Saturday, November 19, 2011

DIY Play Dough

What is it with kids and Play Dough? It can keep them busy for hours! Even my 10 year old sits there and plays with it for as long as her 7 year old brother does and sometimes longer. I’ve never liked buying play dough because I didn’t think the price and the size of the play dough you got, matched up lol, not to mention it always got mixed with other colors or it dried out. I have recently changed my mind because I found a recipe here on, How Does She? for me to make it on my own! Now that I can do! It cost WAAY less money and you get a heck of a lot more and we get to have fun picking our own colors and making it together :D SO I made sure I had all the ingredients, which I didn’t (I’ve never even heard of Cream of Tartar lol), I finally got the stuff we needed and got to it! It was SSOO easy! Even easier than the Salt Dough, this is kinda weird considering salt dough only takes 3 ingredients...


So here is what you need….
1 cup flour
1 cup water
¼ cup salt
1 tbls vegetable oil
2 tsp cream of tartar
& your choice of food coloring

Now throw it all in a pot and mix it real well, 

cook it over medium heat, stirring constantly until it forms into a ball or a big clump,

Place on wax paper and let it cool. When cooled knead until it’s smooth and soft. I had my kids knead the dough while I started a new batch and color. Some of us (Kiarrah) got really into kneading, face expressions and all :)


The first batch we made got dug into right away. Cookie cutters, butter knives, rolling pins… the works. I was very excited to see them enjoying something that I made for them. On the other hand, our second batch wasn’t so loved at first. Kiarrah helped me make all 5 (yellow, lime green, black, red and dark blue) BUT when they were finished and ready to be played with she was over it lol. Gabriel was playing a pizza-math game on the computer and only stopped long enough to come watch me make the black play dough (we were all excited for that one). So I put them in their containers and there they still sit :) My kiddos did say that they were gonna play with it all morning LOL.





<3 Rae 

Friday, November 18, 2011

Whats the big deal about Coupons?

OK I know I’m WAY late on this BUT OMG, this couponing thing is amazing!!

We don’t have cable so I’ve never actually seen one of the Extreme Couponing shows, until now that is. I don’t even remember how I started watching it but, holy moly, am I glad.

I just kept saying, “I want to coupon”, “I want a stock pile”, “I want a coupon binder” LMAO!!

There are some HUGE savings going on and I want in on it! Some of these women have saved over $60,000 in just one year!! One lady had a total of $1,062.40 worth of groceries!! You wanna know how much she really paid for all that??? NOTHING!! Yup nothing! The store actually paid her $8 in store credit that she used on her next purchase!! And she had 52 bottles of laundry detergent in there!! WOW!

So the problem is that I never use coupons; I have some in my wallet that are probably expired. I don’t even know how they work. Now that I’m really thinking about it I wouldn’t even know where to start.

Can someone, anyone, please give me some pointers or point me in the direction of someone who you think can teach me how to be a coupon crazy!?

                <3 Rae

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Turkey craft

Wow! I can’t believe I forgot about the turkeys that we made, I wanted to share them but spaced it. So here I am!!! yay!! :)

I found the turkey idea (here) 
 and since I had so many tp rolls left over from the bird feeders, I knew this had to be the next project.

Let’s get to it……

Here’s what you need; tp rolls, colored construction paper, pencil, scissors, glue, googly eyes (we drew ours on) and your kids :D

1)   the first thing we did was pick out the colors that we wanted for Turkey’s feathers (Red, Orange, brown and yellow),
2)   Then we traced our hands on the paper, cut them out and set them aside for later.
3)   The next thing we did was color on their eyes and cut out a little beak for Turkey ( cut a v shape on your tp roll and fold up to make his beak)   *while the kids were busy doing that I was drawing and cutting  out their feet and gobbles (gobbles- you know the little thing that hangs from their necks, lol)
4)   Next we glued on turkeys feet and gobble
5)   finally, decide what color order you want his feathers to go and start gluing them on to the back of your turkey
6)   Now you and your kids can admire your thanksgiving turkeys!!! :D

We got a little more creative than the original one we saw by adding the feet (turkeys gotta have feet, how will they walk?). We also did one where instead of using our traced hands, we cut out feathers with crazy scissors to make the feathers look, well, crazy :) And since my kids are so nice they wanted to make one for their teachers and their schools office! I thought it would be cute for them to write Thankfuls on the back of their feathers so that’s exactly what we did. For their school they wrote “I’m thankful for Mariana”, on their teachers they wrote “I’m thankful for mrs…and their teachers name!! How sweet!












