Sensory FUN!

As mentioned in last night's post I have been perusing all kinds of fabulous blogs and today A4, C3 and I had a blast experimenting, playing, and having a great, sometimes messy, time doing it!

Our first project was "Moon Sand". A4 and C3 helped measure 4 cups of corn starch, 10 cups of play sand, and 3 cups of water into a tote. Mama added a splash of green food coloring and began the mixing process only to realize I "should" have worn gloves, woops! (Thankfully 10 hours later my hand has lost it's Hulk Green hue!) Our batch of "Moon Sand" was a little on the wet side, but they

LOVED playing in it. A4 enjoyed filling his cup to overflowing and watching it expand back out, "It's lava Mama!" C3 loved adding grass and other green goodies to his Moon Sand. Mixing, playing, and storing the Moon Sand in the storage tote makes it an easy, almost mess free activity!

After an hour or so, the Moon Sand had lost it's appeal and Mama popped the lid on for more play tomorrow or the next day. The boys popped inside for a snack and Mama grabbed some goodies for building a "snow-globe".

Supplies: Water bottle (or any plastic container with a screw lid that you can securely tape closed), a collection of glitter, micro beads, cut up colored straw bits, glitter glue, colored rice, water, and apricot oil. I let the boys choose what they wanted to put in their bottle which was already half full of water. They had a great time choosing and pouring in their chosen ingredients as we discussed what items float, which ones sink, and why. Once we had sprinkled all of our ingredients into our bottles, we added a touch of food coloring (green is the color of the day it seems), added the oil, and Mama taped the lids on. They were SO excited about their "Sparkly Globbly Goop Bottles" they bolted upstairs to wake Daddy from his Sunday afternoon nap

and show him, then out the door they shot to Gramma's house to show her too!

Note: the glitter glue makes some pretty interesting globs in the bottles and the ridges of the water bottles will hold some of the oil as you slowly tilt the bottles upside down and right side up and gives a "lava lamp" look as they slowly make their way up. At bedtime I showed the boys how to hold their bedtime flashlights behind their bottles and watch the glitter and goodies float and morph around in the bottle. Another fun and successful activity!

With Daddy awake, Mama could run to Lowes to buy some pea gravel (was going to use aquarium gravel for our next project, but at $3.98 for a wee little bag at Walmart, I decided to pop into Lowes and snag two huge bags of pea gravel for 3.68 each-no brainer!) Popped back home, snagged more of my empty totes and went to work rinsing

the gravel and putting a nice thick layer in

each of two totes. (I used to sentimentally attach myself to stuff and stored everything. With a recent move, I let go of a lot of clutter and in return have a collection of empty totes-it's rather freeing and quite handy to have all these empty totes laying about)

-"I'm going to see if this grass floats!"

-"These are dangerous meat eaters mama!"

The result? More hours of play, experimenting with items that float and don't float, searching for hidden "jewels" and planting sea weed in our pond box. A menagerie of critters in our dinosaur box along with branch trees and boulders. The lion even rescued a "long neckie dinosaur" who got stuck in a tree!

I simply adore watching them play together!

Really....must.....blog......

I really need to blog much more regularly! I must create a schedule that I can stick with....and stick with it. Not something that would regulate and take away from the creativity or make it forced, but something that would get me in the habit to blog more than once every three months.

Last night I spent a wonderful evening (hours and hours I'm sure) hopping about and perusing various blogs, mainly Play Create Explore and The Imagination Tree where I found a plethora of wonderfully fabulous ideas for kids play and development. My first "experiment" was "Treasure Rocks", aka Coffee Playdough. My boys LOVED IT! I had to tweak the recipe just a touch and use rice flour as we don't have wheat flour in our house (gluten allergy). But it worked great and I enjoyed playing with the dough as well-being it smelled like my favorite drink.

