Learning a bunch with buttons.

Enolah is at such a fun age right now, well most of the time she's fun and often times she's quite a challenge. Any who her little brain is a sponge. I have noticed several people who homeschool start activities around this age (2 and a half). We're not planning to homeschool but I still wanted to do a couple learning activities with her each week. This morning I was feeling inspired and googled "homeschool activities for toddlers" to get an idea of what you could do at this age and noticed a lot of age appropriate activities included colors, shapes, sorting or a mixture of the three. Usually with premade purchased kits. Well I don't have any of these kits but again I was feeling inspired so I rummaged through my craft room and the kitchen and devised two fun activities with buttons!

What you'll need:

- a bag or several different colored buttons
- an old egg carton
- a camera
- a color printer.

Sorting by colors- I took an egg crate and put one of each color button in a space. Then I gave her a bowl full of all the buttons and told her to put the yellow with yellow, green with green and so on. You get it.

Intense concentration.

She's got the idea and doing great!

Shape stencils: Next I took the buttons and arranged them into different shapes on a white piece of paper. I took a picture of each shape, uploaded them to my computer and printed them out. Again I gave her the of buttons and said to make the same shape. An orange triangle, blue square, etc. 

Something to note, when you go to print them out print a test one to check for scale. I made the blue square too big and she said the buttons "didn't fit" so she found a color button that did and ended up making a yellow square.

Again with the concentration. 

There you have it. A fun learning activity for your toddler. You probably have these items laying around too! I plan on making this next, after a trip to the craft store unless I can find some spare wood laying around in the garage. 

It's always a good day when you get new shoes.

Life for the three of us has been challenging but today was a fabulous day! I'd like to hit replay on today for the next 8 weeks. Why today was so awesome:

1. We all slept in until 8 or later.
2. Enolah ate all of her breakfast.
3. We had a dance party in the kitchen.
4. We got out of the house, spur of the moment and the baby didn't scream in the car.
5. I got new shoes.
6. I got the second of our mismatch side tables.
7. The kids napped for 3+ hours each.
8. Bought fabric for a new quilt.
9. Enolah is one step closer to being fully potty learned.
10. She ate all her dinner, including vegetables without me hounding her.
11. No toddler tantrums.
12. We got to talk to daddy.

To replace my old flats that were ruined by dog poop!

Now I'm enjoying a glass of wine, watching the Giants beat the Tigers, reading my new fave blog and looking forward to more days like today.

Dear Daddy

Dear Daddy,

Enolah says she misses you very much. In fact she says it all the time, especially at night, and that she loves you very much. Her ability to express emotion is getting really good! Her imagination is really growing too. Yesterday she gathered a few random items and said we needed to go on a mission. So off we went to roam the neighborhood, not quite sure what the goal of the mission was but I learned something new about her. I asked what her name was several times and it's not Enolah, Nola, Nolie or Baby. She says her name is Yoyo. Yep, I'm Mommy, you're Daddy, Soren is baby brother and she's Yoyo.

It doesn't seem like Soren has gotten much bigger in a week. I'm sure you'd disagree if you saw him though. He's still being a very good boy for me and we even survived a two hour car trip without a peep. I'm not holding my breath that that will last though. I'm pretty sure he's aware of Enolah and likes her. When ever she comes to talk to or love on him he always smiles. It's such a sweet sight to see.

I'm doing my best to keep up with the chores, the kids and work without loosing my sanity. I have caught the decorating bug again. It's probably a good idea you're not here during it or you'd have a lot of furniture moving and rehanging of items to do.

We miss you so much, see you in 9 Wednesdays.

Look what she found. 

And looking as goofy as you do in them!

Sun flare

Oh so that's what they're called! I'm so obsessed with photographs that have the sun rays shining through them. So I decided to snap a few myself. Nothing near the skill and quality of the professional ones I admire but if you ask me I think my iPhone did a pretty good job!

Dear Daddy

This series is for you Sam, we'll see you in 10 more Wednesdays.

Dear Daddy,

Enolah has developed quite the little attitude. She now says things like "no, please don't" "I don't want that either!" and demands "now" after some of her requests. The girl is crazy. She got her Daddy Doll in the mail today and loves it.

Kisses for Daddy.

"It's my Daddy!"

Cheese!

Being sweet.

Soren is a whopping 12 lbs 8 ozs and has been sleeping like a champ. He's getting to be so chill and we haven't dealt with the evening screaming for two weeks now. His hatred of the car has escalated though which makes traveling challenging. Enolah doesn't seem to mind though and sleeps through the screaming just fine.

Enolah arranged Soren, the doll and toy like this! His expression is hilarious.

Before he realized he was in the car.

Tattoos and thrift stores.

Yesterday I had my third and final session of my tattoo done with Justin Lipuma at Jack Brown's Tattoo Revival. Follow them both on Instagram! @leftylipuma and @tattorevival. I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out! Justin does amazing work and you should definitely check him out. I took the liberty of doing a little Q & A. Justin is originally from New York but has just recently settled here in Virginia at Jack Brown's. He's been tattooing for twelve years. When he first started out he wanted to be known for his black and grey work but after his first color piece people started demanding more, he now says he "doesn't have a favorite, they both have their place." It seems as though Justin prides himself in doing work that will last and age well on a human canvas. I can't wait to get more work done by him and for my Soren Jay to be old enough to know this tattoo is for him.

My session was done early so I decided to hit up Villiage Thrift with the kids. Monday is half off day and scored a little pile of treasure for just $10 bucks. The little trucks are one of my favorite toy brands, Melissa & Doug and set me back just 60 cents each. The frames and butterflies I plan to spray paint to match Enolah's new big girl room. It's in transition now but once we move to South Carolina I'm hoping it's a color scheme she can really grow with.

Frugal Friday: wine rack

A couple weeks ago we went to a friend's house for dinner and she asked if I wanted wine with our meal. I said sure and she whipped out a bottle from her wine rack. I thought to myself, I need one of those. We always have beer but how classy to always have wine available to guests. Well being the frugal minded gal that I am I wasn't just going to go buy one, I had to figure out a way to make one. I google image searched "DIY wine rack" and everything that came up required too much heavy machinery either cutting wood or PVC pipes. Then I saw this picture from a blog post four years ago. Genius. 

These are the cans I used, Normal items I usually purchase, I just bought the bigger size. You'll need a can at least 3 inches in diameter for s standard wine bottle. 

I used hot glue to stick them together and the close pins to keep the pressure. You have the stagger the cans to allow the cans to touch because of the lip.

Here it is before spray paint. I left the bottom on the bottom five cans but removed both ends of the top can.

You can decorate it is several ways, modge podge with decorative scrapbook paper, stencil each can or spray paint with a color of your choice. I chose flat black to go with our kitchen theme (more on that later).

Now for the fun part.

The finished product! You can see how removing both ends of the top can prevents it from being "top heavy" and tilting or tipping forward. 

Bye, bye, Daddy.

Sam left Monday morning for Marine Corps Drill Instructor School in Parris Island, SC. He will be gone for 12 weeks. We told Enolah that Daddy would be going to work for a really long time. Not sure if she understands. She cried some yesterday. Asked for him a couple times last night and keeps talking about him today. Here are some pictures of our last weekend together for a little while. We're going to miss him so much! If you want to stay updated on his journey check out his blog.