Meg vs. Thanksgiving: Thankful Tree

For my second Thanksgiving activity this week, I wanted to do something that would help us to focus on being thankful this month. After my handprint and footprint garland, I had a couple more paper grocery bags and decided to cut out a tree on a whim, to which we could add some fall foliage with things we are thankful for. The trunk took me about a minute to cut out, and then I cut out leaves during my spare minutes throughout the day. Here it is with our first leaves:

I thought it was fun that when I asked Little Brother what he was thankful for, he simply said, "Happy!" That warmed my heart, since ultimately happiness is what I want to give my kids. I think that being thankful is a big part of being happy.

We are planning to each put up something we are thankful for every day until Thanksgiving (or maybe through the end of the month?), so our tree should fill up pretty quickly.

Once the tree was done, the wall still seemed pretty bare, so I thought I would finish it off with a banner. If you read yesterday's post, that lead to an epic hunt for printable buntings and banners that you can customize. Next time the process should be a little easier!

Here it is with the addition of the banner:

Much better! I'm no Martha Stewart, but the whole point is to help my toddlers learn about Thanksgiving and what we should be grateful for, and I think this fits the bill (not to mention that it cost me approximately $0, since I had all the supplies, and many were things I inherited from other people or my mom's work).

What are you thankful for today? I hope you can say "Happy!" too. =)

Meg vs. Thanksgiving: Fall Handprint Garland

I love handprint crafts. If you search "handprint" on Pinterest you will find seven kajillion (of course that is a number!) amazing, creative, super fun handprint crafts to do with your kiddos. My three-year-old has been dying to do a footprint with paint ever since he saw the kids on Barney make Halloween ghost footprints, so when I saw turkeys on Pinterest that had handprints AND a footprint, I knew we were golden. (Oddly, none of the links to the actual turkeys worked, so I won't link back to any originals. We started out the fun by looking at some pictures of real turkeys online, then got to work.

Now as much as I love a cute handprint, I am not really into making extraneous messes, so my kids aren't really well trained with hand painting/stamping activities. More specifically, my almost-two-year-old cannot hold still for more than about two seconds, so I didn't think that doing all the prints right onto the turkey would work for us. I decided to just have the boys do a whole bunch of prints onto a paper bag (since I am too cheap to buy real craft paper) and then assemble the turkeys later. I have these Crayola Washable Kids' Paints, and we have really liked them and haven't had any problems with staining, which is good since I neglected to strip my kids down this time before we got going.

I had them stamp their feet twice just in case, which worked out because at the last second I thought to take advantage of the extra paint on their hands and make a little tree canopy so we would have some fall foliage to add to our decor as well.

Then when the paint dried, Big Brother and I cut out the hands and feet and glued them together, added some googly eyes and a couple spots of paint, and behold:

Handprint/footprint turkeys!

We taped them on to some yard with our fall trees, then hung them up in the living room.

Big brother and I also redecorated our branches for fall, since our spring buds (cut out from paint chips) were in poor shape. Here's the before & after:

Blech.

Much more festive!

And I cut out two leaves to cover the tape we used to hang up our garland.

Super easy, the boys love it, and I think it's decor the grandparents will appreciate, as they are all coming to visit around Thanksgiving time.

I have to admit, I couldn't decorate for Thanksgiving without starting to get excited for Christmas. Growing up we always put up our tree and all of our decorations the day after Thanksgiving, so the two are intertwined for me. We may or may not have tuned in to Christmas Radio on Pandora. Don't judge me.

Here's to the start of the Holiday Season!

Meg vs. Halloween: Gingerbread Mummies!

My friend Kelly and I got together on Monday to make some gingerbread mummies to share with our neighbors. I saw a few variations of this idea on Pinterest, and we couldn't resist trying it out. We each had a fussy baby in tow, so I didn't get many pictures, and in 4 1/2 hours we still hadn't finished. But by the next morning I had them all wrapped up and ready to go.

Here's big brother getting in on the rolling and cutting. I actually liked the cookies he did; they had missing and stretched body parts, which really was perfect for the theme.

I let the boys go to town on their cookies with some canned frosting and sprinkles, which kept them occupied for a while.

Meanwhile, we churned out the rest of our mummies, with white royal icing embalming and red sprinkle eyes.

 I think these have to be the easiest decorating job I've done with royal icing! Here is one of big brother's cut-outs. I love how it came out!

We used two different recipes for the two batches, since we have some friends that can't have dairy and wanted some of the cookies to be butter-free. The first is my favorite recipe from Sue over at Munchkin Munchies. These are the ones I have made the last few years at Christmas, and I could eat a whole batch myself.

The second is this recipe for Nauvoo Gingerbread from AllRecipes.com. It calls for lard (this recipe is old school!) but I used shortening and they came out really lovely and soft. They are very mild, so good if you have littles like mine that might be averse to a stronger gingerbread. Otherwise you might want to up the spice content to suit your tastes.

And you can also find the royal icing recipe over at Munchkin Munchies. It is perfect! (The sugar cookie recipe is my favorite too; Sue is the best).

Here they are all packaged up and ready to go. I was going to add some cutesy ribbon, but this was as far as I got.

And with the leftover icing and some chocolate chips I whipped up some googly eyes for future use.

It took me two full days to recover from the cookie mess, but it gave me a good excuse to go out and meet my neighbors after a whole year of living here!