My boys spent hours with their cousins playing with the "Treasure Rocks". Hiding them, breaking them open, discovering their treasures, hopping about in joy, asking Mama to put the treasures back inside the rocks and hide them again. Thankfully even after baking, the insides were still soft enough to remold for hours and hours of play. Also, one of the girls scooped some water from a nearby puddle and softened her rock to make it even more malleable, so it is very easy to re-soften (much more successful than trying to soften playdough ;) ).

Snagged some used coffee grinds from Mum this afternoon (why do people look at you funny when asking for used coffee grounds?), I'll drink a cup or two of joe' this evening and have enough grounds to make another batch of dough tonight so then can play with the raw dough tomorrow and see where their creativity takes them! Creativity! The name of the game these days! :)

Gluten Free...

I keep hearing people say they wish they could "go gluten free" so they could lose weight easily. Makes me giggle at the thought. Eating gluten free isn't a "diet", it's a lifestyle. You can lose weight with almost any lifestyle change, it's simply the fact of sticking with it.

The "easy" or what my optimistic attitude has seen as a huge benefit in a gluten free diet, is the strictness with which one has to adhere to because of the scarcity of "gluten free" foods. Before my hubby was diagnosed as gluten intolerant we ate fast foods entirely too much (even as a wife/mom trying to get into a good/organic food lifestyle). With cross-contamination and gluten being found in most prepared foods it was simply unsafe to breeze through a drive through or simply grab whatever prepackaged/convenience food was on the first shelf. BLESSING IN DISGUISE!

Fortunately, we have found restaurants that have food that is safe for my hubby and truly enjoy a wonderful dinner out and/or a yummy pizza delivered a time or two a week. Even in our home, the pantry choices are different than before his diagnosis was given (thankfully I am generally, but not always, wise enough to not buy the pack of Oreo cookies because lil' ol' ME will be the only one eating the entire package).

Over the past five years the "gluten free industry" has grown tremendously and we have been very fortunate to find more and more advice, products, and support. But at the same time, what has been a very "healthy diet" due to most products being made with whole foods and healthy nutritional values, now is very likely to become a sugar laden, overly processed, prepared food industry all it's own with very few of the health benefits of the original gluten free lifestyle. I for one intend to be scrutinizing labels and companies in order to keep our diets (what we eat, not an attempt to lose weight) on a healthy road. Just some food for thought. :)

Article that prompted this late evening blog :) : http://health.yahoo.net/rodale/MH/is-gluten-making-us-fat

Making Do....

We've been trying to figure out what we want to do with our bed, inability to find a headboard we like, and a HUGE bedroom wall. The lamps were originally bought for our previous home and were used as bedside tables. The console table is also a piece we had bought for the living room in our last home, but it hadn't found a good place in our new place.

Now, I just need to get some extra pillows to give the whole thing a touch of "finish".

Even Surrey the cat gives his wandering approval.

The best laid plans.....

Wellll......Italian Crockpot Soup was put on hold and instead we dined on saltine crackers, OJ, a little bit of brown rice, and gatorade, sigh. Woke up to my youngest emptying his tummy on our bed and spent the rest of the day giving him baths, cuddlying with him, scrubbing floors and doing laundry.



After the boys were bundled up in their nice clean, aired out bedroom for the night, I did take the opportunity to make some gluten-free bread in our toaster oven (still waiting for the proper wiring for our "real range"). Note to self: Fill mini pans no more than 3/4 of batter or it will rise and burn where it pushes it's alluminum foil cover against the top of the oven. I'm looking forward to making some french toast in the morning, snacking on some cinnamon bread drizzled in butter, and pairing some cheesy bread with our lunch tomorrow.



It's almost impossible to believe that today is the last day of 2010! Where did it go? This weekend will be a week of celebrating all we've accomplished this past year and looking foward to what we will take on and accomplish over the next 365 days!

A Day Of Produce and Food Prep......

I have a horrible habit of fluctuating in ........well, some of my habits. I KNOW that eating healthy, local, and organic is the absolute best for my health and the health of my children, but sometimes those other goodies look so yummy and convenient. Then BOOM I'm on a downward spiral, cutting corners, and even allowing my babies to ingest yuckies.

