Lodge Look Pillow

This weekend was my brother's birthday.  I have a wonderful brother.  He is a great man who is kind to all, family, friends, and strangers.  He is one of a kind.  He takes care of everybody.  So when my sister-in-law said she wanted to throw him a surprise birthday party, I thought it was a wonderful idea.  But what do you get a guy who has very few needs or and even fewer wants?  He loves to hunt, always has, and when he and his wife first married I made them Christmas stockings, one with a buck for him and one with a doe for her.  So when I started searching the Internet for something to give him I knew this would be perfect for him.  His living room is decorated in a lodge theme with some of his prized deer heads mounted and hanging for all to see.  I found my inspiration here.  This lovely lady  from Sew Homegrown was inspired by this pillow from Anthropology.

She had her husband draw a pattern and she made this beautiful pillow:

She has graciously shared the pattern on her blog so all of us to use.   There is also a wonderful step by step tutorial to guide you through the entire process.

It is amazing how changing the fabrics and colors gives you a totally different look.  I went to my local quilt store and chose two complementary fat quarters that went with the colors in my brothers living room.

I used a contrasting color for the back and added one of my labels.  I loved how it turned out.  Needless to say my brother was very happy with it.  His wife has requested the matching doe for her birthday.  I told her the doe would be so much easier because you would just cut the antlers off, the hardest part to sew.  Be sure and tell Jessica I sent you when you visit her blog.  Happy sewing

I am linking here:  The Shady Porch, 3 Mango Seeds

Valentine Math for Preschoolers

Preschoolers need lots of experience with sorting, counting, and patterning to develop their pre-math skills.  I love to make games for the preschoolers at my center to play.  Yes play, preschoolers learn through play, not ditto sheets.  So every skill you want them to learn needs to be in the form of a hands on, fun, sensory stimulating activity.  I am going to show you some of the activities I will be using with the preschoolers at my school during Valentines.  First you will need to cut about a bajillion hearts in various sizes and colors.  If you are lucky like me, you will find an organization that has an Ellison die cut machine (thanks M-Y Partnership for Children) and use the hound out of it.

The first game is a matching game.  Using black construction paper cut into 4ths, glue at least one pair of matching hearts per color to the paper.  If you make more than one pair of the same color it gives your children a greater opportunity for successfully finding a match.  But whatever you do don't use an odd number of colored cards or you will cause much frustration because they will never be able to  a match. Lol.

Here is a picture of all the hearts I cut and then laminated for extra durability.

With this pile of hearts, you can sort by size.  I have a small size, a medium, and a large.

Next I used a dry erase marker and wrote numbers on the large hearts and then you have the children count out the number of hearts indicated on the big heart.  The dry erase marker wipes off easily with a dry cloth on laminated items.  This way you can reuse the hearts of another activity.  You also see an example of sorting by color in this picture.

This picture shows patterning.  I used a sentence strip and added the hearts in a repeating pattern.  I used the simplest pattern in the example above.

This pattern is a little more difficult and would be used with your older preschoolers.

This would be the most challenging of the three patterning activities because they would have to chose the right color and the right size heart. 

I hope you found something you can use with the preschoolers in your life.  Thanks for reading.  Would love to hear from you and your activities.

Ephesians 1:16

Valentine Mantle

I have never been one who did a lot of decorating for the holidays.  I guess I found it a little intimidating.  Thanks to Pinterest, I am no longer intimidated.  I have been inspired.  Pinterest has shown me that I can take the things I already own and put them together with some things I create (cheaply) and make something I can be proud of.  The mantle in the picture above was created by using 4 items I keep on it all the time, the red topiary, the mirror, the candle stick, and the FAMILY cutout andadding red candles that I already had for Christmas, a silk rose I had in the cabinet, a simple construction paper heart garland, and a Valentine printable I found here and placed in a frame I already had.  So I spent $0.  I am already planning what I want to do for Easter.  I have been scouring Pinterest for ideas. 

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you will come back later in the week to check out the preschool activities I will be hosting for Valentine's Day themes.  I am sure you will find something you can do with your preschooler. 