Meg vs. The Toddlers: "Spooky Bath"

Now that I have three boys three and under, the evening can get a bit overwhelming, particularly if my husband is busy and I am home alone. Saturday night he was off studying for a Monday morning exam, all the kids needed baths, and of course it was the witching hour for the baby. So in the spirit of the Halloween season, I told Big Brother and Little Brother they could have a spooky bath, which really meant that I threw some glow bracelets in the tub and turned off the lights. They loved it! They stayed in the bath tub for over an hour, which was lovely because I cleaned the bathroom and gave Baby Brother his bath while they were in one contained place. Beautiful.

I couldn't capture any good pictures in the dark, but these were impressive enough for my toddlers, who love seeing pictures of themselves and the things they do:

Spooky!

Meg vs. Toddler Entertainment: Cardboard Kitchen

Last week at Costco, my little cook spotted a super awesome kitchen that I would never ever buy for him. He couldn't take his eyes off of it, and kept asking to go back and look at it. For a second I thought, "Maybe I should get him one on Craigslist." Then I remembered all of the cardboard kitchens I had seen on Pinterest, and decided we could be a little creative and have a lot more fun with it. So I told the little Mr. that if he did a good job then we could make him a kitchen during little brother's nap that afternoon.

He was most definitely on his best behavior! As soon as the little fellow was down, we jumped right in and got to work. We still had a couple of moving boxes left in the garage, and we took them apart and turned them inside out so all of the print would be hidden. Add plenty of clear packing tape, a few old CD's, a couple of milk lids (I'll add more as we collect them, which should only take a few days in this house), some twist ties, and a little paint marker, and ta-da! Instant oven.

Cooking commenced immediately.

 Next we made the sink cabinet. Here are the action shots that my 3-year-old took of the process:

Later we picked up a plastic bowl and a frying pan from the dollar store, and we were all set.

Of course the kitchen was not complete until it had a refrigerator, and my little chef did not let me forget it. Luckily I found two diaper boxes that fit together just right, so we added that to the array the next day. Here is our finished kitchen!

The little Mr., his little brother, and their cousins cooked up a storm all weekend. I would say that my total time investment was maybe an hour, and the total cost was $2, approximately 1/60 of the cost of the fancy new play kitchen. And we love this one more because we made it together.

Meg vs. Myself: 30 by 30

Happy birthday to me! To celebrate my 29th birthday, I decided to come up with 30 things I want to do before I turn 30 in one year. The hubs helped me out with #6 already by taking me to see Les Mis in San Francisco as an early birthday gift last week, so we are off to a good start! Coming up with these goals has made me really grateful for everything that I've been able to do and experience so far in my life, which enables me to focus on a lot of fun things this year. Lucky me! I'll keep up on this list in a new "30 x 30" tab and post about how my plans and projects continue. Wish me luck!

1. Finish up all of our major home repairs.
2. Decorate my house as though I were planning on staying here.
3. Run a ½ marathon.
4. Sew an article of clothing from scratch and wear it.
5. Get a professional pedicure.
6. See Les Miserables on stage.
7. Get life insurance.
8. Read War and Peace.
9. Learn how to hit a golf ball and not look like an idiot (I don’t even aspire to try to get it in the hole).
10. Ride a horse. (Not on a pony ride or guided by someone else.)
11. See Yosemite.
12. Decorate my house for all the major holidays and celebrate with my kids.
13. Grow a successful harvest of something other than zucchini.
14. Catch a fish.
15. Make a pretty makizushi.
16. Have only one child in diapers.
17. Date my husband – plan something every week, no matter how short the time.
18. Do/try at least half of the things I have pinned on Pinterest. (That’s a lot; I’m pushing a thousand pins, though I won’t count things in the category “Dream Home,” etc.)
19. Learn Pachelbel’s Canon in D on the piano.
20. Establish and maintain a routine to keep my house clean and organized.
21. “Upcycle” or purge all the clothes in my pile.
22. Have a yard where I enjoy spending time with my family.
23. Stay on a budget for more than a month.
24. Start accruing real food storage (done on purpose, stuff we can survive on and will actually eat).
25. Learn to cook a palatable steak for my husband.
26. Read one (non-picture) book each in Japanese and Spanish.
27. Write 100 posts for my family history blogs, and get what little I have done in some semblance of order.
28. Finish translating articles for my cleft blog in Spanish, and update both blogs.
29. Learn how to do my makeup for realsies and find products that I like and can afford.
30. Create a wardrobe I am pleased with and get rid of everything else. (Tricky, since I am in the “I am constantly changing sizes” phase of life.)

Meg vs. The (non-existent) Library: Free Kindle books!

I have been trying harder to do at least some work on a project every day, per my goal. I have three cameras. All three have no battery, and I can't find chargers or batteries for any of them.

Sadly, this is not an unusual state for me. All the more reason to be persistent in getting this house together!

Since I can't take any pictures or share the ones I've already taken, here's something fun.

Have you seen how many free books you can get on Amazon? If you don't have a Kindle or another tablet, you can download Kindle for PC and read on your computer. So awesome.

Here is a sampling of the books I downloaded today:

Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know
Smart School Time Recipes
Organized Simplicity
How to Cook Healthy & Natural Snacks

Also, basically any classic book that is not in copyright (i.e. the author has been deceased for a long time) you can probably find for free on Kindle. I am currently reading Sherlock Holmes, and have Pride & Prejudice and A Journey to the Centre of the Earth in my lineup.

(Lest you think I read more than I do, I may or may not read these by the end of 2012. But getting them feeds my book addiction without using my money or taking up more space in the house I'm trying to de-clutter and organize!)

Yay for free!

Meg vs. Boredom: Off-season "candy house"

Post-Christmas special at Michals:  $3

An hour plus of very excited, very entertained toddler that is fun for Mom and Grandma too (not to mention snacks for the next couple of days)?  Priceless.