I am disgusted and ashamed of our country right now.

Our country has elected someone whose message is hate.

We have now gone back so many years in progress for so many different types of people.

My kids were stunned this morning when they found out who was elected. “Who would vote for such a person? He hates all kinds of people.”

Yes, he does.

Kids, I don’t know who voted for him but I will tell you our family will not hate like he does. We will continue to love our neighbors, treat others with respect and kindness, care for those who cannot care for themselves, and believe in the rights of others no matter your gender, religion, nationality, color, or who you love.

What a horrible message you’ve sent to your kids America.

Electing a person who has taught America to hate again.

Shame on you.

Like practically every other little girl in 2014, my 5 year old wanted to be Elsa for Halloween. I could have bought a costume but we kind of have a tradition that Mom makes your costume. As long as I can get away with it I’m going to stick to that plan.

Since my sewing skills stink I knew making a dress from scratch wasn’t going to happen. I needed to find a dress that already fit Caroline and add to that. I found a completely white dress that had been given to us, discussed the design with Caroline, took a trip with her to the fabric store, and just jumped in to making it.

Caroline picked out this blue sequined overlay (is that what this is called?) so I hand stitched it onto the white dress.

At this point the dress was too short for Caroline so I needed to add some length with the blue satin (aka old bridesmaid standard fabric).  I have no idea why there is a seam in the middle of the dress.

We made a cape which was made of the blue satin and then the blue sequin overlay sewed on top of that.

Add a little face paint for Halloween and we have one happy camper princess.

I also bought this accessories set on etsy for Caroline (I can’t find the store now). She wanted all the pieces and I thought why not. On the end of the gloves I added sequins to make them look even more “princessy.” This set blew the budget but I didn’t really care.

Blonde Elsa braid with brunette hair = little girls dream

What are your little ones going to be this year?

Our church has a pumpkin patch each fall and we usually buy a few pumpkins. This year the pumpkins were outrageously priced (apparently collection plates come in orange now) so we walked around until we found some gourds which were only $5. We chose 3 gourds and brought them home to paint.

We used regular acrylic paint and had a lot of fun one afternoon painting the gourds.

Here’s my witch – Gourdita!

My 5 year olds – a little freestyle action going on here

But  my favorite is what my 9 year old saw in this gourd…

A snake slithering up to a freaked out pumpkin!

I simply love this. And my kid. What a funny guy he is.

Grab a few gourds this month and let your kids go crazy.

It will be so fun to see what they “see.”

One day he came home with this magic wand and I thought it was the coolest thing.

Here’s how he said they made it:

1) Take a chopstick and pour hot glue all around it

2) Wait for the glue to dry and then spray paint it black

Simple!

What a great addition to a costume this could be!

Since the name of the game around here is use what you have this project was totally free. I used newspaper, a balloon, flour, water, salt, crepe paper, and construction paper.

I started by covering an inflated balloon with strips of newspaper using a glue/water/salt combination. I would not use this method again since it was just difficult to spread the cold flour mixture all over. Instead, I would just use a mixture of half glue and half water. I’ve used that in the past and it’s a great consistency.

Over a period of days I added several layers of the newspaper. When I felt I had a sturdy enough oval I cut a flap in the bottom of the pinata and deflated the balloon in order to remove it.

Next I grabbed white crepe paper which was leftover from someone’s birthday party and covered the entire oval using a glue gun. *Remember to leave a spot open in the top so that you can hang your creation somehow.

The next step was to glue on long pieces so the “ghost” would in fact look like a ghost.

At  this point you can place the candy or trinkets into the bottom of the pinata flap and then glue it shut with some pieces of crepe paper.

My five year old then helped me create a face for our ghost which we glued on.

And here she is in all her glory getting whacked by my daughter at the party.

Once someone busted open the pinata and everything fell out it was as if they had never seen Halloween stickers, bubbles, pencils, toys, plastic fingers and spiders before.

I’ll definitely be making another pinata this year – this one served us well.

And if you really loved him he’s coming to Dallas on Oct 4th and New Orleans on Oct 7th! Go see him and tell him I said hi!

What the host said about exercising went something like this, “Moms, it’s so easy to exercise at home. You just have to make the time.”

Yep. I agree. You just have to make the time.

But the “it’s so easy part?” Nope.

Every single time I try and exercise at home while my kids are there something like this happens:

Now a few things are happening in this picture:

1. I am being real with you and showing you that when I attempt to exercise at home I do it in my pajamas. I feel no shame.

2. Our play room is a mess.

3. Little people always seem to gather around once that rocking jazzercise type music comes on. I feel like the Pied Piper.

In this case, I was attempting to exercise with a you tube video on the computer.  Little person hears the drums and synthesizers and join me. The exercise I am supposed to be performing is to swing my leg back and forth then up and down. Therefore, my little partner is trying  the same thing but she sticks to mainly just kicking forward and laughing hysterically as she rams her foot into my rear end.

Moving on from that exercise we attempt to strengthen our backs by rolling over and laying down on our tummies. This naturally leads to the “Mommy is a horsey” exercise. It is neither productive nor comfortable for Mommy horse.

Trying to do crunches?

