Mrs. H

No Foolin’…

I’ll be taking a break from posting for a couple of days, and will be back on April 2 with a fabulous STEAM post for you! Be sure to check back here on Thursday and until then… don’t let anyone get ya on Wednesday!

GIVEAWAY TIME!!

I’m super excited about how many folks are following my blog both here on the site and on my Facebook page! Plus, right now I’m hosting an Usborne books party, so it just seemed like an awesome thing to do to celebrate your participation by giving back! I’ll be giving away a copy of “On the Moon” – Becca’s favorite Usborne book!

Check out the Rafflecopter giveaway here:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

It’s only running through next Monday, when my party closes! Earn entries by visiting my Facebook page, commenting on any of my blog posts that you’re going to try that activity with your kids, tweeting about my blog, or of course, you get 5 extra entries in the drawing if you decide to order from my party!

Again, thank you so much for being an active part of my blog. I hope that the ideas I share are an inspiration to get actively involved in your child/ren’s life/ves, and I hope that you always remember that I’m real… many days we do simply nothing at all, and then other days I have vast inspiration and we do five projects at once (ever notice the same shirt in several posts? hehe). I’m just a mom… who has laundry and dishes piled high and dog hair collecting around the baseboards. I have coffee spots on my countertops, and stuff that should have been hauled upstairs two days ago still sitting on the bar. I’m as real as you are. I promise.

A glance back at my kitchen from my vantage point on the couch. Yup. Stuff here and there and everywhere. Life. It happens.

Wildflower Window Decorations

I really enjoy following Jean Van’t Hul over at The Artful Parent. She has some fabulous ideas, and I have really become much more of an artful parent since following her blog. She had a fun idea about making some Easter egg window decorations, and I took that idea and turned it into a flower window decoration instead.

Becca really enjoyed going out to collect random flowers in a little baggy, and then we carefully deconstructed them for use in our art. She held the marker and guided the drawing as I assisted in making a flower design on our contact paper. She then helped put the wildflowers around randomly, and I covered them and cut them out, and then hung on our deck patio door. They are so pretty, and I really enjoy looking at them as I go by. They remind me that spring is here! I used Washi tape to make the stems and leaves, and I did Washi around one flower as Jean suggests in her blog, but then just left the other one b/c it was really hard to make it look the way I wanted in the design we chose to do.

This is a super fun and easy way to make a connection between the outdoors and an indoor art project. For us, I knew it was going to rain, so one afternoon we did the collecting, and the next afternoon while we watched the rain, we made the flowers and thought about spring! It was fun to watch the wheels turning in her mind as she talked about how the rain coming down was going to help the flowers grow more and more. She got so excited. And she was super excited to show our flowers to Daddy when he got home from work! 🙂

Please note – I typically do art projects where the end result is open-ended, and give Becca very little instruction. For this project, I showed her the blog post and Jean’s pictures before we ever started so that she’d have an idea of what we were going for in the finished product. She seemed to really appreciate having some direction, but also totally did her own thing, which was good. So it was sort of product AND process art since we had an end goal in mind and both knew what we were going for (and had to follow specific directions and steps to get to that goal), but it was also process art because it was more about the journey than what it actually turned up looking like in the end. 🙂

YouTube Channel Now Running!

If you’re like us, we like to let Becca watch educational short videos from YouTube… but it gets frustrating when you’re constantly having to switch to the next video! SO – I’ve created a channel on YouTube with playlists that include multiple videos under certain themes, so you can just set it to play without having to worry about the roll over. Super convenient if you’re accessing YouTube on your tv, or handing your child your phone and wanting to know they are watching something that’s ok.

Right now it has a few groups of our favorite Story Bots videos, but over time I will begin to add more and more to it, and will frequently share updates on my Facebook page. (Have you “liked” and “followed” my Facebook page yet? Check it out here!)

So, click on over to my YouTube channel, and set it on your favorites so you can quickly find it when needed! Enjoy!

Deep in the Heart of Texas…

I’ve really enjoyed having a couple of friends guest post on the past couple of Wednesdays, and I’m hoping to share more guest posts with you soon! Today, though, I’m just gonna take a couple of minutes to share a piece of MY heart…

My sweet little girl is growing up so so fast. Some days she struggles, and that tends to be what I focus on. But the past week and a half to two weeks has been absolutely wonderful. She is kind, and thoughtful. She is helpful and attentive to the needs of those around her. She is… she is… she is amazing. I love this little girl with everything in my being, and I’m so very proud to be her Mommy.

Yesterday as we strolled through Hobby Lobby looking at various craft supply items, and planning and giggling about her birthday party (in June), I just had this moment where time stood still. She had gotten a little too loud and a little too excited, and I had taken the cupcake sprinkles out of her hand to put them in the basket (she was shaking them and banging them on the cart). I didn’t tell her what I was doing – I just yanked them from her hand, and threw them in the back in my sudden shift from funny, silly, goofy gal to seriously frustrated Mommy. And she didn’t know what she did wrong. I realized as soon as I did it that I didn’t offer any correction or explain, I just did to her exactly what I’ve spent the last almost ten months of her life telling her not to do to her brother. She immediately started crying. I pulled into a side aisle, and hugged her close and whispered in her ear. I told her that she needed to calm down, that Mommy was getting frustrated because she was being so loud banging the sprinkles on the cart. I told her I was sorry that I had acted so quickly, but I was just frustrated and that I needed her to calm down or we were going to have to leave the store. (Fully realizing I had allowed her to ramp up and even encouraged the silliness.) Her bottom lip quivered as we took a deep breath together, and then she told me, “I’m sorry I got you frustrated. I’ll be sweet now and not so loud ok? I don’t want to leave yet. I want to get tie dye. Pleeeeease??”

And in that moment, as time stood still, I realized what a gift God has given me. A child who wants to please. A child who knows how to work for a reward. A child who seriously loves art and recognized my willingness to step out of my normal comfort zone to do an activity with her… and hold my feet to the fire that we’d really get the supplies and do it. A child who is rapidly learning how to use her vocabulary to communicate her needs and wants. A child who understands common manners and how to use them appropriately.

My child. My offspring. Who just a few days ago was an infant, learning to crawl. Who just a few days later was learning to walk, to run, to climb. Who seemingly just yesterday was a brand new big sister holding her tiny infant brother. Her tiny infant brother, who will be ten months old tomorrow. Where does the time go? It flies.

I know that I’m not the perfect parent. No, I’m far from it. But I thank God for little moments like that when He turns my inappropriate response into a moment of realization. When I can stop and see the blessings around me.

When we got home, we went out into the bluebonnets and took these beautiful pictures. His beauty and blessings are all around me, but often I get so very bogged down in the household chores, the work tasks, the sick husband and baby, the preschooler who constantly wants me… So bogged down that I begin to miss the fact that I have a beautiful home to clean, a job that pays well, a handsome husband and adorable baby boy, and a sweet little girl who is going through a clingy phase and now (finally) wants Mommy more than anything or anyone else.

Yes, we live in God’s country. And there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here, Deep in the Heart of Texas, surrounded by His beautiful handiwork, with my wonderful little family. We are so blessed.