12/8/11

My Kid's Favorite Books


Favorite Toys here.
Favorite Games here.
Teen Gift Ideas here.

It would be impossible to name every one of them, but if you are in for some Christmas gift ideas, these are a few of our tried and true, much loved books.  Quite a few of them are activity or drawing books...sometimes I think those are best for the stages kids go through when they don't really want to pick up a big old book at the end of a school day.

Klutz The Book of Impossible Objects: 25 Eye-Popping Projects to Make, See & Do Craft Kit
Andrew (12) really likes this book-it comes with all the equipment needed to make optical illusions. I have found these strung across my kitchen quite a few times.

We have owned many Klutz activity books over the years and they are my favorites!
Image result for crazy action contraptions



Image result for klutz cat's cradle
Cat's Cradle  (I loved that the kids really got into this one year because it brought back childhood, long bus-ride memories!

Image result for klutz paper fashions
Abbey LOVED this-we still have a book she made out of these in her scrapbook box.

National Geographic Subscription
My science/nature guy likes a subscription to National Geographic. (I do also!)  The Kids and Little Kids versions are excellent and they get SO excited when they find them in the mail box.

Deluxe Essential Handbook (Pokémon) (Pokemon)
I don't think anyone is into Pokemon anymore, are they?  But my older kids loved them, and we had all the figures and cards so my two younger ones (12 & 7) are into them too.  Patrick found this at a school book fair and thought he had died and gone to heaven. It's big and thick and lists them all.

Sports Illustrated Kids Big Book of Who: ALL-STARS: The 101 Stars Every Fan Needs to Know
Another one of Patrick's favorites-he is my crazy sports guy.

Great photos-I bought this as much for my husband as for the kids.

The Totally Brilliant World of Puzzles
Andrew (12) loves this.

Who Would Win? Polar Bear vs. Grizzly Bear
There are quite a few of these "Who Would Win" books, and they are filled with neat facts about the animals. It's fun to hedge a bet till the end!  
I love the author's story here.

I Survived Collector's Toolbox (I Survived)
Andrew (12) LOVES these books, the whole series, and couldn't wait to buy the next one, then the next one, and then the next one.  I great way to teach history.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid #11 Double Down
THE NEW ONE!!!
We pre-ordered this and when it came I had to settle an argument over who got to read it first.

The Smithsonian Book of Presidential Trivia
Again, bought for the boys AND the husband.

Sports Illustrated KIDS Magazine 1-Year / 12 issues Print Subscription
Another subscription that the boys love, it always makes them happy to see it after school in the mail pile-it comes with little sports card to collect also.

Geo-gami: The Art of Making Geometrical Shapes from Paper
I find these all over the house-this is a great activity for 10 and over.


Look And Find Books
ALL the kids loved this seek and find book (as you can tell from the tape.)  Janey has me read it to her every day (she has already memorized where everything is but still loves it.)  

 Someone always gets the new year's edition under the tree.
They are filled with amazing (and gross) things.

My mom got this for Andrew for his birthday and he loves it.  It's a super thick book that has pages with half drawn sketches that you can finish off.
  
 All my boys love this.  I found it on Andrew's floor one morning with about 10 airplanes laying around everywhere.  Apparently, when I thought he was snug in the bed for the night, he was up working away at aircraft.

The Art Of Cartooning 
 Matt and Andrew both love this book.  
A big book and very good with step by step easy to follow instructions for the 6-12 crowd.

Life Picture Puzzles 
 When you just can't eek a book out at bedtime, these are easy and fun.



 I love, love, love these books-there are three of them.  Manners Can Be Fun, How To Speak Politely and How To Behave and Why.  
These are all really well written.  My boys really like the sports guys. 

 Do you know about BOB books?  They are great for teaching reading, and building confidence.  I learned about them with my first (got them from the library) and then eventually bought them all.   They really helped each of my kids learn to read.  They start out really really slowly, with very simple pictures and lots of repetition and progress up per set.

 Matt had read and reread this series.  Abbey and Isaac have read them all also.

Matthew who is fourteen loved this series this year:
Beyonders The Complete Set: A World Without Heroes; Seeds of Rebellion; Chasing the Prophecy

Abbey LOVED the Beacon Street Girls.  Good wholesome tweenie reading.

The same with this collection-Catwings.

The Daring Book for Girls-filled with fun activities and facts.

Matthew, my science guy, loves this collection.
(Maybe I should read them and relearn what I never learned in any of these classes because I was too busy passing notes.)

I love the National Geographic series for kids.  ALL the books are great but these are our favorite so far.
Here are some more of our favorite National Geographic books:
Weird But True's

Myths Busted!: Just When You Thought You Knew What You Knew...

National Geographic Kids Quiz Whiz: 1,000 Super Fun, Mind-bending, Totally Awesome Trivia Questions

This Star Wars book is SO worn out-it's been taped up quite a few times.  Patrick and Andrew love it.


