Tuesday, January 31, 2012

relaxed

What "open container" law?


Cheers!

Monday, January 30, 2012

my little artists

In their Language Lessons workbooks, the girls are asked to narrate different subjects.  Afterwards, the workbook asks them to draw a picture of what they just talked about.

On the pages I am about to show you, their drawings are from two different lessons.  The top part of the page shows their favorite farm animal.  The bottom part of the page they were asked to draw themselves and, if they wanted, their family.

This first one is Bella's.  She is more elaborate than Emily with using different colors and more details.  I'm assuming it has everything to do with being 14 months older.  As I said, Bella picked a pig as her favorite farm animal.  She had seen a big pig that was colored similar to the one that is colored on the paper.  And, next to that one, you can see there are little pigs.  I know this because that was the scene when she saw them in real life. 

Towards the bottom of the page she drew herself.  But, true to her personality, she wasn't happy with how it looked and she kind of scribbled over it.


You can clearly see Emily's drawing style here.  She draws the basic shape and is still into coloring with one color.  And since blue is her favorite color, it is not surprising that she has colored her pigs all blue.  The round shape in the middle is a water bowl and all the shapes around the bowl are her piggies.  And, you can see two pigs towards the bottom that are lighter shade of blue.  Those are the mommy and daddy pigs.

And, she drew herself (left) and me (right).  She told me I was the one with the big head and no hair.  Then she decided that I could have hair and she colored hair on my head.  She is crazy!


Just wanted to share a little look at their art.

Friday, January 27, 2012

blogging block

It has been almost a week since I have posted anything.  I have just been doing my normal thing around the house. 

We have been doing school.  And, you know I normally take the pictures on Friday for my blog, but today the girls were just not cooperating and I didn't feel like "capturing" the day.  Not all homeschooling days are good ones.  Thankfully, most are, though.

So, I just wanted to let you know that I hope to have something good to write about soon. 

I did have a really great day yesterday.  I called up Leslie and had such a awesome chat for almost 2 hours!  Her and I were just meant to be BFFs!  :)  I have now officially changed from a "cyber" friend of hers to a REAL friend!

But, I don't think that is really interesting to most of you.  So, instead, I will leave you with a picture of me that Emily took a while back.  I know I don't really put pictures of myself on here.  I am the "behind the scenes" kind of gal.  But, you can use this to keep the mice away! :)


I did have Jorge cut my hair a few days ago.  I trust him a million times more than anyone here in town.  I haven't had good luck with haircuts here.  My hair is now back to shoulder length.  Basically, just like in this picture.

I'll be back soon, hopefully.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

the girls' room is finished

Last night Jorge finished painting the girls' room.  It looks cute.  Very cotton candy-like.  Which, I really wasn't going for that exact look, but it ended up looking cute anyway.

The girls are both happy with the colors that I picked out.  They said "pink" and "blue" and I picked the actual shade of each color.

I already showed you the color I was going for with the pink.  But, here is what my inspiration color was for the blue.  The one in the picture has a bit more of a greenish tint, but I wanted that light, girly blue.

Click here to go to the site.
But, the paint is up.  The girls are happy and I love that it is so much more colorful in their room.





I really would like to make a headboard for their bed.  I was thinking something like this.

Click on picture to go to Pinterest.
It looks easy enough.  I already have some fabric that would be super cute!

These pictures aren't the best.  But, for now, they are good enough to show you the room.  Tomorrow we are headed to Aguascalientes.  Jorge is going to take me to dinner and a movie for my birthday (which is Monday).  Since we will be there, of course, we will stop in at the Home Depot and get the paint for the kitchen.  Maybe we will pick up some wood for that headboard!

Once that is done, I am going to make another video of the house!  I'm excited to show you have it looks so much better than those nasty blank walls.

Friday, January 20, 2012

more tp art

What do you do when you have two little girls that use about 10 times the amount of toilet paper that they should?  You make more TP art. 

It takes no time around here to collect enough to do more "art".  Even after today, I still have a bunch of rolls sitting around just waiting for their turn to be placed on the wall for everyone to look at.

I made 6 flowers to hang over the girls' bed.  They are rather small, so I might end up making more.  But, this time I didn't bother with spray paint.  I just used a brush and tempera paint.  I cut the rolls first, then painted the outside, let it dry, then painted the insides.  It worked out rather well.  After it all was dry, I glued them together.



