Fall Fun

Wow!! I cannot believe it is already November!! Christmas is right around the corner!! It has been just over 7 weeks since baby Joel was born!! He has brought so much joy into our lives!! Nathan is such an awesome big brother. He loves his baby!! With a young toddler and an infant, sleep and spare time are very rare!! I have started and restarted this blog several times. I originally started this blog as a way to keep up with my family and projects. Turns out I don' t have a lot of time to devote to keeping it up. However, I am going to try my best to keep going (even if the only person who reads this is my husband).

Between yesterday and today Nathan and I made a Fall tree. I drew a tree to the best of my ability (I am NOT an artist). Then used my all cookie cutters to draw leaves, acorns, and turkeys.

 

I drew the tree on brown butcher paper that we have had for several years. In the middle of the tree I used my acorn cookie cutter and wrote one letter in each acorn to spell out Nathan's name. He is too young to identify letters or that I spelled his name, but I want to give hi as much exposure as I can as often as I can. I outlined the tree and leaves in permanent marker to make it stand out. While I was drawing I gave Nathan his own paper to draw on. But he wanted to help me draw on mine. :)

He loves to draw and color. Using pens are his favorite. Since he is still so young he does not get pens often as he either writes on his clothes or mine :/.

So today when he got up from his nap I let him use markers to color on the tree. I gave him red, yellow, and orange.

He was very excited to color. I talk a lot about how we only color on paper. I do this in hopes that he will not color on my walls. :) So far so good!!  He has colored the paper and his hands.

We will continue to color on our tree through fall. As he gets older I hope to turn it into a thankful tree where we write what we are thankful for on the leaves.

Closet Dividers

I have exactly one week left before I have my C-Section with Baby J. I have been working

on getting things ready for baby boy #2. Here are the double sided closet dividers

for Baby J's closet. I wanted to replace the original closet dividers that I used with Baby boy #1.
I used fabric that I ordered when I ordered the custom bedding. We are reusing the same 

bedding/nursery theme for baby boy #2. 

Here are the double sided closet dividers that I made for Nater Tater's big boy room.

Again, I used left over fabric from the custom bedding that was used in the nursery.
I however, got new bedding for his big boy room from Pottery Barn Kids. I will be posting 

pictures soon of his big boy room reveal. 

Stay At Home Mom

     So I have been MIA on here for quite a while!! I just did not realize it had already been over a year!! I know in one of my early blog posts, I blogged about becoming a stay at home mom after the birth of my first son. However, instead of leaving my job, I was given  promotion that I could not pass up at the time!! I have spent the last year as education coordinator for my school. I have enjoyed the challenge and helping the teachers succeed in their classrooms. With that being said my last day work was officially Friday August 28, 2015. I am so excited to see what the future holds for me and my family!
     Today is my first day on the job as stay at home mom!! So far we have not had any major catastrophes! We had a grand adventure to the store to pick up some items my husband needs to finish building a dresser. We have also had some fun play time. And as I am writing this Nater Tater is currently napping!! Bless nap time!! Nater Tater has been in daycare for the past year. In the last several months of daycare Nater Tater decided that he did not need to sleep for more than 10-30 minutes. This had us having some very long evenings where he was too tired to function! Today, however he has already been asleep for over an hour. I do hope that we can continue this. His poor little body needs the rest!!
     Some super exciting news! We have baby #2 on the way!! I will be having a C-Section of Tuesday September 15, 2015! That is just two weeks away!! EEK!!! I am excited and nervous about how drastic our lives are about the change!! I have so much to do and not a lot of time to do it in! My poor husband has been overworking himself for months with projects to get everything ready! I just hope that our very long to do list will get smaller and maybe completed before Baby J's big arrival.
     Since we are having another boy we are moving Nater Tater out of the nursery and into another room that we are turning into his big boy room. I am afraid that we are going to spring too many changes on him at once, but hopefully we will have smooth transitions! We are almost to the point that we can move Nater Tater into his big boy room. I hope he likes sleeping in his big boy bed instead of the crib! This could make nap times more challenging to mommy though!!
     I will be posting pictures of Nater Tater's big boy room soon!! For now I am going to get back to my embroidery machine. I am making closet dividers for Nater's big boy room! :)

Coupons and Reward programs....Oh my!

