I am always looking for new ways to teach Cody while having fun at the same time. I don’t ever want to push him to learn new things unless he is ready and he is having fun at the same time. Lindsay at Crunchy Savings has such great ideas for teaching kids and she shared a great matching game she does with the kids. I knew I had to do this with Cody because he LOVES matching games.

Head to the dollar store and get your letters and numbers. Get two of each. They have an entire teacher section and each item is only $1! The hubs has a work laminator I used. You don’t have to laminate, but your letters/numbers will last longer if laminated.

Start with a small amount of letters or numbers so the child isn’t overwhelmed. Call out a letter and have them find one and then match it to its partner. Cody has so much fun when we play this and he is learning at the same time!

Here, I used the letters we got from $1 store and other letters we had from Leap Frog and played the matching game, talked about colors and practiced our math….which letter is smaller, which letter is bigger?

Here we matched magnet numbers and talked about colors as well. Lot’s of learning and fun too!!!

You can get more ideas for learning on Crunchy Savings Teaching Tuesday’s, our Pinterest board, and our parenting resources page. I would love to hear some of your favorite learning games you play with the kiddos!

Grand Prize goes to:

B.J. Welshans

You will receive an autograph copy of Twixt! Please click here to send me your mailing address!

E-book Winners are:

Maya and Tina!

You will be receiving an ebook!  Please click here to send me your email addresses to receive your book!

Congrats to all of our winners!  If you are interested in reading Twixt, the ebook is currently on sale for another week!  Click here to get your copy today!

I know it is a little late, but I wanted to wish you all a Happy Valentines Day! Hope your day was great! We had an AMAZING day I have to say. Cody was really into this year after going to a valentines party at his friend Conner’s house where they ate lunch on little heart-shaped plates and drank from cute little v-day cups and did a v-day craft. After that he was hooked! So when we were asked to go to another v-day party, I let him pick out some stuff to make little valentine bags for the kids (I didn’t even think to bring them to Connor’s… total party foul!)

You take 2 gummy hearts. Put one upside down on a pretzel stick and the other heart you cut (see pic) and put it on the other end of the pretzel stick. I used a skewer stick to make holes before hand so the hearts slid on easier.You get cute little arrow heart treats!

So we made some treat bags with valentine cards, suckers, bow and arrow gummy heart and pretzel sticks (idea from Family Fun magazine), and stickers. The party totally ROCKED! Lindsay had cut out hearts and put all the names of everyone who was there and had them on the wall which I thought was so cute. Then she let all the kids decorate brown paper bags with crayons and foam stickers. She then made lunch for everyone and turned me onto a Panini maker which I HAVE to have now (there is just something about a hot sandwich)! She made heart-shaped cakes and icing so that all the kids could decorate their own cake which they LOVED! Then the kids put all their treats they brought into all the kids bags. It was a blast!

When we got home the hubs had sent a package to the house for me with tons of little goodies in there, along with 2 dozen roses. It was really sweet, considering I have been getting on his case lately about not forgetting about me with all the craziness of having 2 kids!!!

I then headed over to lifetime fitness for a massage (when you join they give you a discount on a 50 min. massage for $20)!! All I can say is BLISS! After my relaxing massage I picked up some thai food for us and we put the kids to bed and had dinner just the two of us.

All in all, it was a great day! I know how some people don’t really believe in these “hallmark holidays”, but it is kind of nice to have days that remind us to celebrate and appreciate the ones we love :)

How was your day?? Do you have any special traditions for Valentines Day?

For once this is not a Pinterest inspired post! The hubs decided to get a little creative with one of the many shoe boxes I have lying around and made Luke a cool little garage for his collection of Cars he has from the movie.  They spend most evenings building bridges, houses, etc. out of lego and other bricks he has so it was fun to add another dimension to his love of pretend play with his cars. He had fun doing it and I found red, black and gray paint at Michael’s for about .50 cents since he didn’t need a huge tube of it which worked out perfectly. So in the end it cost next to nothing to make, just a little imagination!

Looking for something fun to do with the family? Check this great discount for tickets to the Ballet Toybox! Code is 1112BTMOM and tickets can be purchased online at cballet.org, over the phone at 513-621-5282, or in person at our Box Office at 1555 Central Parkway.