Jorge painted the pink on two of the walls in the girls' room last night.  The other two walls are going to be blue.  When you have two girls sharing one room, it is understandable that they won't want the same color room.  So, we just let them each have the color they wanted.  Tonight the blue will be painted and Emily will be happy.

Here is a little sneak peak at the pink.  It wasn't exactly the color I was going for.  But, it is close enough.  Bella really likes it and that is what counts. (Isn't that non-painted wall gross!? And, if you were wondering, yes, that is a little, green drawing on the wall one of my "artists" did.  I think they were both to blame.)


I had found a color on Pinterest that I really liked.  It had a touch of coral in the pink.  Here was the color I was going for.

Click on picture to go to the page on Pinterest.

In these two photos, it looks pretty close.  But, in person, the pink is a bit more pink than coral.  But, I am sure it will look cute once the blue is painted and everything is back in the room.  And, I have those cute, FREE, flowers to hang up!

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

where does the time go?

I was just looking through some pictures on my computer.  I was looking for something that I could blog about.  I am a huge fan of posts with pictures.  It is almost impossible for me to have a blog post without at least one picture.  I'm just weird like that.

Anyway, somehow this picture was towards the more recent photos and I'm not sure why.  But, I can tell you that it is hard to believe that the little, CUTE girl in this picture is now 5 years old!  Bella was such a sweet baby!

Some days I am in such a race for these girls of mine to be independent.  I'm not talking living on their own.  I just mean I don't have to pour them a cup of milk.  Or, Bella could make dinner.  If you are a mom or dad, you understand that all days are not walks in the park with kids!  But, at the same time, there are lots of moments that make it so worth it.  And, instead of wanting to race forward, I want to freeze time.

But, pictures like the one above confirm that the "independent" days will be right around the corner. 

Where does the time go?

Friday, January 13, 2012

school recap friday!

It's been a week or so since I have recapped our school week.  Although, it really isn't recapping anything.  It is showing you one day, usually Friday's activities.  Details, details!  I think my parents are more than ready to see one of these posts.

I think this is our first full week back to school.  We shorted the past few weeks due to the holidays.  But, it isn't hard to get back into the swing of daily school.  For the most part, the girls are always more than willing to do "school".

The curriculum is set up where I really don't have to decide what we are doing that day.  We just flow to the next page(s) in the workbooks.  It is exactly what I was looking for when it came to what I wanted in a packaged curriculum.  We add things here and there, like different art projects and such.  But, for the most part, we just do what the books hold for us.

These workbooks are great because they gradually introduce new material while mixing it with material that has already been covered.  That way there is less forgetting.  I print printouts from this site that allow you to "customize" a sheet with letters or words.  That way the girls can practice each week what we have already learned. 


Last night was the first time Emily wrote her name all by herself!  I was so proud of her.  Normally I do dot letters and she traces over them.  She had grabbed a piece of paper and started writing.  I looked down and noticed she was spelling out her name!  Such a proud moment.  Here she is showing off that she can do it on her own.


Today one of their workbooks reviewed all the letters that we have learned.  Emily has been stepping up and following along much better than the past.  I guess she is getting into it now.  Maybe she feels more confident that she can do her name on her own now.  Whatever it is, it is nice to see her be more vocal.


Bella, of course, is so studious!  Oh my, talk about a perfect student.  As long as she gets praise, she is into everything! 


 Each of them has even started listening more.  They are following instructions and using their little noggins.  Here the workbook had them color the shapes below to make the picture the same as the one above it. 



Their "I Can Color" workbook has been having them just color in items with specific colors.  Usually Emily just wildly colors over everything, not worrying about where the lines are.  The past few days she has been working to stay in the lines.  You can see how well she is doing in the picture below. 


For Bella, this exercise has been pretty helpful.  She tends to push really hard on the crayon and it makes her hand hurt.  I have shown her how to lightly color so she isn't wearing her hand out.  It took a few days for her to get the hang of it, because she is used to pushing down so hard. 


This moon page is from their "I Can Draw" workbook.  It has been gradually introducing numbers in connecting-the-dot pictures.  Bella has it down pat.  She, as you can see here, does a fairly good job.  The pages without an image, she has a hard time figuring out that you curve some of the lines.  But, this one was more simple since it had the image already there.


Emily is hanging in there.  You can see that from the number 5 to 6 she kind of got off track.  But, she recovered and did a good job.


After we got our work done they played with PlayDoh.  It is always a fun, kind of messy, time. 




