Out of the mouths of babes....

My oldest daughter cracks me up. Apparently she is networking. Today she ran inside and and told me "my friend Sara's friend's mom works with my grandma Pat." Wow. Kudos for the networking. Extra hot chocolate for getting the relationship right.

We also spend time listening to Pandora Disney Radio. Since we recently saw The Lion King in the theater, she really keys into those songs. Elton John wrote and performed several of those songs. She's told both her dad and I that "Elton John is a really good singer. He's pretty awesome." True, but never thought I'd hear it from my 3 year old.

Yesterday we were coming home from town and she started asking about her porcelain teapot that broke last month. Her dad had told her he'd try to fix it, but it's still sitting on his dresser. Her response was "my daddy will fix it. He can fix anything. He is magical." If only I could be as magical as her dad. *sigh*

Lastly, I took her to her 1st dance/tumbling class. She's been dying to go, so we got dolled up in her leotard and leggings with a matching ribbon in her hair. I'm tying the ribbon and she tells me "You know mom, other kids at dance have their moms drop them off." Seriously? #1 she's never been to dance before. #2 she's 3. Much too young to be pushing her mom away. I stayed at dance.

Flower Pot Pictures

Here's a craft from my archives. This is one we did for Mother's Day. I took the step by step photos with the intention of sharing on my blog, but if you read my intro post, you'll know that summer happened and it's just been a "planned" post instead. The great thing about this craft is you can simplify it if you only have construction paper and glue, or you can make it more complex for older kids with paints and tissue paper flowers. And who doesn't like a pot of flowers in their house??

The supplies you need are:

Construction paper

Pipe cleaners

Markers, crayons or paint

Glue

Chipboard flowers (although you could cut out flowers out of construction paper as well)

 First, decorate the flowers. I had a bunch of undressed chipboard flowers from my scrapbooking, which worked perfectly. You can make the flowers out of construction paper or tissue paper. I think it's more fun to use something with dimension. The kids loved coloring with the markers, but paint or crayons are good too.

 Cut the flower pot pieces. I cut a long narrow rectangle and a trapezoid (thanks geometry) out of orange construction paper to look like a terra cotta pot.

 Place your flowers on a background paper with a pip cleaner stem. Glue both the flower and the stem to the paper.

 Glue the large pot piece on the paper covering the bottom of the stems.

 Then, glue the "lip" of the pot at the top of the large paper pot.

 The finished product!

Monster Cookies

Fall is a great time for baking. I generally try not to turn on my oven in the summers just to help keep the house cool, but once fall hits, I'm a baking fool. My oldest daughter loves to help me bake, and I use it to practice counting and some volume games with her (2 half cups equals 1 cup). I wanted to try out a new molasses cookie recipe, but didn't have enough molasses. Instead, we made monster cookies. Here's the recipe:

1 c butter 1/2 t baking powder
1 c white sugar 1 t vanilla
1 c brown sugar 1 c butterscotch or chocolate chips
2 eggs (I used 1/2 c each)
2 c flour 1 c coconut
1 t baking soda 2 c oatmeal
1/2 t salt

Cream together butter, white and brown sugars, vanilla and eggs. Combine flour, soda, salt, and baking powder in separate bowl. Add slowly to creamed mixture. Then add oatmeal, coconut and chips. Drop by spoonful onto cookie sheet. I made giant balls to make the cookies "monster sized." Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes being careful not to over bake. Let sit on cookie sheet for 10 minutes before moving to cooling rack. Using parchment on your cookie sheet works best.

My daughter wanted to make faces in the cookies, but we only had a small bag of M&M's from the parade. She decorated a couple cookies with eyes and ate the rest of the candies. She tells me "I don't think we're going to have enough because I ate them." Haha. The cookies were delicious and chewy. My youngest gave her lip-smacking approval!

We are the people people!

Many of you know I like to sew and quilt. One of my favorite types of quilts to make is a t-shirt quilt. I made my first t-shirt quilt when I was in college using my high school shirts. I figured I wouldn't wear them again, but didn't really want to throw them away. They contained too many memories of trips and teams. Since that time, I've made another quilt for my college shirts, as well as several quilts for other people. I had a memory quilt business for awhile about 5 years ago. I hadn't made one in a few years, but a woman contacted me this summer asking for one for her college shirts.

It's been fun making this memory quilt again. But as I've been sewing away, I've had a couple of thoughts. First, I can't believe I'm making a GRIZ quilt!! I've been a Bobcat fan all my life, having been born and raised in Bozeman. The gal I am making the quilt for went to University of Montana for at least 1 year of her college career, hence the Grizzly gear. Sigh. This Cat fan is glad she decided to transfer. Just kidding............sort of.

This woman was also part of a sorority in college. I makes me think of my own sorority days. Some of my greatest memories are from my time with the Arrows. I will spare you the details (for time, censorship and to protect the not-so-innocent). I feel fortunate that social media (read: Facebook) has created an easy way to keep in touch with these amazing women. I also get nostalgic this week because it's Cornell homecoming. I haven't been back for a homecoming since 2003, but sometime I'd love to take my family back to the hilltop. I'm so excited to see some of my Arrow sisters at a wedding next month. We've all come a long way since our college days and it's so fun to catch up and share how each of us crazy girls is now a wife or mommy or career gal or whatever. I'm lucky to have had such a great experience with a close-knit group. Never again in my life will I have a similar experience. There's just something about sharing college life with a group of friends and sisters.

