Category Archives: kid stuff

Candy-free, junk-free, still awesome Easter egg hunt ideas!

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Easter is coming, and I’m usually stoked about it because to us, it’s a time to celebrate SPRING!!!! Being from Florida and now living in North Carolina, winter blues have become a depressing part of life. All the gray, dry limbs just make my heart sad. Even after ten years in NC, these dreary months are no fun. So Easter has become a celebration of all the gorgeous color that’s coming back to life in all its pastel glory!

We tend to do our own little egg hunts at home.  I like that it’s just us instead of the madness that happens at public egg hunts. Still, sometimes we struggle with what to put in them. We try not do to a lot of candy, but I’m a little sick of the non-candy alternatives. Seriously, our home is just about at capacity with all that tiny junk: the tiny plastic ‘toys’, hair bows that my daughter won’t wear anyway, more stickers, more temporary tattoos, tiny tubs of play-doh that dry up five minutes after you open them and turn into a crumbly mess all over the house….yeah. I’m done with all that.

So what to do? After some thought, we decided on money and power. What kid wouldn’t want that?

  1. Money: Our kids are starting to learn to save up for things they want. We have a bunch of spare change. Why not fill the eggs with some money? Change can add up quickly, and this will give them an extra chance to learn money management, counting and all that stuff.
  2. Power: We did this in the form of coupons. You know how some people do ‘love’ coupons for their significant other sometimes? Like “free massage” and stuff like that? We adapted this concept for easter eggs. Ours will include things like: choosing a restaurant, choosing a movie for family movie night, staying up past bedtime, choosing the next family outing, and some funny ones like ‘make daddy do the sprinkler dance’.

Admittedly, some of our easter eggs will still have candy and toys (mostly balloons and stick on mustaches). I was a bit worried that they wouldn’t enjoy it and it would all be a big fail, but they loved it! The coupons were so exciting for them, and it’s become a ‘thing’ in our house throughout the year.

And the actual Easter baskets? Our approach to baskets also follows our no-junk philosophy. We reuse the egg hunt baskets or ‘package’ everything in something that is part of the gift. One year we got the kids plastic chairs for the yard (the $5 walmart ones that are still kicking around our yard years later), so the ‘basket’ was the chair. We used beach buckets one year as well. We generally take it as an opportunity to stock up on spring and summer items that we’ll get them anyway, but are so fun. Some examples are:

  • beach towels
  • sidewalk chalk
  • bubble solution and a new cool bubble toy
  • flip flops
  • beach/pool toys

I hope these ideas help your spring celebrations and help keep some sanity in everyday life!

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Thank you moms!

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I am so proud to be a mom in today’s world. Really. There’s good and bad, but overall, it seems like for the first time, a mom can make the choices that work for her to lead her family in what works for her. Have I said ‘her’ enough? But it’s true. Crunchy, traditional, stay-at-home, glass-ceiling crusher…whatever it is, there are other moms there to support you. And yeah… there’s a fair amount of snark, but for the most part, we respect and help each other.

But it’s that support that makes me proud to be a mom. Having kids so far from any family has forced us to build a network. Thanks to friends, neighbors, social media, and of course, family, I have learned so much about being a mom.  Seeing all this around me has given me the confidence to try to be the mom I want to be.

Today, I wanted to share some little tidbits that have been ‘aha!’ moments for me that I’ve learned from other moms:

– freezing Gogurts to have yogurt pops: I spent the better part of last summer pouring yogurt into tiny ice pop molds and then fighting the molds to get the pops out. Gogurts are way easier, and I feel better about them than the regular ‘juice’ popsicles (although we have both).

– telling my kids ‘thank you for apologizing’ when they say they are sorry instead of ‘it’s okay’ because chances are, if they had to apologize for their actions, then what they did is not okay.

– asking ‘are you hurt or are you scared?’ when they are crying after a fall or something like that: It gets them to stop and think, and in the process, calm down a little bit and gives you a better idea of what’s really going on.

– brushing my daughter’s hair while she’s in the high chair having breakfast: She can’t run away from me, and she can’t fuss too much because she’s busy eating.

These are just a few of the solid, tangible ways that this great ‘village’ of moms around me has helped me, but there is so much more that I’ve learned that has allowed me to be a mom and to continue to grow in this amazing job. I can’t wait to see to see what else I learn as my kids grow. I only hope I’ve been able to support other moms as well.

So to all you moms – thank you! Thank you for the job you do for your kids and for the role you play in each other’s lives to make us all better.

