Toddler Books

Tonight I attempted to take Claire to the library. Okay, so we made it to the library, we even returned my books and picked up a few other things I wanted and a dvd for Justin. Then we went to the kid's section. Specifically, the kids' dvds and picture books. At that point, Claire went into crazy toddler mode.

There are no pictures of crazy toddler because I think it is bad form to whip out your cell phone and start taking pictures when your child is blatantly misbehaving...seems to send the wrong message to both the child and the people around you.

But a few examples:

• Someone had brought over one of the step stools and Claire had to stand on...and attempt to fall off of it, even after being told to stop.
• When picked up, instead of realizing it was time to stop it, she started swinging her arms around and smacking me in the head.
• When told to stop doing something she giggled.
• When I would attempt to pick her up and she was not done doing whatever she was doing that she shouldn't have been doing in the first place, she would twist around and whine.

Now I'm not going to entirely blame Claire for all of this. She's three. It was late-ish (7:30pm) and she was tired since she doesn't nap anymore. And really, I should know better than attempt to browse when I have her with me. And I also know she could've been a lot worse, I've seen worse from her and from other kids.

I could go with the solution of just not taking her with me, for example going during my lunch break. But she's got to learn and I want her to like the library.

My new plan involves every other week trips to the library with a list (on my phone most likely) of books & authors for her that I want to look for. Tonight I was thinking about getting an Olivia or Angelina book, but I had no clue as to the author of either of them. I could have asked the librarian or looked it up on one of their computers, but crazy toddler showed up first.

Also, having a better idea of where to find things she would like. I was looking at the DVDs but could not find any DVDs of tv shows that she would like. Now, maybe they were all checked out, or maybe I was looking in the wrong place. This will most likely means a library trip during my lunch break in order to find things without having to deal with crazy toddler.

Alright, so any ideas of other books (authors or series) that I should look at for Claire? She likes Click, Clack, Moo, Cows That Type and Llama Llama books.

Project Life: Week 22

Week 22: May 28 - June 3

I so love this project. I love that I am almost halfway through the year and all of these memories aren't just stored on my computer. I love that I'm almost halfway through the year and my book is more than half full.



This week, I didn't write any of my journaling by hand. I typed it all on the pictures before I ordered them. (yes, ordered them, my target's re-model is FINALLY done and I can order online once again) I love journaling on the pictures. After I finished putting my page all together last night, I was looking at the June PL Inspiration on Becky's Blog and saw how Cathy Zielske makes ghosted journal spots on photos. Which is exactly what I had been thinking I should have done on some of these. I just didn't think about it until after I ordered them and saw how hard is was to read some of the text - particularly when I typed over grass. So I might be reprinting a few so that it is easier to read - except I didn't save them as photoshop files, so I'd have to retype all the journaling. We'll see.



The pink card with the green heart is from the Cobalt core kit. I ran it through my printer to print the "this life" on it - using Ali's Hand font.



I used the scrap from a different insert to make this week's insert. Since it was open down the left side, I used some of the 12x12 Cobalt Cardstock and then sewed it to the page protector. I ended up making a few of the pictures weird sizes, but I like that it isn't quite a 6x12 like most of my inserts are. I picked out the piece of cardstock that matches my title card for the week.



Since I didn't do any hand journaling, it is mostly just pictures this week. Since we're about halfway through the year, I'm thinking about starting a new Project Life album - I haven't done THAT many inserts, so it's not really full yet. But I think I will end up needing two books and January-June & July-December seems little a good division.


Thanks for coming and seeing my Project Life!

Menu Monday

Wow...we were so off out menu last week, that I feel the need to post what we actually ended up doing. The main problem...I never made time to go to the grocery store. I'm not entirely sure why, I just had other things to be doing I guess? But not sure what since I wasn't doing anything important. We only ended up with spaghetti because I had to run to Target and grabbed a jar of marinara while I was there.