February 18, 2012 – 1:00 PM | Aronoff Center for the Arts

For one performance only, Cincinnati Ballet offers a diverse program of classical and contemporary ballet selections designed to delight families and introduce children to ballet. At 50 minutes and $25 per ticket, Ballet Toybox is an easy and affordable way to experience Cincinnati Ballet with the whole family.

“This new program of Ballet Toybox offers a fun and lively mix of entertaining works and will include the world premiere of the full length narrative telling of Peter and the Wolf as well as sneak peak excerpts of Princess and the Pea and The Steadfast Tin Soldier which are included in the family series that ends our season. Additionally, audience members will get to see short portions of Swan Lake and our recently premiered Frisch’s Presents The New Nutcracker. This event promises to be a delight to the senses with something for all those who are young at heart! Swans, soldiers, a wolf oh my!”
-Devon Carney, Associate Artistic Director and choreographer for The Steadfast Tin Soldier.

Although I haven’t done my resolution for organizing a room a month yet, I have organized little things here and there over the last month. One of them is Cody’s snack shelf. I blogged a while ago about how I started a snack bin for him which has been AMAZING!!  I wanted to devote an entire cabinet to him so that he can do more on his own, but I haven’t found the space for it so I moved things around a bit and gave him his own shelf :) It is his height, where he can reach and it holds his snack bin, plates, bowls, and cups. One of his chores is to put away his dishes from the dishwasher and get his dishes he needs for a particular snack/ meal  so this allows him to do that. What I also love about this is that it is an easy task for him to do on his own, which is a confidence builder, AND he is getting to choose what color cup he wants, rather he wants a bowl or plate etc. and this makes him feel that he is in control of something. It ends up being a win- win for everyone!!!

For a while I’ve been wanting to try Jen’s green smoothie since she let me taste it and it was delicious! Then…one day roaming Pinterest I found another great Green Monster Smoothie that looked great as well and I was excited to try it because it had peanut butter and one of my favorite things is the peanut butter malt from UDF….HEAVEN! It’s one of my only weaknesses! Luke also loves peanut butter but the hubs is definitely not a fan. They don’t really do peanut butter in England so I don’t think it’s very popular to the Brits.

So in this Green Monster Smoothie are the following ingredients:

• one frozen banana (thanks iowagirleats.com for the tip to slice and peel the bananas before putting them in the freezer!)
• vanilla greek yogurt
• 1-2 tbsp of peanut butter
• 1 cup of milk
• as much spinach as you can fit in the blender!

For the full list of instructions along with pictures check it out at Iowa Girl Eats! We give this smooth two thumbs up AND Luke loves it too! He can’t get enough of it because it tastes like a yummy peanut butter milkshake! This has been a great way for us to start our day or we’ve had it as an afternoon snack when we have the munchies! I will say that I did try this out in my food processor and for me it didn’t work that well, still leaving it too “bitty” for me to drink so I tried it again in my blender and it was the perfect consistency!

Luke drinks this down in about 2 minutes! I love that it tastes great and is so good for you!

I wrote about Cody’s lego themed 3rd birthday at The Little Gym on Tuesday and promised links and info to everything today. Cody LOVES his legos and him and daddy build with them all the time. I got the idea to do a lego themed party when I saw the coolest lego cake on pinterest! I knew as soon as I saw it that I had to do it up lego style.

I searched for Lego ideas and found a ton of blogs and websites with GREAT ideas. Since I really wanted to go minimal this year, I only picked a few things to do, but you could go totally crazy with this and there is SO much cool stuff to do. We may have to revisit this theme again another year or do it for Grayson because there is just so much to choose from! You can google “lego birthdays” and you will see a sea of options. I thought I would list a few of my faves:

