Thursday, July 29, 2010

Easy Entree

You know I love a quick and easy dinner every now and then. Tonight was the night. Here is what I made.
  
with this
 
and this 

Why so quick? Because of this:



Here is what I did....

1. Pound chicken breast until about 1/2 in flat. 
2. Fill with a scoop on rondele spread and diced cherry tomatoes.
3. Fold chicken and secure with toothpick. 
4. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper (I used sea salt and ground pepper).

Now you have this:


Bake at 350 for 40 minutes.  Serve with rice and broccoli (or whatever sides you wish). 
Yum!  The only thing I might do differently is serve it with some good crusty bread to scoop up the extra cheesy goodness that oozes out of the chicken. Instead I just ate it with a spoon (shhhh).

The Fish Gallery

Calling all boy and girl moms!!!  I have a great new activity thank's to Julia at My Blue Canoe.  Thursday afternoons at 3:30 The Fish Gallery on Greenville has an excellent story time. They read a couple of cute books, offer drinks and snacks to the kids, have a coloring time, and they walk all the kids around and show them different sea creatures (even letting the kiddos pet and feed them).  We had a ball (granted, I usually have more fun than anyone in our family, but I promise, the girls liked it too).

Since this blog is usually pretty heavy on girlie things, I'm going to do my best to toss in a few good boy crafts/activities too. I've attached a couple of pictures from my phone (sorry for the poor quality), so you can see a bit of what we did.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Simple Super Food

Tonight I made spaghetti. Exciting, I know. I need to tell you about my spaghetti. It's not normal, you see, it's brown. Why do I feel so inclined to tell you about my gross spaghetti?  Here's why.  You see, I was out of town for four days and have no real guarantee that my girls consumed a single vegetable.  So tonight we had to make up for lost time. How do I do this? Spaghetti. A long time ago, I started adding spinach (A LOT of spinach) to my spaghetti sauce. I put some sauce in my food processor with about a half (if not more) of a bag of fresh spinach. I process until I have green sauce. I then add it to my meat and the remaining spaghetti sauce and, tada, I've just made eating spinach very easy. The only problem is that it turns the spaghetti sauce brown. This works for us because I don't think my girls even know that the sauce is usually red. Please don't tell them. So, if you need a simple way to get your kids to eat a super food, brown spaghetti just might be the answer.

Theme 10: Royalty

Let me start by saying I'm sorry for the lame, once-a-week posts. The past few weeks have been a bit crazy, but things are settling down now and I hope to give the blog a little more attention. This week's theme is Royalty. We're doing a ton of "princess" activities, but our main focus is that we are princesses because our Heavenly Father is the one true King. The girls and I have watched, "Gigi: God's Little Princess" to start the week off and are also reading a couple of similar books by Sheila Walsh.  Here's what else:
 - Manicures and pedicures for the girls (I'm stepping up the usual nail painting)
 - We're going to town on our 500+ princess coloring books
 - Decorating Crowns
 - Making Jewelry
 - Dressing up and having "High Tea"
 - Treasure hunts (the last treasure is a ring pop)
 - Make a treasure box for scripture memory
 - Make a magazine collage of "fancy things"
 - Have a princess ceremony (I have wand and tiara for them)

Monday, July 19, 2010

Theme 9: Ocean

Sorry for the lack of posts lately gang. The girls and I headed out of town and I've had a hard time getting back into the groove since we got home. And now, I'm heading out of town for a few days again, so the posts will be a bit sparse this week too. But, I intend to step things up a notch when I get home.  All that to say.....I can't believe we're already to theme #9.  Here's what we're going to do:

 - Pick out a fish at Walmart (I kind of like the decorative value in this too)
 - Go to the Dallas Aquarium
 - Make TP roll octopuses
 - Make sand jars
 - Make an ocean picture using real sand
 - Maker paper plate fish
 - Make "ocean" jello (blue jello with gummy fish inside)
 - Make seashell picture frames
 - Sea Monkeys (I found these at Marshalls; can you believe they are still around?)
 - Ocean devotions (these are just little devotions I've made up that relate to features of the ocean)

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

DIY TuTu

Today we embarked on do-it-yourself tu-tus.  My little one was a bit ornery all day (this is common), so the tutus were a bad idea, in her opinion. But, my older child (who is a typical first) was all over it.  It's another easy project that I wish I'd thought of a long time ago. I think these would make darling gifts for any ballerina out there.  Here is what you need:
1. Tulle (lots of it) cut into about 5 inch strips  2. Elastic band 3. Ribbon

The first thing you need to do is measure the elastic band to fit your child's waist. I did this the very precise way of wrapping it around her waist and cutting to fit.  Then I sewed the to ends together using a needle and thread.

Then, you simple tie the strips of tulle onto the elastic band in whatever pattern you want. Here's what you get:


I did all the tulle and then went through and added a strand of ribbon every four inches or so. Here's the final product. 


I was going to give the tutu a little trim, but oldest likes it a bit unruly, so there you have it. I'll take this opportunity to introduce you to Grant or Charlie or Savannah or Josh (My oldest tells me she has seventeen kids, so I lose track of who is who).  She is a natural born mothers. More often that not, she has a baby in her hand and doing all kinds of things with them. They go from soccer to jazz to ballet to basketball, to Bible study to community group. She is a busy mommy and they are busy kids. Funny that she hasn't gotten the "simple" memo yet.  Maybe someday. 


Sunday, July 11, 2010

Theme 8: Dance



My dancers and I have missed you. We had a great time in AR and are geared up for this weeks theme - DANCE!!!  As you can tell from above, my girls like to dance. This week they are both taking dance camps, thus the theme. Here's what we're going to do in addition (sorry it's a lame list, but we have some other non-theme things occupying us this week too).
 - Homemade tutus (I'll post the how-to on this when we do it and I have some pictures)
 - Homemade hula skirts (ditto)
 - Ballerina shrinky-dinks (thanks to Ganmere who found these)
 - A whole lotta dancing around the house to all kinds of music
 - Ballet shoes made out of Nutter-Butters

That's all I've come up with for now. I'll post an amended list if I come up with some more ideas.  As soon as I get back in the swing of things around here, I'll post some more simple ideas for meals and for the home.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Theme 7: Transportation


This weeks theme is transportation. I'm excited about this one because there is a surprise in store for my girls. At the end of the week we will be flying to AR to visit their Ganmere and Gandaddy. The plane ride will be the perfection conclusion to a week full of different methods of transport.  Here are the other things I have planned:
 - Train ride to downtown
 - Once in downtown, we'll catch a trolley and grab lunch
 - Frontiers of Flight Museum and painting wooden airlines (got them at Joanns)
 - Duck Boats at Fair Park (it's the only boat I could arrange)
 - Museum of the American Rail Road in Fair Park
 - Paper road (I'm going to make a road throughout our house and let them fill it up with car stickers)
 - car painting (dip match box (or other) small cars in paint and let the wheels do the painting
 - Good 'ole bike rides

Thursday, July 1, 2010

More Fourth



I've found a few more simple ideas for 4th of July crafts. Pictures say it best; I don't think instructions are even needed (they are that simple).

1. Construction paper lanterns:













2. Star wreath: