Abby's 1515Home

Our new home is 1515 square feet with 3 bedrooms. The two front bedrooms are much smaller than we had before and we went back and forth with how to arrange them.... Abby takes big room and smaller room is for guests or Abby has them both and we do bigger bed in bigger room and play room in smaller room or get her a twin bed and make the playroom bigger? It wore me out!

Ultimately, we decided she is 7 and needs space to play. She has lots of toys that she loves and plays with and I don't want to hinder that. Our main guest is my Mom and she was fine sleeping on a twin, so we made the bedroom the small room and the bigger room is the playroom. In 3-5 years, we will likely get a small guest bedroom back and Abby won't need a playroom.

The design for her room came from this fun bedding by Pillowfort at Target. We bought it before we moved and took the sham to Sherwin Williams where Abby and I looked at lots of paint. We decided on Mint Condition, a light and bright mint green and had both her rooms painted that color.

I bought her nightstand on a resale page for $15 and then painted it and used crystal knobs. It has great storage for books! I then shared that bedding with my friend Anna who made this sign for Abby as a surprise. It is her favorite Bible verse and fitting for a young girl learning kindness, humility, and beginning to be involved in extra activities. I love how it turned out!

The other side of her room has her IKEA Hemnes dresser with crystal knobs and a few of her favorite art pieces from the old house. She loves the bunny she painted and is excited to paint another one this summer!

It is a sweet little room for my sweet little girl!

Next door to Abby's bedroom is her playroom. This room is full of fun! Most of the furniture was in her old playroom, we just added some different pieces and painted a few things!

Playing off the mint green, I added peach, grey and gold using Target's pillowfort line again. Such cute stuff at the right time for me! We kept some pinks and blues since we had those pieces from the old house.

More importantly than her space, Abby's heart toward this move has been great! She is excited to start a new school in the fall where she already has lots of church friends. She surprised us all with her first vacation request when we talked about spending our money on things other than our house- Africa to see Sole Hope kids. That is the kind of confirmation a Momma needs!

Worldly Summer: Antarctica

The second place in the world Abby wanted to study was Antarctica. So, while it has been 90 degrees here in Texas, we've had fun with cold things inside!

We made a snow globe and decided to let our little friend Olaf live inside. You can see directions here. It really is simple- glue a toy on the lid, fill with water and glitter, screw on the lid, and shake!

The next thing we made was snow! It only took two ingredients and a few minutes to make a big mess, I mean big fun times! Abby's littlest pet shop enjoyed throwing snow, sliding in the snow and burying each other. The directions are here.... just note, it takes a few minutes to set. It felt like shaving cream for a while and then suddenly was more "snow" like. 

We also watched Happy Feet this week and learned a lot about penguins, sea lions, whales and the environment. Such a cute movie!

The library was our trusty friend and we found lots of books on Antarctica and learned about weather, climate, researchers, animals, ice, snow, and even how the Earth and the Sun rotate.

Since there are not people living in Antarctica, our food had to be a little more creative. We made two types of COLD ice cream this week.

Pineapple Whip was delicious and super healthy. We will make this again for sure! I like that it is only 3 clean ingredients and tastes like sweet whipped pineapples.

 Finally, we pulled out my Perfect Pops cookbook and molds and Abby picked Cookies and Cream popsicles. We enjoyed those to conclude our cold study of Antarctica!

It really has been fun and easy to travel the world this summer. I know I am enjoying having some easy activities during the day when swimming and iPad time are done.

To see more of our summer, click here or check out all my World Summer pins here. Next up, we are studying the parts of the world Jesus visited!

Worldly Summer: Mexico

There is a little bit of a homeschool Mom in me, so this summer we are going around the world with my daughter who will enter 1st grade next year. She picked the countries she wanted to study (with a little help from my husband and I) and we've come up with food, crafts, books, movies, and more to study the culture of the people there. We are planning to do this over 7 weeks of the summer when we don't have other big things planned like VBS or vacation. I'll share craft ideas and recipes as we go!

