Wordless Wednesday!

Molly REALLY loves her new musical instruments!

For more great "Wordless Wednesday" pictures, visit 5minutesformom.

Hope Your Christmas Was Great!

I hope everyone had a great and blessed Christmas. We are definitely feeling very blessed and loved this holiday.

We have had a week filled with family parties and visiting with great friends from out of town. Although I have still been feeling really sick at some point each day (only about 7 weeks left!) and the ice and snow, we managed to make it to all of the services, parties and events we were hoping too. We have the best family and friends in the world, and we loved being able to celebrate Christmas with them.

We have also been VERY spoiled this year. Seriously! I have never felt so surprised.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures...

Watching Molly enjoy the parties and gifts was so much fun. 2 is such a fun age!

My friend Stacy surprised her with this AMAZING new bike. She hasn't got off it is days, seriously, after 3 hours I had to make her take a break for lunch. :)

Molly thought she better get out her tools to help Daddy put together her new table and chairs. Not sure the saw will help, but she loved "helping."

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and a wonderful break.

Red Sled - stART Project

I know I'm a day late in posting my stART project, but I didn't want to miss a week. stART is such a great activity and I love getting to see what other books and projects familys are doing. To learn more about stART or to join in the fun, check out A Mommy's Adventures.


This week we choose to use the book, Red Sled by Patricia Thomas, for our stART project. To be honest, Molly liked this book WAY more than I did. It is nice, it is very short and each page is written in rhyming pairs, like "Still Hill" and "Far Star." This is a great book for when you are working on rhyming. We got this book from the library last week, and it is one Molly already has memorized and can say back to us.

For our project, I thought it would be fun to paint a red sled for our Christmas tree, like the red sled in the book. Molly loves painting, and I was very impressed with how much of the popsicle sticks she got covered in red paint.
I found a pattern for how to make a really easy sled out of popsicle sticks and hot glue over at The Creative Crate, I just didn't mod podge on paper, instead I let Molly paint it up red.

She is very excited everytime she sees her sled. She says "I made it all by myself." Very fun project this week.

Wordless Wednesday!

This is what I get when I ask Molly to please stand still so I can take a picture...


For more great "Wordless Wednesday" pictures, visit 5minutesformom.

Tip Tuesday! Reverse Applique

Over at Not So Idle Hands, is a GREAT tutorial on how to make a reverse applique shirt. As soon as I saw how adorable these shirts were, I knew I had to try and make one for Molly.

It was so much fun to make, it is so easy and turns out fantastic. It seriously only took me about 20 minutes start to finish. I even free handed my cutting, which I never dare do. Love it, head over and see how to make one.

I'm Featured!!! YEAH!!!

I am so thrilled that the snowman gift Molly and I made for her teacher was featured today on one of my absolute favorite blogs, ABC and 123. I get SO many wonderful ideas and activities from this amazing blog. Head over and check it out.

Menu Monday!

It's nice to have a somewhat normal week of meals again. Last week when my husband was out of town for work, I had an interesting time trying to plan meals for me and a two year old only. Needless to say, we did have a lot of PB and J and Mac and Cheese. At least Molly loved it. :)

Here's what we are planning this week:

Monday- Beef Taquitos (SO yummy)
Tuesday- "Healthified" Chicken Tortilla Casserole
Wednesday- Pig in the blankets
Thursday- Dijon Chicken
Friday- Out to eat night

For more great Menu Planning ideas, visit orgjunkie.com

Cookie Recipe - Spotlight Sunday

YUM YUM YUM!!! For the cookie exchange I go to, I decided to try a new recipe this year. Last week my husband was in Texas all week so I knew I needed an easier recipe if I wanted any chance of actually getting to make something.

I found this recipe from Pillsbury and it looked so good, and easy. And let me tell you, they were SO good and easy. :) Here is the recipe link, if you are in need of a new cookie recipe I definitely recommend. YUM YUM YUM!!!

Hand and Foot Reindeer - stART Project

For this weeks stART project, we read the Spot's Magical Christmas. Molly loves everything to do with dogs right now, so we have been enjoying the Spot books from the library. This book is a pretty long one for Spot, but she loved it.