Happy mother’s day!

Super Simple, Super Fun Camp Theme Kid’s Party

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Camp Connor Collage

Last November, we celebrated my son’s fourth birthday party and we had so much fun. Fun. I keep using that word, and it makes me sound lame, but it was pure and simple fun. I’m not sure how I pulled off  taking a bunch of four-year-olds into the woods, letting them play on a rickety foot bridge over a creek, and then turned around and let them have pointy sticks and be close to fire, but I did – we all did. Not only did we survive, but we had a great time.

‘Camp’ is a pretty unusual theme, but it just made sense for us. One of my son’s favorite things to do is go for a hike in the woods behind our house, and he’s been asking to go camping for months, so it seemed like a no-brainer to make this his birthday.

I have to say, this party was a lot easier than I thought it would be. This is why I’m posting about it – at the end of the day, after everyone had gone home, I looked around and said “Man that was fun!” It didn’t cost a fortune, we all had fun, and I was able to enjoy it just as much as my guests. It was so much easier to host a full-blown kid party than I thought it would be.

I kept the invitation simple – just a burlap background with simple writing on it, and printed at the drug store one-hour-photo lab.  You can read more about my invitations in this post.

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Party day came, and we were so excited! We hung primary color bunting across our back yard and our front porch, and covered tables and our kitchen island in primary colored table cloths (the plastic ones for easy cleanup).

Can I say one thing about the plastic bunting? It was actually the inspiration for the color scheme, mostly because it was $1 for a nine-foot length. We bought 5. They are still hanging in our backyard and I love them. It’s giving color to my otherwise winter-gray backyard. And I’m probably annoying my neighbors so, BONUS!!! Just kidding, I love my neighbors, and I’ll take down the bunting once there’s some green in the yard.

We set up our back yard to have different activities that you’d do if you were at camp:

First, my favorite: These canoes made from cardboard boxes were so cute and fun. The kids had a blast racing and running around.  We sectioned off our side yard by hammering some 50-cent dowels into the ground and hot gluing some blue plastic table cloths to them to create a ‘lake’ area. Ideally, I would have filled the area with blue balloons, but a couple of our guests abhor balloons and the popping noise, so I was nice and refrained.

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A camp party planned by yours truly would not be complete without a craft station, right? Surprisingly, it was a big hit! We made pinecone birdfeeders, and it was really easy to set up.  My son and I foraged in the woods for pinecones a couple of weeks before the party.  Then, I tied some yarn from my craft stash to them so that the kids could hang them.  I set them up in a basket with a squeeze bottle full of corn syrup, a bowl of birdseed, a box of zip top bags so the kids could have something to take them home in, and a box of wipes for cleanup. The kids squirted corn syrup on the pinecone and scooped birdseed over it so it would stick. The whole thing cost $6, and I have a ton left over. Normally, they’re done with peanut butter, but I wanted to avoid any allergy issues.

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We also set up what we called ‘marksmanship’ which was really just a bean bag toss game that we had that we tied between two trees. To round off our camp, we set up some sports equipment, and of course, the playground was available.

I didn’t schedule the activities. I welcomed everyone, and they were all free to play and go from station to station as they pleased.

After we played for a little bit, we took the kids on my son’s favorite hike down to a stream and let them play in the woods for a little bit.

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My son loves hiking in the woods behind our neighborhood. It was so cool to see my son, who can be shy at times, be so proud and comfortable as we hiked down the trails. I had planned to just go to the stream, but the neighborhood kids know the area well and all ran down the stream to a cracked, rickety footbridge, so all the kids followed down and we spent most of our time with our hearts in our throat waiting for a kid to fall in the water and/or the bridge to fully break. But nobody did, and the bridge survived. And I think the kids loved it.

After the hike, we headed back to the house for hot dogs (super easy prep: baked in the oven at 350 in disposable roasting pans until heated through, and then kept on the warm setting until needed), chips, cupcakes (store-bought!), and my favorite part of the whole night: the s’mores bar.

Y’all. We need to talk about this whole ‘s’mores bar’ thing. I’m here to tell you to think outside the graham. Somewhere in my planning, it struck me that it doesn’t have to be graham crackers. I started to think about different candy and cookie options. Why only grahams? Why only plain chocolate? And then I had to go for it.  I had graham crackers, chocolate chip cookies and shortbread cookies. And for the candy, I had regular chocolate, snack size peanut butter cups (not the small ones that are sold in a bag, but not the regular size you’d get at the candy stands in the checkout line) and rolos.  I could have gone crazier. I thought about having sliced bananas, strawberries, nutella, sprinkles to dip them in… but it was a camping-themed party for four-year-olds, and I went simple(ish).