Until Next Time

Ephisians 1:16

Delicious Chicken Enchilada

OK, when your teenage son tells you something you make is the best he has ever had, well you just have to crow about it a little.  Last week I wanted to make chicken enchiladas, but didn't have exactly the ingredients my normal recipe calls for, so.... I improvised and it turned out wonderfully. I am going to give you a step by step tutorial of how I did this.  Sorry for not having pictures in the tutorial. I had no idea I would be posting this one until the last minute.  Next time I make it I will be sure to take pictures to add to the step by step.
Ingredients:  4 boneless, skinless chicken breast, 1 medium onion, 8 oz cream cheese, Ro-tel tomatoes, cooking oil, 8-10 tortillas, 1 jar salsa,  1 cup sour cream, 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese.
1.  Boil 4 boneless skinless chicken breast until cooked through (you can cheat and skip this step by using canned chicken).
2.  Saute one medium onion that has been diced in 2 tablespoons of oil until translucent.
3.  When chicken is cooked, chop it up and add it to your onions.
4.  Add a can of Ro-tel tomatoes and heat through.
5.  Add a 8oz block of cream cheese (yes you can use reduced fat or fat free to reduce the fat and calories).
6.  Once the cheese is melted and all ingredients are combined, fill tortilla shells (I use whole wheat to increase the nutritional value) with mixture and place seam side down in a 9x13 dish.  It should make 8-10 enchiladas.
7.  In same pan you just used for filling, pour one jar of your favorite salsa and add 1cup of sour cream (can be reduced fat or fat free) and stir until completely combined. 
8.  Pour salsa mixture over enchiladas.
9.  Sprinkle with cheddar cheese
10. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.
11.  Enjoy!

This is a picture of the final meal.  It would be great if I still had preshoolers in the house I could teach the color yellow.  After teaching preschoolers for 13 years it is hard not to put a lesson into everything.    Also, don't you love the plate, it is from the Dollar Tree, $1. Love it!

Polar Bear Puff Paint

This week at the preschool we are doing activities dealing with polar bears and penguins.  I did my usual seach of my favorite sites for activities that apply to our area of study for the week.  Not really sure which site I got this idea from (sorry for not giving credit where credit is due).  But I will give you step by step instructions on how my students and I prepared this activity for the preschool.

First we gathered our materials for making the paint.  All you need are shaving cream and school glue.  This worked great for us because we are out of white paint in the preschool and I was afraid we would need to add that to the mixture, but no, just shaving cream and glue.

You then mix equal parts of glue and shaving cream.  It looks delicious, just like cool whip.  We also made a polar bear template from and old manila folder.  We used a picture of a polar bear and traced the outline on the manila folder.  We cut the polar bear out and then taped the folder back together.



Doesn't the paint look just like a bowl of Cool Whip?

Next we used a pretty blue construction paper for the background of the picture.  We placed the template of the polar bear on top and used a plastic spoon to cover the template with the puffy paint.

Remove the stencil and Voila!  We then let the kids put their finger in the paint and make puffy white snowflakes around their bear.



Homemade Coffee Creamer

I don't know about you, but I am a coffee lover.  I have been drinking coffee all of my life.  I can remember being just a small child and sneaking and drinking Little Nanny's (my grandmother) coffee.  Funny thing is, she drank Nescafe instant, black and as strong as motor oil.  She could set her cup down and when she came back, it would be over half gone.  I knew better than drinking it all, she would have skinned my hide.  Why during the late 70's did people opt for instant coffee?  I can't stand it now.  Another story for another day I guess.

I still like my coffee black.  But for a special treat I like it sweetened and with cream.  My husband has never been a coffee drinker.  He will say "if it only taste as good as it smelled."  I think it does taste as good as it smells, I love it.  I am not sure when or why, but I got him to try coffee with one of those sweetened creamers like International Delight.  He loved it as long as the portions were 1/3 sweetened cream and 2/3 coffee.  I like having him drink it in the mornings with me, so I would pay the high price for those dairy creamers.  I also worried about what was in those store bought creamers.  One day as I was cruising through Pinterest, I came across a recipe for homemade coffee creamer.  I read through it and decided it would be a cheaper and healthier alternative to the store bought version we had been using. 

So....today I am going to show you just how easy it is to make.  You will need the following ingredients:  sweetened condensed milk (you can use the fat free version), milk (I use skim), and flavoring of your choice.  You will also need a jar/container.  I used an old pickle jar because a pint jar is not big enough and I though a quart jar would be too big.  Whatever jar/container you use, make sure it has a tight fitting lid.  You will need a spoon to get all the sweet sticky goodness out of the sweetened condensed milk can, and a measuring spoon.

What you will need.



Empty the sweetened condensed milk in the container of your choice.

Use the empty can to measure the milk.  Fill the can as full as possible with milk.

Then pour milk in container with sweetened condensed milk.

Add flavoring of your choice.  Today I chose almond hoping to get the amaretto flavor.  I have also used vanilla.  I am sure there are many other flavors that would be great as well.  Someone I was talking to even mentioned using one of those coffee syrups.

Add 1tsp or less to milk mixture.

