Zoo Theme

I knew as soon as Bray was old enough, I would try to do as much as possible to make learning fun for him. Plus I used to work in a preschool, and I find myself aching to do those little art projects, finger paining, and circle time! I miss it all so much that I've been on the edge of my seat waiting to make some kind of mini-preschool experience here at home for the kids. We've done little things here and there for holidays but a few weeks ago was our first actual themed week. It was going well until Bray got sick Wednesday afternoon. So we didn't get to do as much as I hoped but once he got sick, I put on Madagascar to at least try to keep with it.

This was my first time creating a muffin tin meal, and my son was THRILLED!

1. Top Left: Peanut butter sand, apple trees, and rhino animal cracker. (I was hoping to use pudding or yogurt, but the PB was more stable for the trees)
2. Then our little elephant has Nutter Butter Mini Cookies and some peanuts
3. Monkey food (bananas)
4. The panda is a Ritz cracker with cream cheese & olives. I love him, but wouldn't dare to take credit away from the uber amazing Muffin Tin Mom herself! I saw the panda on her blog and couldn't resist for zoo week 
5. Grilled cheese sandwich cut in a circle and extra cheese for details
6. Bear crackers

Here was the one craft we got to do, which really isn't a bad thing considering he is only two. I don't want him to feel overwhelmed starting out. I didn't have any plain paper plates, only small yellow ones, and it actually worked out well for us. Icut fring around the edge for the lion's mane and cut the center out of another one and Bray painted the back orange. After it dried I put the glue on and he placed everything else on :)

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

I was already looking forward to celebrating the birthday of Dr. Seuss becuase...well everything Seuss is just wonderful!! He deserves to be celebrated :) For breakfast I made shaped pancakes, we had green eggs and ham for lunch, then decided to invite a few of Bray & Jay's friends over for a bbq dinner. Bray loved reading Dr. Seuss' books all day, his personal favorite is Mr. Brown Can Say Moo, How About You?

I attempted to make pancakes that resembled the cat's hat.

They looked much better in my pre-cooking thoughts

One of my favorite things to do is anything where I can paint the kids' hands.

So here are there Thing 1 and Thing 2 hand prints. Jay's was a little harder to get ;)

Decorations in the dining room

Birthday cupcakes- I was going to print little pictures for the toppers,

but our printer ran out of ink magically when I needed it. Luckily,

I ran into these book stickers at Michaels in the clearance section!

This is the movie that was on the tv, but I don't think any of the

kids actually saw a single scene lol

Hop Dinner Theatre

Dinner Theatre Friday, just two days before Easter...what else could we watch but HOP?! We had yet to see this movie and it was cuter than I expected. 

It's a really cute story about the Easter Bunny's son

who doesn't want to take on his father's job, but instead wants to become a drummer!

This picture is hard to see, but it says "Welcome E.B."

We made brown bunny ears to look like E.B.

but Jay wasn't feeling good and not really loving her ears

Bray in his ears with my husband,

we had Bunny Burgers with cotton tails (tots)

Easter Fun

I was especially excited for Easter this year becuase Brayden is getting more 'into' holidays. He seemed to understand the concept of the bunny coming and leaving eggs/gifts and LOVED egg hunting!

This was Bray's Easter themed lunch, plastic eggs in an egg carton

(oddly, this was before I discovered muffin tin meals)

Its cut up cheese quesadilla, goldfish crackers, grapes, and apples

I saw this craft going around Pinterest, that you dip yarn

in corn starch and water, wrap it around a balloon, and *poof!*

you've got yourself a cute little easter egg.

Well...let's just say, things don't typically *poof* in our house.

We could NOT get an egg-shaped balloon blown up! No matter what we did,

or what kind of balloons we tried, they were nice little...balls. Perfectly round.

So, I used them anyway and put them on a string with crosses cut from

none other than my trusty Cricut

Handprint bunny art (even Jay got to do this one)

A few ideas for a 2yr old's basket:

Homemade hooded-towel, chalk (washable!), fruit snacks,

goldfish crackers, board books from the dollar section of Target,

sunglasses, wind-up dinosaur, bubbles

It was hard to fill a basket for a 10 month old but here's what we came up with:

homemade no-sew fleece blankie, a pink car, new toothbrush, bath book,

Abby Cadabby bowl, goldfish crackers, gerber snacks, and a furry wind-up bunny that hops.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Dinner Theatre

Of course, when trying to get together themed dinners, I was looking forward to doing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs! I love this movie and it wasn't difficult to plan out food and decorations.

"Welcome to Chewandswallow" made with the Cricut cutter

and the screen shot of Sam Sparks was printed from the internet

Little meatballs hanging from clouds in our dining room

Above the tv: clouds raining doughnuts, pizza, and burgers

I printed them in different sizes so they looked farther into the distance

OK...so here's what happened with dinner. We had NO spaghetti, of course.

So it was rotini and meatballs. Plus I decided that tonight would be

the perfect time to make homemade breadsticks for the first time.

(If you look very closely, you can see I tried to make one of

the breadsticks look like an umbrella! lol) So that's why those

look a little ...crooked?

Bray dressed like Flint Lockwood :)

Sam Sparks' house of orange jell-o for dessert



Toy Story Dinner Theatre

This was our first Dinner Theatre night. After I had my daughter, it got a little harder to go out (she is our..outspoken one lol) plus I wanted to think of a way to have fun as a family without spending a lot of money. Our first movie was Toy Story (on January 6, 2012), so we ate at Pizza Planet

I made this sign for our dining room, I printed the photo

and cut some Cricut letters

That is supposed to be the moon lol

Nerf ball + Christmas tissue + kids meal train track=

Saturn! (shhh it's our secret)

Its hard to see, but there were little yellow stars all over the dining room walls

I made Pizza Planet labels and covered our cups with them,

even Bray had his own "to-go" cup

And mini pizzas for dinner!

Woody doll, Woody pajamas, Toy Story chair and of course..

Our Feature Presentation :)

Welcome!

My very first blog post! First of all, welcome! I have two children right now, my son is 2 and my daughter will be 1 in a few weeks. The older they get, the more activities we do together to make sure they are enjoying what they learn. I typically do things by weekly theme, I feel that makes it easier on both me and the kids. I plan to spend the next few days posting past activities that we've done and that'll catch me up to the present. I look forward to sharing with you our weekly themes (crafts, stories, and snacks), Dinner Theater Nights, and anything else they comes up along the way. I'm not a pro so things don't usually come out perfect, but I hope this blog will at least give you a few ideas.