That of course leads to little one leaning on your legs trying to start the well known parent exercise of “flying airplane kid.”

So it is usually at this point that I just give up. It’s just not worth it TV ladies.

For now I will just stick to biking with my kids to school and my swim workouts which are away from home. I’ll still watch the TV exercise segments of course but I will probably just work on building those folding t-shirt muscles.

Hope you are able to enjoy your time off work and school!

“Well son, seeing as we still have five weeks before you start school I think we are okay.”  My reply didn’t really satisfy him or his sister who also had a case of school supply mania.

Three weeks before school started I caved and took them shopping. We bought everything required except for the folders my son needed. Somehow I missed seeing those on the list.

My 4th grader needed blue, red, and yellow folders with brads for school.

First off, why in the world do they even sell folders without the brads in the middle?

No one buys them and they are quite useless.

Moving on.

Fast forward to two days before school starts.

While out shopping I found the blue folder that was needed and scooped that up but could not find a yellow or red folder.

All together, my husband and I went to about 6 different stores looking for these folders.

School started and by the 3rd day of school my son said that he really needed the folders.

I suddenly remembered that I had a stash of school supplies saved in case any of the kids that I teach need something. Old folders, binders, erasers when they go on sale. You name it, I probably have it in my box.

Searching through the box I found a yellow folder with brads but it had someone else’s name on it. I crossed that name out and handed the folder to my son. He was less than thrilled when I showed him the folder. I promised that this was just temporary and that I would still look for new folders.

Cut to the next day and another store folder failure.

So desperate times come for desperate measures.

I asked my husband where the electrical tape was. Somewhere in the back of my mind I seem to recall us having red electrical tape. He found the tape and we were in business “making a red folder.”

I proclaimed the folder perfect.

My husband said, “really?”

“When Andrew looks into his desk he will know which one his red folder is, it’s great.”

Great is probably not how my 10 year old saw it the next morning but he took the folder and put it into his backpack without a fuss.

A few days later I was cleaning out a drawer and happened to find an old plastic red folder with brads that was already labeled with Andrew’s name.

Thank you to hoarding school supplies from kindergarten!

Andrew was happy to take that red folder to school and bring back the green and red folder.

I thought all was good on the school supply front until yesterday when Andrew brought home a note saying he needed an extra blue folder with brads for a different class.

I shouted to be husband, “Honey, have you seen the blue electrical tape?”

Last time we left off my six year old was busy working odd jobs like folding towels around the house in order to save enough money to purchase a Build-a-Bear stuffed animal. She was keeping track of her savings using the chart I made for her.

Caroline had saved about $23.00 when I received an email from Build-a-Bear announcing a 40% off sale on the stuffed animals. This meant that the stuffed animal Caroline wanted that originally cost $28 would now be on sale for $16.80! This would be a big savings for her.

When we started this money saving process I told Caroline that if she bought the stuffed animal I would buy an outfit for the animal. Any other accessories she wanted to buy would be her responsibility. Once we knew about the sale I told Caroline to kick her saving into overdrive because we needed to get to the store in a few days in order to use the 40% coupon. The sale would give her an opportunity to buy the animal and an accessory.

The day of the big purchase came. Caroline laid out all of her money and counted it. We made piles 100 (when counting the coins we counted to 100 and she knew that meant she had one dollar).

Just a quick note about how I taught my daughter to count nickels and dimes. We worked on knowing that 2 nickels has the same value of 1 dime. So when we lined up the coins we lined them up into ten cent amounts. Looking at the coins in vertical groups you see 10 cents, 10 cents, 10 cents, and 5 cents. By having her line up the 2 nickels on top of each other she knew they were the same value as the dime. Putting her fingers on these coins she would count: 10, 20, 30, 35.

After all the money was counted, Caroline had saved $27.93. Not quite the $30 goal but I knew with only 1 day left in the 40% off sale we needed to go to the store now.

Caroline walked right to the stuffed animal she wanted – Risa the Rock Star Rabbit. With each rock girl you  get to choose a star that goes inside of her. Caroline chose the word, “fearless.”

I turned down every opportunity the Build-a-Bear workers tried to extort get more money from Caroline. Don’t you want a talking heart inside for $5? Don’t you want a bubblegum smelly in your animal for $4? No we don’t. It’s not in the budget.

After getting her bear stuffed , choosing an outfit and pair of shoes for the newly named “Blueberry,” we made our way to the check out. Caroline gave the animal and pair of shoes to the clerk who totaled up everything. In what I can only call fate or a small miracle from the money gods the total came out to $27.93! The exact amount Caroline had.

I had Caroline count out her money and give it to the clerk. Yes, I am that mom who will make everyone else behind me wait. It was a big moment for her and I wanted her to be able to see it through to the end. After all, since we had exchanged all of the 100’s into dollar bills at home she only had to count out $27 in bills and the 93 cents in coins.

Here’s the end result!

Caroline really loves “Blueberry” and is proud of the fact that she worked hard to get her. I am sure she’s going to request another money saving chart at some point and that will be fine. What I am most excited about it when she gets to the money counting lesson at school and she kicks some serious coin counting butt.

Well, that and when she starts folding my towels again.