Have You Seen This Giveaway?

Check out the giveaway over at Kiddio! They're giving away an awesome kids rocking chair for two with a built in bookshelf from Mason and Matisse. Seriously, head over and sign up. It's awesome.

Caught in the Act

Reece managed to pull his brother's chair from the dining room through the kitchen over to the counter where the cream cheese pumpkin bread that his Aunt Tamara had made was wrapped up. He unwrapped it and helped himself. He was shoveling handfuls in his mouth when I caught him.

The remaining bread
Full of bread, proud, and happy

Thanksgiving

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We certainly did. We spent the evening with Jerad's mom, aunt and grandmother. It was the first time that we hosted Thanksgiving at our house. It was a little crowded, but I was glad that we got to have them over.
I discovered the BEST cranberry sauce recipe the day before Thanksgiving on the Food TV site. It's an Emeril Recipe so of course it's good. Seriously, I don't like Cranberry Sauce, but I think this stuff was AMAZING. I'll be eating it over ice cream very soon.

Cranberry Sauce
2 cups Cranberries
Juice and chopped zest of 1 orange
1/4 cup Port
1/2 cup sugar, or more if needed
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon cornstarch
In a small saucepan combine cranberries, orange juice and zest, port, sugar and cinnamon. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmering and cook until cranberries are tender, stirring occasionally. In a small cup make a slurry with cornstarch and 1 tablespoon water. Whisk cornstarch mixture into cranberry sauce and cook, whisking, until sauce thickens. Taste and add more sugar, if necessary.

Just FYI, I didn't have any Port and I didn't want to buy any. Several comments on the recipe said that they used 1/2 cup Orange Juice instead, so I that's what I did. It was fantastic!!

I made this Cinnamon Garland the day before Thanksgiving and it really made our Dining Room smell great. I got the idea from Skip to My Lou. You just mix together one bottle (4.25 oz) of cinnamon and about a cup of apple sauce. Then you roll it out between two sheets of plastic wrap. I used cookie cutters to cut the shapes and then baked it at 170 degrees (the lowest my oven will go) for an hour on each side. I hung the "Give Thanks" garland on the window by our dining table and the leaves and circles from our light about above our table.

Unplug Your Kids- Thankful

It's been a little while since we've done the weekly Unplugged Projects, but we jumped back in this week with the Thankful project. Originally I intended to do this as a turkey project. You know, the one where you put what you're thankful for on the the turkey feathers. However, since we made Cereal Box Turkeys just a couple of days ago I decided to go with something else. I cut big circles out of construction paper and had the boys tell me what they were thankful for, I wrote it in Sharpie on the circles and then we taped them to the back door. We had all sorts of things to be thankful for: that daddy is Spiderman, that Uncle John is the Hulk, and that mommy is Spidergirl (these are all great family secrets by the way); David from school, the guinea pigs, that Jesus died on the cross (Wyatt thought of that one), Transformer toys, driving race cars, that we went to a Veggie Tales Concert, that Miss Robin had a baby, for all the little tiny babies, and Seth listed everyone in our extended family.

Cereal Box Turkey

I got the idea for these little turkeys from this blog. Ours are a little different, but generally the same. The boys had fun gluing them together. When I was cutting up the boxes they kept asking what I was doing and I told them we were going to make turkeys. They were so confused. I think they turned out pretty cute. Reece's is the one in the middle with no feathers. He got tired of the project before he glued on the feathers in the back. I used empty Cheerios, Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate, Z-Bar and Annie's Organie Mac & Cheese Boxes that I had in the pantry for the project.

Wyatt's Turkey: He drew it with a mouth.

Seth's Turkey: He's the one that originated the eye lash idea.

Making Our Own Laundry Detergent

My favorite show on TV is Jon and Kate Plus 8 on TLC. Right after it another show comes on about a family with 17 kids! The funny thing about that show is that the parents were in our church when we lived in Arkansas (they were in High School and I was a kid). Anyway, they did a show about being frugal with their money and talked about making their own laundry detergent. I researched it and found out about how much cheaper it is and how much better it is for the environment and decided to try it out. I bought all the ingredients for about $8 and I think it's enough to make the detergent recipe 3 times which should be enough to get us through the year. So, I'll be spending $8 a year on laundry detergent instead of $72 (which is approximately what I was spending on the Kirkland brand at Costco). In the grand scheme of things $64 isn't a ton of money, but if you can find little things like this to do in different areas all over your life then it can really add up.
I used the following recipe that I found at tipnut:
1 quart Water (boiling)
2 cups Bar soap (grated)
2 cups Borax
2 cups Washing Soda
Add finely grated bar soap to the boiling water and stir until soap is melted. You can keep on low heat until soap is melted.
Pour the soap water into a large, clean pail and add the Borax and Washing Soda. Stir well until all is dissolved.
Add 2 gallons of water, stir until well mixed.
Cover pail and use 1/4 cup for each load of laundry. Stir the soap each time you use it (will gel).

