Dano's new desk and rotating toy boxes

 Dano's Custom Art Desk
During our remodel we also started building a desk that was less bulking then any square one. I was inspired by this bright color scheme Ikea one.  I know ours is just 2 shelves but we LOVE it and it fits 4-5 kids!  Perfect for our small house and nannying small messy kids.  We bought all of our supplies at home depot.  Daniel did all the wood working for it and I sanded and painted it.  Here are the dimensions:




NO NAP=Deperate Organized Activities!

So, the sad realization of no more naps has hit me.   Danagan still takes naps but it is a screamfest on both of our parts and ends up feeling like this for both of us...

I have created over 8 themed boxes that we are going to rotate.  When the weather is too crummy (which seems to be a lot in Washington!)  we get one of these out.  I also intend to use these if we are skipping a nap but he needs to be quiet for the Piper.  Most of these items I created myself or found them at garage sales for pennies! A lot of the boxes I know are repetitive activities but some have variations.

The only problem with this system is space!  I have seen someone use hanger bags with activities stored in their closet also though.  For your sanity figure out a system that works for your home. We use big plastic totes with lids in our garage.

We have taken out 90% of the toys of our house by sorting and creating these themed boxes.  We have seen the following results:

-They don't get bored with the toys that are rotated
-Less broken toys
-More imaginative play
-Less mess or at least a mess small enough so the child doesn't get burnt out trying to clean up
-More laughter and less stress...I can't put my finger on it but our kids body language and attitude exhibits less stress
-Clean weekends! (theme totes go away before daddy gets home Friday night and return Monday morning which make literally no cleaning on the weekend!)
-They open books on their own more
-They are more courteous and thoughtful (They seem to be more aware of the people around them with out so much clutter)

With that being said we do have random toys we keep out at all times.  Some of these are:
A bin of dupolos
A bin of train tracks
A empty wooden kitchen (they have to ask for a picnic set to come down and then pick it up when its done but they usually create imaginative toys with legos or blocks)
Magformers
Angry birds with wood blocks
2 Rody bouncy toys
1 bag of babydolls with clothes, crib and stroller

*Even these get turns in the garage at times though if they get out of hand.

Our homeschool daily goals for him this preschool year were the following:
Read a little bit of a chapter book and regular books everyday
Letter recognition activity which has quickly turned into sight word games and reading activities.
Practice writing letters, words  and name
Counting to 10 or counting to 20 activities (It has turned into counting to 100 and skip counting)
Establish a morning routine and ownership of how he is going to help our family through family chores.

Here are some of our themes from when Danagan was 3 years old:

We have moved on to creating continent themed shoe boxes for this year for him.  I will have to post that one later....

Theme  Solar System
5 educational space books which includes THIS pretty sweet pop up book
Rocket launchers
Fun Facts Poster, Large Planet cut outs w/ names found HERE
Glow in the dark stars to make constellations on the wall
Assortment of space figurines (toob kind)
Fold out space mat with moon rover See it HERE
Glow in the dark planets that can hang from his desk. Like the ones HERE (Don't have this yet...soon)
Electronic Educational planet  like HERE
Space Bingo by little Einsteins
Malissa and Doug over sized puzzle found HERE
Marks and Spencer puzzle HERE
Small Ravensburger solar system puzzle  HERE
Buzz light year suit  and NASA jumpsuit both fits ages 3-6
Ski helment (thought it actually looked more like a space helmet)
Little toys: Dollar store space kaleidoscopic, MOBIL rocket man (found HERE),

5 Laminated games: 1.  space flash cards, 2. space themed shadow match-up, 3. clothespin the beginning letter cards, 4. puff dot color matching sheets, 5. Blast off game; sort rocket sizes

Crafts:
assortment of stickers of rockets, planets and stars for a fast craft when needed to prevent melt down
Wood rocket to color and display (the ones you find at check out at JoAnns)
Shaving cream galaxy HERE- In order; put shaving cream (only white) on tag board, drop drops of food coloring, swirl with a toothpick and then scrap it off.  It leaves cool swirls like a space galaxy!
make a rocket out of your name like HERE
TP roll rocket(you know the type with tin foil and streamers!)

Theme 5 Ocean Life



Felt board ocean scene
Sea shell and sand shakers

Ocean hide and seek box: blue bubble wrap pieces, blue scarves, fish/ocean creatures, shells, sm beach balls,
fish game
BIG Ocean Puzzle
2 chunky ocean puzzles
Melissa and Doug 4 in 1 seal, walrus, whale and seahorse wood puzzle
beginner 4 pc ocean puzzles
ocean memory - peices taken out from a regular memory game OR
DIY Fish Feelings memory cards HERE
Quiet reuseable writing binder
j is for jelly fish HERE
j is for jelly fish (2) HERE


Crafts:
Felt fish in a bag (just like the pet store)  HERE 
Jelly fish in a bottle HERE
painted/colored octopus with crate paper
Crab craft - Body outline HERE...... extra legs HERE
Octopus tp roll HERE
octopus w/ paper plate and crate paper HERE
Sensory play with jell beads HERE

