Favorite Pinterest idea to date...

I have no good picture of my finished product, but this is the shelf I could easily clear off and consume in a month not to mention the pinto and refried beans.  

This is an awesome money saver, they taste delicious, and I feel like I'm giving the family higher quality food.  

Stephanie O'Dea has awesome slow cooker recipes and her instructions on how to make black beans in your slow cooker are great.  I cooked them for an extra hour and still felt like they were a little tough.  But after being frozen and cooked into some chili, they were some of the best black beans I ever ate.  I love this.  We eat TONS of beans around here and I'm looking forward to making these on a regular basis.  

Playing and working with Emma

In the morning after we drop off Ada at school, we will often come home and get right to work.  Em will usually go right for the watercolors or some other thing in the art supply bin in the kitchen.  Right now there is a tray with glitter glue that both the girls are LOVING.  They squirt it out (or I do it for Emma- where she points on the paper) and spread it around with a qtip.  Ada has made "Saturn", "Jupiter", and last night while skyping with Nana and Gampa, she made "all sorts of roads".  I love having the art supplies out all the time.  Luckily they both really like to do that sort of thing, so they always have a go-to activity.

I'm getting myself sidetracked.  Emma and I will come home from school and... do art or work on some of the "Montessori- type" work I put on a bookshelf in the living room.  We will work together or she works on her own and I get the dishes put away or other stuff I need to do in the kitchen.  I finally got the Valentine's stuff put away and got this up over the weekend.  The button thing is mostly for Ada- I made it for our plane trip but it didn't really get used while we were traveling.  The color sorter is good for both girls in different ways.  Then I have some of those color tiles ( I made them with paint chips and woodsies), and the Melissa and Doug magnetic dress up girls Ada got for Christmas from Gramma Deb (a favorite).

Made this from 2 buttons we had from a lacing toy we got from the Popes and a piece of ribbon from a Christmas gift.  The felt was just left over scraps from other projects and I just cut random freehand shapes.

But this is really how Emma would rather play with the buttton work...

The color sorting work.

For the record, Emma is 1 and cannot accurately sort these colors.  I put them in the bins to demonstrate and she just plays with the pieces.  She especially likes putting little pom poms in and out of a little frog that has an open bottom.  Ada can identify colors and the objects and makes up stories for each one.  Her favorite is the little red flipper/jumper thing.  When Emma found the car she walked it over to the car I made Ada when she turned 2.  I just pulled it up from the basement because I'm kind of sick of looking at it and was going to recycle it.  She drives the car around the car (funny, Ada used to do the same thing).

And then, there's Peek-a-boo...

Pinterest Fail

I saw this idea on Pinterest months ago and I thought it would be fun to try since Ada loves hot dogs only a little less than she loves noodles.  Well, maybe it was because I put the noodles in the dogs during the girls' nap so I could just boil water at crunch time, but it completely didn't work.  It's a good thing Ada is such a good sport because I had promised "Alien Hot Dogs" for dinner and totally did not deliver.  She didn't care.

I took a picture of the before thinking I would have an after picture that would rival that of the original pin, but man was I wrong!  Look at those 2 little pathetic noodles that stayed in one little hot dog- and the rest were ALL broken.  Lame.

The Pinterest bubble has been popped.  It is not all rainbows and unicorns anymore, but I'm still going to waste my time looking at stuff and pinning it.

IT GREW!!

So, an update to our sunflower work... the seed sprouted!!  It is very possible that I am more excited about this than Ada, but I think my enthusiasm wears off on her:)

The sunflower seedling clearly needs some kisses....

Just an adorable note about her ensamble today- the leotard is her favorite "ballerina" although she also has on a ballerina skirt and a pair of tights.  To complete the look she found a beautiful pink sweater that her great grandma knitted her that Emma just outgrew in a pile of clothes to put in a "if there are more children bin".  She decided it would keep her warm.  Since her frame is so small and the knit has some give, it looked pretty cute.  And I love that it can stay in rotation :)

Valentine's Day Photos

So I realize the day has come and gone, but we still have our heart work out because mama hasn't changed it yet.  No problem for Emma who has been really enjoying the heart marshmallow work.  Wanted to share a few pictures of her- and I ask you, how can you not just absolutely love this kid?

I forgot to post this earlier, but in a moment of inspiration I remembered those large tissue paper flowers that I used to make as a kid.  Actually, for some reason they are etched into my brain in association with Holly, Melanie, and Nancy and Whalom Park.  Not sure why.  Maybe we bought them there?

We had been experimenting with watercolors on salt and paper and coffee filters (Ada is WAY into watercolors these days- I'll post some of her collection soon), and I remembered those flowers.  I folded a bunch of filters into an accordion, wrapped a green pipe cleaner around the middle, cut some ruffles and unfolded.  Then we dyed some water and dipped. I let them dry upside down in the shower and then we had beautiful flowers for the table without spending any money- love it!  Next time I think I'll have Ada just paint or use a dropper because the dipping method went too quickly and kind of mashed up the leaves.  We just fluffed them up when they were dry, but still.

Sorry, don't know how to rotate...

Alas, here is the last of the pics of the girls working on cards.  If you look closely you can see the photo cards we looked at as they were working.  Ada ran out of steam pretty quickly on this project.  It is becoming clear to me that she is more of an artist than a crafter.  More on that later.

One Little Seed

When we moved in Tony and Ada planted some sunflower seeds next to our garage.  They grew.  All fall they greeted us with sunny smiles when we came home.  Huge bumblebees would buzz and feed from the enormous flowers.

Unfortunately I don't have pictures from when they were planted or of the beautiful blossoms.

But once they dried I decided it would be a waste not to really use up the seeds.  So I put together this tray.

I used the printables from Montessori Print Shop and Ada and I talked about seeds and what they need to grow.  After a couple times of using it she would tell me the story of how they will "grow ad grow and grow".  Very cute.

She used the magnifying glass to investigate and look at the seeds and the flower head.  She put the head on the cutting board and would hit it with a meat tenderizer to get them off  and we would count the stripes on the seeds.  She collected the seeds in a little tin.  We crushed a few and ate the seeds inside.  She did this work several times over a couple weeks.  

Then...

We made little "pots" out of toilet paper tubes and used our new purple duct tape which I love.  The little pots were on Pinterest and were the inspiration for adding this portion of the work.  I wanted to make the pots and the seeds were just sitting there so we'll see if they grow.

The original plan was to take the seeds and eat a few (we did) and feed the rest to the birds in the yard.  Well, that's when I saw another cool thing on Pinterest...

We made a birdfeeder using peanut butter and another toilet paper roll.  Ours isn't as cool as the one that inspired this, but we made it and Ada was excited at the prospect of feeding the birds.  We put it on a bush that is near a window where we might be able to see them eating.  I have a feeling that some squirrels might enjoy it too... we'll have to watch and see.

I heart pizza dinner

Tonight we had pizza shaped like hearts.

I used scissors to cut the dough into heart shapes and parbaked to make it easier for the girls to put on toppings.  I had wanted to make my own dough and put pink coloring in it to make it extra festive, but alas the pop and fresh dough was what happened here.

Pre-baking: this was the huge one we made for Papa.  Basically it has every thing on it that we like on pizza: mushroom, pepperoni, artichoke hearts, olives, peppers, buffalo chicken.   I tried to make an arrow out of an olive and put it on the center heart- kind of a fail, but that's why it looks so weird.

Ada's mushroom and pepperoni pizza.