Breakfast Noms

Now that Maddie is in school our mornings have become a bit more fast paced.

The alarm on my phone goes off at 7am- I swear under my breath, consider tossing my phone out the window and then begrudgingly get out of bed. I am not a morning person.

Then we are on a race against the clock to get everyone reasonably dressed, washed and fed before we have to head to the school. To make things easier on myself I have begun stocking the freezer with quick and easy breakfasts - waffles and pancakes. Well tis the season for pumpkin and I have fallen in love with the most deeeeelicious pumpkin waffles.

I have to admit I haven't followed the recipe EXACTLY yet. I have made a few changes here and there but nothing major.

My edits: I generally make a double batch which means I am 1oz short on pumpkin if I use a regular size can- no biggie, they still taste delicious. I use 1% milk instead of whole and oddly enough I do not have all the spices the original recipe calls for so I just sub in some generic pumpkin pie spice. Still delicious.

I end up making a double batch of these waffles because they are soooo yummy. I let them cool completely on some wire racks then stack them between wax paper in the freezer. Once nice and solid I stack them in Ziploc freezer bags and we are ready for the morning! 

You have to try this recipe, I promise they taste just like fall!

Turkeys On Parade

Tis the season for lots of gobble gobble! Maddie has been busily creating a parade of turkeys at our house this week.

During a play date over the weekend Maddie and her friend had fun make these quick and easy coffee filter turkeys with washable markers and a spritz of water.

Earlier in the week Maddie took it upon her self to grab some craft supplies and...

make this adorable little fellow all on her own!

Maddie is at such a great age right now where all I have to do is provide her with a few materials and she is able to make a project all on her own. It's the best way to keep her occupied while I do a few chores around the house! This turkey was made with a paper plate and bowl that Maddie painted and then glued together.

Maddie's Play-Doh basket was filled with materials to make turkeys this week too! She had some seasonally appropriate colors (although pink ended up in the mix too), a pumpkin cookie cutter, feathers, googly eyes and bits of pipecleaner.

Play-Doh sculptures have been a big hit in the house lately and keep Maddie occupied for extended periods of time too!

Pumpkin Spice Play Dough

We had a rough weekend. Not a lot of sleep all around for all three of us so we really tried to lay low and do a whole lot of nothing. Maddie of course isn't a big fan of doing nothing so I ended up mixing up a match of play dough to keep her occupied.

I split our usual play dough recipe in half this time and added some gold glitter, pumpkin pie spice and orange food coloring to make some fantastic pumpkin play dough!

Once the dough cooled I set Maddie up with a pie play dough mat, rolling pin, a few cookie cutters and the lids to some yogurt containers that looked like tiny pie plates!

We ended up all joining the fun and making some pumpkin pie creations. Pies, pumpkins and a dinosaur for good measure!

Lets Talk Turkey

*Thank you for all of the well wishes! I am feeling considerably better than last week - not at 100% yet but I am getting there!

We finally managed to get a Thanksgiving Turkey project done this week and I LOVE how it turned out!

Materials: paper bowl, brown paint, brown/yellow/orange/red foam, googly eyes, glue

While Madison painted the paper bowl brown for the turkey body I cut out all of the foam pieces. I pressed a cup onto a piece of brown foam for the turkey head.

I also cut out a variety of colored feathers.

Before Madison glued all of the foam pieces on I did trim the tips off of all of the feathers so that they would lay flat against the bowl.

Madison took care of all of the gluing!

Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!

Giving Thanks by Jonathan London

After yesterday's trip to the library we are over flowing with Fall and Thanksgiving themed books for the week! We did our first book related project yesterday to go along with Giving Thanks by Jonathan London.




Madison was a bit confused with the story the first time we read it. She wasn't sure why we would be thanking the sky, bunny rabbits and mushrooms! With a little chat about being thankful for all that we have and all that surrounds us she was more than eager to write down all the things that she was thankful for.

I have seen quite a few different styles of a Thankful Tree but I wanted to incorporate our family into the tree along with the things we are thankful for. I ended up tracing all of hand's onto a piece of brown construction paper for the top of the tree and now when ever Madison looks at it she likes to point out everyone's hands!

Then we each took a set of colored leaves; Madison chose red, I had yellow and daddy grabbed orange. Now we are able to tell apart everyone's Thankful Leaves. Now onto the good stuff!

Madison is thankful for: Mom & Dad, Maddie Mae Bear, The Playground, Friends and Milo
Daddy is thankful for: Amanda, Madison, His Job, Good Friends and Family!
Mommy is thankful for: Our Family, The US Navy, The option to be a SAHM, Our Home and Good Coffee!

I was a bit surprised at how involved Madison became in this project and at bedtime last night she was still listing off the things she was thankful for!