Monday - Fried Egg Sandwiches
Tuesday - Smoked Brats, Veggie Mix
Wednesday - Pork Chops, Veggie Mix
Thursday - Arby's
Friday - Pizza Hut
Saturday - Wedding Reception Food
Sunday - Spaghetti, Corn

And actually, I did go to the grocery store. On Saturday morning...to buy coffee & donuts. But since I had Claire with me, and we hadn't eaten breakfast yet and it was almost 10am, I didn't buy stuff to have for dinner on Sunday. Plus, it was already Saturday, the meal plan was already ruined at that point.

But this week...we're going to do better! I hope. Because our eating out budget was SHOT last week. I just need to go to the grocery store. Soon. I probably should've gone last night. Oh well.

Monday - Deli Sandwiches, grapes
Tuesday - Chicken-BLT Bow Tie Pasta Salad, Bread
Wednesday - Taco Pizza (homemade dough - make it Tuesday night)
Thursday - Chicken Stir-fry, rice, egg rolls
Friday - Marinated Turkey Tenderloin, pasta side, veggies
Saturday - Steak, buttered potatoes, green beans
Sunday - Fried Egg Sandwiches

I'm also planning to make a Peanut Butter sheet cake on Saturday for Justin. And on Sunday, I am making Pioneer Woman's Pineapple Upside Down Cake {in a cast iron skillet} to take to lunch because that is specifically want my dad wants for Father's Day. I can't link up to a recipe for that one because it is out of her cookbook. I'll probably end up posting pictures of both of them on Sunday night...I can't wait.

S'mores (over the stove top)

Maybe everyone else had already thought of this, but I hadn't. It was actually Anaya's idea.

One of the things on our summer to-do list is make S'mores. I had planned on roasting the marshmallows over the grill. I went ahead and bought the stuff for S'mores on Saturday while we were at Target, but wasn't planning to make them this weekend.

When we were coming in from playing outside on Sunday evening, Anaya asked if we could make S'mores. I kind of hemmed and hawed because I didn't feel like dealing with the grill and it was supposed to start storming at some point. So Anaya asked why not just make them over the stove top. I just kind of hemmed and hawed because roasting marshmallows over a burner just seemed WEIRD. But I talked to Justin and decided to give it a try...what's the worst that would happen? We have a flat-top stove so a fire was unlikely and if the marshmallow fell on the burner it make a mess, but could be clean up.



I was definitely right about feeling like an idiot roasting a marshmallow on a kabob skewer over a burner. But it worked!



If we do this again we'll cook them over the back burner, Claire got a little closer to the stove than I liked which resulted in Anaya and I simultaneously telling her loudly to back-up and get away from the stove. She wasn't trying to touch the stove, she was trying to steal a graham cracker, they were just on the counter near the very hot burner.

Photoshop Fun

We went to my brother-in-law's wedding tonight and I took 320 pictures...and I almost wish I had taken more!

I am most definitely NOT a professional photographer nor a professional photoshopper, but I did have some fun with photoshop with a couple of their pictures. I really wanted to take pictures in RAW mode and see what I could do differently with them than with regular jpg files, but my camera's RAW pictures are not supported by the version of photoshop that I have. That's the problem with have a version of photoshop that is 7 years old and a camera that is 1-2 yrs old.

Here's the original, straight-out-of-camera picture that I had the most fun with...



The first thing I did was apply a boost action & a warmer action. And then I cropped it a little since the original has just a teensy tiny bit of a kids head in the bottom of the picture.



Then I wanted to see how it would look in black & white, so I went back to the original picture and applied PW's Black & White action. I think it looks pretty good.



Then I decided to try and be all spiffy and leave all of the picture in black and white except for her bouquet and his boutineer. Wedding photographers always seem to have a shot like this.



All actions from Pioneer Woman's Action Sets

Pop Ba-looons

As I mentioned in my Project Life post yesterday. Claire LOVES water balloons. I went to Target...a couple of weeks ago...and bought Anaya some water balloons because we threw hers away last summer because she left them all over the house and we had a 2 yr old and three cats. So I bought some more and explained to her that they do not come in the house. And after playing with them, everyone is required to walk around the yard picking up pieces of balloon. I know, I'm the mean and evil step-mother. It cooled off again and she was at her mom's house, so we never ended up doing anything with them until Memorial Day Weekend. At which point I think I tied at least 75 water balloons and therefore and no longer evil, even if I do make them pick up the pieces of the balloons.



