What's Cookin?

What to cook for dinner? After a busy day, trying to decide what to cook is usually difficult. When you finally come up with an idea, it seems you never have the ingredients you need. What helps me with this challenge is menu planning! I just recently started doing this and I find it to be so much easier! I love cooking but seemed to always find myself struggling to come up with a dinner idea each night because I wouldn't have all the ingredients I needed. Menu planning allows me make my grocery list and be sure I have everything I need for the entire week. So each Sunday I sit down with my recipe book, and my computer (there are so many great recipes online!) and I plan each night's dinner and make my grocery list. I would usually just jot down the meals on a scrap piece of paper, but finally decided to create a menu chalkboard where I would have it posted in my kitchen.

So hence we have my most recent project:

This is the menu board we created in my kitchen. We created the entire thing ourselves by first using masking tape to block off the squares and then painting over the squares with chalkboard paint. (When I say we I am including my husband. He did all the measuring and making sure the squares were straight. This is not one of my strengths!)  I cut out the letters using my cricut machine and vinyl adhesive paper. I was so happy with the way the project turned out and we use this every week!  I will share my upcoming menus and recipes in future posts!

Happy eating!

Fall Artwork

My two year old daughter is obsessed with painting right now. Every morning she says "Mommy, I want to paint today." She is happy just freestyle painting with her little paint brushes but lately I've been trying to explore some new ideas with her. We've been using our fingers, sponge letters and today we decided to create some fall art. I wanted to share with you three of the activities we did. They are all so easy and require very few supplies!

 Collect orange paint, a round sponge and paper. I happened to have these round sponges with a handle, but you could always use a different shaped sponge.

 Draw a simple pumpkin shape on the paper and then let them get to painting!

Cute little pumpkin! 

 This is our attempt at a colorful fall tree. I first painted out a tree trunk and branches. If your child is older they could draw their own. Then I let her use the round sponge to add colored leaves. She loved this!

 Some of the leaves started wandering off the tree :) We just considered those falling leaves and the one that fell a little too far we turned into a pumpkin!

Our third art project goes with the fall children's song "Five Little Pumpkins". My daughter loves this little song. If you are not familiar with it, here are the words and motions. Try singing it with your little one! They will love it!

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate (five fingers up)
The first one said "Oh my it's getting Late" (Hands on Cheeks)
The second one said "There's a chill in the air" (arms around self)
The third one said "But we don't care" (swing pointer finger)
The fourth one said "We're ready for some fun!" (hand in air)
The fifth one said "Let's run, run, run!" (running motion)
So woooo went the wind, and out went the lights,
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight!

So after several rounds of this cute little song we decided to make a picture out of it. We created our gate using some wooden sticks I had. You could use craft sticks or toothpicks also.

 We designed our gate! This was her first time using glue. We had a couple of instances of trying to eat the glue, due to it resembling icing. So there was also a lesson on not eating glue. :)

 I had these foam pumpkin stickers that I have had forever and have had no use for. They were perfect for this activity. Of course you could always use paint or draw the pumpkins!

Five little pumpkins sitting on the gate!

Have fun exploring your creative side!