February is here and Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. It’s hard to look anywhere without seeing hearts in reds and pinks. I’m not a huge fan of store bought Valentine’s and crafts. I prefer homemade cuteness. I am sure you are not surprised. Just in time for all the preparation and planning for the day of love I thought I would share some of our favorite Valentine’s day crafts from the past.

Valentine’s Day Love Bugs

Valentine’s Day Heart Flowers

Hoppy Valentine’s Day Frog

Kid-Friendly Lunch Build Your Own Heart Sandwiches

Now it’s your turn to share your Valentine’s Day activities and crafts for kids. Just add the link to your craft or activity below. I can’t wait to check out what creative and fun ideas you have to share! (Please note only relevant links will be allowed, spam links will be deleted.)

It’s Friday night and I don’t really feel like cooking. Well, I do feel like cooking but the only things I fee like making require the oven. More importantly they require the bake button on the oven to work. How in the world does a bake button decide to stop working the night before your home inspection? The buyer isn’t bothered. She decided she would like a credit she can use towards buying a new range instead of us fixing the oven. The catch? That means no baking for me for approximately 33 days. Of course all I can think about now is cookies, roasted turkey, fresh bread, brownies, baked potatoes, you name it. That button is taunting me. Taunting me I tell you! Pinterest is not helping either.  It just fuels my desire to bake something, anything, right this minute.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder or something right? Maybe it’s actually more like absence makes this lady go crazy.

By the way if you are on Pinterest (or hooked on Pinterest as I am) follow my boards here.

Are you tired of seeing this little pink bento yet? I hope not because I think it is here to stay. There are just so many possibilities. Honestly it makes being creative fun and easy. That is how things like cheese rolls-ups happen.  The only drawback to our bento box so far is that it needs to be held together with a band because it doesn’t click together like American lunch boxes or food containers. Maddy usually just has a teacher help her put the band back on her box after she finishes eating.

What’s in the Box: Cheese Roll-ups

• Cheese stick rolled up in turkey and sliced onto inch or so chunks.
• Salami rolled and sliced.
• Pecan Nut-Thins crackers.
• Homemade Almond and cranberry granola bar
• Mini-banana (so cute!)
• Kiwi and mango chunks accompanied by a green bear and an orange monkey.

A while back we started in on a fairly quick and fairly simple home improvement project.

Simple. Ha. Quick. Ha ha.

This simple project of replacing all the flooring in our home was expected to take four or five months. Approximately 15 months later we are finished. When putting the flooring in we figured we would get at least a years worth of enjoyment out of the new tile and Brazilian redwood floors throughout our house before moving. You see the plan was always to put our house on the market in the spring of 2012.

With the impending arrival of a sweet little baby this summer we decided to push the sale of our house up a few months and we planned to list it February 1. The surprise came when over two weeks before even listing our house we had a request for a showing. From that lone showing came an offer which we have accepted. We’ve also managed to find a home we love. So now we’re also under contract to buy a home as well. All of this is wonderful, especially since we’ll have plenty of time to move and get settled before the baby is born. Except for that whole having time to enjoy our beautiful floors and organized home.

In the mean time it means craziness, not getting to enjoy all the time and effort we put into installing wood and tile floors in this house and driving around with a wedding dress in my car. Okay actually I don’t need to be driving around with it in my car any longer. I took it out of the closet in our extra room so the closet wouldn’t look so small with my big and puffy wedding dress hanging in it for our one and only showing. It just so happens that I have repeatedly forgotten to take it out of the car and bring it back inside.

 Maybe I should just take it out of the back of the car already. Or maybe I should just leave it there. We’ll be moving in a month anyway.

We’re still having fun with our cute pink bento. Actually Maddy stayed home from school yesterday and still requested a bento lunch. Before this particular day Maddy had never tried salami. A great thing about bentos? Maddy is so excited about her lunch she is trying new things foods without thinking twice about it. It’s also fun to hide little surprises in her lunch, today’s surprise was in the Sweet Heart container, pickle slices!

What’s in the Bento: Turkey Salami Pinwheels

• Whole wheat tortilla with mustard, turkey, salami and cheese
• Carrots slices
• Dill pickle slices in the sweet heart container
• Blueberries
• Strawberries with the tops cut off to look like hearts
• Roasted almonds and dried cherries

So much food in such a little box!

2012 is a year of changes for the Evolving Mommy Family. For one, Madeline started preschool. That was a big change on its own. We have also decided to sell our house. We’ve been working like crazy to get it ready to list in the next couple of weeks and everything is coming together. Preschool, selling a house, buying a house and moving. All big changes right? Well there is more. Some of you may be privy to this bit of news already but, I am excited to share our big news here at Evolving Mommy my – home away from home.

The Evolving Mommy Family is growing from a cute little family of three to fun family of four! You want proof? Well, other than my tales of constant nausea and exhaustion from the  first trimester, the story of hearing our babies heart beat for the first time, or the multitude of pictures Maddy has drawn depicting our family with the baby, her with the baby or just the baby, I can share some photographic evidence.

Look at that belly! I love it! Thanks in advance for sharing all the fun in our ever changing journey this year. I think 2012 is going to be a good year!

Maddy started preschool last week. She is going half days for the time being and that includes lunch time. I can’t tell you how excited I was to get to pack fun lunches for her. After we got her signed up for school I started looking for a bento box for her. regular lunch boxes are fine, I just wanted something fun that could help take some of the edge off the potentially undesirable food her classmates might be eating around her. So far I think it is working as her box comes home nearly empty everyday even when I sneak in things she may not normally gravitate to. She loves her pink bento box. How do I know she loves it? Well, one sure sign is telling people she has a bento box is one of the first 2 or 3 things she tells about her time at school so far.