In the book Spot meets two of Santa's reindeer and has to help them find Santa's missing sleigh before Christmas Eve. So, for our project, we made these hand and foot print reindeer that I saw on the blog Tired, Need Sleep. This was so much fun, Molly absolutly loved having her feet and hands traced, she thought it was the funniest thing ever. And of course, the highlight was gluing on the nose. :) Now if she could just remember they are reindeer, she keeps calling them her moose!

For many more great stART projects, visit A Mommy's Adventures.

Wordless Wednesday!

Ha, Ha! Molly loves her scarf dress, but... so does the cat. :)

For more great "Wordless Wednesday" pictures, visit 5minutesformom.

Tip Tuesday! Great Teacher Gift Idea

All afternoon Molly and I have been crafting, crafting, crafting! I saw this adorable idea to make a snowman gift box out of a chinese food container over at Blue Cricket Design (this is an amazing blog, head over and check it out!). So we got to work and made this one for her Storytime teacher. We lined ours with tissue paper, and filled it with mini candy bars.

Molly is so excited to give it to her teacher, I'm just a little worried that the Storytime Christmas party is going to be canceled in the morning due to the winter storm we are getting right now. But I'm sure we can figure out someone who would like this gift. :)

Nativity Set - Spotlight Sunday!

This week I wanted to show off Molly's amazing Nativity Set! My Grandpa (Molly's Great Grandpa) cut out the pieces in wood, and then my talented Aunt Amy took the time to paint them for my daughter and my niece. I think they are fantastic!

I let Molly set them up on the dresser in her room, she is so excited to have something special of her own for Christmas in her room. She talks about them everyday, and I love how it gives me the opportunity to talk about it with her and tell her about why we celebrate Christmas.

Right now she loves the sheep.

I wish I was talented enough to make these!

She's going to enjoy them forever!

Now I am just in need of finding a really good book about The Christmas Story to read to a two year old. We have read a few from the library, but nothing like I had hoped. If anyone has any suggestions let me know.

And thanks again for the hard work and great Nativity Set Grandpa and Amy, we LOVE it.

Blog Makeover!!!

As you can see, my blog is looking quite a bit different! I am so excited, I WON A PRE-MADE LAYOUT from one of my favorite sites, Leelou Blogs. Yes, I knew some Twilight Trivia about Chinchilla poop because I am just that cool, and won! :)

I am in love with the new header. And now I am realizing that my pictures and info need some serious updating. I also have switched to 3 columns. I hope everyone likes it, and just bear with me as I get everything arranged.

Seriously, if you haven't been to Leelou Blogs, head over and check it out. They have lots of free backgrounds to choose, as well as awesome pre-made layouts, custom layouts, invitations, and SO much more. The next thing on my list, a signature. :)

Frugal Friday - Free Christmas Music!

For the 25 days of December through Christmas, Amazon is giving away a new FREE Christmas MP3 download. I am really enjoying my Casting Crowns, Joy To The World.

Head over and check out what songs you can get for free. Happy Frugal Friday!!!

stART - Silver Bells

This Thursday for our stART project, I choose one of Molly's favorite library books from the week. She is very into books that are also songs right now, so she loved reading Silver Bells. The pictures are fun and she loved singing along.
For the craft project, we made bow wreaths. Almost ever picture in the book there is a wreath, so I thought it would be fun to make a few to decorate the house.

All I did was cut the center out of a paper plate, and then let Molly stick Christmas bows all the way around it.
For the finished wreaths, I just added a piece of magnet to the back so that we could hang them on the fridge.
For more great stART books and stories, head over to A Mommy's Adventures.

Wordless Wednesday!

Molly's exact words... "Take my picture mommy, I'm a pirate, arrr..."

For more great "Wordless Wednesday" pictures, (or almost wordless in my case) visit 5minutesformom.

Christmas Card Pictures!

I waited until the day before I was going to order my Christmas cards to try and get a good picture. I always think I'm going to do it way ahead, but for some reason I never do...

Here are the 2009 Christmas card pictures I finally managed to take. I just need to remember that I should never expect my young 2 year old to smile at the camera on command, ah!



And here are a few that didn't make the cut, but I love. I am still figuring out my new camera so it was fun to take 100 pictures and see what turned out... I even did some cropping, scary!

Hee, hee

I think she looks like me in this one.

Getting her feet tickled, I'll try anything for a smile at the camera. :)