A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

The kiddos colored a ton of pictures today. Apparently, today was 'New Picture Day' for the fridge. I had no idea.  My favorite picture? This one:

Aaron drew this picture of the two of them. Please notice Jillian's hair. I believe he is thinking of her in the morning when her hair is all over the place. 

This picture just absolutely melted my heart today and perfectly sums up their relationship. I truly hope they are always like this. 

Spring Monogram Wreath

I think Scott cringes when I walk into Michaels, especially when I'm by myself. It's like being in a casino, I lose all concept of time, money and good judgement. I feel like I am Martha Stewart walking up and down the aisles saying things like, "Oh look at this thing on clearance, I could make an entire bookshelf out of it" or something like that...

Anyway, I was in Michaels to buy cardstock for the kiddos birthday invitations and found myself in the floral area. How does this even happen? I don't know, this is why I need to be supervised. I purchased a natural grape vine wreath, a bunch of hydrangeas, floral wire, wire butterflies, a white letter 'N', Martha Stewart pearl paint, a sponge brush and ribbon. All of this, in my mind, was going to make an adorable spring wreath. 

The first thing I did was paint my wood letter with the paint. I'll tell you what, Martha Stewart has every paint color in the universe. The blue matched perfectly, it was crazy. 

While the paint was drying I snipped the flowers using pliers and then wrapped the floral wire around each steam, pushed the flower through and secured it with the wire. 

I then worked the butterflies into the flowers. You have to be really careful with these, they are super fragile. 

After the paint on the letter dried I hot glued some of the wire on the back of the letter and wrapped in around the wreath, securing it in the back. 

Then I added the ribbon to the top and hung it up on my door. 

Not to shabby, if I do say so myself. Thank you again, Michaels, for giving me another adorable project. Scott and his wallet thank you, too. 

Homemade Prayer Board

I've wanted to make a verse of the week and prayer board for my family and finally got around to making it this weekend. 

I was originally going to get a cork board and Mod Podge some cardstock on it to look pretty. Then I saw this on clearance at Michael's:

Perfect! Then I grabbed my bright cardstock and picked a verse and asked everyone in the family to write down what they wanted to pray for this week.

My friend Dawn asked me how I chose my verse for the week and honestly, it's just one of my favorites. From here on out though I really want to pull a verse that will focus on what everyone is praying for. 

Do you have something like this in your house?

Falling into fall

I've always loved fall, I think it's my favorite season. I love the smells, the flavors and most importantly the colors. Ok, who are we kidding? I really just love that pumpkin spice everything is everywhere and I try and consume mass quantities as if it will never ever come back ever again. 

This weekend I felt somewhat crafty (I don't know why) so I made a ribbon wreath:

Sorry for the bad lighting, I keep forgetting to take a photo with the natural light. 

To make the wreath I bought 6 spools of autumn ribbon at Jo-Ann's and a wire wreath. Then, I cut the ribbon into the same size strips. On the bigger ribbons I cut those down the middle. Then I just tied each ribbon onto the wire wreath and voila! I have a kick ass wreath. 

The kiddos also made wreaths thanks to the handy dandy kits that Jo-Ann's has. The kit comes with three wreath bases and a bunch of felt leaves. They glued them on and I added the ribbon.

This one is Jill's:

This one is Aaron's:

Now, if the weather would get with the program it would be the perfect fall. I will say that is one thing that I miss about living up north. I do miss the slight bite in the air, the changing leaves and the ability to wear really comfy and chunky sweaters. Then I remember that I can still wear shorts in February and the feeling fades.

4th of July a few days early

 Since the 4th is during the middle of the week this year, we decided to celebrate early and had a cookout with friends this weekend. To get in the spirit, the kiddos and I actually did some crafts and made 2 different wreathes.  I helped the kids with this foam star wreath:

And I asked them not to help me with this wrapped yarn wreath:

I found both crafts on Pinterest, you can find the foam star one here and the wrapped yarn wreath here.

I'm pretty pleased with myself that a) I actually did a craft and b) it came out pretty decent looking!

Saturday we had a cookout and Scott broke out the smoker. Seriously, this has been the best gift I've ever given him. It's like the gift that keeps on giving. He decided to smoke some pork butts and injected them with Cherry Dr. Pepper. The meat was a little tougher to pull, but was super tender and really juicy. 

I also tried out a new dip recipe that I found on, you guessed it, Pinterest. It's a loaded baked potato dip and is seriously out of this world. The group of us ate all of it, I'm surprised we didn't like the bowl.

You can find the recipe for this dip here. I'm warning you though, it's super delicious and highly addictive. 

The cookout itself was great. All of the kids played and seemed to have a great time. Aaron actually slept until 9:30 Sunday morning. Clearly, he had a good time. 

Hope you had an equally awesome weekend!