So, on the Friday (May 25) we pulled out the water balloons. And Claire was enthralled. She was popping them as faster than I could fill them. Eventually I found a box to put them in and we kept it out of Claire's reach, so for every one that she got, we put two or three in the box. I also had Anaya start helping me fill balloons, I filled them, she tied them. Unless she was still tying one when I got done filling the next one.

That night we drew a bulls-eye on the driveway and Anaya & Claire "competed" to see who could get the most points. Unfortunately, unless you throw them really really hard, the balloons only pop when they hit grass. They bounce right off of the driveway...and people...but if they so much as brush against a piece of grass, they pop.

Now Claire is obsessed with the balloons. She calls them "Pop Ba-looons". I have a Summer To-Do list with pictures of things we can do on it, and Claire will go and point to the one of water balloons and look at me and say "Pop Ba-looons?". We'll be in the garage and she'll see them on the shelf and say, "Pop Ba-looons?". Which means almost every evening, I end up sitting in the backyard with a hose, filling and tying water balloons as quickly as she can pop them. Mostly she likes to sit in a chair next to me and just throw them from there so that she doesn't get grass on her feet.



In an effort to not tie so many balloons waste fewer balloons, I started making "fountain" balloons for her. Basically, you fill the balloon with water and don't tie it then hold the top of it closed and hand it to her. She holds it while all the water squirts out the top. Then you can reuse the same balloon until it is too stretched out and then it will explode all over the balloon filler while they are filling it. Which Claire will also find humorous. And of course, since I made the rule that Anaya & her friends had to pick up all of the pieces of balloons...guess what else I get to do every night...

Project Life: Week 21

Week 21: May 21 - 27

I feel like I'm way behind even though there is only one full week between the week I post and the current week. My plan for PL this year included picking pictures/ordering them on Sunday night, getting them Monday & putting it all together Monday night or Tuesday night and posting the completed layout on Tuesday. Now I'm giving myself an entire week to pick, print and put together a week before posting it. Not that it matters that much. At least I'm sticking with it.

This was the week with the weekend of Memorial Day. We really didn't do anything special for the holiday, so I just went with my normal Project Life schedule of Monday to Sunday which means next week will start with the Monday that is Memorial Day.



This was also the last week of school for both kiddos. The first two 3x4 are pictures of them on the last day. I ended up adding a strip from my labeler that says "LAST DAY OF SCHOOL" but took pictures before I decided to do that. On the right you see the front of a 6x12 insert. The insert is entirely pictures of playing with water balloons. I originally bought them for Anaya, but Claire LOVES them so much. She asks us almost every night to "Pop Ba-loooons?". I'll probably write a story about that during week 22 of Project Life.



The back side of the insert is on the left of this picture - more water balloon pictures. The top picture is of the game Settlers of Catan. My brother is really into strategy games, so since none of us had to work Saturday, Sunday or Monday, we played games Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night. I wrote a little bit on the card about what games we played and who won - mostly my brother. Then my mom & sister-in-law and I went to get pedicures on Saturday. It was opening weekend for the pool so we went every single day. And I re-started the tradition of going to McD's for $1 ice cream on our way home - we did it last summer too. And I made a peach pie and it was delicious.



I love the bright red felt letters over the mostly blue/green pictures. They are from Making Memories, I was cleaning my old scraproom in the basement and I found them. I have a light blue set too, but wanted the pop of the red. I put them on the outside of the page protector...we'll see how they hold up. And I won't be able to let Claire look at this page un-supervised or she'll pull the letters off.


Thanks for coming and seeing my Project Life!

