Easy & Quick Truffle Dessert

I had a party to attend the other night and was asked to bring a dessert. This truffle is one of my favorites, and is perfect for summer (and for getting the kiddos involved!) Purchase a pre-made angel food cake at your local grocery store. Break the cake apart into small pieces and lay in a truffle dish. This is a great helpful task for a child of any age!

Place enough to cover the bottom of the dish.

Make a large portion of vanilla pudding according to package directions, and allow to sit in the fridge for 5 minutes to set up.

Next, dice fresh strawberries over the angel food cake. Then, layer vanilla pudding on top, followed by a bit of cool whip. Repeat the layering of cake, strawberries, pudding, and coolwhip.

And, voila! A perfect summer dessert!

I decided this morning, that chocolate pudding would also be good with strawberries! You can also change out the fruit, or layer strawberries and blueberries for a great 4th of July dessert!

Upcycled Wreath: Tutorial

I hate to admit, but I had my Easter wreath still on my front door until yesterday! I haven't had a good summer wreath, but I knew that I wanted to make one. I started this a few weeks ago, and finally finished it yesterday!

Here's what I did: You'll need a foam ring. I got mine from a Teachers Supply Store for free! You'll also need a roll of twine. I got mine from the $1.00 section at Target.

Wrap the twine around the wreath, hot glue the twin at your starting point and at your finishing point. You can also hot glue in places while you are wrapping.

I took a bag of fake flowers that I had and pinched each flower off of it's stem. I stuck them into the remaining part of the wreath, and a few bundles in the middle of the twin.

And, here's my finished wreath!

And, an up close view of the wreath!

This wreath cost me all of $1.00 and I love it! You could also add a decorative bow, and you can leave off the clusters of flowers for variations.

Teaching Tots- Color: Orange

We fell a bit behind on our Teaching Tots lessons with Gretchen. Friday morning was spent making up on coloring the letter D for dinosaur that we missed on Wednesday, as well as teaching the color orange. Gretchen helped me make orange pudding for her afternoon snack.

Having your tot help in the kitchen is not only a great bonding time, but it teaches them to follow directions, which is a great skill for every tot to have!

This coming week, we'll be making a Lamb craft for the letter L, work on colors yellow and green, and she'll add numbers 4 and 5 to her caterpillar!

Satisfied Honey's: Kaylin & Autumn

Check out these fabulous photos of very satisfied little honey's!!!! Kaylin is wearing her ladybug clippies while making a silly face at her momma!

And, sitting very pretty in her purple and blue bow!

Autumn is wearing a cutesy orange and pink made to match bow at her birthday party!!!

Thanks ladies, for sharing your pictures with me!

Hapari Giveaway!

The blogging world has been fulled of Hapari swimsuit giveaways. I've entered every one and have yet to win one, but I've had another chance!!!

Survey Junkie is now offering a $96.00 Hapari swimsuit gift certificate! Go here to enter- giveaway ends June 30th.

New Bed- sort of!

On Monday we made the big leap to taking the front part of Gretchen's crib off! I was so nervous about her nap time, so I made sure to do this on a day where daddy was home- so he could be the stern one!

We put on a t.v. show for her, while we converted her crib. She was a little confused when we brought her into her room, but she immediately jumped into bed! She loves that she can crawl in and out and play on it now!

Thankfully, her nap time went really well that day- as have every other nap and bedtimes she's had!

And, she's only fallen out once!

Teaching Tots- Day 1 A-E

Today was day 1 of our summer lessons. I learned today that you have to be flexible! Gretchen and I were going to join a Mommy & Me group today at a local nursery, which would've thrown a lot of our activities out the window. 20 minutes before we were suppose to leave, I found out the event was cancelled. So, we were able to start our lessons! I started first thing this morning. Gretchen had eggs, bread/toast, and cheese for breakfast. I told her that eggs started w/ the letter 'e', and had her identify the 'e' in her name that's on her placemat. She must have known we were going to learn letters, because when I folded her toast over for her, she exclaimed, "B!". I guess it looked like a letter b to her!

I had her color the letter 'A" picture while I was cooking breakfast. She wasn't too into coloring though, so we put it back in the folder for her to finish later.

Gretchen made this at church a few weeks ago, but I thought it was a perfect letter 'b' activity! Simply, let your child color a coffee filter, and clip it in the middle w/ a clothespin to make a butterfly.

This was our letter 'b' activity. We glued buttons onto a 'b' butterfly. Gretchen is right hand dominant, so I placed the buttons on her left side. She had to reach across midline in order to pick up the buttons, ranging in size from large to small. Reaching across midline and using a pincher grasp are great fine motor skills! Tip: Use activities to increase learning as well as motor skills! Note: I did place the glue on the paper for her.

Here she is with her finished button butterfly!

Afterwards, we played a game with cotton balls. I brought home these large tweezers from work, and gave her 3 cotton balls. (We were learning to count to 3 today.) And, I gave her a red cup, since that was her color of the day. Notice that her shirt has cupcakes on it for the letter 'c'! For this game, she simply had to pick up each cotton ball with the tweezers and place them into the cup. She had a hard time at first, but had the hang of it this evening when she showed daddy the game she learned.

Her lunch consisted of applesauce, cucumbers, chicken nuggets, and dip!

We covered the letter 'b' when she got her afternoon snack-brownies (and oranges!)

What did you teach your tot today?

{Friday is our next scheduled lesson}

Mantle Re-do

I was deep-cleaning my house over Memorial Day weekend, and I decided I needed a change to my mantle.

Mantles are fairly easy to re-decorate and to add a nice update and change to your living room.

Here's my mantle before: Golf picture fram above, 2 glass candlesticks, two pictures, a mantle clock, a fleur de lis, decorative balls, and a decorative box.

And, the AFTER! I placed the decorative wicker balls in a glass container, kept two of the pictures (because I love them), moved the fleur de lis, added a book, and a bulldog for a touch of whimsy (DJ use to work at La Tech), added a picture frame on top, and moved the glass candlesticks to the opposite end and added red candles- I needed a touch of color and I love it!

Teaching Tots- Day 1 Supplies

Tomorrow I will start my Teaching Tots lesson with Gretchen! I wrote a little about what we'd be doing on day 1 last week, you can check it out here.

But, as the week has gone on, I'm going to be changing things up a bit!

If you haven't found printable alphabet pages, you can look here.

We are going to work on letters A-E.
Numbers 1-3
Color- Red

I'm going to use the number caterpillar found here for all of our number lessons.

Lunch tomorrow will consist of Apple sauce, Brownie, Chicken Nuggets, Drink (okay, I don't have a D food), and we'll likely have Eggs for breakfast!

She will color the letter A, and we'll hold off on apple painting until one of our review days at the end of June. For the letter B, I have a butterfly that we will glue buttons onto. We also have a letter C, D, and E to color. A cute E activity, would be to glue egg shells onto a letter E, or you can even save them for letter N and make eggs in a nest!

For fine motor skills, I brought home a pair of tongs from work, which we will use to practice picking up cotton balls and placing them into a cup.

Stay tuned for an update tomorrow evening or on Thursday to see what all we accomplish!

Shutter Love Tuesday: Pets

Trendy Treehouses hosts Shutter Love on Tuesdays and todays theme is Pets!

We use to have so many pictures of our pup, but as Gretchen gets older these are getting fewer and fewer! We do love her though- despite the hair and the mud she brings into the house!
Introducing.......... Bailey!.......... I bet a lot of you didn't know we had a pup of our own- poor DJ, he's stuck in a house full of hormonal women!