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Stay at home mom with dreams of perfecting all things mama.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Teaching the joy of chores...

Take a little ten to let your kids help with the chores you usually take care of in the house. My kids are at the age where they love to help with the things that they do not usually get to do. Yesterday I let them help vacuum.

The search for crumbs was the best part for them. It was a like a little treasure hunt...just a little. 


Easton pointed out some crumbs for Melanie to catch....


She was happy to help...

My philosophy is (and I'm not positive about this) if we take time to teach kids that chores are fun while they are little, they will not be so unhappy about doing them when they are bigger.

Train them up in the way they should go...right?

Take ten!!

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Paint your cookies...

Do you know how to paint cookies? I just learned...it's pretty cool and REALLY easy. Try it with your kids.

Egg wash: One beaten egg, add one tsp. water and beat some more, mix in your choice of food coloring..we chose green.
Paint the cookie dough before baking and then bake as normal. I made East's name and a piston cup cut out to freeze and save to put on top of his birthday cake.


The kids cut out cookies..Mel chose a Christmas tree and Easton of course chose to make more piston cups.


Then they got to paint and sprinkle their cookies.


I decorated these. Some have the green egg wash and crushed candy cane sprinkles and others have melted chocolate chips topped with the candy canes. YUM!

Yesterday I asked the kids what they wanted to do tomorrow (which is today), and they said they wanted to make Thanksgiving cookies. We didn't have any turkey cutters so we started Christmas early!

Happy Holidays! Thanksgiving and Christmas!

Take Ten!

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Extra candy corn..DIY experiment

I had candy corn and a bag of Costco size pretzels....the kids were getting tired of plain pretzels. What do you do when this kind of scenario happens? Well you melt the candy corn down of course and cover the pretzels with it...DUH! :)

Throw some candy corn and butter into a pot..I did not bother measuring...

Melt it down...

Add some marshmallows...again no measuring there either.


Melt it...looks good huh?


Toss in some pretzels and cover them up with the chewy gooey goodness...


Then toss the pretzels onto some parchment paper...but don't be like me and forget to spray the parchment paper or it will stick to the bottom pretzels.

These were delicious! Everyone liked them..and we used two things that were going to go to waste in our house!


After they cooled down they were not sticky to pick up and eat. Great post Halloween treat! Take ten to try it. It literally took ten minutes!

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Family night!



Smile, sit down, and have a little family time. Make a happy little person like the one below.


Or, you can make a couple of snails like daddy and Easton made....


Our family play dough night kind of happened by accident. Melanie took out the play dough, Darrell sat down an joined her, and eventually all of us were sitting around the table making dough art. I stole away to take a quick pic of our happy family time.

These are the memories that will shape our children's personalities, their futures, and the way they view their childhood. 

It was so fun, just ten minutes of playing, but big keepsakes for all of our hearts.

Take ten for family memories.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

A cup of cake...

On her birthday a friend gave Melanie a little busy bag that contained play cupcakes to decorate. They are so fun and cute, and oh so many possibilities for learning this little bag contained!


Inside the bag there were cupcake tops and bottoms of different colors and all different shaped sprinkles. It gave lots of room for creativity. But as a mom, I wanted to make it educational too.


So after a little bit of playing around and decorating we began our math lesson.

We sprinkled ten sprinkles, we subtracted sprinkles, we added sprinkles, we counted just the blue and pink sprinkles..we did a lot of math with those darn sprinkles! It was fun.

The best part about this project is that it is something you can make quite quickly and easily with construction paper and scissors. Try it and make math fun! The earlier you start math learning, the easier it will be later.

Take Ten!