I hope that if I make it to heaven, I’ll be greeted with this, my favorite combo: chocolate chip cookies with rolos and the requisite torched marshmallow.  Behold the beauty:

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Confession: I was so wrapped up in the party that I forgot to take pictures of the s’mores bar(and pretty much everything else), so I totally made myself a s’more just so I had a photo for this post.  We all suffer for our art, don’t we?

Setup couldn’t have been easier. I just set everything out on my countertop, lit a couple of sterno fuel cans, and said “Everyone, enjoy!” And they did. You know how a lot of parents normally don’t try cupcakes at parties and act all like “Oh, I’m too grown up for that. I’ll let the kids enjoy.” ? Well, they won’t pass up a s’more bar.

This was such a fun and easy party, the way all parties should be. And the best part of it was that my son had an awesome day.

Before I wrap this up, I want to thank the ladies at All Wrapped Up Parties for this awesome post about why you should consider hosting a party at home, because it got me to finally click ‘publish’ on this post. As I read it this morning, I was fist-pumping in the air going “AMEN SISTAHS!!” So thank you, Julia and Alexis!

Letter Race!

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Inspiration struck me a couple of nights ago during a middle-of-the-night feeding.  I was thinking about how to keep my son busy and work on letters and numbers, thinking about the stuff he does at preschool, and how I can recreate them at home.  And I wanted something that will get his energy out because it’s been a little too cold to take the baby outside in the mornings when his energy is at its highest.  Then I wondered if I could combine all of this, making learning some sort of full-body experience. So this is what I came up with:

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Letter Racing!

It’s so simple and easy.  I wrote letters on cards that I had lying around, but you can easily do it on regular paper and cut it into pieces (about four per page).  I did the letters in his name and then a few others.

My son and I then taped the letters to the front door randomly.  We went to the end of our entry hall so we were facing the door.  I wrote a letter on his LeapPad (a chalkboard, dry erase board or scratch paper will work as well), had him try to guess it, and if he didn’t know it, I said it for him.  Then I asked him to run to find it and bring it back, making a big deal: “Go! Go! Go! Run!”  “Yay! You got it!”  “Yes! That’s the C!  Awesome job!”

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We did this until we had collected all the letters to his name. Once we had them all, I wrote his name on the LeapPad (I had done one letter at a time before) and worked with him to put the letters in order, asking him what letter came next.

It’s such a simple game, but he loved it!  As soon as we were done, he taped all the letters back on the door and wanted to play again.  This time, we didn’t even need the LeapPad.  I just asked him what letters we needed, and helped him figure it out when he got stuck.

He got a little upset when I had to stop to feed the baby, and made me promise we’d play after lunch.  Yes, darling, I promise to make you play a fun educational game.  Sheesh.

When we played in the afternoon, I realized how many variations of the game there can be.  I had him go to the letters in different ways (crab crawl, hopping, etc.), I asked him to match letter sounds (What letter says “Ssss”?), I had him put the letters back on the wall one at a time…  The more we played it, the more changes we could make to make it fresh.

He was so excited to show my husband what he learned that day when my husband got home! We had another round of letter racing, and then something kinda creepy happened.  When we were done, our son started to put letters back on the door.  I got distracted drawing on the LeapPad (oops) and my husband was taking care of the baby.  He looked up and said “Did you have him do that?!?”  I looked up and saw this:

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Yup.  My son spelled “robot” completely by accident. He had no idea he had done that.  He’s a bit of a perfectionist, so it doesn’t surprise me that he put them in a straight line in the band between the panels of the door (he’d done that a couple of times during the day), but it’s kind of creepy that he spelled out a word.

All this excitement and all it took was a sharpie, some paper and some tape.

Super Fun Mid-Week Kid Birthday

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So my little boy has turned three years old.  Wow. I cannot believe he’s grown up so quickly! I have to say, I was a little stumped about how to celebrate his birthday.  Three seems to be a big year – they are finally old enough to really enjoy all the fuss, so it’s really fun to celebrate.  But how?

As much as I wanted to give him a real party (and had almost the whole thing planned out before the baby was born), I realized that it was too much for me to take on at the time.  But I still wanted to make him a cake and celebrate.  I just needed the perfect inspiration, which was escaping me.