Hola! We visited Mexico for our first world summer stop! 

We studied the beaches of Mexico- Cancun, Cozumel and Cabo and made this fun beach craft with playdoh, salt dough, and a paper plate. See details here. 

We are keeping this really simple so we checked out books from the library to learn more about the country, climate, people, and history and bought a fun Dora book that helps teach simple Spanish words. It had pull tabs and Abby really enjoyed it. She made us laugh with her deep voice for crab!

We did math with Mexican coins, sampled Mexican candies from the local convenient store, enjoyed Mangonada, and Pioneer Woman's Tres Leches cake. 

I pinned lots of ideas here if you want to preview our summer! This week, we are studying Antarctica! Brr! :)

Teacher Appreciation for under $10

I have been blessed with some wonderful women that have served as teachers to my daughter. So, teacher appreciation is a fun week for me because I get to shop, be creative, and express to them in little gestures all week how appreciated they are.

This year, I took all of my gift ideas from the teacher cheat sheet at Abby's school. The PTA gathers the teacher's favorites into a binder and we can get a copy at anytime to help us gift them well. This has been so helpful to me because Abby's Kindergarten teacher isn't girly like I am, so I would have struggled to find what she liked!

Each day next week, we will be bringing her one of the items pictured above. She loves popcorn, chocolate chip cookies, and gardening. The colored pencils are a vase to hold her favorite flower- carnations. I simply glued 36 colored pencils around a tall melamine glass with my hot glue gun. Everything was purchased at Target.

Finally, on Friday we are giving her a gift card to Target using this cute printable from Landee See Landee Do blog. I usually dislike gift cards, but love them packaged all cute!

Need more ideas- I've got you covered...

Fun crafts to make for the teacher here

Cute little bag of goodies with a tag here or here

Summer goody bag ideas here

Summer pedicure kit here 

Abby's Kindergarten Luncheon

Hello! Long time no blog! I haven't had the time or desire to blog this summer, but have a couple of fun posts to share with you before summer wraps up. Later this week I'll share my 3 big home improvement projects, but today we are all about Abby's kindergarten luncheon. 

We invited 5 of Abby's friends that are all starting kinder next week over for lunch. She has known these kids most of her life from preschool and church. When they first arrived, I gave them all 2027 shirts representing the year they will all graduate and we went outside for pictures.

Back inside we sat down for lunch with only these six little ones in the formal dining room which had been decorated for the occasion. 

The dining room buffet table includes a chalkboard, apple and bell that I had on hand. I also bought a dozen globe stress balls on Zulily months ago and had the balloon topiary gifted as leftovers from a friends birthday party.

On the other side of the buffet were these adorable cookies from my friend Kelly who owns Cookies by Kelly. They were the perfect sweet touch after lunch! 

 The center of the table had lots of fun school supplies including my favorite globes from my office. I made the "ruler" runner on the table from a piece of white fabric my Mom hemmed and a black sharpie marker.

I decorated the windows with bunting from Modern June and a chalkboard bunting from the Target party section. 

Each place setting was decorated with a yellow crayon cup, a plain red paper plate with a felt stem and leaf hot glued on and the cutest napkins! I found these in the $1 spot last year and I just wrote each child's name on the napkin.

Inside the kitchen, I set up a simple lunch buffet and made it fun with another chalk board banner from Target. The little ham sandwiches were still in the oven when I snapped this picture. Along with those we served chips and dip, fruit salad, and had lunchables for the special kindergartners. I also had water, tea, lemonade, and a variety of juice boxes and old bottled sodas.

I served everything on my favorite stove top cover!

We had one little game planned for the kids. They went on an alphabet scavenger hunt. They had classic brown paper sacks where I had written the letters of the alphabet. They each started with a sack and then moved to the letter station.

At this station they dug through plastic magnets to find their letter and found the matching flashcard. Both were placed in their sack and it was taken to the toy station!

