Round Robin: Valentines Boxes

My bloggy friend Amy is hosting her monthly Round Robin today. Hop on over to see other festive February posts.

I'm sharing a craft idea using emtpy tissue boxes...

Our homeschool group has a Valentine party and exchange every year. This year we have our boxes ready. We used empty tissue boxes. I spray painted Claire's and she put foamy shapes, paper hearts and stickers on it. Nathan, who is 13 and only participates in the hope of getting candy, just covered his with the funny papers. It turned out real cute though and took very little effort from him!


When I was a kid I remember making Valentine boxes out of shoe boxes. We never seem to have shoe boxes laying around though so last year I came up with the idea of using the tissue boxes. With our allergies we ALWAYS have plenty of them!

CSN stores

I love CSN stores! They have so much great stuff! They've got everything you need from
home office desks to lamps to towels and cookware. All on one convenient site.

The nice folks at CSN are giving me a chance to review one of their products. Hmmmm....which one should I choose??? What would you choose from CSN?

I'll be sharing what I chose soon so stay tuned! :)

We have a winner...

I have a winner for my Homemade Gourmet giveaway...comment #4: Amy from Keeping up with the Schultz Family. Congratulations, Amy! I'll send you an email.

Thanks to all those who entered. If you'd like to see what Homemade Gourmet has to offer click on of the Homemade Gourmet links in this post or in my sidebar. And don't forget to check out the "easy recipes" section of their site. Lots of great recipes for delicious, quick homecooked meals!

L.E.N.S. Photo Challenge: PE

Home is where you start from hosts the L.E.N.S. Photo Challenge every week. This week's theme is Physical Education: what does PE look like at your house?

Well, my son plays baseball and he also has a membership to the gym where he likes to rock climb and play soccer. At home he rides his bike and climbs trees.

My daughter takes gymnastics and also rides her bike and climbs trees. When its warm enough we can swim in the pool.

But when the weather is cold and we are iced in, like we were this week, this is what PE looks like at our house...

GYMNASTICS EVERYWHERE!

She has a meet coming up soon so there are splits, cartwheels, tuck jumps, stradel jumps, you name it, going on at our house every minute of the day! To be quite honest, these things go on whether she has a meet coming up or not. She eats, sleeps, and breathes gymnastics!



Don't forget...my Homemade Gourmet giveaway ends on Super Bowl Sunday. Click here if you haven't entered yet!

Postcard Friendship Friday #67

The postmark is very smudgy, but I think it says 1942 or 1912. Big difference, I know, but I can't make it out. The stamp is one cent. Anyone know what the postage was in 1942 or 1912? :)

I love the keyhole look of the card. Not your typical Valentine looking postcard.

I just had to post a card today that showed snow because this is what we woke up to this morning in North Texas...

We've actually been iced in since Tuesday. Now, there is snow. Its pretty and all, but its very cold here (hasn't been above freezing in 3 days). I'm ready for spring!

Postcard Friendship Friday is hosted by Beth at The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Don't forget...there's still a couple days left to enter my giveaway. The link is in my sidebar.

Cabin Fever

Well, we are on day 3 of being stuck inside due to icy, freezing weather. Personally, I'm enjoying it! All of the kids activities have been cancelled. We are getting school done and then having free time in the afternoon. I don't get a lot of free time these days so this is a treat for me! Of course, I'm one of the lucky ones that was not hit by the rolling blackouts yesterday. I have friends that are still with out electricity. From what I'm reading from everyone on Facebook, they are faced with some serious cabin fever. After all, this is Texas. We aren't used to being snowed or iced in!

I found this on the internet today. I especially liked the prayer entry!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_localdallas/20110203/ts_yblog_localdallas/dallas-fort-worth-stricken-with-cabin-fever


We aren't really experiencing cabin fever at our house, but we seem to be in the minority with that!

I thought I'd share some ideas for things to do inside with the kiddos.

First, if you haven't done it, break out the board games and play doh and paint. Its a great day for those things! Change things up by letting the kids paint with different items like a feather or a carrot. They can even make paint stamps out of a slice of potato.

Another idea is to surf the web for some winter craft ideas. Here is a good site:
http://www.dltk-holidays.com/winter/index.html

Making a tent in the living room is always fun too! Get out some blankets and make a fort or a tent. My kids would play in these for hours!

Also, cooking with the kids can be fun. Mix up a cake or some cookies. Then, give them some icing and sprinkles and let them have fun decorating them. A fun "cooking" activity for toddlers is letting them play with dry pasta. My daughter used to love doing this. A spoon, a bowl and some dry pasta provided her with lots of fun.



Or make a big pot of hot soup for this cold weather. If you need a yummy, easy soup check out my Homemade Gourmet website: www.homemadegourmet.com/aimee . Their soups are delicious and so easy to make that the kids could help out. My favorites are Chicken Enchilada and tortilla.

Yesterday, Claire made a popsicle outside! She poured some juice in a small cup, covered it with foil and stuck a popsicle stick in it. We set it on our grill right outside the back door. Six to seven hours later it was frozen solid!




Today we are reading "The Stolen Bread Smells" and making cinnamon bread. She's also painting using different kinds/sizes of brushes.

Hope some of these ideas have been helpful to any of you who are stuck inside with this winter storm!

Don't forget...there's still time to enter my giveaway. Check out my sidebar for the link.

13

Thirteen years ago today I became a mom.

After 17 1/2 hours of labor and an unexpected c-section, we finally got to meet Nathan!

Don't let this picture fool you...he rarely slept! He was the fussiest baby I'd ever seen! He cried everytime I put him down and he refused to sleep in his own bed for 2 years!

But we love him anyway!







And he eventually stopped crying and started sleeping in his own bed.

He spent the first 5 years of his life competely obsessed with construction...road construction, construction vehicles, tools...that's all he thought about every day! We rarely saw him without his hard hat on!

The construction obsession eventually faded and was replaced by a baseball obsession!

Here he is with a giant pretzel we made as part of some school activity a few years ago.

To this day he still LOVES pretzels!

This is Nathan today. A teenager. Sigh. I cannot believe how unbelievably fast the last 13 years have gone by. I also cannot believe I now have a teenager! Heaven help us all!

Happy Birthday to my Nathan!