Baking Bread

O and I baked bread this morning. Although, really we just put the ingredients in the bread machine and pressed start. It was lots of fun and very messy. O loved pouring the ingredients into the container. Unfortunately, her aim was a little off, so we had flour everywhere. She also liked mixing everything together, and she even snuck a few bites. Yuck! We made honey oatmeal bread, which is my favorite bread machine bread. Its delicious! Here is the recipe:

INGREDIENTS
1 1/4 cups water
3 cups bread flour (we used 1.5 cups of bread flour and 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour)
2 tablespoons honey
1 1/2 tablespoons dry milk powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup quick cooking oats
2 tablespoons margarine
1 tablespoon active dry yeast

DIRECTIONS
Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select White Bread setting, and Start.

Learning to Climb Stairs

O's cousin, Marg, loves to teach her how to do things, especially gross motor skills. Marg's mom (my sister) is a pediatric physical therapist, and Marg is often her "assistant" when she is treating patients. With each step, Marg said "like this." O loves this special attention from Marg, and she now says "ike this" every times she goes up and down these stairs.

Check Out Our Grape Tomato Plants!

We can't believe how tall our grape tomatoes plants have grown! I'm not sure if you can tell from the pictures, but these plants are taller than Elliott (and he's 5'11"). They are COVERED with green tomatoes that we can't wait to eat! They are planted in an earth box (thanks, G & G!), and they are about 2 feet taller than our traditionally planted tomatoes. We're definitely planting EVERYTHING in earth boxes next year! O loves to help pour the water in the earth box spout.


O and Ell love to bounce on the joggling board on our deck. I think this may be my new favorite picture of the 2 of them!

O's Beach

O is in love with her beach. The lake is especially high this year, so we brought in 3 truckloads of sand to make a beach. We need to bring in a 4th, but I am REALLY dreading shoveling another truckload of sand. Its backbreaking work, and I was sore for a week after shoveling the last load. Luckily, Elliott shoveled the 1st 2 when we were out of town :) Despite the hard work, we are so glad that we decided to make beach for O. She LOVES it! She writes her name in the sand, rakes the sand, builds sandcastles, makes sand pies, etc. It freaks me out daily to live this close to the water with a toddler, but having a beach in our front yard is definitely a highlight of living on the water.

Feeding the Geese

O and I had a great time throwing bread to the geese this morning. It was a good lesson on the importance of being quiet since they swam away every time she was loud. I'd remind her to be quiet, and they'd come back.

Putting Marbles on a Frog

Don't you love my creative title?! I wasn't sure what to call this work so I just called it what it is. My mom brought a bath frog that's meant to stick to the bottom of the tub (O and Marg love to play with them in the bathtub at G & G's house), and I had a little glass dish of marbles. I showed O how to carefully pick up one marble and place it on the frog's suction cup. She was super excited and couldn't wait until it was her turn. She did a good job, although she needed prompting to pick up only one marble at a time. She was immediately ready to try it again, but after placing 2 marbles correctly she decided to throw the 3rd marble across the room. She clearly knew that was not acceptable (she was looking straight at me waiting on a reaction when she did it), so I calmly had her pick up the thrown marble and took the whole work away. She was very upset because she really wanted to "bay" (play) with the frog and marbles. Hopefully, she was upset enough to remember that we don't throw marbles! This is a work that she will do only under close supervision because there is a slight possibility that she may decide to taste a marble :)

Choo-Choo Soul

Since O really likes trains, Elliott started watching Choo-Choo Soul music videos on the internet with her (I'm not really thrilled about this since I don't allow her to watch tv, but as long as she dances more than she watches its ok). She LOVES to dance to the Steam Train video, and she put on quite a show tonight :)

We Love Felt Boards!

I have to admit it...I love felt boards! O likes her felt board, but I like it much more than she does. She has the most fun when she is destroying the pretty little scenes that I make on it. I took this picture seconds before she wiped the felt board clean :)

O's "I Spy" Quilt

Its COMPLETELY finished! My mom and I made this quilt for O for Christmas, but we've only just finished tying it. I really shouldn't say we. I tied 2 knots, and my mom tied 192. She's been working on it every Wednesday and Thursday night for the last month or so. O was excited when we put the quilt on her bed. She's looking for a monkey to match the monkey on her dress.

Thrifty Thursday

Sorry this post is a little late! Once again I didn't take any donations to the thrift store which I am feeling pretty bad about, but we had a super busy week and I didn't make the time to go through our junk. I bought 5 books and 2 baskets for 2 dollars and 49 cents.

I had to go to town to get a tetanus shot this morning (I sliced my thumb with a grimy razor blade last night while opening a tube of wood filler to TRY to fix O's sandbox). Since I like to do as much as possible when we go into town, we dropped off the trash, stopped by 2 thrift stores, and ran by Wal-Mart. We rarely go to the thrift stores in our town, so I was excited to check them out. I bought 7 books for 2 dollars and 50 cents (I can't stop the addiction!). They're all children's books, of course!

Jack and the Beanstalk

I found this Jack and the Beanstalk book at the Dollar General for about 2 dollars, and I thought it looked like something O would enjoy. It has a little drawer that holds the characters in the book. As I read the book to her, I took out each character and stood it up on its stand. She had fun playing with them after I finished the book. This book was definitely worth the 2 dollars that it cost!

How Do You Blog?

I try to spend as little time on the computer as possible when O is awake, so when she's asleep I blog as fast as I can. I throw out what I want to say and upload the posts quickly. Sometimes I'll start a few posts and finish them later. I find it to be MUCH easier for me to post lots of short blog posts instead of one long post about several things. It just helps me organize my thoughts to do it this way. I almost never proof read (I really don't like to read what I've written), and I rarely go back and read any of my posts. I've always just assumed that my mom and Elliott would tell me if I make any glaring grammatical or spelling errors. I just mentioned this to my mom, and she informed me that I make errors ALL the TIME and she thought I just didn't mind! Ugggg! So...sorry about my poorly written posts. Hopefully, my mom will let me know if I have any errors from now on because I'm not going to start proof reading :) So...How do you blog???

I'm Featured on the Crafty Crow!

The magnetic photos that I made for O before a road trip were featured on this very cool blog! Check it out if you get a chance.

Cleaning the Floor

I ordered this adjustable floor and carpet sweeper from Montessori n Such recently, and O is becoming a good little sweeper. She's also pretending to vacuum with her IKEA push toy. I love to see her clean the house!

The Banging Wall

The idea for a banging wall came from here. I've been thinking about this for a while, and its a relief to have finally made it. We still have a few more pieces to add, but there plenty of things to bang on! The best thing about it is that all of the materials were just hanging out in our garage, so it was free and we cleaned out the garage a little bit:) We've had a great time making "music" so far, and I can't wait for O's cousins to come play on it this weekend at our yearly family reunion :) I hope our neighbors won't mind the noise!