Ziplock sensory bag.  CHECK THIS OUT!
Octopus Hats
paper plate see through aquariums with cyran wrap
Play with frozen crabs in ice in the sink or bath tub with blue water
Make sea life mural by coloring and cutting out variety of coloring pages:
-1 Jelly fish HERE
-Sand Dollar HERE
-Crab worksheet HERE

Online games

Jelly fish jigsaw - HERE
Crab jigsaw HERE



Theme 1:  Dinosaurs

Snack:
Dinosaur cracked hard boil eggs HERE
Dino foot print cookies HERE

Paper decoration dinosaurs to put on the wall of our bench desk and poster of the real sizes of dinosaur eggs 

10 books with dinosaur themes some include: pop up books, definition books, fun story books, dinosaur anatomy book and jigsaw books for older kids.

Homemade dinosaur memory game

Foam dinosaur stamps

1 big over sized jigsaw floor puzzle of dinosaurs

felt dinosaur book with felt pieces

4 chunky puzzles for ages 1-3

Coloring worksheets and a reusable binder of beginning handwriting worksheets.  By using plastic sleeves and a dry erase marker you can reuse work sheets and save on printing!  Here are some great free sites I used for my binders.

D is for dinosaur HERE
D is for dinosaur (2) HERE

Online Jig saw- HERE

Some art activities include:  freezing toy dinosaurs in a big block of ice or little ice cubes and having them chip them away, build a homemade volcano or use food colored vinegar in droplets over baking soda for the little ones.
Awesome colorful printable diorama HERE

Theme 4 Things that go!

DIY Denim quiet road  example HERE
DIY Tavel pack for hot wheels

Build able wooden train (This was driving me nuts with all the pieces so, its been great to have it as a once in a while toy) 

Little tykes train with fold able mat.  Even though he places with his train table non-stop this is a new toy for him so, its exciting.

10 books with various things that go.  Some examples are emergency cars, construction vehicles, airplanes, and trains. 

3 chunky puzzles with transportation themes

1 big over sized jigsaw floor puzzle of construction vehicles

Theme  Insects
Dragon fly, frog, lady bug puppets
Bug sensory bin with paper grass and plastic insects like HERE  You can also add a magnifying glass.
2 Insect puzzle with magnet net
10 bug themed books
2 bumble bee puppet
1 LARGE bubble bee stuffed insect


HERE is a great website for some AWESOME easy craft projects

Theme 3: Farm Animals

Old McDonald farm hand puppet
felt animals for board
animal magnets
Matching game of plastic animal and what kind of food it gives us such as:
-cow: milk bottle
-chicken: chicken thigh and egg
-sheep: mini barbie sweater
-pig- bacon and ham

Melissa and Doug oversized barn puzzle HERE
bingo

 

Fridays scissors and Cream (Breakfast pizza, Cream Cheese Strawberry Muffins & a New Deck!)

For those who are new to our blog I have taken on the challenge to broaden my domestic goddess talents. I will be posting "first attempts" to crafts and recipes each week for your entertainment success or total failure! I call these my Friday's scissor and cream posts.  Enjoy...

Strawberry Cream Cheese Muffins

Holy Summer Sweetness these muffins are scrumptious.  They are pretty sticky so remember to use liners. See the pictures below for why!  HERE is the recipe I used.  Perfect summer time treat.  Can't wait til we can pick strawberries this summer at a u-pick farm!

Breakfast Pizza

Here is our attempt to a new style breakfast pizza with crescent roll dough.  It was a fun idea for "breakfast dinner"  HERE is our recipe.

New projects
Our hopefully one and only home improvement for the summer was ripping up our old N-A-S-T-Y deck and replacing it with a new one.  It was fairly simple since we kept all of the base fame from the old one but it was very time consuming.  We ended up having to wait almost THREE weeks before staining it because of our spontaneously rainy May weather. Here is our before and after shots.

Before:

Here is the deck behind Danagan.  It was painted to try to extend the life a little bit but ended up chipping badly.

During:

AFTER:

Now that we are a family of 4

Now that we are a family of four we have been trying to do a lot of balancing around here.  I still have been nannying part time and Daniel has been doing photography and working full time in his new position.

We have been doing a lot of our normal routine with Piper which has been actually a lot of fun.  Here they are snuggling in for story time.  (her eyes are always bugged out like this.  It really makes her hair look even funnier.  Like she was struck by lightening!)

Last week we noticed that instead of Pipers hair falling out like Danagan's did it is growing in blonde and thicker!  Now she is beginning to look like a bad hair dye job. LOL,  Here is her first curl on her left side and a hair comparison picture.

Danagan nearly bald by 3 months!

April Showers bring may flower hair bows?

For those who are new to our blog I have taken on the challenge to broaden my domestic goddess talents. I will be posting "first attempts" to crafts and recipes each week for your entertainment success or total failure! I call these my Friday's scissor and cream posts.

Since we found out last August that we were going to be having a girl.  I couldn't help but feel a little overwhelmed with my crafty list.  (Darn you Pintrest!)  Of course I wanted to make a gazillion hair pretties for her so here they are...Prepare yourself.  Most of these are super easy and somewhat cheating to make compared to a lot of the other ones I have seen in the blog world.

