Using my Elf for naps

I REALLY, REALLY, do enjoy it when my kids nap. Really. So I came up with a brilliant idea to get us through the holidays WITH naps.

Enter Desmond, our Elf. Our little critter is quite the character. Stealing candy, making messes by dumping out laundry baskets full of clean clothes. You know, mischievous, like my 3 year old. Well, he got crafty this week. Desmond grabbed a whole bunch of toilet paper rolls, and YES, we do have them just laying around. He covered them in scrapbook paper and strung them together with some twine. Inside each roll he placed a little riddle. A riddle that describes a special assignment for us to do. Perhaps he might have shared one with me. "Snap! Crackle! Pop!" indicating it is a day to make rice krispie treats.

25 little riddles inside a fun little advent calendar crafted by our special Elf Desmond. But, just as we have been told the rules of our elf, we must not touch him and he must not speak to us, SANTA's ORDERS, this assignment advent comes with rules too. We may open the calendar every morning and read the riddle. However, we must continue to be good all day long and only AFTER our nap will the tools and supplies we need to complete our assignments appear with Christmas magic from the north pole.

Will it work? I don't know. But it sure is going to be fun!!

Desmond the Elf

Have you heard of The Elf on the Shelf ? Well, until last year I hadn't. But I thought is was so fabulous and couldn't wait until this year to get it going with Big Sis DIVA.

If you are not familiar with this tradition here it is in a nut shell. A little doll elf that sits on the shelf. Comes with a fantastic little story book about Christmas magic and how said elf reports to Santa each night. Elf lets Santa know if the members of the house are naughty or nice. So basically this crazy little doll keeps your kids in check all season long.

Our family Elf is named Desmond, and he arrived last Monday night, just in time for pre Thanksgiving meltdowns. "Desmond is watching for naughty little children!", but I would NEVER say that to my kids. Nope! HA!! I do not like doing Christmas anything before Turkey day, but Big Sis DIVA found Desmond's "Elf Mobile" aka his box and book and desperately wanted to know what it was. So his arrival was early. In the case of a 3 year old who is naughty a lot this is a good thing!

We have been having a blast. Big Sis DIVA eagerly hunts Desmond down every morning to see what mischief he has found himself in. Throughout the day if she knows she is up to no good, she will stop and point to his perch on the hanging light above our kitchen table and tell me, "Desm and wating". Her speak for Desmond is watching. LOVE IT!!!

Here are a few snapshots of Desmond's recent mischief.

Good ol' Desmond pulled all Big Sis DIVA's baby photo albums off the shelf for a look!


Desmond stole a cookie and even ate some!

Before Big Sis DIVA's Birthday party, Desmond swiped the candles!

Gobble Gobble

Happy Turkey Day my fellow Americans! May you survive the day without punching some relative in the face. Be safe! Don't eat too much in case you need a fast getaway.



We are taking the easy route and using my husbands CRAZY work schedule to allow ourselves to be safe and eat in true American style at the Chinese Buffet up the street, alone without the thickness of family hovering about! Yum Yum! And just the usual bicker amongst us. Awesome.


But just to keep in the spirit, I did force my little family of 4 to participate in fun little crafts of the season. For your enjoyment:

Feather Hats out of scrap construction paper


Family Handprint turkey!

And as usual, thank you Pinterest for your fabulous ideas!

What happened to the magic?

I love Christmas. Really! I love it. And now through the eyes of my kids, I really am giddy with anticipation. I can not wait for the holiday season. However, I am furious with the constant barrage of Christmas decor starting back before Halloween. I do not find it acceptable to walk into the grocery store and find Rudolph sitting atop pumpkins that have yet to be chosen for jack-o-lanterns. I hate having to explain to my daughter that Santa does not come to dinner on Thanksgiving. I am already sick and tired of hearing Christmas music and we have not even sat down to stuff ourselves full of fowl.

What is the problem? Why must we do this? We ALL know Christmas comes in the month of December. Perhaps marketing teams feel that consumers will not spend money if Santa is not thrust in their faces for months leading up to the big day. On the contrary. I find myself REFUSING to spend any of my money at any store that floods my vision with Christmas decor way before its time. I strongly feel that those people who will be spending money year round for Christmas (myself included) are going to do so whether or not the twinkle lights and bells are going. However, push me to see stockings hung in October and you can be assured I will take my money elsewhere.

STOP IT! Stop forcing Christmas to come along 3 months before it should. Allow Halloween to have its own time. Allow this country to enjoy Thanksgiving and all that encompasses this holiday without the stressful rush to hurry it up and move on to Christmas. Allow our Children to experience was THANKSGIVING involves without the commercialized necessity to make sure they jump start Christmas wants. Allow our kids to be thankful for what they have, family, friends, and food and of course their toys.

