Awesome Sauce: May 2012

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Summer Reading - FREE Book from Barnes and Noble!

As I was searching for ways to keep my almost-a-first-grader busy over the summer I saw this awesome program by Barnes and Noble going on this summer.

Your child in grades 1-6 reads 8 books at home and fills out a journal stating the title, author, and who they'd recommend the book to and brings it into a participating Barnes and Noble store for a FREE BOOK! WOOHOO! I LOVE free! It has to be from their list but there are 7 choices in the first and second grader bracket (one about dinosaurs and one about Lego Heros so I'm pretty sure we're covered).

We just printed our "Reading Journal" out and G is reading his first book tonight. He loves hearing ME read stories, but this is a great incentive for him to read himself.

The program runs from May 22nd until September 4th 2012.

Happy reading! :)

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Best Mother's Day Card

Ha! I just found this Mother's Day Card at the awesome Paperless Post (for FREE!) Hilarious!

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Teacher Appreciation Week: Day 5

Our room moms left us to our own devices for Friday's gift - no theme or group gift idea which I like better! I decided to use these cute little free printables from the domesticated lady for all 5 of the teachers and just changed it up a little for the kindergarten teacher.

The free printable topper can be found here.

I made these little bags of popped popcorn for the preschool teachers, since there are four of them and I needed to think of the most cuteness for my money. They all loved it and were eating them for snack with the kids.

The kindergarten teacher got this popcorn container that I picked up at Target for $1. That find was what started me on a search for cute ways to use it for the teachers! Her topper is holding a bag with 2 movie tickets inside and then there are a couple of microwave popcorn bags and a little note from G about why he appreciates his teacher.

She has been teaching for 35 years and said these were the wittiest teacher appreciation gifts she's ever received! Yay! She's been taking pictures of our gift each day and sending it to her friends, and has a little display of them in her room so the other teachers at her school can come by and check out what we brought each day. G was SO proud of everything he brought her which was great.

I'm so thankful for the amazing teachers in my kids lives and these fun little gifts are just a small way to tell them how much they mean to us! :)

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Bacon

At dinner tonight G said "Mom, you know without pigs we wouldn't have bacon?" M, while eating a big juicy piece of chicken, said "Why? Are the pigs in charge of delivering it to the grocery stores?" G just stared at him and I gave him "the eye" saying "don't you dare start the 'we are eating farm animals' discussion with your brother right now! I am too tired." We'll just let him think the pigs pull up in their big truck and deliver all the bacon slabs to the store, right next to the semi-truck of steak the cows drove in...

Teacher Appreciation Week: Day 4

SCHOOL SUPPLIES

Backpack.
Fruit snack.
Waterbottle too.
Calculator.
French Translator.
Pink eraser.
Glue.

Notebooks.
Workbooks.
Poster paper.
Pens.
Dictionary.
Stationery.
Presents for my friends.

Lunchbox.
Tube socks.
Watercolors.
Tape.
Yellow pencils.
Plastic stencils.
One for every shape.

Wristwatch.
Stopwatch.
Cell phone.
DVD.
New computer.
Motorscooter.
Giant screen T.V.

That's my
list of
all I need to buy.
I never knew
a shopping list
could make my mother cry.

--Kenn Nesbitt

The room moms for Gs kinder class organized Thursday as "school supply day" so we are sticking with that theme and using some of these ADORABLE free printables from How Does She to make them cute.

And here's our finished gift...

I'm going to have G fill out one of these to put inside before he goes to school:

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Teacher Appreciation Week: Day 3

So far all the teacher gifts have been a HUGE hit with all 5 teachers (2 for each of the boys in preschool and 1 for our kindergartener). The boys really love the play on words so we're sticking with it for Wednesday with this adorable tea making kit idea from Domesticated Lady.

The cute little "For a TEA-riffic teacher" free printable is available here.

Then all you need is a water bottle, some tea in little single serving packs and cute ribbon (we used yellow because that's the favorite color of 3 of the teachers).

We also made some s'mores tonight after dinner with all our leftovers supplies from Tuesday's teacher gifts and they were delicious and so easy to make!

Police visit

OK, just had a little meet and greet with a couple County Sheriffs at my house, after our house alarm went off while no one was home. When I pull up to the house I see a uniformed officer with his gun drawn, standing outside the open front door.

I say :"Is someone in THERE?!!"
He says "It looks bad. There are clothes all over the dining room table..."
Me: "Oh, um, that's the stuff I'm getting ready to sell on ebay".
Gun Wielding Peace Officer: "I can see books and toys strewn around the living room."
Me: "Um....yeah. Well. That's the kids stuff...I mean I TOLD them to clean it up, but, you know..."
Gun brandishing, VERY muscular policeman gives me a blank stare and says "I'm waiting for my partner to arrive so we can enter the premises.
Me: "Oh, yeah. Well, that sounds good, sure."

Once policeman (and gun) number two arrive they yell some stuff but I really only heard the words "we have our guns drawn and you may be SHOT".

Crap.

