The girls have already been hard at work the past couple days making Valentines. They spend at least 30 minutes to an hour every day crafting up a storm, cutting, and gluing, and writing love notes to each of their family members. I've been throwing in some love as well... usually in the form of a piece of chocolate or something. Every night after dinner (and after girls are in jammies and have cleaned their room... I have to use any incentive I can to get them to do those things), we all open our mailboxes and enjoy our Valentine surprises from the day. All the Valentines go up on the fridge, and by Valentines Day we have quite a pretty red, white, and pink collage to look at. :) I love to see traditions take shape, and I hope that this one will stick around a while.
Since it's the month of love (I like to say love in a sultry kind of way... haha), I really liked this idea posted about HERE as a way to encourage kids to show kindness to each other and serve within their family. So, we're going to give it try! I imagine this is going to take quite an effort on my part to consistently remind the girls to do kind deeds for others... but hopefully these "heart strings" will be a fun motivator as well. Read the linked post for more details, but we'll be stringing on felt hearts for each kind deed that is done - I'd like to do this for the entire month of February and see how many heart strings we can fill up!
Speaking of cute...
Oh, and today was Groundhog's Day! Phil, the groundhog, says an early spring is on its way. A stat I ready today said that the groundhog is correct 39% of the time. Not impressive Mr. Groundhog... you'd think you could get it right at least HALF of the time. haha. As with Dangerfield tradition, we had breakfast for dinner to celebrate - with sausage... ground hog. You get it right? Well, I think it's funny.
And one last thing... we tried out Bountiful Baskets on Saturday for the first time. I was happy with the loot that Ben brought home from the pick up. I ate the strawberries and one of the cantelopes that first day... yum! We've been chipping away at the tomatoes and cucumbers in salads most nights, and I was feeling domestic to have chopped up my own big stalk of broccoli... I steamed them and they cooked up FAST and it was good! Better than the steamfresh bags of broccoli I normally buy, and most definitely cheaper. And it wasn't very hard either. I've always been intimidated by broccoli before now. So, I think I'll like doing this produce co-op every couple weeks... it gets me more familiar with cooking and preparing different veggies and fruits and we end up eating a much larger variety of it all as well.
And I always thought February was just a month after January, way to go Susan!
ReplyDeleteI think you should teach classes on How to be a really cool Mom and do lots of fun things. Your house seems and sounds like so much fun. I might make a trip to HObby Lobby tomorrow and get some cute crafts up in this house. Thanks for the inspiration. OHhh and your little guy is so so cute and handsome!
ReplyDeletesusan i was so excited to read this post. out of everyone in the world i think you have the cutest craft ideas! so fun. i bought the mailboxes to copy this activity and we got our neighbor friends doing this along with us and everyone is having a great time with their writing and reading and creating. so fun. super thanks for the ideas. also the other day i was window shopping and found your dishes to you collect. They have all sorts of stuff. Anything that you need or have been looking for. They have a ton of different ones. I want to get you one but not sure if i'll be buying one that you already have. let me know.
ReplyDeleteI like your fun ideas and activities. I especially like the looks of your red and white dish display.
ReplyDeleteI recently found some cute Mexican style plates at the dollar store. They will be cute for a taco night.
That basket of fresh produce looked nice. That kind of good food will keep everyone healthy.