Here each kid dug in the bucket to find a toy that started with the letter sack they were holding. The kids had lots of fun looking for something with their letter and often worked together!

 After playing a little while longer, the kids left with these little packages of writing utensils and their own globe ball. I bought these notebooks on 90% off after school started last year! If you plan to throw a party like this next year, I recommend shopping in the next few weeks. Supplies go cheap fast!

These sweet six kids are some of my favorite little people in all the world and I'm so glad we could celebrate their upcoming big day together before we all go separate ways! As you can tell from their little signs, they have big futures ahead of them!

 

I found lots of ideas for this party on Pinterest. Check out my Back to School Party board here. 

Toe-Tally Awesome Teacher Gift for under $15

I feel like preschool teachers get pretty excited about summer! It is the reward for a long hard school year, so I like to celebrate summer with Abby's teachers each year. Last year, I did pool bags filled with summer essentials (details here) and this year I decided to go with pedicures!

I bought everything at Wal-mart including the plastic Aladdin mason jars and the pedicure goodies below. I spend about $15 on each teacher!

I then stuffed the cup with cotton balls and the goodies. I found a handful of cotton balls on the bottom and then the pedicure pieces and then more cotton balls looked the best.

Finally I added a ribbon and a tag. If you had a bigger budget, a gift card for a pedicure would be a nice addition.

So excited to have teacher gifts done for the year! May goes by so fast and there is so much going on- it is nice to be ready!

St. Patrick's Day Kid Treats

 I love cute little printables that you can find free online so often now! These little free tags from Lauren at Every Day Cheer inspired me to spend a little time crafting with my 5 year old. We had all of the supplies on hand so this project was free! I love that!

I printed the tags on cardstock and punched them out. Then, Abby signed her name on each tag. With all the little preschool goodies we like to do, thank goodness her name is short! She really should have it mastered by kindergarten.

We filled small treat bags with Skittles, a gold or green coin and then tied them off with the tags. They would be super cute with Lucky Charms inside or raindow twizzlers and chocolate gold coins. Just think of all the colorful treats out there!

I don't normally celebrate St. Patrick's Day beyond wearing green, but am happy to have this fun free little project to share the luck of the Irish with friends on Monday.

Creative Valentine Cards & Candy Alternatives

I love Valentine's Day and the sweet little notes my 5 year old exchanges with her friends. But, having a child with a severe peanut allergy and a sweet tooth, I don't like all the candy she tries to consume that day. So, I looked around for some alternatives to a boxed card and chocolate candy. Here are my top five favorites:

Funky Polkadot Giraffe used a squeeze pouch of applesauce with a little "love" note. These are great for preschoolers because kids and Moms love them!

I love the idea of giving something other than food! We gave out balls just like this to kick off summer last year and kids loved them! Great idea Crafting Chicks!

There is something so soft and sweet about these little bear hugs. They are perfect for little bittys to exchange at school.

Goldfish are always a big hit in my house! We did goldfish carrot sticks two years ago, but I've never thought of a clever way to give them out at Valentine's Day. Using o'fish'ally as the cute word makes these easy to give out for most any holiday!

I love pixie sticks! They are a classic childhood candy! I love these tied together with a little washi tape from Etsy. You could also tie in pixie dust or Izzy from Jake & the Neverland Pirates on these. 

Don't forget the teachers today! I know class parties are stressful days for them and always try and bring them seasonal goodies, too! My favorite valentine gift for teachers- a really sweet candle. This year I bought Red Velvet Cupcake and Sweet Spun Sugar from Target.

Happy Crafting!

Candyland Party: Decor and Games

Abby's 5th birthday party was so much fun to plan! Who doesn't love the game Candyland, a bunch of sweet treats and a house full of excited kids? hehe!

Let's start with decor and games and then we can talk food and my dream Candyland party later this week. To see all the Candyland posts, just click here. 

