Mama Dani's Musings: October 2011

Friday, October 28, 2011

Flutter By Friday 10-28: Come Link-up!!

Welcome to this week’s Flutter By Friday blog hop!
The reason:
For readers to find other neat blogs to read and follow.
For bloggers to find readers/followers.

Here’s what to do:

Follow the host (Mama Dani's Musings) and co-host (I'm Bloggin')
Use the linky at the bottom of this post to post up to 2 posts per link-up.
Come back and see what other bloggers have been linked to.
Comment on a post you like.
Follow a new blog.
Come back next week to do it again!

I’ll randomly pick a link from this week’s blog hop to feature in next week’s blog hop!
Please take a moment and check out this week’s featured blog:
Sweet Peas and Bumblebees

I'd also appreciate if you placed this blog hop button on your blog.

This linky will end Sunday evening.

Stay up to date by following me on twitter @MamaDaniBlog or "liking" my Facebook page. New followers: Welcome! Please leave a comment to let me know how you found my blog so that I can follow you back!

© Mama Dani's Musings

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Project 52: Weeks 41-43

Week 41: Visit to the pumpkin patch:

Week 42: Our mutt, finally calming down some.

Week 43: Maddy enjoying her lollipop.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Kids Meal: 10-24-11

There wasn't a theme to today's lunch. The Jack-o-lantern sandwich goes with the fact that we're talking about pumpkins/Jack-o-lanterns this week. The roasted sweet potatoes were just a recipe that I really wanted to try.

Surprisingly, the sweet potatoes stole the show!

Sunday, October 23, 2011

School Days: Halloween

Halloween is right around the corner so we spent the last 2 weeks decorating the house. The best part about all the decorations is they didn't cost us a dime to make. We had everything already laying around the house and a lot of the supplies are recycled materials. Here's what we did:

One of my favorites is our door decoration. I took a black trash bag (that someone gave us hand-me-downs in none the less), and cut the draw string off and cut the sides to make it flat. The kids then added lots of white hand prints. I finished it off with "Happy Halloween" in orange pant.

Another area of the house that we like to decorate is the big picture window. We combined the coffee filter spider webs from The Artful Parent and egg carton spiders to create these. They really look neat from the outside at night with the lights shinning through the shear curtains we have.

These little ghosts were great scissor practice for the kids. They are just tissues with fringes cut around the edges. The heads are just cotton balls tied into place with spooky faces drawn on too.

The kids are being ghosts for this Halloween so Sean and I used the left over fabric to make these mummies.

Last but not least, Moms Like Me's post were the inspiration for our bats.

What are you doing to get ready for Halloween?

Friday, October 21, 2011

Flutter By Friday 10-21: Come Link-up!!

Welcome to this week’s Flutter By Friday blog hop!
The reason:
For readers to find other neat blogs to read and follow.
For bloggers to find readers/followers.

Here’s what to do:

Follow the host (Mama Dani's Musings) and co-host (I'm Bloggin')
Use the linky at the bottom of this post to post up to 2 posts per link-up.
Come back and see what other bloggers have been linked to.
Comment on a post you like.
Follow a new blog.
Come back next week to do it again!

I’ll randomly pick a link from this week’s blog hop to feature in next week’s blog hop!
Please take a moment and check out this week’s featured blog:
Diary of a Working Mom

I'd also appreciate if you placed this blog hop button on your blog.

This linky will end Sunday evening.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

3 in 30: October: Week 2 and 3 Update

October is continuing to go very well! I didn't get to make a post last week because of computer problems so here's week 2 and 3's update:

1. Morning- Mornings are going great. I had gotten use to Maddy waking up by 7:00 and stopped setting my alarm. I guess she's gotten use to the bedtime change now and isn't waking up before 7:00 every morning. So, there were a few days I slept till 7:30. Not bad though.