GET ORGANIZED

I got the organization idea from Pintrest and made it in a second.  Its so much easier to use then the jewelry box I have for her!

Here is a hair pretty package I sent to my sister this last September

-The nylon headbands I made out of .50 cent stockings from walgreens with the help of THIS tutorial.  For a newborn head I found that 4.5-5 inches long were a perfect fit! I made brown, white and black

-Felt bows I made from this tutorial HERE.  I loved the rounded corner look better then the normal points.

-The fake flowers I found at a garage sale for pennies and added over sized pearls to the middle with a hot glue gun.

-My organza flowers I make are definitely my favorite.  They are a little more time consuming because hot glue does not stick to the fabric so you have to hand sew them :( HERE is the tutorial to follow

The blue vintage frayed flower was made with THIS tutorial.  I made it in beige as well and works great for those outfits that are hard to find the right color for!

Matching THE tutu!

I bought THIS adorable photography prop tutu and I needed to get a adorable flower to match.  Unfortunately, it took a while to match the color but it works!  HERE is the tutorial I followed for it!

Sunflower Cluster  I had these little scrap booking flowers so I threw on a felt backing and made a cluster hair pretty! Lovely model...It scares me how much he loves girly things!

Die Cut Flower Fun

My friend let me borrow her sizzix Big Shot die cutting machine with THIS flower die and THIS butterfly die.  For the flowers I used the same concept as the blue frayed flower in my sisters package.   The only difference is these ones have cute little scalloped edges from the flower shape!

Here she is wearing the brown right side flower...picture makes a big difference when its not on a head!

Folded shape flowers

These I made with the Big Shot I mentioned above. Since you fold these from the middle its SUPER important each one of the shapes are exactly the same size all the way around.  HERE is the tutorial.  You will see to make these flowers you just stop at step 6!

Here she is wearing the paisley one in the bottom right corner

Fancy Peacock feathers

I was looking endlessly for a flapper peacock headband but they were going for A LOT of mullah! I found this at Hobby Lobby for 3 bucks and sewed some black buttons I had to the felt backing.  Saved almost 20 bucks this way!

Circle Vintage Flowers

THESE are SUPER easy!  What I love the most about these is that you can have a uneven circle and it looks just fine.  It also is a great way to make use of your scrap bin...your welcome :)

Felt Flowers

I am not really a fan of felt most of the time because I can never manipulate it just right.  The yellow puff was made from THIS tutorial out of yarn and the blue felt stringy one I got from a blog HERE

The felt flowers below came from a massive JOANNS headband kit pre cut and ready to glue.  So...again hardly a creative flower but they sure are cute!

Secret Shabby Chic Flowers

I call these secret flowers because they are a busy mom unknown secret.  These flowers come already made on a continuous spool of fabric in the ribbon section of your local fabric store.  Cut each individual one out and throw a backing on it.  I guess I can't really say this is even a craft but who really cares its a cute way to make hair flowers!  HERE is an example of what the fabric looks like

Yo Yo Flowers

Love Love love these little hand sew flowers.  HERE is a tutorial to follow.  They seem to always turn out to be the perfect medium size.  They are also pretty forgiving as far as shape goes.

Here are some other ones I threw together but I do not have tutorials to link them with.  Sorry...just having fun

March Madness: Happy Dano's 3rd Birthday, Piper's Blessing, St Patty's AND Easter!!

We had a pretty intense March so I am sorry for such a long and cluttered picture blog post. Early in the month Danagan had a Pirate themed party for turning 3 years old.  He now daily asks if its his birthday again. We will often find ourselves lighting candles in random pieces of food just to reenact the event!  Too Fun.  The same birthday weekend we blessed Piper since family would all still be in town. We then had fun with the St Patrick day and Easter events.  We are so thankful for our friends and family who made this March Madness even more fun for us!

Happy Easter!

Happy St Patty's Day.  Don't you just want to pinch these cheeks!!!  To celebrate we invited some new friends over for corned beef  and veggies

Danagan's 3rd Birthday

Pirate sign with burnt vintage edges will be on the door.  It will state"Argh...Pirates only, No trespassing, All others will walk the plank, Enter at your own risk"

Mustache pirate Cake HERE...The whole theme has been based around this!

Food:

Pirate marshmallow suckers HERE

brown chocolate mustache mold suckers

Orange wedge boats floating on cups of blue jello HERE

Tuna salad in cucumber chunks HERE

Cheese cubes and ritz crackers- pirate gold

olives- cannon balls

pirate booty

Pineapple cups- pirate jewels

veggie plates- peppers, carrots, cucumbers,- pirate swords

Tattooed banana halves HERE

Activities:

First we decorated a paper pirate hat and staple it together to wear for the duration of the party

I painted treasure boxes and they put stickers and gem stones on them. Next these little matey's dug through a rice filled box knecklaces, compass rings and gold pieces to fill their decorated treasure chest

 Piper's Blessing
 

Totally tuckered out from the weekend events!