Cup full of apples

This may be my favorite fall decoration so far!

Materials: egg carton, red paint*, masking tape, green foam, brown pipe cleaners
*yes I know the picture shows orange paint. The original plan was to make pumpkins but we swapped it out last minute for red paint to make apples!

Am I the only one we hates cutting out egg cartons? Anyways after cutting out all of the egg cups tape two together with masking tape to form an apple.

Maddie spent a good hour or so painting all of the apples. I ♥ washable paint, that stuff was everywhere!

The finishing touches: I used some decorative scissors to cut leaves out of green foam and then cut brown pipe cleaners in thirds for the stems.

Madison threaded all of the leaves onto the stems then we folded the pipe cleaners in half and stuck them on top of the apples.

Apple-rific!

and how cute are Maddie and daddy making caramel apple cider pancakes?!

Scrunchy Apple

Tissue paper art is one of Madison's favorites!
My guess: because it includes glue and crumbling paper.

Materials: scrap cardboard*, red/green/brown tissue paper squares, glue

I drew an apple shape on the scrap cardboard, cut it out and then set Madison up with a bowl of tissue paper squares and blob of glue.

I love that she is finally at the age where she can really do an art project all on her own!

*Cereal and pasta boxes are wonderful for scrap cardboard!

Paper Pumpkin Pals

Lazy afternoons for mommy and daddy = BORED child

I do fondly remember the days when my husband and I would lay in bed all weekend watching movies and ordering takeout...it was nice and quiet. Those days are long gone though. Madison needs something to do all the time which lead us to our Paper Pumpkin Pals!

With very few materials we were able to provide Madison with a fun craft that took her about an hour to complete!

Maddie worked contently at the kitchen table turning the paper bags orange and then filling the with cellophane all on her own. When she was done I stepped in and helped secure the tops with green pipe cleaners and a foam leaf. With adult supervision (for the sake of my kitchen table) Madison used a black permanent marker to add some spooky faces to her pumpkins!

The grandparents loved their new Fall decorations!

I Spy OWLS!

I think the owl craze sort of snuck up on me. I started to spy owls on blogs, and featured on Etsy products months ago. Then I started fall shopping and more owls! Frankly I have to admit they are gosh darn adorable.

Sunday afternoon we spent crafting our own owlies as a family and now our whole downstairs is covered in owls. I attached some of them to clothespins and stuck them on lampshades and any other little place that needed an owl! Owls on the mirror? Yes! Owls in the bathroom? Yes! Owls in the tree house? Yes!

The only problem now is that every time I turn around there is an owl and the CSI theme song plays in my head.

"Who are you, who-who, who-who? Who are you, who-who, who-who?"

Muffin Tin Monday: Apples!

What a fun theme we are celebrating today for Muffin Tin Monday!

APPLES

I was surprised at how easy it was to make lunch today. I did do a little bit of preplanning by serving Apple Cider Chicken for dinner last night just so that we would have leftovers today!Top: Apple sauce with cinnamon and raisins, Granny Smith apple slices, caramel for dipping
Bottom: Apple fritter, apple cider chicken, 'apple trees' or broccoli

and of course no apple lunch is complete without apple juice!

We also did a fun little apple inspired project with daddy yesterday. I printed out some apples and the word FALL on cardstock for Maddie to color. We then adhered an additional layer of cardstock for stability.

After everything dried and I cut out all the apples and letters Maddie and daddy grabbed the cinnamon and glue to make everything smell nice!

To finish up we strung everything on some cute red ribbon and hung our new fall banner in the living room!

***Okay maybe it is just me but after typing apple so many times I keep looking at thinking I spelled it wrong! ***

Fall Leaves

Finally a use for all of those broken crayons! I have a pencil case full of them and assumed some day I would do those cool wax paper/crayon shaving projects with Mad and the time has arrived!

Mad wasn't a big fan of making crayon shavings ~ she did a little and handed it over to me. Okay! Instead she took care of peeling off all of the paper. I used muffin tin liners to separate the colors and Mad passed me the crayons she wanted to use.

Of course Maddie couldn't do every part of this project but she did have fun spreading the crayon shavings on the first layer of wax paper.

Next up the iron! I never ever ever ever use this thing but it got put to good use today. I layed paper towels under and on top of the wax paper to protect both my Brandon's iron and my cutting board.

Ohhh pretty colors!

I printed out some fall leaves on cardstock and then cut them out to trace onto our waxy crayon paper. I figured if I printed them out on cardstock I could reuse them in future projects this month. If you are super artistic you could just free hand on to the waxy crayon paper with a Sharpie.

After cutting all the leaves out Maddie helped me tie them all onto a dowel with white thread. This project took most of the morning for us to complete but that was fine with both of us!

Plus look how super cool it came out!