<3 Rae


Monday, November 7, 2011

Memory Monday

So i wanted to Blog about Mine and the kids Turkeys that we made this afternoon BUT the pictures are taking too long to upload SO i decided to just share some pictures of us over this past month or so.  Since its Monday ill call this Memory Monday. Hey maybe ill do this every Monday! Shoot i'm gonna have to make myself reminders lol.

So anyway, for the longest, i couldn't upload my pictures at all due to the fact that i don't have the CD to my favorite Aunts camera. Then i found this nifty little USB Card Reader for 5 bucks!!!! I ordered it off Amazon but it took FOREVER to get here :( When it finally arrived, i was so excited! I had SO many pictures! All the way back to the end of August!  Madness!
So here are some, I hope you enjoy....

 <3 My beautiful children on Picture day back in September..
 <3 Our Cantaloupe, we kept seeds from a cantaloupe that we ate and then planted the seeds :)..
<3 Planting our plants..
 <3 So proud..
<3 The desert smells AMAZING when it rains..
 <3 Helping Mom make a Cheese Ball..
<3 My Girls :D..
 <3 1st. Scorpian my Daughter found in HER ROOM!! My Honeys so brave he picked it up with his fingers!..
<3 Bishops homemade beenie to keep his head warm :) Kiarrah made it for him out of some old pj bottoms lol she cracks me up!!..
<3 My Handsome Boy reading to me..
Ill save the rest for next Monday or when i remember to do another Memory Blog. Thanks for stopping by, <3 Rae

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Pumpkin Muffins


I’ve been on a Holiday frenzy lately, looking up all kinds of fun Holiday crafts for my kids to decorate our house with and yummy recipes to make our house smell good and our belly’s full. I’ve been getting most of my ideas from Pinterest, LOVE that site!!

A recipe I thought would be yummy was the Pumpkin Muffin that I found (HERE). I wanted to use pumpkin but not in a pie, too traditional. So this one was perfect because its muffins :D and you only need TWO ingredients!!! YES you read that right! It’s SO EASY!! My Daughter made them all by herself :D

So here is what you’ll need...
<3 1 can of pumpkin 15oz
<3 1 box of cake mix (I used yellow cake mix) (you DON’T need the egg, water or oil, JUST the MIX by itself)
 Put cake mix and pumpkin in bowl and mix real good…


 Spoon muffin mix in cupcake wrappers and bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes…

 

When they are done you will have some yummy moist muffins with a taste of pumpkin. Top with powdered sugar or a dab of whipped cream. YUM!! Let me know if you make them and like them.

<3 Rae


Thursday, November 3, 2011

Bird Snacks



I need to stock up on craft supplies! Anything that will keep the kids busy is my friend. Yesterday as I’m cleaning the kitchen, (for the second time of the day,) my Son got this huge spark of energy. It was too cold to shoo him outside and he kept asking to throw bird seeds outside SO, I decided to have him make some bird feeders. Thank goodness too because he was driving me bananas! LOL.

Last year we made some Bird Feeders out of Pine cones, Peanut Butter and Birdseed's...

They worked but Lordy were they MESSY!! It was so hard to roll them in birdseed's and to hang them from string and I think the birds either carried them away or they fell and our dog Bella got them. Bella LOVES peanut butter (she’s been sniffing at our new bird feeders since we put them up).

So as I said last year we made some using Pine cones, this year we did them differently. I saw the new-easier kind on this Blog (HERE) and thought to myself “GENIUS” “why didn’t I think of that?” In her version she used Toilet Paper rolls (I’ve been saving every roll since then)!! WOW, so much better, they’re easier to hold than the pine cones and instead of tying them to the tree, you can just slide them on to the branch! DUH!! I don’t know why I didn’t think about that! I’m just happy we found an easier way; I’m so easy to please ;)

Here are some pictures of Gabriel making some and the steps. Enjoy :)

 First we got an empty toilet paper roll and spread peanut butter all over it...
 The we spread birdseed all over our cutting broad...
 And rolled the peanut buttered toilet paper roll on the birdseed trying to get it as even as possible...
And then your DONE! And the birdies have a treat :) Now find a good branch to put them on...
I've been looking out for birds but still haven't been able to catch a picture of one.
      <3 Rae