First time....Gingerbread Houses

 OK, so this year I decided it would be fun to make gingerbread houses.  I have never really done that before in my life so it would be a fun new experience for all of us.  So the first few pictures are of the girls decorating the houses.  By the end of the task Colette figured out how to use a frosting bag.

 Leila used more frosting than her two sisters combined did.  Hers took the longest to dry because there were just gobs and gobs of frosting on her house...and her hair....and her shirt...and the table...you get the idea.

 Savannah has this thing with lines.  She colors in lines (meaning thin, long rectangles) when using crayons, and she decorated her house the same way as you can see by the above picture.  I loved though how their different personalities came out in how they decorated their houses and what they were thinking.

 This one is Savannah's  The pretzel squares are windows and the large marshmallows are chimneys for Santa to use when he visits.  That is a big deal in our house this year as we are living in an apartment without any chimneys and the girls are worried that Santa won't be able to get in to leave their gifts.

 The photos above and below are of Leila's house.  It was her idea to use pretzels as windows.  When she was decorating her last side she realized that she hadn't done any windows yet and decided to make up for it on that last side.

 And Lastly we have Colette's.  She chose candies for decorating based on what she likes to eat because she knew sometime soon she was going to be able to eat some.  She kept asking when she would be able to eat her house.  It was so cute.

I loved this activity with the girls.  They are so creative and had so much fun!!  Definitely a tradition we are going to have to continue in years to come!

Kindness.....

Ok, so I was going to post about this awhile ago, but obviously I didn't.  One afternoon there was a knock on the door.  By the time I got to the door, the knocker was gone, but a bag was on the porch with the above note.  The bag contained several shirts (both long sleeve and short sleeve), two dresses, and two skirts.  For those of you who don't know, Savannah started kindergarten this year and, here in Dallas, TX the schools require uniforms.  Not knowing exactly how much clothing to get, and not having a lot of money. I was brought to tears by this wonderful surprise. 

Then I noticed the second half of this sweet note.   Leila and Colette were told that they would get something later.  They were so excited about not being left out of the excitement that found our home that afternoon.

A couple weeks later, 4 more bags appeared on our porch.  These contained new matching skirts for the girls, along with a shirt, socks, a hair barette, and a new movie for each kid. And this time, there was a very touching gift for me.  Savannah also got some uniform pants for school.  My emotions overcame me and I weeped.  My girls were wondering what was wrong with their mom.  I have no idea why someone chose to do this for my family, but it was truly an answer to prayer -- and much more!  Thank you so much to whoever did this.  I wish there was something I could do for your family in return.  Please know my heart is full of gratitude and love for you!

The girls wore their new matching skirts to church the next Sunday. Savannah's primary teacher asked her if I had sewn the skirts, and Savannah excitedly told her that someone had left them in a bag on our porch.  My girls absolutely loved being thought of and enjoy all their new treasures throughout each week!

F is for Fairy Tale

So several weeks ago the girls and I did a fairy tale theme for preschool.  It was so much fun.  In the following three photos you can see the Three Little Pigs' houses, Cinderella's glass slipper (which was a shoe cut out, painted blue, and sprinkled with glitter and sprinkles), and two pictures which shows the difference between a frog and a toad (just in case you wanted to give one a kiss). 

 

As you can see in the first photo below, Savannah drew her own houses and then applied the straw and sticks.  The red one is the brick house and was painted with a rectangle sponge.  She was going to fill in the whole paper but remembered that the wolf goes down the chimney, so she added one in the

top right corner of the page.

 Leila's artwork is pictured below. Leila drew her house of straw similar to Savannah's and applied straw, but then decided to draw her stick house like I drew Colette's houses.  She also used toothpicks to put in a window.  The brick house is the red one.  The outer layer is the bricks, and the pink middle is the inside of the house.  The small gap in the bricks at the bottom is the door, and if you look closely, you can tell that she remembered the chimmey at the last minute.

 I drew all three of Colette's houses but, as you can see below, she had her own style when it came to placing the sticks on the middle home.  It's amazing how different three kids can make the same project.

 In the next picture on the right-hand side, you can see Colette's frog and toad better.  We glued oatmeal and rice on one and painted it browns and grays to make it look like a toad. The frog was a shiny paint of any color since frogs vary in color.  We based this project on The Princess and the Frog story.  The other artwork is painting with apples, which we did after we read Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. 

 The photo below is Leila's Apple Art.

 Below is Savannah's Art.  She is very much into her artwork having some kind of order.

We also read The little Red Hen and made home-made brownies afterwards.  We made princess hats, a dragon mask, and then a castle out of card board boxes, which the girls painted. Then we acted out Sleeping Beauty.  Savannah was Sleeping Beauty, Colette was the wicked fairy Maleficent, and Leila was Prince Phillip.  We had all the important characters at any rate.  Below, the girls are sporting their princess hats.

