Finally! Some New Paint!

It's been awhile since we've done any painting!  Our tiny pots of Crayola washable paints had been used up and awaiting replacement for quite some time and finally we've gotten some more.  The kids received a box of new, small, paint pots as a Valentine's present from us and we promptly dumped them into our awesome drip-spout paint containers.

They got to work this morning at their easel.

Will, of course, painted Transformers. 

And then washing up the paint brushes (which I always leave to the kids to do), was almost as entertaining for them as painting!

InstaFriday

Will's sharing all the tips on teeth brushing that he's learned the past week for dental health month.  :)

Sanctus Groupie  ;)

Started making some preliminary plans for Soph's birthday party yesterday.  I heart Pinterest and Etsy!!

Love note from my husband after I put my SR magnet on the fridge last night.  Had to put in his two cents... 

Writing out his Valentine's for friends at school.  They're store bought this year 'cause he really wanted Transformer cards.  ;)  Shocker.  It's cute how particular he's being to tailor the card to each friend. 

Magic Bars.  Yum yum yum. 

I might start moonlighting as a Subway sandwich artist!  This is our dinner! 

On second thought... I think I'll keep my day job.  Watching Will attempt to eat this was like watching a snake eat an antelope.  Fail.  They were good though!

My little yogis getting into tree pose with our kids yoga DVD from the library.  Will LOVES this. 

Amazing how quickly they've memorized these poses! 

Kicking off Valentine's week with OPI Holy Pink Pagoda... Oh, and some raspberry oatmeal pancakes for breakfast.  This was the color I had on my toes when I delivered Sophie.  My pre-hospital pedi.  :) 

Big pot of homemade meatballs in tomato sauce simmering on the stove top.  Mmm.  A fresh loaf of bread smeared with garlic butter is ready to go in the oven and a salad to go with.  This was gonna' be Valentine's Day dinner but we thought it sounded better on a leisure Sunday.

5:45 a.m. - workout time! 

Starting our 3rd chapter of the night:  Horrible Hairy and the Dungeon. 

My pot of black bean soup from weekend lunch - divided into my favorite Tupperware containers for easy lunch packing this week! 

Unconventional V-day nails.  Love! 

Trying a new pancake recipe tonight for breakfast-for-dinner.  Apple vanilla pancakes from the Weelicious cookbook.  Rave reviews from the the kids.  I guess I forgot to add breakfast-for-dinner to my dinner post this week. 

Pumpkin pie-cycles. 

My boys with their final product:  the Optimus Prime Valentine Box!  (It's the one on the left in case you can't tell which one is the toy.) 

Leader of the Autobots. 

Sibling teamwork to finish Sophie's preschool Valentine's. 

Packed school lunch for Will:  hard boiled egg, apple-PB "sandwich", veggies, popcorn and Cheerios. 

Breakfast hugs and kisses.  Love, Mom 

What's For Dinner? Week 2

Week of February 9-15.

I was planning on serving spaghetti and meatballs for Valentine's Day this week (a family favorite... and it's RED!), but when I prepped it over the weekend, it smelled so good that we ended up eating it right away.  :)

Also on the menu this week:
1) sub sandwiches - these kind of got out of hand in the size department... they were HUGE!
2) baked sausage with apples, potatoes and onion, served with Dijon mustard to dip (from the Dinner: A Love Story cookbook)
3) a pot of black bean soup with cilantro lime cream for one of my weekend lunches and three work day packed lunches (Cooking Light magazine - also online)
4) a pan of magic bars with graham cracker crust, coconut, chocolate chips and Heath bar crumbles

Several food pictures to come in my InstaFriday post for the week.  :)

Valentine's Day 2013

I was just about to make a quick, lunch-break trip to Hobby Lobby a couple weeks before Valentine's Day to see if I could find one of those paper mache mailboxes for Will to decorate for his class party... when Craig insisted that he was going to make one at home instead.  Will is still completely enamored with Transformers and Craig wanted to make him an Optimus Prime letter box. 

Seriously, the amount of effort and detail I watched Craig put into this thing was ridiculous...ly adorable.  :)  Craig said he always had a cool homemade box when he was a kid and he wanted the same for Will.

Will's job was to color in the cab and hood, which were covered in paper with flame outlines sketched in.

Will LOVED this!

You can see the open flap at the back of the truck bed.  That's where the Valentine's went in and, when lifted up, it had Will's name displayed on the underside.  Then the flap was able to tuck inside at the end of the party.

Will also spent some time the weekend before V-Day filling out some requested, store-bought, Transformer Valentine's to pass out to his friends.  Of course.

 

Thankfully, Sophie's preschool class made all their own Valenine's "pouches" in class so she didn't need a box.  But we did make her Valentine's at home from an idea on Pinterest.  I printed a fish bowl template just large enough to fit into a resealable sandwich bag and then traced one for each child in her class onto cardstock.  I cut them out and wrote in the wording on one of my lunch breaks at work and then Craig spent an evening that I was taking Will to karate to work with Sophie on tracing her name on each of them.  She's still not completely legible with writing her name yet, but it's getting better.

On another evening, she and Will worked together to put the fish bowls into the bags and spoon a few spoonfuls of fish crackers in each.

They read:

"Valenine, I'm glad we're in the same school!  Love, Sophie"

Valentine's Day 2013 - and party day for both kids at school today!

No great shots of both of them together this morning, but oh well.

This evening, Nana came by to bring them each a Valentine surprise (an OSU t-shirt for Will and a Comets t-shirt for Soph + some treats for each) and then she let them climb in her lap and sort through all their cards from their school friends.  They were in heaven.  And I was grateful for some free moments to finish up dinner preparations.  Thank you, Nana!

Happy Valentine's Day!