Because Babies Grow Up

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New Year’s Eve Plans

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I’ve been enjoying Pinterest more than ever as I’m trying to find ideas for celebrating New Year’s Eve and sneaking in a bit of a birthday celebration for Scott. He turns ONE on January 1 which makes it his golden birthday so I’d like it to be a little extra special, at least for those of us who will remember! Side note, it also occurred to me today that it will be Brent’s golden birthday on the last day of January. I think extra special birthday celebrations are in order for January!

Click on the picture to see more of the pins on my board.

I’m particularly intrigued by the yarn balloons. We tried them once, but we didn’t wrap them with enough yarn. We may have to try again. My plan is to use white yard and then spray paint them either silver or gold. I’ve also gathered a selection of mini silver, blue and gold ornaments to make garland to hang down from the ceiling around the food table.

What are your plans for New Year’s Eve?

Christmas Traditions: Santa’s Cookies

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We’ve baked up a storm today making chocolate chip cookies and ginger snaps to leave for Santa. Sammi also thought it would be prudent to leave Santa a gift. She chose to give him cookies for the ride home 🙂

We’re off to read the Nativity Story and
open our new Christmas jammies.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!


Merry Christmas!

Spiders

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I have a huge aversion to spiders. Seriously. I literally cried when the park ranger walked by me with a tarantula at a show we went to. Then I turned around and carried the snake around for all the kids to see. It’s just spiders. They freak me out. So celebrating spiders on our Halloween Countdown took a lot of will power for me. In the end, it was one of the more fun days we had!

We made spider snacks:

Oreo Spider TreatThey are cute and I know you want to make them, too! Here’s the how-to on spider cookies.

Supplies for Spider Cookies

I made the frosting first following our gingerbread house frosting recipe. I was a little distracted and added almost two pounds instead of one pound of powdered sugar. I added some more milk to thin it down and smooth it out. I was worried it wouldn’t hold well with the, uh, alterations. But it did great.

Next we pulled apart the Twizzlers and cut them into little leg-length pieces. Then we twisted the top of the Oreo off. We pressed eight legs into the cream filling. Then added a little frosting to the backside of the Oreo and put it back on top to cover the legs. Then we dipped the chocolate chips in the frosting, generously, and put them on to of the Oreos for eyes. I love the look of a little extra frosting around the chocolate chip. Looks like real eyes to me.

This was great work for little fingers. Sammi (5) and Elli (3) both helped put legs on and dipped eyes in frosting and added them. Sammi also loves to twist off the Ores tops. Once she worked through the process on one cookie with me, she did all the rest of hers on her own without any assistance from me. I love how independent she is now!

Monster Pancakes

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We’ve been following The Home Teacher’s Countdown to Halloween. It’s been so much fun and the girls look forward each morning to picking the pumpkin off the wall and finding out our theme for the day (a picture on the back of the pumpkin). Today is Monster day and I have lots of fun things planned, but we started the day off with monster pancakes for breakfast.

Monster PancakesBrent made the pancakes and colored some green and some purple. Then we put decoration possibilities on the table. We had chocolate chips, bananas, whipped topping, bacon and sausage.

Sammi and her Monster PancakeEach person created their own monster.

Sammi and her Monster PancakeSuch creativity!

Scott eating his Monster PancakeEven Scott enjoyed his monster pancake.

Other things we are doing today:

Looking for monster ideas? Check out my Monster board on Pinterest!

American Flag Marshmallow Craft

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I saw these star shaped marshmallows at the store and just couldn’t resist bringing them home. After mulling it over for a few days, I finally came up with this flag craft to do with the red, blue and white marshmallows. The pictures make a great step-by-step for this American flag craft.

The Setup: baskets for sorting, flag, glue and marshmallows

Sorting

Squeezing glue

Adding Stars

Adding Stripes

Finished Flag and Snack Time!

F.Y.I. We got the blue and red baskets from JoAnn’s this past week.

Have fun celebrating Flag Day tomorrow. If you want to know how the flag got it’s nickname Old Glory, check out the story of Captain William Driver.

Happy Holidays from Aaron Nigel Smith

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At the beginning of this year we introduced you to Aaron Nigel Smith’s album “Everyone Loves to Dance.” It is still a favorite at our house. Aaron has just released a holiday song that he recorded with his two sons and Rhythm Child. We’ve had fun groovin’ to it!