So, this is mostly a shout out to the sweetest girls I know. Love ya, miss ya, wish I could see ya more often. It's also a quick plug for my home business I call Carlia Creations. T-shirt quilts are just one of MANY things I make, so check it out! http://www.facebook.com/carliacreations or http://www.carliacreations.blogspot.com/

Halloween Spiders

My oldest daughter loves to do crafts. She takes after her mom :) I thought we'd make something for Halloween that we could use to decorate the house. Spiders it is!

Here's what you need:
Construction paper
Empty toilet paper rolls
Pipe cleaners
Glue
Scissors
Hole punch
Markers

Cut your paper so it will fit around a toilet paper roll. A standard piece of construction paper can be cut into 1/4th and wrap 4 tubes. Glue the contruction paper around the tube. We used black construction paper to be spider like, but you could use any color.

Using the hole punch, make 4 holes around the bottom of the tube. Insert a pipe cleaner into each hole, fold in half and twist. You can see that the spiders don't have to be all black. Being the mom of a girly-girl, she wanted to make pretty spiders with multi-colored legs. She might be the only person I know who wants pretty spiders. Next time I'll get glitter too.

Cut out small circles for the eyes. You can use the markers to decorate the eyes. Glue them to your spider. Once again, something so simple can make a little one so happy! Happy Halloween!

The Time Has Come

I started this blog months ago. Correction, I set up this blog months ago. My original intention was to document the kids' craft projects, meals I prepared, etc. I think I'll keep along those lines, but who knows where this will take me. I've taken pictures of many projects, I just haven't done anything with them. I can say that summer was my excuse. Really, it's because I didn't sit down and make the time. I'm sitting now, the kids are sleeping, and I'm making the time. I don't think I'll write every day and I certainly won't have new projects every day. I'll do my best to bring new ideas, new recipes and maybe meet some new mamas in the process.

Self-disclosure time: I love to learn. I always have. You can ask my own mama. I drove her nuts when I was a kid always wanting more books to read, more workbooks to complete. I was a school nerd. There were lots of years where I was embarassed to say that. I look at my oldest daughter and see so much of myself in her. I hope I can show her it's ok to be a school nerd, but I'm guessing there will be years where the kids in her class won't agree. Anyway, I'm a work-at-home mom. I went to the prestigious private liberal arts college. Loved it! Got my fancy degree and spent my 20s working. I had some jobs that I loved and others that were simply jobs. I got to travel, meet lots of people, earned reward trips, worked tons of hours, learned so many skills I can't even list them all on a resume. I met my husband when I was 27 and in the midst of my career. Suddenly, I didn't want to travel. I didn't want to be working nights and weekends and holidays. I wanted to be home with this great man. Then, we got married and had ourselves a daughter. I always knew I wanted to be a mom. I was raised with the mentality that moms can do it all (be a wife, mom, and have a career). I realized after my daughter was born that I didn't want to do all of that. I really wanted to just be a wife and a mommy. Unfortunately, I had to go back to work. I balanced working a 48 hr/week job + 1.5 hour daily commute with being a wife and a mommy. Crazy, right? Let's add another baby into the family! After my second daughter was born, my husband and I did some number crunching. Basically it came down to this: I would be bringing home nearly nothing after insurance, daycare, and commuting costs to be away from my kids 11 hours a day. If we were going to be poor, at least I could be with my kids. Our solution was for me to stay home and take in some children for childcare in our home.

This has proven to be the most amazing adventure. As a mom, I love spending the days with my kids. I sometimes feel guilty because I missed out on almost 2 years of my oldest daughter's life. I have to keep myself in check because I know she was well taken care of and she is perfectly adjusted and wouldn't remember it anyway. I'm thankful that I have this time now with my kids. I've always loved kids (and if I were younger, I would have had more of my own!) so taking in additional children wasn't a stretch for me. I have a background in education and developmental psychology from my college education. Now was my chance to really apply those things.

The challenge for me has been maintaining adult relationships. When you speak with preschoolers, toddlers and infants all day, adult conversation becomes golden and coveted. I need my girl time more than ever. I'm thankful to have such a great husband who understands this and helps me take the time I need. I'm also thankful for the parents whose kids are over here because I probably talk their ear off when they pick up the children. :)

Being a work-at-home mom keeps me challenged because the kids are anything but routine. I'm always trying to come up with new games, crafts, songs, books, meals, activities for them to do. Hence part of the reason for this blog. But I'm also wanting to be sure that I'm challenging my mind and not letting it go to mush. I'm hoping that writing will help me keep thinking. Who knows? There are lots of opportunities out there for mama bloggers just like me.

That's it. Me in a nutshell. And the introductory post to what I'm hoping will be an enjoyable blog for me to write and you to read. Stay tuned!