2. Middle of the day- We're still struggling with this one...

3. Bedtime- I don't think we could do any better with this one! Both kids are in bed by 9:00 (well, a couple days they were a little late b/c they were at grandma's late..). Maddy has a hard time going to sleep on the days that she fights naps and ends up napping late. Even then, she's in bed by 9:00 and is asleep by about 9:45. Those nights aren't ideal but even then I sit by the door of the room and use the hall light to read. She still needs me in sight to fall asleep.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Joys of Computer Problems

I thought I'd post a little update b/c my normal posts will be on hold for awhile. Tuesday evening I noticed hubby's laptop (our only working computer) had smoke coming out of where the cord plugs in. Not good!! I quickly shut it down. Later that night he started it up. It worked fine but plugging it in causes it to shut down. We're hoping it's just the power source but hubby needs to open it up and look around. Meanwhile, we're on an extremely tight budget right now. My computer has been down for a long time b/c it would cost too much to fix it; $50 for the system recovery disk plus whatever an external disk drive would cost (it's a netbook). And that wouldn't even guaranty a fix. I also have an older laptop that stopped working 2+ years ago. We know it's the power source. My dad was suppose to fix it but hasn't gotten to it. We decided to look more into it and found the part on ebay for just $5.10!! You better believe we ordered it! It should be here by the beginning of next week. Hopefully the computer will be up and running sometime next week. Until then, we're computerless. We do have internet on our phones but it has it's limitations. My mom was nice enough to let me borrow her nook so that it wouldn't be a complete pain for me to continue trying to fill daycare spots (most of my advertising is done online). That also made it possible for me to write this post. Thanks mom! So, that's what's going on around here. Also, my blog list doesn't work right on the nook so sorry if I miss something! One more thing, please ignore any typos and misspellings...touch screen and no spell check is not a good combo for me! lol

Monday, October 10, 2011

Kids Meal: Autumn

We're welcoming autumn today with some autumn food.

Pumpkin dump cake, pumpkin shaped toast with pumpkin butter,
Minestrone soup...and not pictured because I almost forgot it, cranberries.
Another change: the kids decided they wanted pumpkin nutella muffins instead of the pumpkin dump cake for dessert.

More Muffin Tin Monday ideas:

Muffin Tin Monday at Her Cup Overfloweth

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Weekend Recipe: Pumpkin Nutella Muffins

I'm all for any recipe that includes pumpkin. Mix pumpkin and chocolate...I have to try it! These muffins smelled wonderful while baking and tasted very delicious. However, there could have been more pumpkin flavor for my liking. The recipe can be found here.

What you'll need:

Pumpkin puree (not pie filling)
Vegetable oil
Eggs
Vanilla
Brown sugar
Sugar
All-purpose flour
Ground cinnamon
Ground ginger
Nutmeg
Baking powder
Baking soda
Salt
Cocoa powder
Nutella

Saturday, October 8, 2011

School Days: Dinosaurs

We continued learning about dinosaurs this week but another busy week prevented us from doing all the activities I thought we would do. Most of this unit (Sean's choice) ended up being library books (boy do they have a lot on dinosaurs!) and these flash cards I found in the dollar section at Target:

The activity that we did get to was inspired by this blog post.
The kids started out making prints:

T-rex made the best:

Then they shifted gears and started painting the dinosaurs:

Which turned into body painting:

They were going to make these dinosaur feet but then I thought about our hardwood floors and didn't want more cracked heads. We will be making these dinosaur eggs. We just ran out of time this week.

If you missed it, last week, we had a dinosaur lunch and an ice dig.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Flutter By Friday 10-7: Come Link-up!!

Welcome to this week’s Flutter By Friday blog hop!
The reason:
For readers to find other neat blogs to read and follow.
For bloggers to find readers/followers.

Here’s what to do:

Follow the host (Mama Dani's Musings) and co-host (I'm Bloggin')
Use the linky at the bottom of this post to post up to 2 posts per link-up.
Come back and see what other bloggers have been linked to.
Comment on a post you like.
Follow a new blog.
Come back next week to do it again!