"Do you want a monster to come out of your closet?"

A lot's been going on this week. Yesterday I went to the dermatologist to have the, as my cousin refers to it, hole in my head, checked. I was all pumped for him to say it's fine and that if I didn't mind having the cyst there it could stay. Wrong. It has to come out, but at least it's not infected so it will be a much easier procedure. This also means I will have a bald spot on top of my head a lot longer than I anticipated. Good thing I watch Jerseylicious on Style and can properly tease that area of my hair. Thank you Tracy, thank you.


The kids are doing so great! I'm literally amazed with the things they come up with now. Let's start with the princess.


No, not her Halloween costume, apparently this is everyday wear when you are as cute as her. She's a big fan of Monsters Inc and we have seriously watched it a million times, I don't even think I'm exaggerating. Anyway, Scott was putting her down for her nap the other day and apparently she pointed to the closet and said "monster!". Scott asked her if she wanted a monster to come out and what does my darling say? "Yes!" This is also the child that wants an apple when she is watching/reading Snow White. I'm definitely going to have my hands full....

Now onto my Bubba man, Mr. Aaron....


He's a smart little you know what. He also has superhero like senses. The kid can hear/spot a helicopter or airplane from Kansas, I swear. We were heading to SeaWorld a while back and Aaron starting saying "helicopter! helicopter!". Scott and I (real safe, right?) are both looking out the window trying to figure out where this helicopter is. Aaron even told us what color it was and we still hadn't even found it. I swear this helicopter was miles away, I have no idea how he saw it.

He's also working really hard on signing his numbers and ABC's. Granted his ABC's pretty much look like either a B, D or A, but I love that he wants to do it.

We also broke out the paints the other day. Jill LOVES when we paint, she did at least 6 pictures, and she pretty much covered each page in paint. Aaron likes it, just not as much as Jill. Plus, Aaron takes his time and really puts a lot into what he's doing. Jill just plows through her paintings.

Don't you love it? Crafts are definitely becoming a lot more fun over here. We even colored pumpkins the other day. I'm looking into fun Thanksgiving themed crafts that we can work on so we can display them at Thanksgiving dinner with my family.

Don't forget to head over to my review blog, I have one giveaway and one really cool announcement from CiCi's pizza!

Paper Plate Wind Spinners

A few days ago Jill (when she short napped me) and I did another one of the Education.com crafts for the Summer Activities Challenge. This time we made a Paper Plate Wind Spinner. Hands down this was the easiest craft, next to the tie dye baby wipes. Plus this was the least messy (so therefore my favorite).


All you need for this craft is a paper plate, scissors, markers/stickers/glitter/glue (for decorating) and string. I think Jill was more excited about getting to play with stickers than anything else. We talked about all the characters that were on the stickers that she put on the plate and then she colored around them.

I didn't cut the plate in front of her, I knew it would cause a meltdown, so while she was decorating another plate I cut the original into the spinner and this is what it looked like:

Cute, right?

There's only 34 days left in the challenge, which you can still join. All you have to do is complete 10 activities before the deadline to be entered to win the grand prize trip for 4 to Cancun.

Summer Activities Challenge

In the summer in Florida it's one of two things come afternoon time, super hot/humid or monsoon like conditions. There is no in-between. This has caused me to get creative, mainly to keep my own sanity, which really is questionable.

I found a great site called Education.com that does projects for preschoolers and it's anything from math to arts and crafts. We've tried two of their activities and are now participating in their summer challenge. The challenge is to complete 10 activities on Education.com by August 29th. It helps promote continued learning throughout the summer, and if you finish all ten you are entered to win a trip to Cancun, so hollar!

We've completed two of the 10 activities. The first one we did was their baked crayon art. I have a ton of broken crayons around this house, so this gave me something to do with them other than throwing them out. The kids loved this activity and I cannot wait to get frames for it.


The second activity we did was the egg carton caterpillar. Somehow I managed to forget to take a photo of the finished product. They say to use cardboard cartons that way the kids can play with them afterward, but I buy cheap eggs, therefore they're in Styrofoam cartons.


Jill was all about painting the cartons, she loves painting. Aaron could not get past the fact that he had to wear his smock. I mean really shame on me for trying to protect his white t-shirt. Silly mommy.

I can't wait to see what other activities we do, they have a bunch for 4th of July, so we definitely have to try one of those. If you have a chance, check them out, there really are a ton of activities for everyone from preschool to high school.

Valentine's Day Crafts (yeah it's late...)

Now that everyone has received their Valentine's Day presents (ok I'm a little slow mailing packages) I can now share the photos/video of them making them!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Cute, huh? I forgot to take photos of the finished product, but the kids loved painting them. Jill actually refused to stop to take a bath, and actually walks around with her paint brushes (still). I think I have a budding artist on my hands!