Tips

Easy Ways to Surprise & Delight Your Children

Thumbnail image for Easy Ways to Surprise & Delight Your Children

My kids love a good surprise – how about yours? Since the baby days of peek-a-boo, I’ve loved finding little ways to add more smiles and giggles to our days. As often as I can, I look for sweet, memorable, or unexpected things I can do for my kids. I feel like I shine as [...]

Continue reading →

Summer List 2011

Thumbnail image for Summer List 2011

We’ve been adding to our annual summer to-do list the past few days. Do you and your kids do something like this? Many of the things on our list appear every year – swimming, backyard camp-outs, going to the fair. I love that the girls remember these traditions as summer approaches each year – sweet [...]

Continue reading →

Birthday Party Activity Stations for Toddlers & Preschoolers

Thumbnail image for Birthday Party Activity Stations for Toddlers & Preschoolers

Maybe it’s the kindergarten teacher in me, but I love setting up activity centers or stations when we have kid parties. The kids can spend most of their time playing, and there are plenty of activities available to keep them busy. I usually plan four to six open-ended activities so the kids can play and [...]

Continue reading →

Five-Minute Family Traditions

Thumbnail image for Five-Minute Family Traditions

In my experience, it’s the little things that make the biggest memories. Do you find that to be true? When I was growing up, we didn’t have air-conditioning. I still remember my dad taking us for drives on hot summer days so we could cool off in the air-conditioned car – and, if we were [...]

Continue reading →

Around the House: Weekly Jobs

Thumbnail image for Around the House: Weekly Jobs

Okay, so here is the rest of our job chart that you got a peek at when I wrote about our after-dinner jobs. We set this up with two main goals: 1. To give the girls a daily responsibility in addition to after-dinner jobs and nightly room tidying 2. To help my hubby and I [...]

Continue reading →

Around the House: After-Dinner Jobs

Thumbnail image for Around the House: After-Dinner Jobs

Thanks to our new after-dinner jobs, I have a pretty tidy kitchen every night. I am constantly surprised by how much I love walking into the kitchen in the morning and seeing clear counters and an empty dish drainer. It’s such a mood-booster to start my day! I followed the lead of Molly at Mommy [...]

Continue reading →

Self-Serve Painting

When the girls ask to paint, I try to always say yes. I don’t always have the easel set-up, but they are usually just as happy to paint at the kitchen table. Sometimes they want watercolors, but often they want “real paint,” as Delaney calls it. We use Colorations brand washable tempera paints or BioColor [...]

Continue reading →

Goal-Setting Charts for Young Kids

Setting goals is not just for grown-ups. Even our littles can benefit from the confidence-boost that comes from setting a goal, working towards it, and achieving it. Goal-setting with young children should be simple and straightforward: Involve your child as much as possible in choosing an appropriate goal. Listen for times when your little one [...]

Continue reading →

Giving Your Full Attention

I always enjoy hearing tips and tricks from other parents and thinking about which ones would be a good fit for me and my girls. So, I thought I’d share some of my parenting tips with you from time to time. My tips may be things you’ve read before, heard before, tried before – but [...]

Continue reading →

Party Tip: Creating Large Cardboard Characters

Thumbnail image for Party Tip: Creating Large Cardboard Characters

I’ve had a few questions about the large painted characters we made for Delaney’s Alice in Wonderland party {see Part 1 and Part 2 for more pictures}. My husband did the drawing. I printed out a picture of the character and he drew a grid across it. Then, he drew another larger grid on a [...]

Continue reading →