhere on our long list of updates to make.)