painted pinecone centerpiece

While on vacation over Thanksgiving, Ethan and I collected a bunch of pinecones one afternoon at a park. I couldn't wait to do something with them. The weather was beautiful this afternoon and so it was a perfect day to do some painting! Ethan did a great job painting each pinecone and then helping me sprinkle them with glitter. Once they dried, we put them into a tall, square vase that I had gotten at Target for another (never completed) project years ago. As in, before Ethan was ever so much as a thought. It's been sitting in our garage begging to be utilized in some way for some time and I think Ethan's beautiful painted pinecones suit it perfectly and turn it into a perfect holiday centerpiece!

ho, ho, ho

Ethan's Santa picture this year was a surprising success! My husband predicted tears, I was convinced we'd get an unsure stare -- but we got a sweet little smirk (and one grumpy Santa!) and so this year's Santa picture was a success!

With Santa pictures under our belt, it only means one thing: the holidays are officially here. I figured there was no better way to get in on the holiday spirit than participate in a wonderful ornament swap hosted by Dreaming of Dimples and Living in Yellow. The swap was unique in the sense who you sent an ornament to was not who sent one to you, so you really had the opportunity to make some new friends and spread some Christmas cheer!

Ethan and I got our ornament from Lauren at Pink On The Cheek. It's a beautiful glass ornament handpainted with Mickey Mouse ears and Ethan's name.

Lauren must be some kind of mind reader. See, when I made my post about choosing our tree, I showed off some of our ornaments and said how much I love getting a new ornament each year. I hadn't done that yet for 2012 and was feeling a little sad about it until this beautiful ornament showed up! Thanks to Lauren, Ethan's wonderful 2012 is now represented proudly on our tree. Even better is that Lauren incorporated Mickey Mouse into our ornament! You see, we had plans to take Ethan to Disney World this Christmastime but it just didn't work out what with scheduling. It was a little disappointing, even though we made plans to go after the holidays are over this year, perhaps in the spring. Like I said, Lauren must be a total mind reader because she brought Mickey to us this year!

Thank you, Lauren! The ornament looks beautiful on our tree!

tot school - 17 months

I'm a little bit behind on Tot School posts. Thanksgiving week and traveling for the duration of it threw us for a little bit of a loop. This post contains our week of Tot School during Thanksgiving week. Once we got back into town, we kind of took the week off of Tot School to regroup and things start back up this Monday morning!

Thanks in part to the stress of traveling and just generally being preoccupied by the holidays, it seems I've forgotten to get any pictures of Ethan actually doing Tot School. This was our last week of general colors before moving into themes and it was an interesting week at that!

THIS WEEK IN TOT SCHOOL:

From Top:
1. Sorting and Matching - I was sure Ethan would be indifferent about this one, but he actually liked it the most. I took an egg carton and placed a pom pom inside each well, leaving extras of identical pom-poms on the tray. Ethan's job was to match up the pom-poms by placing the similar colored one across from the other. He was pretty good at this one and he really, really enjoyed sorting the pom-poms into the wells. As usual, he got red and orange confused a few times but I was really proud at how well he could select the like colors and match them accordingly.
2. Pouch Tops - This was a repeat from earlier weeks and one that Ethan never fails to love. He takes the multi-colored pouch tops from an old yogurt container and pops them into the old deli soup container. He likes to get experimental by putting the pouches in upside down or on their sides.
3. Color Matching - This was a fun one. Ethan had been increasingly interested in the Velcro on our weather wall so I thought it would be fun to incorporate Velcro into one of our activities, too. I made this one by taking some free paint swatches from Wal-Mart and cutting out the different squares. I glued each square onto a gift box and attached a piece of Velcro. Ethan's goal was to attach the like colors to the ones on the box. He was pretty good at this one, too, though he'd do it seriously once and then just enjoy sticking and re-sticking the Velcro shapes. He'd get orange and yellow mixed up a few times on this activity as well. Orange is a tricky color!
Magnetic Fishing - I was SO EXCITED for Ethan to see this activity -- that I spent a ton of time on -- but he was really uninterested in it. His favorite part about it was playing with the fish on their own or twirling the rods around in the air. I made this one by painting popsicle sticks and hot gluing an old piece of shoelace as the line to each one. I found the little wooden "bobbers" at Michael's for a couple of dollars and painted each one accordingly, too. I printed the fish out and laminated them, attaching magnets from a magnetic tape roll accordingly. The idea was for Ethan to fish for the fish of the matching color. Once I showed him how it worked, he thought the concept was cool and tried to pick up a fish or two, but decided it was much cooler to just twirl the rods around. This one will make a grand reappearance in a couple of weeks!