It has been a dream of mine to one day become an extreme couponer! I am starting out slow!!!! The month of July has been my first time couponing. I am using coupons that I find online; mainly through coupons.com. I have been using several blogs of others to help me get started!

Frugalfindsduringnaptime.com
Yeswecoupon
QueenBeeCoupons.com
Hip2Save.com

I am still learning about coupons, but so far, I LOVE IT!! It has helped my family stay within our grocery budget for the first time in several months!!

I also have joined several rewards programs or apps.

Ibotta app
Shopkick app
Checkout 51 app
SavingStar App

These all help you earn points for money/gift cards or to get cash back for your grocery purchases.

We also eat a lot of Kellogg's products. So I joined the Kellogg's Family Rewards. There are codes on their products that you can redeem for cash or prizes.
I found some codes on the Hip2Save website that I was able to use to get extra points!

The codes are: (They may still be working)
GETFUELFORSCHOOL- 20 points
AMAZINGSPIDERMAN- 20 points
SPIDEYEXCITEMENT- 20 points
SPRINGONTHECOLOR- 20 points
EARNGREATREWARDS- 20 points
CRAZYGOODCONCERT- 20 points
HOWITWORKS20PNTS- 20 points
EARNSWEETREWARDS- 50 points
GIFTOFMUSICBONUS -20 points
KFRSHARETHANKS- 20 points

I also joined the Pampers village since we buy LOTS of diapers for Nater Tater!

I suggest you check out these awesome sites for great offers and savings!
Happy Saving!!

Happy Father's Day!

I have the most wonderful husband and father to my little boy! I wanted to do something that made his first Father's day fun and memorable! I was inspired by this post by Growing Book by Book. So I ordered the book I love you Daddy!  by Jillian Harker. I am hoping to start a great tradition of giving a "Father's Day" book to my husband every year that he can read and share with our children. My husband and I both love to read and I hope we are able to pass that love onto our children!

I also used a simple salt dough recipe to make molds of my son's hands and feet.

Salt Dough Recipe:
1 cup salt
1 cup flour
1/2 cup warm water

Combine. If it is too sticky add more flour. Roll out and make impression. Bake for 3 hours at 200 degrees.

It is really hard to try to make the mold of hands and feet when you are working with a squirmy 3 month old! Especially, when trying to do it by myself. I was able to get both feet, but only one hand! After multiple attempts and him snatching a chunk of the dough I gave up on getting his other hand.

I can't get it to rotate :(

 I can't wait for more firsts and adventures with my little family!!!

Alpha Treats

I have a shopping problem that I have been working on controlling over the last couple of months. It is getting better! The Dollar Tree is a danger zone for me as it is one of my favorite places to go. You will never know what you can find! I found these adorable stuffed dogs! I had to get them because I knew I could find some way to use them! So I bought a few thinking I could use them in my classroom somehow. I did!! I made an alphabet game with them.

I also found the dog bowl at the dollar store.

I found a box and decorated it with scrapbook stickers and filled it with magnetic letters.

Then I hot glued a magnet to the dogs mouth so they can "eat" the treats.

 Once the dog "eats" the treat, the children have to identify the letter.

 

 

Here is what the completed game looks like.

I will use this as a small group or center in my preschool classroom. They are going to love playing with the dogs and I hope to sneak some learning in there too!! :)

Early Birthday Present

My wonderful husband built my early birthday present last weekend! He built me a raised flower bed. I am going to try to grow pumpkins for the second time. The first time I was able to grow vines but no pumpkins :( So I am going to try again in the raised flower bed and see if I have better luck. I want to use the pumpkins to decorate with in the fall.

I planted 10 big pumpkin seeds, 10 Medium pumpkin seeds, and 10 small pumpkin seeds in a seed starter kit. Once the vines start growing I will replant them in the flower box. I also planted 5 watermelon seeds and some herbs. Sometimes my thumb is more black than green, so we will see how it all turns out!

Bentley and Cooper (aka Pete and Repeat)

My dogs were very interested in what I was working on. They wanted to help me plant seeds!