We are having a cookout tomorrow and inviting some people over.  Then, Sunday, Jorge is going to paint some more!  I'm looking forward to the weekend.

Hope all of you have a great one, too!

Thursday, January 12, 2012

yarn balloons

Today has been a pretty quiet day around the house.  This morning the girls took a bath and then they went down to their grandma's house.

I got my work done, made the beds, washed the dishes, watched one of my shows, ate lunch, and then didn't know what else to do.  So, onward to the internet.  I hopped on Pinterest to see if there were any fun things I could make or bake.

Since we are getting ready to paint the girls' room, I figured making some sort of decoration might be appropriate.  So, I saw that I had pinned these yarn-type balloons a while back and, having all the supplies, figured I could whip some up.


Let me just say that starting the yarn around the balloon is not the easiest.  It isn't hard either.  But, the balloon is so smooth and slippery with the watered down glue that you have to convince the yarn to stay in place.

Once you get it started, it isn't horrible to place the yarn.  I just cut long strips of yarn, probably 20 feet or more each, and dipped in the glue mixture, ran the yarn between my fingers when pulling it out of the glue to rid the excess amount of glue, and then started to roll the balloon while wrapping the yarn around it.


After I found my little tricks doing the first one, the second one was a bit easier, now that I knew how to get it going a bit.  I only had so much glue, so I only was able to make two.  A trip to the store will cure that.


I am curious to see how they will set.  The pink one is sort of dry and it doesn't seem that firm.  When I pop that balloon, all will be known.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

shrinky dinks fun and a little more

For Bella's birthday, I bought her some Shrinky Dinks paper and a book that has a bunch of images that you can trace/copy and color in.  Today was the first time that we have used the stuff.  The girls had never done any Shrinky Dinks before.  And, as I expected, they loved it!

I remember being little and loving them, too.  I figured this would make a nice supplemental lesson to our homeschooling.  And, let us have some fun at the same time.  One of the workbooks that we do in homeschooling is tracing.  The girls practice being SLOW and actually staying on the lines in their workbooks.  So, the Shrinky Dinks paper was extra practice for them.  I think they did pretty well.




Emily and Bella colored in their names.  Bella did everything on the butterfly (tracing and coloring) and most of the snowman.  I had to help finish tracing for her.  Emily traced most of the airplane and colored it.  I did the house with the snow.  Emily did help me color it a little.


Here is Emily showing off her name and the airplane. 


Bella was more than proud of her butterfly and snowman.


After we finished school and our Shrinky Dinks project, we ate lunch and followed lunch up with some cake.  This cake is something else!  Leslie found the recipe in one of her cookbooks and was willing to give it a go.  When she blogged about it, there was no way I wasn't going to try it out.  She claimed it tasted like a pumpkin cake.

Now, you might not remember, but I can't find pumpkin anything here.  Not pumpkin puree or an actual pumpkin.  So, the thought that I could make a cake that tasted like it...  Well, that was pretty spectacular.  And, the kicker is that one of the ingredients in the cake is TOMATO SAUCE!  Yes!  I know!  Crazy!  Try it!  Really.  It is good!  Just look at it!  Recipe here!


And, one last thing on this post.  Jorge painted the accent wall in my living room last night.  So, I wanted to give you a little preview! I love the color of blue.  It, of course, is a tad different in person than in the photo.  But, this is pretty close.  I would say it is a bit more tealish than this.  The color is called "adaptation".  But, I would say it should be called "peacock".  It is beautiful!


We bought paint for the girls' room this past Sunday at Home Depot.  Once that is done, we will head back for the kitchen paint.  After that, I am going to give you another "tour" of my house!  I am very happy with how it is all turning out!  It definitely feels like a home now!

Monday, January 09, 2012

back amoung the living

I have been sick over the past several days.  The kind of sick where you just don't really want to get out of bed.  Yesterday was the first day where I felt OK.  Today, even better!

So, now you know why I have been absent lately in blog land.  But, I am back!

Being sick surely doesn't get me out of doing my routine of things, like cooking.  I mean, when you have two little mouths that won't stop, you have to continue to cooking and such.  So, this past week I have been making simple meals.  One was those Mexican pizzas that I made a short time ago.  I had been wanting them again since making them that first time.  They were just calling out to me. I ended up making them for lunch. Well, actually, I made one.  The girls weren't interested at all.  Fine with me!

I had a pound of beef that I seasoned with taco seasoning.  Making only one Mexican pizza doesn't take much of the meat.  The rest went into the refridgerator and I have been eating it little by little.