 We also made miniature apple pies when we read Snow White.  Leila is showing hers off in the photo below.  We also played games like finding Cinderella's lost slipper, or picking which shoe would make a good glass slipper.  We had races and ran away when the wicked fairy tried to get us.  It was so much fun and so much fun to watch the girls express their different ways of looking at life.  It was also fun to hear what they took away from each story, after all a fairy tale is supposed to teach us something. 

Pioneer Day Celebration

So we celebrate the arrival of the pioneers into SLC on the 24th of July.  So this morning we learned about our own pioneer ancestors.  Then we played with water balloons.  We learned that Dad can throw it the farthest and highest, but the girls have the most fun passing it around to each other. Below are some action shots.  Last week for FHE we also played pioneer games and walked through ice water in the bathtub to experience some of the things that the pioneers did.

 Then we made covered wagons out of strawberry newtons, marshmallows, toothpicks, and gummy lifesavers.  The girls really got a charge out of it and wanted to make several.  Below is what they are supposed to look like.

 This is how our (very independent) 2 year old made them.

 Here are the girls with all the finished product.  We had so many of them we put them into a wagon circle.  It was a fun activity and a yummy treat to end the morning.

Pioneer Day Dresses

Last year I decided that I wanted to make my girls some pioneer dresses.  With my Mom's help, I was able to get the material but that is as far as I got.  So this year I was determined to make them.  I was so proud of myself.  I was able to crank these out pretty quickly and I only had one kind-of-late night.  As I finished each one I would say, "I really like this one, it's my favorite."  They all are my favorite and the girls look great in them if I do say so

myself!

    

 Colette

 Leila

 Savannah

St. Patrick's Day

St. Patricks Day has arrived.  We had a lot of fun this year learning about rainbows in relation to leprechauns and such things.  The girls each made one of these mobiles.  We stuffed paper clouds with shredded paper.  Then we learned what order the colors of the rainbow are and made 6 circles.  We glued them and then cut it in half making two rainbows.  We turned it in a mobile.  We still have them hanging.We ofcourse made a trap to see if we could catch a leprechaun.  I suggested an etable trap and they loved the idea thinking we could catch one and then eat the trap.  Its a win win situation.  We decided to do a rainbow cake.  My colors aren't as good as I've seen, but it was fun.  We used a bunbt pan so there would be a hole in the middle.

We make ladder out of pretzels and molding candy that I had leftover from Savannah's party.  Leprechauns like nature things so we thought pretzels were best for that look. 

We placed pretzels across the top so we could cover the top with something to lure the leprechaun.  The girls got to use my cake decorating stuff with my new grass tip I got for christmas. 

This is the finished product.  Wooden ladder made of preztels, signs that represent things that leprechauns like (a hat, clover, etc), green in coloring, gold, and the rainbow coloring of the cake. 

This is what we found St. Patricks day morning.  If you look closely inside the cake you can see a little green shoe that got stuck in the frosting.  Unfortunetly we didn't think about the leprechaun being able to eat his way out of the cake.  Below is the hole he got out of.  Oh well, we got to enjoy eating it anyway.

The above is what the cake looked like when we cut into it.  Not to bad for a first time.  Below is the girls checking things out.

We also had some activities through out the day.  We made rain sticks because you need rain to make a rainbow.  They were made out of pom poms and rice.  Then we danced to some scotish music and made rain sounds with the sticks. 

We graphed out a bag of skittles.  I asked them different questions like which has the most, the least, what order do they go in and what did they notice.

These are the clues the leprechaun made to lead us to our treasure.  We had until midnight to find it and then the leprechauns would get it back.  Besides gold they left us squirt guns, bubbles, necklaces, and these green sticky hands.  The girls loved those the most, but they continue to enjoy the guns and bubbles.

This is a game we played.  Its called don't eat pete but we called it don't eat lucky.  It had a board of lucky pictures with a piece of candy on each one.  Someone leaves the room and the group picks which picture will be lucky.  Then the person comes back.  They pick a picture.  If its not the one that was picked they get to eat the candy and pick again.  When they pick the right one the group says Don't eat Lucky.  Then its someone elses turn.  The girls loved this as they got to eat lots of candy.  We also played a memory game.

Here are the girls at the park with their squirt guns and bubbles.

These are some of the crafts we made during the week.  The Ireland flag.  The gold is suppose to be orange but I didn't have any so we used yellow.  The clover Savannah did in Preschool.  The leprechaun face was fun.  The girls colored, cut, glued together, and curled the paper and glued it on too.  They wanted to make sure their was enough curls for him to have bangs.  Savannah glue her curls on differently then Leila. Can you tell?   I love it when they want to do it the way they want and not exactly the same as each other.   Leila also thought the clovers would make a good mouth.  Colette's is the last picture.