So, another goal and habit that I must master this next year and forevermore is a good meal plan and health habit that I'll stick with and am able to keep my family on track with. In my perusing online for hints and motivation to get things going right I came across http://www.eatrealgood.com/ and Community Supported Argiculture. What a wonderful idea! Roger and I are looking into two farms in our area that participate in CSA and I'm hoping it pans out. From Juneish til Novemberish, a big ol' box of fresh organic produce every week for around twenty bucks each week. What better way to put us in line for great habits than to have a box of produce each and every week to consume?

On the eatrealgood website there is a wonderful menu planner/meal maker that you can use free of charge. You can type in the fresh produce you have on hand, add any filters (Gluten free and 5 ingredients or less for us) and wahla, you have a long list of wonderful recipes to choose from. Pick the dishes you want to do and shoom, there's a shopping list of all the things needed. So, this morning I created a menu to get us through to next week and went to shopping! Then spent a few hours prepping produce, filling the refrigerator crispers and making some new dishes. So much fun! Not to mention YUMMY!

Today's trial was Pork Chops, Apples, and Green Beans. It was DELISH! Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture, but if you can picture salt and peppered browned chops, with apples fried in butter with a touch of brown sugar and cinnamon, and a side of wonderful green beans. The boys weren't sure their favorite fruit was supposed to be in their dinner, but they tried it and ironically chose the green beans as their favorite part.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day helping with the family business so it'll be a crockpot meal or two tomorrow....looking forward to a yummy Italian Stew and can't wait til my oven is hooked up again so I can bake up an awesome sounding Tomato Chicken with Green Beans. Here's hoping to a wonderful start to some great habits!

The master artists of our house.

A Wonderful Christmas Wonderland.....

.........though not a Winter Wonderland....

We had an absolutely wonderful (though mostly snowless) Christmas this year. We celebrated over four days, visiting friends and family, sharing gifts and holiday joy. My favorite day of course was December 25th. We spent a fantastic day at home simply enjoying our children and keeping our family and new traditions the center of the day as opposed to commercialism, others expectations, or busyness. It was a wonderful day watching our babies unwrap Christmas in a whole new way!

The boys had a blast decorating our tree a couple weeks back and mama dear even let go of her perfectionism and didn't micro-manage the ornament placement. I was even the proponate of purchasing a "fake tree" and actually enjoyed it immensely (no pine needles in the carpet fa lalalala la la lala!). After the boys decorated the tree, Alan declared it ready for the "perfect star" to be placed on top. Roger picked him up, Alan placed the star, and.....flop! The tree top was too weak to hold up the vintage star topper that I like so much. Well, a tree must have a star, so the boys and I created a "gingerbread star"from cardboard, lots and lots of glitter, buttons, and a little ribbon. (Again, mama is making positive strides and let go of her perfectionism-obvously something I'll be making goals to work on and conquer in 2011). I love the star, and as we were boxing up the ornaments and packing away the tree my four year old Alan declared that our star needed to be set on top of the mirror in the living room-so there it sits for now.

We even enjoyed a sticky evening building a tiny gingerbread village. Every year I declare to myself that the boys and I are going to make gingerbread, and design and build a wonderful gingerbread house decorated with perfect lil' gum drops and m&m's. Again, I pushed the foolish perfectionism aside and bought a kit for us to put together. The boys had a BLAST and I loved the wonderful silly time working with them, their childlike ideas, and goofy lil' sayings. They work together so interesting-like. I was a good girl and simply glued the pieces together, and put the gooey colored icing where the boys directed and they placed all the candies. They were so proud of their accomplishments and they did a fabulous job! Not sure if Alan stuck his hand in some icing or stole a piece of candy here. :P

I have completely enjoyed the past few days of mostly uninterupted time with my boys and fully intend to make this the norm. I am a stay at home, working mom but have discovered recently just how much I have allowed stuff, activities, and poor time management take away valuable, quality time with them and me personally. Another goal to tackle in 2011! This mama is ready to tackle some goals, new priorities, and habits this near year!