December shelves

In the kids play room I have one shelving unit for toys, one for Cooper's work and one for Charlotte's work. The toy shelf gets rotated out every 2 weeks with "new" toys from the cabinet, it helps keep the toys fresh and following the Montessori school of thought - when toys are laid out easily accessible both visually and physically to the child they will play with them in a more purposeful way and learn to take care of them versus everything being thrown into a toy box.

 Of course the December shelves have a Christmas theme to them with plenty of Christmas trees, jingle bells and Santa :)

Toy shelf (brother's truck obsession is slowly taking over the toy shelf.....)

Cooper's work shelves

He has 3 different kinds of boxes to open/close and they are filled with large jingle bells. He loves filling up the boxes, closing them, shaking to hear the jingle noise, open and dump it out. Rinse and repeat :)

On the bottom is a small bowl of pom poms that he can drop down a tube on his busy board (pictured above), a bowl of santa erasers that he also fills the boxes with, stirs with a play spoon, etc. And the third bowl are gold beads that he likes to hide things in, drape around his neck, and put on the dogs :)



On Charlotte's shelf she has a page of Christmas trees with numbers on them and she counts out the correct number of pompom ornaments to match, a do-a-dot S is for Santa worksheet, a Christmas tree page with different shaped ornaments to match, a Christmas memory game (she is a memory game master), a Christmas cookie sheet for fine motor flipping (the cookies were MIA at the time I took the picture), a 3D to 2D matching game, a Christmas book, a cutting basket full of ribbon, wrapping paper and bows to cut and peppermint playdough which was being played with while I snapped this picture :)

 The kids are loving the Christmas activiies and I still have more to swtich out and add in a week or so!I also want to do a post on all the fun crafts and traditions we have been doing,

xoxo
Ashlea

Life in pictures - November

Sister is such a helper in the kitchen and is so good at using a knife

soaking up those warm temperatures

snapchat fun

plucking berries off of a branch

he will stay like this until you come and flip him over :)

goatee baby

brushing all 4 of his teeth

play dates with friends

brother in this puffy vest <3 <3 <3

poor babe was so sick for a few days before Thanksgiving :(

All in all a great month and getting excited for the holidays!

xoxo
Ashlea

Fall Fun

Between our Indian summer and extended Fall temps we were able to get a ton of fall fun into the past couple months. Pumpkin patches, hay rides, festivals, trick or treating, pumpkin carving......

Pumpkin patch #1 - cotton fields, corn bins, pumpkins galore and mini train that took us around the fields

 Botanical gardens scarecrow trail - they had huge pumpkin displays, scarecrows, and cornstalk maze

Pumpkin carving - a beautiful warm evening of carving pumpkins and squishing pumpkin guts

Boo-tanica at the botanical gardens - they had arts and crafts, snacks, pumpkins, and face painting

 Annual Fall festival at our church - inflatable slides, food trucks, trunk or treat and a movie on the lawn afterwards

 Halloween night - trick or treating with my witch from Room on the Broom and all her animal friends. We met up with our neighbors behind us and a couple other families, Charlotte hung so well with the older kids and did the whole walk up to the house, say trick or treat, and say thank you thing and loved running around with all the neighbor kids. Brother ran around and loved seeing all the decorations and even got his first taste of candy!  About half way through he tuckered out and rested on me and drooled his sucker all over me :)

xoxo
Ashlea

Dollar store revamp

I havent been doing much in the way of crafting lately but a few weeks ago I came across this little sign at the dollar store and loved its acorn shape and burlap top

 But I thought the harvest picture was a little cheesy and not my style. I held on to it for a week then decided that it would make the perfect chalkboard sign! Enter one of the best crafting invention of the past few years - chalkboard paint....

 It took 3 coats to completely cover it but it dries quick so it didn't take long. Then I wanted to add some wear to the chalkboard part so it wasn't to shiny black so I rubbed white chalk on it, wiped it off, rinse repeat......

 Then I free handed the word WELCOME and tada, a cute little welcome sign for a dollar :)

 Other autumn decor I put up.....

xoxo
Ashlea

Apples

 It has been the season for all things apple and we have been doing lots of eating, exploring, drinking and playing with them.

Apples are RED :)
painting with water, one of my favorite young toddler activities because its pretty much mess free!

 Visiting the apple orchard and sampling some of the goods

 Exploring the inside of the apple - seeing the star, counting seeds, naming the different parts

Apple stamp painting

We just finished up doing a TON of pumpkin activities so that post is up next :)

xoxo
Ashlea