I ended up using a funnel and pouring the detergent from the Home Depot bucket into an old laundry detergent holder that I had. Now I can just shake it up before I use it.

Ingredients

Grated Soap

Final Product

Mini Optimus Prime

The voice changer on this thing is soooo creepy, but the boys love it.

Thinning Paint

I decided to do a little exercise with the boys where we thinned paint with water so they could see how you could get a different "look" with just a little change to the paint. Ofcourse Wyatt loved it and Seth wasn't that interested (why do I feel the need to get him so interested in art when he clearly has no interest in it). First, we used full strength paint and painted a line on our paper, then we watered it down a little and painted another line, then we watered it down a little more and painted another line. After that I let the boys paint whatever they wanted.

Seth trying hard to stay interested; I've got to find something else that will interest in him that's artistic/crafty/fun

Wyatt wrote his name in yellow crayon and then painted over it

As you can see, Wyatt loves to paint (all of these except one are his)

Make Your Own Bouncy Balls

A while back I bought these Make Your Own Bouncy Ball Kits at the Dollar Bin at Target. We finally got around to making them and the boys loved it. You mixed a colored sand like substance into a ball form and stuck a blinking light in it. Then you swirled the ball form in water for 30 seconds. Then you let it dry for 15 minutes before you pulled the ball form off and you have your new blinking bouncy ball. It worked pretty well. The sand stuff expanded quite a bit, so Seth's ball got a little lopsided.

Don't you love the Larry Boy hat and Sunglasses?
Drying Balls

All finished

Spider Pizza

I made these a couple of nights before Halloween and the boys loved them. I used English Muffins for the bottoms and then I used String Cheese for the Web. I made the Spiders out of Olives.

Obviously, I didn't pull the string cheese thin enough. I only made half with spiders because it was getting late and I knew the boys wouldn't eat them anyway.

Happy Halloween

Our computer crashed and I'm a little late putting up these pictures, but they were too cute not to share. We went trick-or-treating with our friends, the Rankins, on Halloween. It was their son's first Halloween and our boys were so excited to have him along. This was also Seth's first year to go trick-or-treating. Last year he got sick all over his costume and our driveway when we walked outside to go trick-or-treating, so he stayed home while Jerad and I took turns taking Wyatt down the street. This year we went in our neighborhood then we headed over to Russell's boss' house and hit a few houses in that neighborhood and then we went to my parents.

The Rankins
Howdy, ya'll!!

Our little Indian

You can't tell it from the picture, but Wyatt was actually a Ninja Turtle Cowboy. He had a Turtle Shell pinned to his back. It was totally his idea.

Cowboys and an Indian!!

This weekend our church had their "Family Reunion" and the kids got to dress up in their costumes. Reece was an Indian and Wyatt and Seth went as Cowboys. We had a great time. There were almost 50 baptisms, which prompted some questions from Wyatt, so that was great. The boys had a great time jumping in the inflatables, climbing the rock wall, and getting their face painted.

Seth did great on the rock wall. I knew he would because he does so well on the one at our park. Wyatt got a little nervous. I think Seth will be our dare-devil child and Reece will probably follow right after him. Reece would have climbed the wall, but there was a weight limit for the harness and he was too small.

Reece got Indian Stripes painted on his face
Wyatt and Seth both got a tribute to our great family secret painted on their faces. You know the secret, the one that their daddy is really Spiderman and goes out to fight the bad guys at night while they're asleep. Let them tell you all about it. You might just end up believing them; they can be really convincing : ) I don't know where this came from, but they totally believe it and if anyone steers them away from it I will seriously have to hurt them. They've started asking if I'm "Wonder Red Spider Girl" and what super powers I have too. So, that's pretty cool too.

Muffin Tin Monday

This week the boys' muffin tins had:

Spoon for the Cottage Cheese, Cottage Cheese, Tortilla Chips, Apple Slices

Candy Corn and Pumpkins, PB&J, Queso, Carrots

Juice, Animal Crackers, Raisins, Ranch

Seth ate everything except the queso, it was a little spicy
Wyatt ate everything and declared, "Look mom, I'm eating carrots, just like the guinea pigs!" Usually, we have the little baby carrots, but since I have a huge bag of big carrots for the guinea pigs I just peeled those and sliced them for the boys today. He was sooo excited.
Reece had Raisins, PB&J, Animal Crackers, Apples, Cottage Cheese, and Tortilla Chips. He was very pleased : )