I always want my front door to match the theme of the party and this year I used a cadny decoration from Hobby Lobby's Christmas section. I simply painted a #5 purple and glued it in the middle. In past years, I've had a big Abby Cadabby door, a ribbon colored wreath, and a burlap doughnut.

You can't have Candyland without oversized lollipops! There are tons of different ways to make these on Pinterest- using pool noodles, cellophane on balls, and many more. I opted for simple and very inexpensive. I made these four lollipops for under $10! It was a windy day, so they ended up inside and on the front porch instead of my sidewalk, but still were super cute!

To make the lollipops, I covered the long cardboard tube found inside wrapping paper (perfect since her party was just after Christmas) with colored masking tape. Much easier than painting it!

Then I stapled two paper plates (bottoms out) to the top of one end of the tube. I then hot glued the top of the plates together. It created a tight little "sandwich" with about 4" of wrapping paper tube inside. To cover my staples, I hot glued a simple tulle and ribbon bow at the base of the plates.

The remainder of the plates were glued together, wrapped in cellophane and tied up with ribbons. I then used tulle and tape to hang the candy from the curtain rods in my dining and livings rooms. I had five total pieces of candy for the five windows in that space.

Another big part of Candyland is the brightly colored squares that make the path through the game. I bought a multi colored pack of 12x12 paper and cut it into 4x4 squares. These were used in great detail on the food tables and the leftovers were taped in random patterns along the entryway walls. I just used painters tape for easy removal later.

I will share the food table in great detail in another post (it was almost to pretty to eat!)! The front of the table included a banner made from cut out letters, glittery ice cream cones, and aqua chevron cardstock candy wrappers. The letters were printed out using Candytime font in hot pink and cut out. The ice cream cones were Hobby Lobby Christmas decorations and the chevron wrappers were purchased on a Jane.com flash sale. I connected them all with a little hole punch and pink yarn.

I always believe that a party should have crafts and games for the kids. I fear them being bored! In the past we have made felt cookies, cereal necklaces and personalized pillowcases, eaten doughnuts without our hands, and created snow globes and ornaments. This year was no different!  

I asked all of the guests to sign the Candyland board for Abby's game. I thought it would be fun for her later and I love anything with little kids handwriting on it!

Using Skittles as dabbers, the kids played Bingo together! We had a game going almost the whole time. It gave my 12 year old niece a fun job at the party and the kids had fun!

Using skittles to cover the numbers that had been called out connected the game with the party theme. We own a Bingo set complete with cage ball for holding the number similar to this one. They are inexpensive on Amazon and fun to have when kids come over. The winners of the games won a small gumball machine I bought at Dollar Tree filled with gum purchased in bulk on Amazon.

I also had a craft for the kids- they made felt lollipops to take home. Using simple glue with colored Popsicle sticks, pre-cut felt circles, and a lot of sequins, they had fun gluing and crafting at the kitchen table. I bought everything at Hobby Lobby. There were enough felt circles for 30 lollipops and I spent $12 on everything. Easy and inexpensive!

I would have loved to have given everyone a board game, but that wasn't in the budget! Instead, we filled treat bags (from Jane.com) with candy and included little tags on them. The Candytime font came in so handy!

As a funny touch, I also handed out toothbrushes to all the guests. They had after all eaten a lot of candy! These were free thanks to my smart husband- he recommended I call my daughter's dentist and ask her to donate 30 toothbrushes. She did without hesitation! 

I am a professional event planner for a living, but I do professional events with little room to be creative. So, you can imagine, Abby's party is lots of fun for me! 

Her and I settle on a theme in the Spring and then I buy little things over the next 6-10 months to space out the cost and not feel overwhelmed. It is supposed to be fun, after all!

To see her past parties... check out:

1st birthday- Abby Cadabby

2nd birthday- Milk and Cookies

3rd birthday- Dolls and Doughnuts pajama/breakfast party

4th birthday- Merry and Bright Christmas party

More Candyland details to come!