Menu Monday

This week, I have a cold. And thinking about what to eat for the week just isn't appetizing. We never did have the pork chops we were supposed to have last week so they got thrown in the freezer. Since my cold was killing me on Sunday night, we ended up eating mac & cheese for dinner because it was even less work than frying a couple of eggs. Hopefully this cold goes away soon.

Monday - Fried Egg Sandwiches
Tuesday - Pork Chops, Veggie Mix
Wednesday - Ravioli w/ Marinara, Veggie Mix
Thursday - Smoked Brats, Veggie Mix
Friday - Chicken Stir-fry, Rice, Egg-rolls
Saturday - Wedding Reception Food
Sunday - Pizza (Homemade or Frozen or Take Out)

That's it, that's what we're eating. Unless this cold continues to make me not want to stand in front of the stove...then we'll be eating Mac & Cheese all week. Or something else equally easy, like sending Justin to pick up fast food.

Recipe: Cookie in a Cast Iron Skillet

Doesn't this just look delicious...



I found this recipe on Tasty Kitchen and had to make it. This thing was seriously rich. It says to serve it with ice cream and it means it - you need something to balance this thing out. I was all out of ice cream, so I went with a glass of milk.



I didn't have any chocolate chunks or any candy bars to make chunks out of, so I ended up using Nestle Mini Chocolate Chips. I will definitely try it again with dark chocolate...preferably high quality dark chocolate. I got a little worried that I did something wrong when I was stirring the dry ingredients in, it seemed like I had too much flour and the dough wasn't coming together at all. But it did eventually come together and look like dough. Then I started folding my chocolate chips in, and they started MELTING because even though it had cooled some since I melted the butter, the skillet was still hot enough to melt the chocolate. So I quickly go them as mixed in as I thought was necessary, and put it in the oven.



It kind of reminded me of a dessert that I used to have with friends out in San Diego. The Pizookie at BJ Restaurant & Brewhouse. This is thicker than theirs, I think it might be good to cut this recipe in half particularly if you don't have a LOT of help eating it. Justin's allergies were bothering him so he had taken some allergy meds and passed out on the couch so it was just me and Claire. Which means we only at about a 1/4 of it. Definitely needed more help eating it. And because it is so gooey, you can't really get all of it out of the cast iron skillet and not have it turn into a mess.

The original recipe: Dark Chocolate Chunk Skillet Cookie
Step-by-step picture directions: Tasty Kitchen Blog

Toddler Summer Nightdress

This is actually my second attempt at making a dress for Claire out of one of my old tee-shirts. This one turned out much better. I learned from the mistakes of my first dress...

Here is my first attempt:



The first thing I did wrong was sew straight up the sides without leaving arm holes - whoops. Which turned it into a tube dress so I cut the original neck line off and added the braided straps to keep it up - I need to shorten them a little bit still. I was also intending to make an A-line dress...but this is not an A-line at all. But I learned! And Claire gets to wear this as a swim cover up.

This time when I cut up my old tee-shirt, I used part of the side seams for the sides of the dress. Then I angled it in a little bit and made kind of half-oval arm holes. Ta-da!



The white line is approximately how I ended up sewing this. As I was doing it I realized that I really wanted the dress to go in slower, so I sewed farther down the dress side than I had actually cut. I did the side seam first, from the bottom of the arm-hole to the original side seam of the shirt. After both sides were finished, I hemmed the arm holes. I just folded about 1/4" of fabric in and stitched as closely to the fold as I could. I could probably do the arm holes a little better, but for a first attempt at making my own arm-holes, it's not bad. It would've been better to have a 1/2" to fold in so that I could've folded the edge under to keep it from fraying...oh well, it's just a nightdress!



After I took pictures of the finished product, I wanted to put it on Claire for a couple of pictures. She REFUSED to have anything to do with it. When I would attempt to put it on her, she would push it back up off of her. When I got it over her head, she had it off of her head before I could get an arm in it. Ended up taking bribery to get her to wear it - ice cream & some little balloons to pop. Now she's wearing it to bed because once it was on her, she figured out that it wasn't so bad after all.



However, there was no getting her to hold still for a picture.