Kid Games.


I'm so excited about my new book my friend, Jill gave me. There are all sorts of easy games that can be done with kids and a lot without much effort. My mom is super creative and we always played silly games. We do the same thing in our house now.

"New" Book Shelf.

I bought this book shelf at a furniture thrift store for 15 bucks. It had a flimsy back that we took off. I had a great pantless model to show the before pictures...




...and a shirtless one for the during.




I grew up with my mom refurnishing furniture and I love to do it now. I got some advice from the home depot guy for painting a wooden piece:

1. Clean it off.

2. Give it a light sand to rough it up and help the paint stick. He recommended a 200 grade sand paper.

3. My mom suggested getting something that already had the primer in it so I wouldn't have to paint an extra coat. I just picked out the color I wanted and they put primer right in it without changing the color. So I did two coats of the paint and primer in one (semi-gloss). I worked on it during the day outside while the kids played and at night while my husband read our book we'd been reading together.



4. Organize the shelves.



I love these vintage books I found at thrift stores. I also enjoy finding fun activities to do with the kids-one was called Exploring and the other was called, get this- Fooling-how cool is that (it's a bunch of magic tricks for kids). Then, I decorated the the shelves with the model cars and trains Apollo painted from Michaels (I saw some the other day for 50 cents and the kits come with the wooden parts, paint, paint brush, sand paper, and glue).





My mom saw these cars and thought she could make them herself-she did an amazing job! She cut the cars out of wood, painted them, and added wheels.





Here's some more pics. Most of the Dr. Seuss books came from thrift stores or gifts.








My mother-in-law let me borrow some of her books from when she was young and let me have some others-the book shelf is a fun place to show them off. We found Treasure Island in a thrift shop. Apollo looooved it.




Here's the finished product for Apollo's room. We bought a street lamp a few years ago that was plastic and white. We bought a pewter paint kit and Carleton did it over the plastic. Fun for a kid room.

Potty Training.


Friends recommended this book. It has been my bible for the last week-great step by step instructions.





Eve was the first one to tell me about this book-always has great ideas and is always doing fun stuff with her daughter, Addy. She sent this pic of some Halloween fun, but can be done anytime. She bought the vase at a garage sale and put a scary specimen in that changes and grows in water. Addy likes to watch it and calls it a "scary monkey."

Homemade Book.

My mom made the cutest book for Apollo. Maybe it will give you some ideas and inspire you to make one too.

Here's what the outside of the book looks like:



Here are all the inside fun pages.




This one has a little magnetic wand so you can make the guy have different hairdos.

Yummy.

I tried this berry smoothie on the One Mango Tree blog. It's so good for you and delish. I added a little milk to mine but Carleton said it was perfect and wondered why anyone would add anything else. recipe here. With the left over oj, I made popsicles (with the popsicle maker I got at the dollar store).






Hungry Girl cook book by Lisa Lillien. Love it. It's fun. She has fun recipes that are made a little healthier. This one's called "Yum Yum Brownie Muffins" and is way easy.



Ingredients
1 box devil's food cake mix (about 18 ounces)
One 15-ounce can pure pumpkin

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Mix the two ingredients together. Don't add anything else that may be mentioned on the box, like eggs, oil, or water. The mixture will be very thick, so you might be tempted to add in other things to make the batter smoother. Do not do this!

Place better into a 12-cup muffin pan lined with baking cups or sprayed with nonstick spray. Place pan in the oven and bake for 20 minutes.

Makes 12 servings.