• Geo Parent: type “Lego” in the search bar and a ton of FREE Lego printables will come up. Great coloring pages and activity pages, along with a ton of other stuff! Print them out and use them as games for your party or parting gifts.
• Lego.com: here you can scroll (on the left under downloads) and print free coloring pages, dot to dots, stickers etc. I got sticker paper at Staples and then just printed off lego stickers Cody liked so he could decorate his Thank You cards with them. It was SUPER easy to print and then you just cut the image and peel the back off and you have yourself a cool lego sticker.
• Kingdom Lego: more of the same from lego.com, just different figures and pics
• Delia Creates Blog: AMAZING DIY Lego info here with links to EVERYTHING, including an adorable blank lego card template where you can put your own text and use it as an invite or a thank you!  This is where I printed Cody’s crown… a FREE printable with tons of options to use for decorating! I also used the image for the green board to put his cake on.
• Winks and Daisies: check out the comments for links and directions to the free printables including lego lanterns and a lego man banner. I printed out the lego men here and used them on his green board for decorations and in the cake. I had some cake pop sticks and just taped the men to that and stuck them in the cake to make it look like they were sitting on the lego.
• Tip Junkie also has a great list of lego birthday bashes.

Like I said, you could go crazy!! I had a lot of fun with the stuff I did do.

• The lego cake. There are a ton of ways to do it, but I thought this one was the easiest. All you need is cake mix, frosting (I make my own), gel colors (to dye the frosting) and marshmallows! There is a great video how to with the link as well. A few things I recommend:

1. I wanted the really bold blue and red colors (since TLG provided plates and those were two of the boy colors I chose) and it takes a lot of gel coloring that goes into making them dark!! I think that the red gel color makes the frosting a little tangy so if you can try choosing lighter colors such as yellow etc. I just think it messes with the yummy flavor of the frosting.
2. Although this is not hard to do, it is time-consuming. I suggest making your cake and frosting two days before your event and then frost everything the day of. This will save you from being in the kitchen all day long!!
3. In the how to video they say to use a fork to ice the marshmallows. I have skewers for kabobs and I ended up using that. You can get the entire thing iced and once you slide it off onto the cake there is hardly any “fixing” of the frosting you have to do.
4. I printed the lego template from Delia Creates blog and just grabbed colored construction paper I had and printed off several sheets. I made Cody’s crown and the “green board” for under his cake. I laminated it and then taped it to an oversized cutting board I have. It looked really cool to have a green board under his lego brick cake. I saw somewhere else, a mom spray pained bubble wrap green to look like green board and used it as a table runner! How cool?!

• The lego men. I printed those off on regular computer paper from Winks and Daises and use them for his Happy Birthday board and for in the cake. Easy peasy!!
• The goody bags!!! These were AWESOME! If you have the time and wanted to make the goody bags yourself, you can find instructions for that. I just didn’t have the energy to do it and could not find ANY lego goodies to buy until I searched Esty…. AMAZING the stuff they have on there! You can type “lego” in and you will get pages of stores that could accommodate your wishes. I ended up using two different stores.

DaRosa Children’s Art: She was super easy to get in touch with, answered all my questions and I received my items very quickly. I ordered lego key chains and a lego bracelet (for the birthday boy).

Lego Keychain

How adorable is this lego bracelet??!!!! Cody thought he was hot stuff :)

 LilCreativeCreations: This store has a TON to choose from. I had certain things in mind that I wanted in the goody bags. Vanessa completely worked with me on putting together a package of all of the things I was wanting and was able to put it all into a big cello bag with a pretty ribbon so it was all ready to go. She was easy to work with and made all of my ideas into a reality. You can get 10% off your order (the code is on their homepage) and I will say they are super busy so if you are wanting something for an event, I would order it early.

Everything in the goody bag: Lego crayons (bricks and men) with a coloring page, lego bookmark, lego tank with instructions and a lego ring.Lego tank with instructions

Lego tank with instructions

Cody LOVES reading so what better than a lego bookmark?!

Lego ring- they come adjustable so it will fit any finger :)

I LOVED everything, but I think the lego brick crayons and lego men crayons were my favorite!

 Lastly, Daisy Mae Tshirts made this ADORABLE 3 shirt for Cody for him to wear special on his birthday! It was sooo cute! I was able to pick the font style and pattern I wanted and it turned out SOOOO cute! I used a pic of him in the shirt for his thank you card from Shutterfly. I LOVE Shutterfly and am more and more impressed by them every time I use them. Their card quality is awesome and you can use as many coupons as you want with them!! SCORE!

 

Pictures In Thank You Card

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