After a couple minutes they come out and have Paul do a walk through with them to make sure nothing is missing.

Then they leave and we walk into the house. Hmmm. This is a bit embarrassing. I mean it LOOKS like the place has been ransacked, but really it's exactly as we left it this morning as we all rushed out the door to work and school. There are some firetruck underpants hanging from the kitchen chair (Max threw them in a fit this morning while screaming for his garbage truck undies), there's a demolition site of lincoln logs on the family room floor, the breakfast dishes are on the counter and the DVD we left on for Huxley (you know, so he doesn't get lonely) has ended and is doing a continuous loop of the intro song to Duck Tales. But, and I say this with the upmost pride, my pantry is IMMACULATE. I just hope they took a good LONG look in there. I mean, it's a great bad-guy hiding place right? And so organized! :)

They determined that the door to the garage hadn't been latched all the way and the wind blew it open, so not ACTUALLY a break in. Good to know they're hardcore about it though. And I have now started tidying up the house on the off chance we are almost-robbed by the wind again.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Teacher Appreciation Week: Day 2

G said his teacher LOVED her latte card Monday. Yay!

Tuesday he's taking this adorable little s'more pack that I found on the cute domesticated lady blog.

They're PERFECT! They're so simple, so cute and have that little hint of summer fun around the corner. The free printable to make the label can be found here, so the only other things you need are a 4x9 clear cello bag, some graham crackers, marshmallows, and little hershey bars (we had lots of extras...YUM!). The label has directions for making an individual s'more in the microwave! Too cute!

Mother's Day

Now that I have the 3 little boys tagging along with me everywhere I go, eating out is a different experience. They are generally well-behaved in public, but they aren't the biggest fans of eating at restaurants and I can see why. It goes against their perpetual motion mechanisms to sit still for extended periods of time and then their Mom (aka ME) is always frowning at them when they come up with AWESOME ideas. For example, attempting to eat spaghetti the way our dog would, without utensils or appendages, face first into the sloppy noodles didn't earn a positive reaction from me. On top of that, the prices are always raised on Mother's Day and most of our favorite restaurants only offer "special" menus. For these, and many other reasons, we've moved away from the traditional "Mother's Day Brunch" and I've been looking for different things to do with the kids, and with my mom.

This year my mom and I are going to PAINT!! I'm so excited! This amazing artist, Timree, taught a boys painting class a couple of weeks ago that G did and loved, so now my mom and I are going back for a little Mother's Day painting class.

Here's 5 year old G's airplane painting (his first time EVER painting on a canvas with real paints)

How adorable is her studio in Newport Beach?

She has so many fun paintings to chose from in her classes.

After my mom and I paint our cute little paintings, hubby and the kids are going to meet us down by the beach to go on a little Duffy boat ride and picnic. What a fun day! And no sitting still in a stuffy restaurant for the boys!

Not only is this going to be my mother's day gift, but she's doing a sweet "Father's Day" painting class that G and hubby will go to (the other boys aren't old enough to take the classes yet). They're painting flip flops! How cute is that?

Teacher Appreciation Week: Day 1

All three of my kids have awesome teachers! I wanted to do something special for them this year for Teacher Appreciation Week (May 7-11) so I've been combing the web for ideas for months. Here's what we're doing Monday, which I found at the great blog eighteen25.

Gs teacher LOVES Starbucks so it's perfect for her. The other two are in preschool, and I can't imagine a human being able to deal with 2-3 year olds all day without the assistance of large quantities of caffeine!

The free printable is found here, and then all you need is cardstock to print it on, a coffee sleeve cut to fit and glued or stapled on the bottom and sides to create a little pocket for your gift card. Place the gift card inside and then wrap it with cute twine. I've found LOTS of fun colors of twine at The Twinery.

The boys can't wait to give these to their teachers!

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Awesome Summer Reading List!

With the kids quickly approaching the end of the school year, I'm already in full panic mode about what they're going to do for 8 hours a day, everyday, for 3 entire months! One of the things I want to make sure we do a LOT is read!! This is a list of the books we're planning on reading this summer. Some are new ones we haven't read yet and some are old favorites. My kids are 5, 4 and 2 years old and there are books on here that are appropriate for all of them. I'm finding that I need to stop reading the kids only books in their "age group" because they end up missing out on some GREAT books. The 2 year old is really liking the Magic Tree House series, and my 5 year old still loves reading Owen, so I just have all these books out on our awesome book shelf and let them pick.

I rotate the books that are "on display" every month and the rest are stored in a bookcase cabinet so they can still go grab a favorite book whenever they want. I've found that rotating the books that are out on display keeps them excited about different books and encourages them to read new stories.

Most of the links below are to GoodReads, which has fantastic detailed reviews of each of the books. You can purchase most of them at Barnes and Noble, but we like borrowing them from the library the best (especially during the summer when our library has their "summer reading program"). I hope it gives you some ideas for awesome books to read with your little ones, or ideas for gifts for the little reader in your family!

Awesome Summer Reading List

1. Cloudette