After asking around on facebook, a friend who thought I was having a party suggested setting up a cupcake bar so the kids could do whatever they wanted to do to their cupcake.  And I liked the idea of him decorating the cake, but wasn’t quite 100% sold on it.

Then it hit me how absolutely perfect that was.

I mean, what does a soon-to-be-three-year-old want more than anything in the world? Especially one whose whole life has been turned upside down in every which way within the past two months?

Control.

What my son likes most in the world right now – more than Cars stuff, chocolate chip cookies, trains and playing in leaves combined – is calling the shots, and with good reason.  In the past few weeks, his whole world has been flipped about ten times over.  All his friends moved to a new classroom without him, his favorite teacher left the school, he’s been potty training and let’s not forget about a new baby in the house and the constant in and out of visitors that’s resulted from that and then to finish off this crazy time, he’s moved up to the next classroom which is structured completely differently from his previous one.  Just in time for the craziness of the holidays… it’s no wonder he’s trying to make everything go his way.

So I ran with it.  I decided he’d have as much control of his birthday as he could.  The day before his birthday, he helped make his cake.  Cooking is one of this favorite activities, so he was in heaven.  I made it even more personalized by dividing the batter and letting him choose colors to dye the batter and then letting him fill the cake pans by pouring spoonfuls of the different colors so we got a crazy supercolor marbled cake.  That night, I frosted the cake.

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The following day – his birthday – I set up the cake on the table with all sorts of stuff to decorate: glitter gels, Cars sugar decorations, edible dinosaur decals, sprinkles and tiny chocolate chip cookies the size chocolate chips.  When he came home from preschool, he saw his birthday table and his eyes popped open wide.  Just what this mama wanted.

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We decorated the cake while dinner was cooking (and I use the term ‘cooking’ very loosely – I popped a frozen pizza in the oven because pizza is his favorite and I’m not superwoman so I wasn’t about to cook from scratch that day).  We had so much fun and he was so proud of having done up his cake. And as an added bonus, we got some quality family time in what would normally be a hectic weeknight where we didn’t really connect.

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What do you think of this confectionary masterpiece?

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Words of Wisdom {Nursery Wall Decor}

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Confession time: I’m a little scared to raise a little girl.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m excited about having a little girl, all the pink and glitter, ballet classes and general ‘sugar and spice’ that having a girl entails.  It just seems like it’s so hard to be a girl and it’s getting harder.  I keep hearing things like how third graders at a school nearby have lunch group therapy because the cattiness with the girls has gotten so out of control (although that might be the product of helicopter parenting), and I see more and more cattiness and just downright rudeness between little girls.  And women as well.  I mean, let’s just look at the whole mommy wars thing.  Breastfeeding vs. formula, attachment vs. cry-it-out…  We do it to each other. It breaks my heart.  And I don’t know how to raise a kind, smart, confident, creative little girl that will grow to be a strong woman someday.

But dammit, I’m gonna try.

So when I was thinking of what to do in the nursery, I got an idea in my head of having a wall of wisdom, if you will.  I looked for quotes from strong women that would reflect qualities I want my little girl to have – things like kindness, confidence, creativity, doing your best, reading… I thought it would be hard to find enough to fill a wall, but the hard part ended up being narrowing them down.

The project was a lot of fun to do. I rummaged around my house, craft stores and Goodwill to find frames and my hubby and father-in-law spray painted them white.  Once I had an arrangement I liked on the wall, I began designing what went where and how it would look.  I ended up with a few other things that weren’t word frames: a corbal/shelf to which I added a little bud vase with a pink rose, a mirror to add some sparkle to that side of the room (and because it was $2 at Goodwill), and her initial.

To design the word ‘art’, I used a free trial of Adobe InDesign.  I love, love, love the Adobe Creative Suite.  I miss it so much.  I think that’s what kept me at my old job for so long.  Sigh.  But I digress.  I channeled my inner design nerd and spent way too much time playing with fonts, sizes, kerning, spacing and all those fun things I used to do back when I worked 9-5.  Finally, I had each frame the way I wanted it (mostly).  Most I was able to print at home, but there were two that were too big for my printer, so I had them done at Office Max for a whopping $3 or so. I then trimmed everything down to size as needed and popped them into the frames.