I’ll randomly pick a link from this week’s blog hop to feature in next week’s blog hop!
Please take a moment and check out this week’s featured blog:
Mamas Like Me

I'd also appreciate if you placed this blog hop button on your blog.

This linky will end Sunday evening.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

3 in 30: October: Week 1 Update

The first week of October went very well!

Here's how we did with each of this month's goals:
1. Morning- Mornings have gone fairly well. I haven't gotten up by 7:00 every morning but if I wasn't up by 7:00, I was up by 7:15/7:20.

2. Middle of the day- I can still work on this one. We made it outside more than normal but not everyday.

3. Bedtime- This one has been better than a success! Every day we did great with the unplugged time and both kids were in bed by 9:00...that's half an hour earlier than I had planned for Maddy! It's working so I'm keeping it like that! As much as I love the kids, I am enjoying the kid free time each night.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Project 52: Week 40

We've been preparing the kids for the idea of a new little baby brother or sister pretty much since the beginning of my pregnancy. Thanks to a great idea from a friend, they are already playing with Jellybean. Around this time, they say a baby can start seeing light. So, Sean and Maddy have started using their flash lights on my belly to see if Jellybean can see it. Sean is so cute "Baby, can you see it? Wake up baby!" He also likes kissing my belly and talking to Jellybean. Then yesterday, he had his head on my belly and was singing to Jellybean when he got a big kick in the head. He jumped up pretty fast and his face was priceless!

Monday, October 3, 2011

Weekend Recipe: French Toast Bites

A day late because of computer problems but better late than never! Yesterday morning we had French Toast Bites for breakfast. Yum!! My kids are not big breakfast eaters but they scarfed this down! We made a little mistake and didn't let the bread go stale first. This made the bread more soggy than it should have been but didn't effect the taste. The recipe can be found here.

The ingredients:

Sugar
Cinnamon
Eggs
Buttermilk (We made buttermilk with almond milk and vinegar.)
Milk (We used almond milk)
Vanilla extract
Salt
French bread
Butter
And of course real maple syrup

Inspired by this pin.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

School Days: Dinosaur Ice Dig

This week Sean decided he wanted to learn about dinosaurs so that's what we started on. We didn't do nearly as much as I thought we would because Sean's ER trip and my ultrasound. I have a list of activities for next week to continue this lesson. This post will be about one of the activities that we did get to this week: the dinosaur ice dig! This activity was inspired by this pin/this blog post. I should have done what they did and used paper cups because it would have been easier to get the ice out. The kids had a blast anyways! I used the plastic dinosaurs the kids have gotten at the doctor's office and froze them in plastic cups. These dinosaurs float so I had to put the tops on the cups for this to work. We enjoyed this project so much that I didn't realize that I wasn't getting good pictures. If you look past the blurriness, you'll get the idea and see how much fun they had.

Both kids got a set of tools:
Spoon, fork, water (room temp and hot), medicine dropper and salt.

3in30: October

September was a good month so I'm looking forward to trying this again this month! I think I'm going to work on routines this month.

This month's goals are:
1. Morning- I want to work on my sleep and I think becoming consistent with a wake up time will help. So, I will get up by 7:00 every morning...7 days a week.

2. Middle of the day- I find myself making excuses about getting the kids outside...heat, rain, bugs.. We all need the outside time so we will get outside everyday even if it's just for a short time while covered in bug spray, holding umbrellas and wearing rain boots.

3. Bedtime- We're going to get into a definite evening routine. Part of this will be having unplugged time...no tv, no computer, no cell phones. Sean has a bedtime but it's kind of lax. Maddy does not. Everyone will be home by 8:30. That's when our unplugged time will start and it will continue until the kids are in bed. Sean will be in bed at 9:00, Maddy at 9:30 (with the goal of moving it back to 9:00).

Pages

Friday, October 28, 2011

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Monday, October 24, 2011

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Friday, October 21, 2011

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Monday, October 10, 2011

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Friday, October 7, 2011

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Monday, October 3, 2011

Saturday, October 1, 2011