I’m still new to bento boxes and even in the short time I’ve been packing a lunch in one I’ve had super adorable days and kinda okay days. Today’s bento featured a little leftover pizza with black olives – Maddy’s Favorite – cut into small squares. Even though this bento features a “boring” leftover I still think it is cute.

What’s on the plate (or in the box in this case) – Black Olive Pizza Bites

• Leftover pizza with black olives cut into small bite sized squares
• Mini pieces of broccoli and carrots cut into rounds
• Organic fruit leather cut into flowers
• Homemade cranberry and almond granola square
• Clementine and kiwi chunks

As a parent some days are challenging. Those days make you yell or cry or feel so overworked you can’t imagine things being harder. We’ve all been there. I’ve been there.

On the flip side some days are just sort of magical. Those magical days, no matter how normal and boring they might seem on the surface at times, come along and act like an eraser and somehow make all those rough days seem fuzzy and hard to recall. It’s like a drug to dull the memories of the rough times.

Maddy and I had a wonderful day today. We ran errands. Yes, errands are usually the kiss of death for any day. Lots of boring stops, in and out and in and out of the car, and tiredness make errand days dreaded around here. Today was completely different. Maddy didn’t complain or act out once. She listened to every direction and showed patience I didn’t even know she had. After our errands were done and we returned home the rest of the afternoon and evening continued in similar fashion.

I was thrilled. I love days that go by without a fight, or having to count to three, or timeouts. As I started making dinner before Luke got home I thought I had hit the jackpot.

But it gets even better.

Moments after Luke walked in the door tonight Maddy grabbed him and pulled him upstairs for a secret meeting so mommy couldn’t hear. They were up there for a bit and then hastily came down stairs, checked when dinner would be ready, grabbed their shoes and coats and told me they had something they needed to go do.

My previous training in these sorts of situations told me to keep calm and not ask questions. They had a mission and I obviously was not supposed to know any of the details.

So I made dinner, I read a little bit and drank some tea. Just as any mom will tell you, it is not hard to pass the time while the house is quiet.

After about 40 minutes the front door opened and Maddy burst through running across the living room to me. That is when she proudly handed me a picture frame with a pattern pretty flowers in pink, green, fushia, blue and orange around the edge and a picture of herself inside. Then came the words that made my eyes start to tear.

“Mommy I got this for you with my own money because I’m so thankful that I can go to school and I love you. It even has your favorite color flower, my favorite color flower and Daddy’s favorite color flower. ”

Then Luke confirmed that Maddy had in fact raided her piggy bank and hatched the whole plan. Then the tears were rolling down my face.

Maddy then happily made it her duty to help me pick a spot for my surprise gift. We decided on my desk where I can look at it while I am working.

Last night we set up Maddy’s brand new alarm clock. What use does a four year old have for an alarm clock? Several actually. We’ve been working with Maddy for a while on a morning routine. You see my child with her stay-at-home-mom has had a pretty easy morning routine for most of her life. Okay, pretty much all of her life. Get up eat breakfast, eventually get dressed and then get on with the day. That routine while a comfy one for both of us was lacking in several areas.

1.) It is easier to get a four year old to do something if it is expected, always. Things like getting dressed and making a bed should not be a fight every morning.
2.) Four-year-old children should have responsibilities. It’s set expectations for simple responsibilities, such as turn off night light, with a loosey-goosey routine.
3.) Luke planned to take Maddy to school every morning on his way to work. Without some morning structure it is hellish to get out of the house in a reasonable amount of time.

and really the list could go on. So routine has been established, tweaked, tweaked again and changed up a bit until we found something that works for us. With the actual addition of school we knew we needed something to get Maddy us and going in the morning without us having to do the actually waking her up part. That would make for a grumpy kid. What wouldn’t make for a grumpy kid would be waking up to happy music. This morning, her first morning with an alarm clock set to play some of her favorite tunes, Maddy was up and ready to go in record time. No fights, no orders, no having to watch over her every move. She remembered every responsibility on her little list. She was ready to go before Luke was and all in all everyone set off to Maddy’s first day of school in happy moods.

When I stop and think about it I can’t believe my sweet little baby is old enough for school, a packed lunch, picking her own outfits or an alarm clock. But boy oh boy is she ready. So ready she didn’t want to leave school today when I went to pick her up after lunch time.

On a side note those of you who know Madeline will smile to know she paired a very girly fluffy pink skirt, fuzzy pink jacket and black leggings with bows with a very green t-shirt with a big menacing T-Rex plastered across the front. That’s my girl. She is who she is and I like it.

The holiday season is here and in full swing. With this magical time of year there are generally presents. Lots and lots of presents. Bows and baubles. Ribbons and paper. This stuff is everywhere, and really it is like crack for kids. They just can’t get enough. Who doesn’t like gifts? I like gifts. We all like gifts. But around this four-year mark we are currently in there seems to be an issue with the gimmies. I can understand it and the age appropriateness too, but I don’t have to like it.

What better time to talk about beating those greedy gimmies than during the most extravagant present time of the year? It must be an issue many of us face.

So my friends I’m asking you, how do we teach our children to be thankful for what they have? How do we prove that we don’t need every shiny new thing their little eyes see? How do we teach that it really is better to give than to receive?