What's Cooking?

Kids Edition: Pumpkin Spice muffins

Of course, you don't need kids to make this simple treat.  I just thought it was the perfect way to let her get her hands messy and enjoy something she cooked up!  Brooke is loving being in the kitchen.  I remembered a few years back when this popular two ingredient muffin surfaced on Pinterest.  I decided to let her do most of the work!

This is literally all you need, and an oven:

Dump in can of pumpkin and spice cake mix.  Stir.

Keep stirring!

I may have helped her stir a little…

Since there are no eggs, I had no worries about her enjoying some "batter"

Bake at 350
12-15 minutes
Enjoy!

Even my hubby loves them!  Perfect with a cup of coffee or tea.  Or even on their own.

Color Week {Tot School}

I feel like my house has been Grand Central Station over here!! We've had our chimney fixed, AC repaired (furnace died) Cable updated, carpets measured, carpets torn out, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something.  Every day it's been busy, but I've tried my best to keep things moving over here with "Toddler School."  My printer is not working and I don't have any laminating sheets for my new laminator, sooooo we just rolled with the punches.  My main goal was to keep the TV off because that dang thing is so easy to turn on!

For color week I just went around and pulled anything that was colorful.  She loves playing with the pom poms.  She puts them in a cup, adds a pipe cleaner as a "straw" and drinks.

We tried color sorting/matching, but she wasn't that impressed.

She loves the clings, though I won't let her really mess these up.  She has apples up front that she enjoys ripping, errr, playing with.

We snack and I try to read books about colors.

Pink Tray-gathered as many toys as we could that were pink!

At the playground, she was singing a made up song about all the colors on the slide, so that was kind of cool!

We discovered "Color Crew" on Netflix.

This was BY FAR the best activity.  A few ice cubes.  A bit of water with a couple drops of food coloring.

A ladle. Two buckets. WINNING!

Baby boy really liked it too, until he got a little cold from the water.

And we added yellow to it after nap time, which obviously made green.

We sorted the colored blocks and built towers.

We moved into mom and dad's room where the fan was since the AC was not working.

I pulled out a box of toys in the basement and we went through these colors!

We did a little baking today with some apples that were on their way out.  Simple, tasty and she loves making a mess in the kitchen!

That box of toys kept her occupied for a bit!

So while I don't feel like I "taught" her much, I know she is learning and most importantly having fun.  The key to us having great days is to stay busy, active, and move around the house!  It's a little tricky with the baby who spits up a little bit; I have to make sure we have blankets wherever we go..but he has gotten much better with that!  He's army crawling, she's almost potty trained and overall I would give ourselves an A for the week!!  Fridays are always nice because Daddy's around, (mommy gets her nails done) and Saturday they head to Nana and Papa's for a sleepover!  Long weekend ahead and we are pumped.

Did you get on board with the tot schooling?  I am looking forward to shapes next week!

Fun at home With a Toddler

While I don't ever "officially" have a lesson plan…I kind of just wing things around here in the "Toddler School" department. I am hoping to get on track come next Monday 8/31, like I've mentioned before with Tot School. 

For now?  When baby bro naps, we pull out the messy stuff, like paint!

-$1 sponge cut into pieces
-blue paint
-paper
-giant roll of brown paper from $1 store to try to contain any mess

She knows B and so we used blue…

I was inspired by Leah and her Mommy School, who had done this cupcake liner craft…so we added "water" with the sponge paint.

She then requested orange and just started painting away.

Brother woke up so I did the dishes and these two goofed around.

Tuesday night the new Madden came out, so I had to snap a photo of our silly little family.

We've been reading/doing some work with The Very Hungry Catipillar and her mind was BLOWN when I found it on Netflix for her.

Wednesday we did a little baking for brother!  She loved playing with the extra dough, rolling, pinching, and flipping!

I was going to buy or order some teething biscuits, but I just googled and found a recipe online.

Super simple recipe HERE

He approved!

We then went up to the dealership so Daddy could help switch the carseats.  He is just TOO heavy for me to carry in that seat, so we put him in Brooke's other seat, rear facing.  I then thought it'd be fun to drive out to our land…

Cross your fingers we close within the next month!!

And theeennnnn….a DOUBLE meltdown occurred. Brooke was fussy because Bradley was fussing, and she started saying she was hungry.  So I do something I never do, and got her a happy meal.   She enjoyed her cheeseburger and I was able to feed the baby.

That's real life!   I had packed snacks, but she went through them so quickly, I was in a pinch and whatever.  We don't eat it all the time.  Sometimes ya just roll with the punches.  I usually stay home because I know my kids and they thrive on routine, but man some days I just need to get out and drive. I used to drive an hour to and an hour from work, and while I do not miss that daily commute, especially in the winter, I do miss just getting out and about.  I know they won't be this little and so much work for long, (I say that a lot, don't I?) so I just do what I can and we are all just fine.

Green Fun [St. Paddy's Day]

So, I didn't do too much with the whole St. Patrick's Day theme.  I put some Irish music on Pandora and pulled out a few tricks in my back pocked.  I tried a few Pinterest projects yesterday and they didn't really turn out as well as they looked…but she had fun!  Next year we will get into doing fun little tricks with the Leprechaun.

One had cut an apple in half, and then you use that to make a 3 leaf clover.  The other was to tape 3 wine corks together and use that to make a clover.

She just had fun getting messy…

And I had to quickly stop taking photos because she realized it was waaaay more fun to use her hands!

Joe HATES corned beef and cabbage, so I made us ribs [and mac and cheese]

Brooke made a cake.

Stirred in the green!

Poor thing needs her hair cut desperately! But she enjoyed a little frosting.

It wasn't a huge super creative baking project, but she had fun and it was tasty…although she still said it was blue after all that green talk, all day long. Oops.

After dinner we 'split up into teams' as Joe calls it.  He took Brookie to the mall so she could run around and ride the carousel.  I took baby boy to the grocery store, but he woke up while I was trying to look at makeup.  His cute smiles made it worth it.  He was spent by the end of the night.

And so was Daddy.  I asked him to hold the baby while I pumped quickly.  I came back to this.  I think it's funny how I have so many pictures of him sleeping with the babes this little and yet none of me sleeping, EVER!  I'll sleep eventually.

Last night was actually quite good, baby boy only woke up once around 2am and then not again until 7!  Let's hope this continues.  

How was your St. Patrick's Day?  Let me know of any fun activities you do with your kids!