That leads me to what I have been obessed with for the past few days.  For some reason I have been craving food that I can add lettuce and sour cream to.  Don't know why!  And, that seasoned meat did the trick.  I ended up eating ALL the meat myself! HA!  I'm not afraid to admit it.

For the past several days, this is what I have been eating.  YUM!  Nothing special.   Just a soft taco.  And, I especially like that I have been using flour tortillas. Jorge isn't really a fan of the flour ones.  So, normally we have the corn ones around the house.  But, I prefer the flour.  So, why not keep those in stock, too!



I know.  Original idea, huh?  HA!  Steal my original idea if you like.  I won't blame you.  It looks good, right? 

Since my lips are so chapped, chapped beyond belief, due to my cold, I left off the salsa because I don't need them to be burning like someone set my lips on fire. 

Next up for today, FINALLY take down the Christmas tree.  :(

Thursday, January 05, 2012

Rosca de Reyes in the house!

Tomorrow is Three Kings Day (or in Spanish El Dia de los Reyes Magos or you may know it as Epiphany).  I admit, that before a few days ago, I had no idea about this holiday.  I heard about it when my friend, Leslie, was talking about it on Facebook.  She sent me her blog link that explained how it was celebrated here in Mexico.

I told her that we don't really do any sort of Mexican traditions in our house.  It seems it is all American.  I'm not against learning about the Mexican culture.  And, it would be nice, living here and all, if the girls would learn some things.  Leslie suggested that I go out and buy the traditional Rosca de Reyes and start the tradition.

I guess it was meant to be because this morning, right before Jorge left for work, he was telling me about a home remedy to help my soar throat/cold, when we heard a car horn honking out front.  He went to see who it was and saw his uncle (he owns the bakery right down the street) holding a very large box. 


Last night, he had seen his uncle and his uncle asked him something.  But, because his uncle was wearing a scarf over his mouth, Jorge didn't understand what he asked.  I guess assuming what he said, Jorge answered with a "yes". 

We found out what the question was this morning!  He had asked Jorge if he wanted a Rosca de Reyes.  So instead of going and buying the bread, the bread made it's way to me.  Funny!


I wanted to show you how large this thing is.  We are going to have to have the whole neighborhood to help finish it off!  I set the gallon of milk in the box to show you scale.


And, if the gallon of milk wasn't enough, below you can see a picture of the girls sitting at the green table.  You can see that there are two cupcake pans and they are still smaller than the bread!  Wowza!


I have never had, nor seen, this type of bread before.  But, let me tell you.  When I took the lid off so I could take a picture, the smell is WONDERFUL!  So sweet!  I can't wait to try it.  Now we have to round up some more people to help eat it!

Monday, January 02, 2012

a great weekend

It is 2012!  You know, I have never thought anything special about the start of a new year.  I know lots of people make resolutions and think of it as a "new start" and such.  But, me, I just like the countdown and then it is done and over with.  I just look at a new year as a continuation of my life.  Not that that isn't good.  But, I just don't signify this time of year as anything more important or special than, say, June.

But, five years ago, that all changed.  I now have a reason to make New Years Eve special.  My first daughter, Annabella, was born.  I rang in the New Year in a hospital room after having one of the most perfect babies in the world.  She is my NYE, tax deduction baby! :)

Saturday we had a party for her. Complete with a pinata and all!  You can see how we celebrated.




For the rest of the birthday party pictures.  Check out my flickr page.

On Sunday we chanced it (not sure if things would be open...some places weren't) and went to Aguascalientes.  Every since getting back from the States two months ago, Bella has been asking if we could take her to McDonald's.  So why not continue her birthday celebration the day after her birthday. 




The McDonald's is right next to the Wal-Mart.  And, there is still a big Christmas tree in the parking lot.  The girls saw it and wanted to get a picture with it. 



Then, we headed across the street to the mall.  Bella said she wanted to pick out some new shoes.  So, she found some she liked, which wasn't a hard task.  The girl is shoe crazy.


I figured Emily should be able to pick some shoes out, too.  Of course she wanted blue shoes.  Jorge tried to get her to pick the pink ones.  But, he should have known better. :)


Emily looks super cute in her Converse All Stars.  And, Bella is girly as ever in her pink flats.


It was a fun weekend.  Now that the holidays and a birthday is past, we can get back into our regular routine.  Hope everyone had a good weekend!