It might be hard to see the quotes in the photo, so if you are interested, this is what is up there (for now, at least):

1. We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. – Marie Curie

2. Nothing is impossible, the word itself says “I’m possible!” – Audrey Hepburn

3. Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment. – Oprah Winfrey

4. Let us always greet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love. – Mother Teresa

5. You can’t use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have. – Maya Angelou

6. No me embarco sin galleta. – my grandma (this means “I won’t get on a boat without a cracker/cookie” in Spanish, meaning to always be prepared and being able to take care of yourself.  She said this all the time, and we take this advice to heart, literally and figuratively.  My husband who travels a lot will now not get on a plane without crackers based on her advice.  My grandma passed away this summer, so it’s nice to have a little piece of her in my little girl’s room.)

7. …something magical happens when you read a book. – JK Rowling

8. A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous. – Coco Chanel

Admittedly, some of these have been all over pinterest and aren’t exactly novel, but they all speak to me.  What I couldn’t find were quotes on travel/seeing the world, but got some travel-inspired prints for another wall in the room to give her that sense that there’s a world beyond our little town.

Here’s another look from further away. I love how it’s part of the cozy little corner where I’ll be rocking her for hours  and hours.

I’ll admit that having these quotes on a wall in a room for a baby who can’t read may not make her a strong woman later on in life, but at the very least, it will inspire me to try to live up to these ideals and to work hard to raise a daughter that embodies these sentiments.

Glider Makeover

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A few years ago when we were shopping for nursery furniture for my son, we found a glider in what we thought was a great neutral color that will work in any future baby’s room, whether it’s a boy or girl.  The taupe-y cushions looked great in our son’s woodland-themed nursery and the microfiber was soft and easy to keep clean:

But flash forward to a few weeks ago, when we put it in our light, bright aqua girl’s nursery and it looked like baby poop:

So what’s a hormone-raging mama-to-be supposed to do? Have a panic attack about how I can’t possibly have that glider in this room, or else some awful catastrophe will happen. Totally normal, right?

Well, I wasn’t that melodramatic, but close.  Still, I was really intimidated at the thought of recovering the cushions.  I mean, I’m used to coffee cuffs, notebook covers and bags.  Cushions are big.  But when a 60% off coupon for Joann’s arrived on my smartphone, the project didn’t seem so bad.  At least I wouldn’t be out too much money if the project was a bust.  So armed with 4.25 yards of fluffy pink fabric (which is enough for the glider, a blanket and more), I set to work.

I began by laying out the cushions on freezer paper, my pattern-making material of choice.  I had to tape two pieces together for the back and seat cushions to get it wide enough.

Then, I traced around each cushion.  After that, I used a compass (yes, the ones that gave you headaches back in ninth-grade geometry) to give myself room for the cushion depth. There’s probably a good way to measure this, but my pregnant brain wouldn’t process it correctly anyway, so I guesstimated how much to add. I ended up with an extra two inches except for the front of the seat cushion that’s a little thicker.  I went with three inches for that.

After cutting out the paper templates, I pinned them to the fabric and cut out the pieces. Next, I pinned the fabric pieces right sides together and stitched them together, leaving one side open to stuff the cushions.  I added two 20-inch lengths of grosgrain ribbon where the straps that snap to the chair on the back cushion so I could tie it on instead of trying to make little covers for the straps.

And this is where I began to cheat and get lazy.  I decided to just safety-pin the back cushion closed, since it rests on the seat cushion and I wasn’t going to see the closing anyway. I didn’t want to sew more ties or deal with a zipper/velcro closure, and I hate it when cushions are sewn shut because then it’s so much harder to pull the covers off to wash them.  I pinned the seat cushion closed as well, which allowed me to use the ties from the original cushion.

Here is a view of how the cushions tie.  The back cushion ties with the ribbon and the seat cushion ties with the original ties.

For the arm rests, I made the pattern pieces and cut the fabric the same way as the cushions, but I sewed just the sides, so I ended up with tubes.  My glider arm cushions snap onto the chair at the top and bottom.  At first, I was going to sew them completely in and then slit some holes where the snaps are until I realized that the snaps are completely hidden.  So I slipped the tube/covers on the cushions, pinned one side to the cushion to keep them from sliding off and snapped them onto the chair.  I didn’t even need to pin the bottom side.  It’s snugly snapped in and well hidden.

The foot rest was next.  I cut out fabric the size of the top plus a half-inch seam allowance, and added 4-inch bands around the side.  When those were all sewn together, I hemmed the bottom to make it nice and straight and an even depth.

So there it is.  A glider makeover for a little girl’s room, all pink and fluffy and soft.  And it was so much easier than I thought it would be.  I think it will make those 4 a.m. feedings much more pleasant, don’t you?

There’s a new ‘C-word’ in town.

