P’s First Lapbook

I’m so excited! Ever since I discovered lapbooking, I just couldn’t wait to try one with my P. So when the opportunity presented itself to go the Museum of Natural Science in Raleigh, I thought, “Hey, let’s do a dinosaur lapbook to get ready for our visit!”

This was a pretty simple lapbook. (I figured we should start simply until we get the hang of it.) But the process was pretty fun. I let P choose which dinosaurs to do, with the only guidance that we would look at 3 herbivores and 3 carnivores. We used the website Enchanted Learning Dinosaurs. They have more dinosaurs than I’ve ever heard of, which gave us plenty to choose from. I printed out a small coloring page of each dinosaur he chose, and we read about them on the website. We did about 2 dinosaurs a day until we had all six in his book. We sorted them into 2 small booklets, herbivores and carnivores.

(He got so into it, that he even started matching up some of his toy dinosaurs to the ones we were studying.) P decorated the cover with dinosaur stickers, and then it was time for the museum! While we were at the museum, we took lots of pictures of P next to the dinosaurs. He loved it! Then we printed some pics at home and included our favorites into the lapbook.

Anyway, I think the result was pretty cool, and I just loved hearing P pronounce all the dinosaur names (which he did amazingly well!).

That Garden Time of Year

It’s that fun time of year again, when we get to go out and get our hands dirty and plant yummy things for our bellies!

I took my Sweet P out with me to pick out the seeds for our garden. And this year I told him he could pick one packet of whatever he wanted to grow. His selection was, of course, watermelon. I think Sweet P could live on watermelon alone if I let him.

I took a little extra time to plan our garden this year, and thanks to our dear friend, Nicole, we have an abundance of large planters to use. So the main portion of our garden will now be housed in planters lined up along the wall, with just a few other items planted directly in the ground. Our soil isn’t necessarily the best, and there really isn’t much room to amend, so I’m limiting what goes directly in the ground this year. I hope this will prove the most fruitful method.

Our selection of things from seeds this year include:

• Sugar Baby Watermelon (Sweet P’s choice)
• Hot Salsa Mix Peppers (DH’s choice)
• Teton Hybrid Spinach
• Evergreen Bunching Onions

• Grand Rapids Lettuce
• Garlic
• Landstar Garden Beans (These will be sown directly in the ground, because I’ve always had luck with them in the past. I will also plant these in three sections about 2-3 weeks apart to hopefully have beans for a longer period of time.)

Our selection of live plant start items includes:

• Tomatoes
• Basil (I can’t ever have too much of this stuff!)

And still growing vivaciously is my wonderful Rosemary Bush. Yes, I think I really have to call it a bush at this point. And I still have 3 small Strawberry plants that survived the winter, so we’ll see if we manage to get any berries this year. If we can keep the obnoxious squirrels away from them.

Christmas time!

We finally got our tree tonight! Normally we get it the first weekend in Dec, but it's been crazy busy around here lately. Concerts and gigs left and right! Not to mention all the crazy weather. (I mean really, it's this cold here, and we have no snow. C'mon on now! Not fair!) We wanted to get the tree two days ago, but thanks to the two days of rain (and gigs), it was a no go. But finally it was a dry, yet cold day today, so we went out this evening and bought one. It turned out to be a slight blessing in disguise, because the tree we wanted was on clearance!

I let P help hang ornaments on the tree this year. It was fun, but slightly nerve-racking. (Especially when I heard things hit the floor.) But the tree got decorated, and it's finally starting to feel like Christmas in our home.

If you are wondering; yes, the tree is slightly crooked. And the ornaments are clumped together in places (P's fine handiwork!). It may not be a perfectionist designer look, but it was decorated with love, and that makes us happy.

Oh and here's some extra cuteness from P and his Savannah.

Merry Christmas!

P's Leaf Collection

P has been collecting leaves for a while now, and I finally came up with something to do with them. We made a tree poster together, and glued his collection onto it. When it's dry, we're going to hang it on his wall so he can look at his leaves whenever he wants. Even one of his rocks made an appearance on it (just a little one).

(Plus, this will keep the dog from eating the leaves. YUCK!)

Re-purposed!

So we finally got a flatscreen for the living room. YAY! We mounted it over the fireplace, which meant I could rearrange the room. But we still had the old stand from the old tv that had died. It was massive compared to the new one, and it's hard to believe it was about the same screen size. Anyway, since we never seem to have enough seats, and I hated to lose the storage capabilities of the stand, I decided to turn it into a bench. I figured if it was strong enough to hold that giant tv before, it should be plenty strong enough to hold a person. So I bought some 1 inch foam, which I doubled up to make it more comfy. Then I picked some fabric from my stash, a pretty green wool I got from my Nonna, and proceeded to sew a cover. Having a small child, I made the cover with an opening in the back like a sham, so I can take it off to wash it. Then I cut a piece of an old mattress pad to add a little extra fluff to the top. I stuffed the mattress pad piece and the 2 pieces of foam into the cover and voilà! A comfy seat with storage below. The pillow in the picture is from the couch, but I think I will have to make some nice pillows just for my bench. And if you're wondering, I did make the cushion slightly smaller than the stand on purpose. I left the end open so I'd have a place to set a drink down. Clever huh?!

Autumn Beauty

Our trees are rapidly losing their foliage. P seems to enjoy this very much. Especially since I taught him how to jump in a leaf pile. He has also started a leaf collection. Anyway, I just found this beautiful Bradford Pear leaf for him, and I had to take a picture. Just thought I'd share some beautiful fall color. Enjoy!

Pecan harvest has arrived!

I'm so happy! I actually managed to rescue some of our pecans from the squirrels this year! It's not much, maybe about 1 1/2 to 2 cups shelled. But I just love it when I can harvest edibles from around our house! I also got some good practice at shelling them. I think I've gotten pretty good at getting mostly whole or half nuts from the shells!

Now, what to make with them. Hubby would love a pie, but it's not enough for that. Maybe some pecan snickerdoodles. That sounds yummy!