ART PROJECTS:

I'm totally disappointed but we didn't do any art projects this week. We did, however, do a fun activity with colored ice. I had simply used food coloring to make some multi-colored ice, put them onto a tray and let Ethan go nuts. I thought playing with something cold would be really fun for him. He loved playing with the cold ice but wasn't so sure about the colors that ran off onto his hands. (He's not a huge fan of getting his hands dirty.) He enjoyed sorting the colored ice from the tray into a nearby plastic bowl I'd left outside previously from another project.

WEEKLY READING LOG:
My little bookworm still loves to read! His favorite titles this week were:
1. Chip Wants A Dog by William Wegman
2. Llama Llama Wakey Wake by Anna Dewdney
3. Where Is Baby's Bellybutton by Karen Katz
4. Blowin' In The Wind by Bob Dylan
5. The Story Of Thanksgiving by Nancy J. Skarmeas
6. Four Little Kittens by Golden Books
7. Moo, Baa, La La La by Sandra Boynton
8. Muddypaws by Moira Butterfield
9. The Pokey Little Puppy by Janette Sebring Lowry
10. The Fox and the Hound Hide & Seek by Golden Books
11. Where's Spot? by Eric Hill
12. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
13. Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell
14. How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Cats? by Jane Yolen
15. Willy The Wandering Kitten
16. Clifford's First Halloween by Norman Bridwell

like snow, like gold

Today Ethan experienced his first snow!

Well, kind of.

Our local JCC held an "it's snowing in Boca!" event in which a huge pile of manmade snow was dumped in the back of a playground and the children were able to play in it. Ethan was freaked out by the cold, slippery stuff underneath his shoes. My husband was worried Ethan would overheat in his sweatpants. I was snapping pictures and giddily having a blast celebrating Ethan's first snow. I know. Us Floridians are way tacky.

My toes felt numb after about three minutes on the pile of snow posing for some pictures with Ethan. Kudos to everyone who deals with real snow -- I'll stick to flip-flops and beach days in December.

reusies reusable snack & sandwich bags review and giveaway

Let's talk ReUsies. I love them. See, I've had a hate/hate relationship with the plastic bag for some time. They've always been annoying and wasteful but my final straw came the day our box of plastic baggies melted from being too close to the toaster oven in our kitchen. It was the final push I needed to stray away from products that were not only wasteful, but potentially dangerous and laden with unnecessary chemicals. Gross.

Enter ReUsies, which are reusable sandwich and snack size bags. They're comprised of 100% cotton and lined with leak-resistant nylon. The best part? They don't sit in landfills (instead, they keep hundreds of plastic bags out of landfills) and they don't melt.

I know what you're thinking. Aren't they hard to clean? No. They're not. If anything, they're frighteningly simple to clean. Toss them in the washing machine, the dishwasher or even wash them by hand. You'll be amazed at how easily they are to clean up. In fact, my husband and I recently attended a wedding and brought Ethan the snack sized bag filled with blackberries, blueberries and plum slices. The fruit sat in the bag in our insulated lunch tote for a good two hours before Ethan ate them and we had no leaks. The inside of the bag was tinged blue from the berries but after a quick throw in the washing machine when we got home, it was good as new. Not a single stain or dab of color.

The bags hold plenty of food, in each size. The sandwich size bag is able to hold large "adult size" pieces of bread. I've personally used it to carry around two mini-bagels at once and five spinach nuggets another time. There is plenty of room and the bag securely fastens with Velcro so that no food escapes. The snack size bag could also fit a half of a sandwich, which I sometimes use it for when I know Ethan will be eating lunch on the go. I was able to fit a full pear's worth of pear slices comfortably in the bag and frequently use it for berries. I try to wash my ReUsies by hand when possible, but since life is typically so busy and we tote around berries often, I'm guilty of throwing them in the washing machine most frequently. After quite a few washes, the color on my ReUsies bags has not even slightly faded, though they do note that machine washing can cause the ReUsies to fade. We've been lucky so far!

ReUsies bags come in all sorts of cute prints. Ethan loves his airplane print ReUsies bags! My favorite part is that ReUsies also come in plain colors for that grown-up who tends to shy away from funky patterns (like my husband!), making these great gifts or stocking stuffers for adults as well!

HOW TO BUY: Browse ReUsies online store to take a peek at all of their great patterns, colors and styles and do some shopping! 4-pack gift sets are available, too!

HOW TO WIN: Because despite helping to save the planet, the ReUsies staff still have time to be all-around awesome, they've offered one of my readers the chance to win a set of two ReUsies bags in the print if their choosing!

Good luck! a Rafflecopter giveaway