Let us go back to the magic of the season. Allow for total transformation into the wonderful world of the holidays AFTER Thanksgiving. Let us give our younger generations and our children something wonderful and special to look forward to. Do we all recall that awesome feeling we have after we decorate the house for the holidays and put the last box away, walk into the room and see the magic. and feel the holiday warmth within our soul? Imagine if we could give that feeling to our children, with the world.

Think about it. Consumers make the difference. We can make it happen. I personally have not set anything Christmas out in view in my home. My daughter will be spending the night with her grandma Friday night and will come home to Christmas wonderland on Saturday. It really is that simple!

YeeHaw! Jessie Party

Big Sis DIVA turns 3 years old this week, the 25th to be exact. So we had her birthday bash this last weekend. Big Sis DIVA LOVES Toy Story. However, Toy Story is just not marketed at all to little girls, so we improvised. We had a country Jessie Theme party and it was a blast. Big Sis DIVA loved it. And H4L had a swell time too!

I used my favorite new toy, the Cricut, and made a fun birthday banner using all "Jessie" colors.

We have a local park that has a great pavilion surrounded by a beautiful park. We enjoy many hours at this park, so I just knew this was the perfect location for Big Sis DIVA's Jessie party. Finding "Jessie" theme items was quite a task so we ended up making our own decorations. Here are smores pops. ummm yum. Thank you Pinterest for this idea. Marshmallow dipped in chocolate rolled in graham crackers.

It was very difficult to find a Jessie theme Pinata, so we took a cute boot and decorated it with Jessie cutouts we printed right at home.

And my fabulous MIL made Big Sis DIVA's cake again this year. A gorgeous and delicious Jessie hat.

Did you know you can run cheapy brown paper lunch bags through your printer and make fun goody bags? I didn't. Thanks to my fantastic husband, I now know AND we had these little cuties to give everyone, young and old alike.

We had a superb time celebrating Big Sis DIVA's 3rd birthday. Thank you to all that joined us in making it special.


*please note that this is a test post from my new tablet. please forgive any format errors as i figure out how to blog from this toy.

4 months? Really???

Has it really been 4 months since I last posted? Wow!

Well I am sure you can guess lots of happenings have gone down at the Pink Haired Momma pad. Princess Pork Chop is now a fatty 6 month old character. Big Sis DIVA started SCHOOL, yes! School. Well, at least that is what I tell her Mother's Day Out (MDO) is. H4L has officially passed all of his training and is a real live TRAIN CONDUCTOR!!! CHOO CHOO! And I am still fluffin along with pink hair.

I have missed blogging. So many things that I have to share from the last few months, lots of tot fun and mommy fun since I now have 2 days a week of NO TODDLER!! My plan is to share some of our fun over the last 4 months and get to chatting again about our day to day craziness here in Pink Haired Land. But we will see. I do have a WILD (almost) 3 year old and a 6 month old Pork Chop, so time will allow what it will. I do, however, look very forward to connecting with all my bloggy buds again!

And did I mention Big Sis DIVA turns 3 YEARS OLD this Friday? How did this happen?

Hearts and Marbles

Pinterest is monopolizing all my time. I love it. It inspires me so much. Big Sis DIVA and I got busy in the kitchen with one of the inspirations I discovered on pinterest. WE made simple cupcakes SNAZZY with a simple marble.

Check it out. Lemon cake batter. Placed in cupcake liners. And a single marble placed just so, to make a lovely little welcome home dessert for Train Main H4L from his daughters! Easy Peasy and adorable.

Thank you Pinterest. Now I am off for more inspiration!

Pinterest

Pinterest.

I am in love.

That is all.

Cupcake Ice Flowers

Really! It is so hot. Too hot. My poor kid hasn't seen a park in weeks. I can not handle even opening the door after 8am. I melt. Pink puddles of me line the sidewalk. So we stay in. But I want my kiddo to have fresh air, so we head outdoors early early in the morning and do a fun little craft, swing a few swings on the backyard swing set and then its back into our Pink Haired Cave for the day.

This was a fun little activity we did. It was actually a two parter. On the first day we braved the heat and waltzed through our family garden at Gha's (grandma) ranch. We studied leaves and bugs and most important, Flws, or Flowers.

Big Sis DIVA loves flowers these days. She examines them with a keen eye. Smells them and carries around her pretty flws. She loves them. So we picked a variety of flowers as we named off what color they were and a few leaves and brought them home. I decided to take these fabulous find and freeze them in water in a muffin tin. So day 2, before the heat set in outside, found us in the backyard exploring "Cupcake" flowers.

Quite enjoyable. Cool. Easy and educational.

Colored noodles

Every morning before the heat sets in and we have to lock our doors, pull our shades and watch Toy Story for the zillionth time, Big Sis DIVA and Princess Pork Chop get to do a little fun activity outside. This week we had some fun with noodles.