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Yes, my friends.  Around our house, we have a new ‘c-word’.  It’s cooking.

I can’t say it around my son anymore, because he insists on being part of the action.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m thrilled that he loves to cook.  I hope to keep his interest going long enough so that someday I can take a break from cooking and give him a night or two a week to cook for the family. I know I’m many years away from that, but a girl can dream, can’t she?

Plus, I definitely want my son to know how to cook.  Someday, he’ll be a grown man, and let’s face it girls, a man who can cook for you is just…dreamy.

But it’s starting to be a bit of an issue now because he wants to be part of everything cooking-related.

I started ‘cooking’ with him when he was just over a year old.  I let him spread sauce and sprinkle cheese when we made pizzas, or add cinnamon to his oatmeal – simple tasks like that.  His preschool did more adventurous stuff with the kids – making ice cream, churning butter, letting them ‘measure’ and mix instant pudding and crush cookies to make dirt cups, etc.  When he turned two, I took in cake mix and the kids made their own cupcakes.  It was so cute and way more fun than just handing them cupcakes.  But his love of cooking has hit new heights in the past few months.  It’s an obsession.

Recently, I’ve gotten more adventurous and have tried to let his love of cooking benefit me.  He’s more than capable of mixing pancake mix and scrambling eggs, so I let him do those tasks while I get other things ready.  And I love having my little buddy around in the kitchen.  As soon as I take a cutting board out, he pulls a chair up to the kitchen island and stands on it, and asks me questions like “How many cups, mama?” or “I cut this now?” which I think is so cute.  I give him plastic measuring cups and dry beans so he can ‘cook’ with me when there’s nothing that he can do, but he’s starting to catch on and insisting on being part of the real action.

The thing is, I can’t always have a two-year-old helping in the kitchen.  I don’t want him around raw meat, or close to knives and stuff.  And sometimes I just need to get stuff done.  But as soon as the ‘c-word’ is mentioned, he runs to the kitchen and starts grabbing stuff.  I’m to the point where I avoid the word if at all possible, instead saying ‘mama’s making dinner’ or ‘getting food ready to eat’ and sneaking around when I’m getting dinner ready.  Which is hard because our house has a very open floor plan, so I can’t really hide anything.

Here’s a great example: just a minute ago, he went up to the counter and turned off the slow cooker, gleefully saying “Mama! I’m cooking!” as he turned the knob round and round.  Cute.

We got him a little play grill so he can cook on his own, and I have a strong feeling that Santa will bring him a play kitchen this year. But if he’s not convinced by Tupperware and dry beans while he’s standing next to me, I’m not expecting the toy kitchen to work as a distraction when I need it. He’s okay right now.  I can say “Mama has to do this part, it’s too dangerous for you right now.”  and he’ll reluctantly watch me finish up. But I can tell he’s getting more and more stubborn and wanting to do more (as witnessed by his encounter with the crock pot).

So, how do you handle kids in the kitchen so that you can do what you need to do but still keep them involved?  What are your favorite dishes to cook with your kids?

FunTime Friday

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When I had a job (meaning one that kept my bank account nice and happy – we all know being a SAHM is more work than pretty much any ‘job’ out there), Fridays were awesome.  I worked at a church, which meant that most staff members worked on Sunday, so Fridays were just a skeleton crew around the office.  So we had fun.  I started my day off with a latte (the only one I allowed myself each week), I got to see my awesome volunteers, and we usually ordered something good for lunch and all sat together. We all had work to do, but we just made it fun.  And I miss it.

So I started doing FunTime Fridays with my son.  It happened by accident, but now I’m embracing it as a ‘thing’ we do. Each Friday, I try to line up something above and beyond our normal routine.  It’s not like I sit around all day with him watch TV.  We color, read, count, and sing.  We play with play doh, play inside, play outside, play with trucks, play with blocks.  We watch a little bit of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and do the Hot Dog Dance a million times in a row. I try to keep him active, but I just don’t have the mind power to plan super days every day.

But I wanted to do something really cool with him once a week.  Something different from the norm.  Something that would celebrate the moments of our lives (fake coffee anyone?).

So far, our FunTime Fridays have included play dates, lunch with Dada, making and eating Jell-O jigglers (hence the photo above), some messy crafting, and a trip or two to the kids’ museum.  His pre-school has started doing ‘learn at home’ activities (aka: homework for two-year-olds ~ yikes!), so those will also be part of our Fridays. I have a few other ideas that I hope to do soon like:

How do you get creative with your kids?  I’d love to hear some ideas!