Aaron Nigel Smith – Happy Happy Holiday featuring Rhythm Child

Happy Holidays from Because Babies Grow Up and Aaron Nigel Smith!

Halloween Wreath

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This was a quick and fun craft project we did one afternoon. We just used Halloween supplies we had on hand. Last year after Halloween I bought a bunch of rings and other Halloween plastic goodies. We discovered this year that the ring part pops off easily and leaves the Halloween shape free to become something else (other than a ring!) So we used them to make a Halloween wreath.



Supplies
  • Paper plate
  • Paint
  • Halloween shapes, figurines, anything you have around the house
  • Ribbon, Halloween colored or not
  • Glue gun
Directions
  1. The paper plate is the base of the wreath. Cut a circle out of the center of the paper plate. Then trim around the outside of the plate so the wreath is the size you want to accommodate the decorations you have for it.


  2. Paint the paper plate. We used orange, yellow, purple and black. We also used the Bingo bottles to paint so that the pain wouldn’t be too thick and would dry faster. Let dry.


  3. After the painted plates were dry, we warmed up the glue gun. The girls chose which shapes they wanted on their wreath. We laid them out to see how full the wreath would be and what order they wanted their shapes in.


  4. I added glue to the back of the shapes and helped the girls put them where they wanted them. Then they pressed down and counted to five to let the glue dry before we did the next one.


  5. After all the decorations were on the front and the glue had cooled, we added the ribbon. I just cut the ribbon pieces all the same length. I doubled the ribbon and glue gunned the ends at the top of the wreath. After a minute to cool, they were ready to hang.


Wishing you Happy and Safe Halloween Celebrations this weekend!

Wordless Wednesday: Flowers

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My Birthday Bouquet

Sammi’s Mother’s Day Flower Craft from the library

Elli’s Mother’s Day Flower Craft from the library

A closer look at the poem on the flower craft

Today we’re linked up with 5 Minutes for Mom and Seven Clown Circus and Marvelous Mommy.

And we’ll be adding this post to Buried With Children‘s Kids Make the Darndest Things this Friday.

Check out this week’s giveaway. You get to pick your own prize pack from Baby Cribs Plus.

Happy Earth Day!

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Happy Earth Day!

Check out our Earth Day giveaway!

I’m thoroughly enjoying the Earth Day ideas from the comments on the giveaway post. I’m surprised and please by how many people are planning on planting a tree. Some other great ideas include planting vegetable and flower gardens, participating in town cleanup, turning the compost pile, and going WITHOUT electricity!


Here are some Earth Day ideas
for little ones birth to five

Newborns and Babies

  • Visit the park
  • Sit on a blanket outside
  • Feel the textures of different things outside: grass, leaves, flower petals, the bark of a tree.

Toddlers

  • All of the above
  • Have them accompany you to take recycling to a local facility
  • Dig in the dirt, plant seeds and water
  • Play in the water outside

Preschoolers

  • All of the above
  • Practice sorting plastics and cardboard into two bags for recycling
  • Learn about conserving water and electricity
  • Turn off lights, appliances, and electronics when not in use
  • Turn off water while scrubbing hands with soap/brushing teeth

5 year olds

  • All of the above
  • Help pick up debris/litter at a local park or in your own yard
  • Talk about/show how products are recycled
  • Talk about decisions you’ve made to be more aware of the environment
  • Decide one thing together to do to be more green
  • Go on a scavenger hunt to find environmentally friendly products in your home or at a store
  • Change light bulbs to energy efficient ones

All Ages

  • Visit local events that promote Earth Day
  • Make a craft using recyclable materials in your home
  • Go on a nature walk and pick up any trash you see along the way
  • Buy your produce from a farmer’s market or local farm

What are you doing to celebrate Earth Day? I wanted to go see Disney’s OCEANS as it’s in theaters today. But the closest theater is over an hour away so I’m not sure it’s worth the drive. I think we’ll spend some time at the park and plant our flowers.

WW: Recycled Earth

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Check out the giveaway from Hanes to win your own Earth Day tee. Ends Monday.

We took Make and Takes’ Recycled Art Challenge. We made this earth from old newspapers lying around. We crumpled them up and then somehow managed to form it into a lopsided ball. Then we paper-mached it to give it a good painting surface.

After it dried, we painted it blue. Then we painted a cereal box green and cut out the shapes of the continents. We taped them on and there’s our finished Earth.

Today we’re linked up with 5 Minutes for Mom and Seven Clown Circus.