November Pinterest Day(s)

    So today was supposed to be our big November Pinterest Day.  The thing is, we've been passing around a fun little virus for the past week or so and this is the first day we all feel somewhat functional.  We don't get sick like this... we haven't in a long time.  It's been quite challenging, but now that we're past it (knock on wood) we can breathe a sigh of relief and move on with our lives.

    I decided that because we took an entire week off of school last week, we really couldn't afford to waste any more time and had to dig in to our lessons today.  That, and, this mama was too covered in blankets to make it to the store for our supplies yesterday.  But you know, that's life.  Anyway, I had the brilliant idea of breaking up our Pinterest Day this month.  We'll do a couple activities a week throughout the entire month so that we can do all the fun activities we planned without the hassle of fitting it all into one busy day.

  I will attach links for each individual activity we're looking forward to enjoying, as well as a link to the November Pinterest Day 2014 board... well... for that, just click here.  As you will see, we went with the turkey/Thanksgiving theme for this month.  Why not?  As we do our activities, I'll post pictures on my Facebook Page so you can see my cutie pie kids and what not.  :)

November Pinterest Day 2014 Links

1. Thanksgiving Scavenger Hunt

      To get us out of the house and on the move. 

2. Roll A Turkey

      So there's a recipe for homemade butter at the top of this post.  Looks delish, but that's a bonus to the activity we're planning on using.  Scroll down to find the printable for this.  Looks like fun!

3. Thanksgiving Jokes

     I plan on printing the colorful Thanksgiving Jokes page and cutting each joke out individually for the kids to take turns reading to the rest of us.  They need a bit of "public" speaking practice... why not make it fun? and funny? :)

4. Turkey Color by Number

      My two younger kids LOVE color by number sheets.  This is for them.  

5. Thanksgiving Word Search

      For my oldest two. 

6. Coloring Pages of Thanks

      My kids like to color... and so do I.  I'm particularly fond of the pictures with verses.

7. Hand Dipped Fall Pretzels

      As if we didn't eat enough sweets on Halloween.  This brings a little salt into the mix.  Fun, quick, easy.  What's not to love?

8. Thankful Tree

      This will be a fun family project.

9. Handprint Turkey

      My kids love paint and googly eyes.  This should satisfy their artsy wishes.  *Note:  I have no idea what the link has to do with the art project.  I'm just using the picture on Pinterest.  Pretty obvious what needs to be done anyway. :)

    Everything is simple, fun, and festive.  November should be a great month for us!  Don't forget... pictures to come on my Facebook Page.  Be sure to "like" the page to keep up with all my posts. 

 Happy Pinteresting to all! 

October Pinterest Day 2014

  We had our first official Pinterest Day of the 2014/2015 School Year today.  I learned some lessons that I won't soon forget, the kids had a ton of fun, mommy was crazy hormonal, but overall, it was a pretty good time.

  First of all, I made a change that I may scrap next time around.  Normally, we have a half day of school.  We do family devotions, math, and language arts before skipping everything else to have our Pinterest Day.  Today, the genius that I can be, decided to do a full day of school on top of our Pinterest activities.  Let's just say, my head and my pillow will have a long-awaited, much appreciated meeting tonight.

  Another slight change I might make next month is the amount of activities we do.  I didn't account for the playtime with many of these, or the eating of things, or the little distractions along the way, so I totally crammed way too much into one day.  It is now the kids' bedtime, and they just finished up for the night.  Hey, they aren't complaining, but my pregnant aching back is giving me a good scolding.

  If you'd like to check out everything we did in one place, you can follow this link to my October Pinterest Day 2014 Pinterest Board.  (click on the highlighted words)  If you'd like to see specific activities, click on the highlighted links for each one.

Here are 3 of my 4 kids gathering supplies for our big day.  KayKay decided to boycott the picture.

So, without further adieu, I give you October Fall Everything Pinterest Day 2014...

1.  Dissolving Pumpkins

Follow the link to see how to go about playing this activity out.  We had a lot of fun with it! I'll spare you the details via written word and show you a couple pictures of our results.  :)

2.  The Lifecycle of a Pumpkin Worksheets

  We printed off the blank worksheets and I had the kids draw in the pictures.  They seemed to enjoy this.  We also discussed the Life Cycle of an Apple a little bit, but didn't do any of the activities this link provides.  Thank goodness, because we'd still be going about our day right now! 

3.  DIY Fall Playdough

  This is a great recipe that calls for natural dyes (of which we didn't use.... cue gasps!).  It smelled so good.  We used cinnamon rather than pumpkin spice, and I plan on doing this again around Christmas time.  The kids adored this playdough.  They literally played with it for hours today.  Hours and hours.  Maybe I'll make it once a month.  It made for a great babysitter while I cleaned up the numerous messes we made in the kitchen.  Here are some more pictures of the kids...

4.  Leaf Rubbings

  Who doesn't love a good leaf rubbing?  This link gets into the science of things a bit.  It was neat.  It was our first shot at doing this with aluminum foil as well.  The kids loved it, this took minimal time, and now I have colorful leaves to cut out and hang around the house.  Here's a pic of a couple of the kids' attempts.  It's hard to see the leaves on the tinfoil in the picture, but it turned out really cool! 

At this point, we had to take a break to eat dinner.  Here's a picture... and a link, for the curious cats who just have to know what we ate...

Buffalo Chicken Pasta Bake

5.  Fall Guess Bags

  Kayleigh was in charge of this one.  She put everything in one box and blindfolded the younger kids to have them feel and "see" if they knew what they were touching.  I think they had fun.... I couldn't be sure.... I wasn't in the room at the time.  ;)  Sorry, no cute, but completely out of focus pic for this one.

6.  Pumpkin Spice Puppy Chow

  

  Last, but certainly not least, the (as Uncle Jesse would say) "Lord Have MERCY!" deliciously good Pumpkin Spice Puppy Chow.  We used Ghirardelli white chocolate, because our local grocery store didn't carry the orange candy melts, so this ended up looking a bit more like the literal dog food Puppy Chow, and a lot less Pumpkin Spice, but after throwing some candy corn in the mix, this quickly became a family favorite.  

The end result??

Happy kids eating a terribly bad for you, but oh, so yummy bedtime snack.

AND....

One spazzed out, exhausted mother.

Here's to next month....

~Em