Place the lid on the container and shake....

shake......

and shake some more.  It take a while to combine all everything.

Pour the mixture in a pretty cup. (I always pour the milk first. You don't have to stir)

Add the coffee.  (Isn't that a pretty cup?  I love these.  I got them and some bowls and plates to match at the Dollar Tree. :)

Enjoy!
It even has a little foam on top.



Monster Manipulatives

In the past few months that I have been blogging, I have posted quite a few post that deal with the suppers and thangs part of my blog, but very few that dealt with the youngans.  So....today I am giving you one for the youngans in your life.  I teach Early Childhood Education at a local high school.  This is a class that teaches high school students the basics of working in the early childhood profession.  I am also the director of our on campus preschool.  This is where my students work and practice the skills they learn in class.  So what I am sharing with you today is an actual activity I have planned to use with the preschool children this week.  We are doing a week of "Marvelous M."  Every activity that we do will begin with the letter M.  On Friday we have plans for several monster activities.  When I was making the plans I needed a manipulative (pre-math) activity to go with monsters.  I began my search on the Internet.  I was looking for printables that I could use to  make matching monsters for the children to practice their visual discrimination skills.  I didn't find anything that I really liked.  I knew I could free hand some monsters, but to get two free handed monsters that look just alike is near impossible.  Yes, I could have used the copier and simply made a copy of each monster so they would be exactly the same, but I had another idea. 

I decided I would free hand my own monsters making each one completely different.  They would be different colors and some would have legs and some wouldn't.

I cut them all out.  I decided some would have round eyes and some would have square eyes, some would have one eye and others would have two, some would have teeth, and some wouldn't, do you see where I am going with this?

I assembled the tools I needed to make the eyes, mouths, and teeth.  I free handed the eyeballs, squares and circles of varying sizes (monsters have these big uneven eyes so don't sweat it).  I used a hole punch to make the pupil of the eye and I mixed it up and made them of differing colors.  Then to make the mouths I free handed some black strips for the mouth and used decorative scissors with a jagged design to make the teeth.  A glue stick kept them all in place.

After I attached all their faces, I laminated them because I knew that after they were handled by 18 small little hands their faces would be falling off. 

You can have your children sort them by those that have legs and ......

Those that don't.  You can sort them by color, by those that have teeth and those that don't, those that have one eye and those with two eyes, those with round eyes and those that have square eyes. 

I hope you are inspired by these cute little monsters.  The old saying "necessity is the mother of invention" was sure the case as far as this activity was concerned. 

Renee

Repurposing an Old Window

In a past post I told you about redecorating my living room.  This has been an on going project.  I am very particular and get these ideas of what I want and won't settle for anything less than what I want.  That said, I still have a very large bare wall in my living room because I have not been able to find that one thing that makes me completely happy.  On a small wall I made a piece to hang.  I had an old window in the basement from a house we used to live in.  I absolutely love old windows.  I have been waiting for years to do something with this window.  So this was going to be the day that I finally did something with that old window. 

I started by adding hangers to my old window.  These I purchased at Wal-Mart.  They could also be purchased at a hardware store.  I don't remember exactly how much I paid for them, but I can promise you it wasn't a lot because my decorating budget slim to none.  They need to be placed evenly.  I used the panes in the window as my guide of where to place place them.  Then use just a screw driver to secure them.

This is the Martha Stewart Circle Cutter.  I purchased it several years ago at Micheal's.  I do remember I had a coupon so it was half off the regular price, but not real sure what that was, but would guess less than $10.  I used the circle cutter to cut circles out of turquoise, brown, and cream colored scrapbook paper.  One tip, I learned this the hard way, cut the inner circle first then the outer one or your cutter will not be resting on the paper and your circle will move making it impossible to cut the inner circle.

I placed the circles on the window where I wanted them.  Some of them I cut in half and rested along the edge of the pane.

I coated the window with Modge Podge (I make my own, you can see it in the corner of the picture.  I found the recipe on Pinterest).  Then place the circles back where I had them.

Coat the entire window with a nice layer of Modge Podge.  Be careful not to get the paper too wet because it will ripple.  You can see a couple of my circles did ripple.  If the do, just keep pressing them down with your Modge Podge applicator.

After the window was finished, I went a head and hung it on the wall.  I needed to put it somewhere to dry out of the way and this seemed like the best idea to me.

This is the finished project.  What do you think?  I am happy with it.  I would like to accent it with some smaller items.  I am thinking maybe some letters from our names, or spelling out the word FAMILY or WELCOME and painting it in coordinating colors.  I am open to suggestions. If you have an idea for something that would compliment my window, please share!!!

Y'all come back!
Renee