Colored Noodles

I took a package of Ramen Noodles (CHEAP) and cooked them. Then drained them. Added a bit of grapeseed oil and food coloring and stirred them up. I then set them in the fridge overnight. In the morning I pulled the noodles out of the fridge and we headed outside to play. We used utensils from our outdoor kitchen to give it a look. Big Sis DIVA does not like to get her hands dirty, despite all my attempts to get her to, so I settled for tongs and spoon play. Now, Princess Pork Chop has no problem getting dirty and playing with colored spaghetti.

We had a really fun time and discussed colors and bugs and worms and cooking and pretty much every single thought a toddler could come up with.

Big Sis DIVA loved the colored noodles but did not like it when Princess Pork Chop climbed in the bowl. She told me, "not right momma, sisa doesn't go in the bowl." Gotta love my everything has to be in perfect order 2 year old!

Tin can windchime

I love color. I love whimsy. I love things that are a little bit funky. And I LOVE doing activities with my kids. So when I happened upon this lovely little idea, I knew Big Sis DIVA and I had to get to crafting.

Tin Can Wind Chime.

Awesome!

I saved up some veggie cans and tuna fish cans. Cleaned them, sent them through the dishwasher and laid them out to dry. I am a bit of a worrier, so I took black electrical tape and covered the "open" edge of all the cans.

Then I set up the workspace and surprised Big Sis DIVA. We used spray paint for our project.

I allowed her to watch me paint the cans while she played on her swing set. I didn't want her to breathe in the fumes.

After the cans dried, Big Sis DIVA helped me use the hammer to poke holes in the cans (you know this was a riot, right?) and thread wire to hang our cans. Simple. fun. Exciting.

We now have a lovely little colorful funky piece of whimsy hanging on the swing set, a fine choice by Big Sis DIVA, that blows in the wind and makes beautiful sounds. Oh! Wait! We have no wind. It is a summer in Houston! Perhaps in the fall the whimsical tunes will accompany the whimsical appearance of our fun little craft!

The definition of friendship.

When we are tots, friendship is defined by who has the best dessert and is willing to share during lunch. We all know this is a big deal when we are 5! As we grow up, we begin to look a little deeper and our friendships are defined by who gets their drivers license first and who can use the car most often. And then we grow a little more and friendships become defined as who can pass off the fake id and score beer for the next party.

Time continues on and so do friendships. We find ourselves married and friendships begin to take on new definitions yet again. We look more for those cool couples we can hang out with and enjoy a young party style lifestyle and yet be "mature" as we purchase adult things like houses. At first it is young couples who have no children. Then as the womb begins to speak out, we define our friendships by those young couples who have young kids. We surround ourselves with these friends to gain perspective and guidance. We fake our way through kid parties with these friends, definition being friends with cute babies we can spoil.

And then it happens. We ourselves have kids and thus a new definition of friendship is formed.

This is where I am in the great journey of life. My friendships are defined by the simple notion of if I make the guest list to my kids play date friend's birthday parties. It might sound silly or irrational, but it is the truth. At this point in life, your social circle seems to surround your children. It is only natural. Its what happens. We really come full circle on the definition of friendship. Perhaps more dessert sharing should go on in adulthood.

Looking forward to the next stage and definition of friendship as Big Sis DIVA starts preschool in the fall. Any tips?

Midsummer catchup

Are you enjoying your Summer?

We are, here in the Pink Haired House of Chaos. We totally enjoy the sunny 100 plus temperature days that keep us indoors longing for a day of rain, so we can then go outside and play. But that aside, we are having a great summer here. Hence the reason my posts have been so infrequent. Oh and the fact that I have a new baby. Ha!

We have been running around town introducing Princess Pork Chop to the play date circuit. And Big Sis DIVA has been honing in her crafting skills and learning how to make masterpieces. I have snapped all sorts of pictures and hope to share these fun activities with you in the coming days. If for nothing else than to show off my beautiful kids and their beautiful smiles as we live day by day!

Thanks for popping in and stay tuned!!

Princess Pork Chop

Critter2 has earned herself an official nickname in our home. She is now affectionately known to those who love her dearly as Princess Pork Chop. Someday, I am pretty sure she will hate me for allowing this name to come about, but I can not help it. It is cute. It fits her and I like it.

And lets not mention she is a bit "porky". We went for the 2 month checkup. you know the yucky one with the first round of shots. BOOOOOO! But aside from those horrible few moments we discovered that Princess Pork Chop has doubled her birth weight in 2 short months, weighing in at 10.2 pounds. She is now 4 inches longer/taller whatever we call it at this point. She is developmentally and physically soaring and showing no signs of trouble from her early birth.

She is amazing cute with her fluffy little legs and chunky little cheeks. I could sit and smooch her all day. She has started to coo and this is really cute. Big Sis DIVA was not a coo'er, so I find this development thrilling. Princess Pork Chop has also stolen my heart as she has started smiling real smiles, in response to my voice and face. Ahhhh. Melts a momma's heart I tell ya.

Big Sis DIVA is still enjoying her baby sister and so far no attempts to throw her out in the trash have been uncovered! So we will continue on with these two cute babes and live and love life!