Halloween Crafts

We've been doing a lot of Halloween crafts for the past few weeks.

Here we did hand print spiders for Big N while Little N made footprint ghosts (which we mailed to a family member before we remembered to take a picture).

We made construction paper candy corn that Big N added a little more fun to since she wasn't a big fan of how our craft looked. Although thinking about it now, it's probably because she has absolutely no clue what candy corn is, oh well, no need to introduce more candy now.

Toddler Drawer Organization

Since I'm headed back to work in a matter of days, we need our mornings to be SUPER efficient, so I've started to get everything as organized as possible so it doesn't matter who is doing the morning routine, *cough, cough R*, there will be no excuse for the kids to not have underwear and socks.

Instead of buy an expensive organizer for the kids stuff that probably would end up ruined anyway, I cut up pieces of cardboard and duct taped them in the drawer as an insert. Now everything has a place. Ahhh...I love being organized.

Crinkle Cat

Using Martha Stewart for inspiration Big N and I made this crinkly cat one day during craft hour while Little N was sleeping. Big N is getting so independent in her art. She can now fold the paper herself and do ALL the gluing, she tries really hard to use the scissors herself and can so far cut a triangle. What a huge change from a year ago when it was really just me doing things and her watching. Anyways, we're going to hang this from the ceiling for Halloween but, it was just much to wet with glue at this point to take it anywhere.

World Word Art

If you remember back in March when two of my niece's and one nephew were celebrating their birthdays we made them a zebra, an elephant, and a monkey to hang in their respective rooms. So of course, now that we are celebrating the first birthday of my other niece she needed something to put in her room too. When I asked her parents they said she was really into word world these days, or at least smiles when it's on. So, we went with a word world theme and made the duck for her to put up.

At first I attempted to just use white glue to outline the duck and then had planned to paint everything on colour so it was just a subtle picture, but that didn't turn out well at all, so I ended up painting the whole thing.


Now, we just need all the kids to get healthy so we can actually deliver our present to little B.

Sock Bun Curly Hair

So I've been crazy addicted to Pinterest recently, if you haven't checked it out, DO IT, it's one heck of a time waster, especially the iPhone app, I can now keep track of all my virtual pin board needs.

Anyways, I came across a few posts that linked back to two videos, one for a sock bun and the other for how to use a sock bun to make curly hair and I'm honestly amazed. Considering I have stick straight hair, and I did absolutely nothing like the video suggested, I just threw a rolled up sock in there and took it out in the morning. And I ended up with this:
It makes me believe that if I actually used the water and perhaps a little product in my hair before putting it up there I would actually have a nice wave to my hair. Look out work, my curly hair is going to look awesome! :-)

The Princess and the Dragon

Big N has recently decided that she doesn't like dragons, so R had the idea that the two N's should play the princess and the dragon. Of course with Little N being the dragon, I'm not sure if the thought was to get Big N to like dragons because her little brother was one, or that she should just beat up dragons, but either way, the kids had fun putting together their princess and dragon hats. As you can see Big N did all the gluing on her hat all by herself, which meant it took an extra couple hours for the hat to actually be dry. Big N was definitely more interested in wearing her hat than Little N, but he did enjoy playing with the fire mouth on his dragon.
Big N is just starting to get into the make believe stage, so I think in the coming year we'll have a lot of fun pretending.

Banana Crumble Muffin Recipe

Is it bad that our family can eat a dozen muffins in one day? So, when we're running out of groceries, we go through a lot of muffins. I came across this recipe and it was DELICIOUS! Definitely one to add into the regular rotation. I did make a few substitutions as per usual. Here's what we did:

Ingredients:
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 bananas, mashed
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tbsp. all purpose flour
1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tbsp. butter

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease 12 muffin cups, or line with muffin papers.
2. In a large bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, and baking powder. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg and melted butter. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
3. In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and cinnamon. Cut in 1 tablespoon butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping over muffins.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.