They also love this one:

This year I started buying one hardcover picture book a month to freshen up my collection.   (My favorite ever is old Harry the Dirty Dog.)  On my blog's sidebar is a link to more of our favorites.

I think Santa might bring a few of these this year for Janey:
Little Golden Book Classics

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12/7/11

Ordinary Days

St. Nick came.  

This is what my TINY downstairs 1/2 bath looks like right now.  But I am so excited about it.  I picked out my tile and wallpaper in one day-I got so lucky because I adore them both-and spent hundreds less than I thought I'd have to. I will do a before and after post when it's completed.  By the way, we are not doing this work ourselves-just so you know-that would be scary.  And it would look just like that picture above for the next 20 years if that was the case.  Why did I start this project weeks before Christmas?  I ask myself that several times a day.

First snow flakes.

I let them.  


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12/6/11

Easy Holiday Food and Busy Day Recipes

Food, food, food-my life seems to revolve around it, it seems, especially at this time of year.  Here are some simple recipes that make my life easier this holiday season.

If I need to bring an appetizer to a party, my feta dip is super easy and I know it will be gone in seconds.  (It is my most viewed post, no kidding.)  No oven, no bowls, no mixer, no stove top.  Here is the easy step by step recipe.

If I need to bring a dessert, I know Kitty's Brownies will be a huge hit.  I am telling you, these things are divine-and it's just brownie mix and 3 candy bars.  They are ooey and gooey and chocolately and taste like you slaved over them for hours.

Caramel corn or shortbread cookies are usually my old standbys if I want to bake a gift.


These pretzels are fun to make with kids and make a great snack.  My blog friend Sarah made them with her kids and they turned out prettier than mine ever do.  You can check them out here.

My favorite cut out cookies are from an old-fashioned recipe my mom used every Christmas when we were kids.  The recipe uses granulated brown sugar-they are sweet, but not too sweet, look like gingerbread, but not too gingery.  My kids love them. Here is the recipe for Butterscotch Rolled Cookies.
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I have talked about meal planning and how it really saves me time and money and my sanity also-more than ever this season.  Sometimes I just about hate doing it, but if I don't we will end up eating take out pizza every night.  Here is an example of my menu for the week-I just want to prove that it does NOT have to be fancy-I always think "meal planning" just sounds overwhelming. I use notebook paper and tape it up where I can see it every morning. Grilled cheese and soup one night-or pizza night on Saturday-no gourmet dinners or five course meals here.  (Lots of my recipes are here and I've been adding new ones every week.)
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11/9/11

Ordinary Days


My glasses.  I never wear them...they are emergency back up glasses.  The kids seem to love them though.

A heavy book bag.

These garlic roll ups are a family favorite.  You can find the easy peasy recipe for these babies here.

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Did you wax leaves yet?  We are working on that this week.  They are coming down in droves around here.

Andrew has been writing me a note every night before bed and leaving it for me on the kitchen counter, or sailing it down the stairs in a paper airplane.

So cute.  One day he left me one that just said, "Have a nice day."  I set it where I can see it when I wake up every day.  A good reminder.



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11/4/11

Gratitude For The Week

(my burst-of-energy straightened garage/mudroom)
Today I am grateful for:
1. Energy.  I cleaned, straightened, got out winter coats and boots, baked bread, put away Halloween things, organized my Christmas list and a heck of a bunch of other things.  Sometimes I get these great big bursts of energy and this week was one of them.  Health is not something to ever take for granted.

2. On Thursday Abbey had an early dismissal and Jeff picked her up and we all went out to lunch.  One on one time is the best.

3. Beautiful crisp days where I can look at blue skies and breathe fresh air.  I am trying to do that as much as I can because I know pretty soon I will be gazing at a gray sky every day.

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11/3/11

My Very Own Cookbook

I finally finished a little fun project I have been working on all year.  I made my own cookbook.  I decided, earlier this year, that I needed a little boost to get out of a cooking rut I was in.  I knew what I needed was a project that would help my organize and simplify my recipes.  I decided to collect my family favorite recipes and consolidate them into a cookbook that I would really use...not like those cookbooks that I buy that have one or two or three good recipes in them, but a cookbook where I would use ALL the recipes often.

How many times can I type the word cookbook?

Anyways, I knew that when it comes to me and projects and being the mother of five children, I have to break everything down into little steps.  First I organized my recipe binder nicely.  I took out recipes that I would never make and marked the one I knew already were going to make the cut into the book.


Then I slowly but surely started trying some new things. This is what really got me out of that rut...I was making the same things over and over and I knew I wanted a nice collection of 100+ recipes, and I only had a little more than half of that of die-hard favorites so far. I found recipes through friends, family, blogs, and books and recipe site. I experimented on my children and if the recipe was a majority-rules good one, I would make adjustments (more sauce, a little less spicy etc) to make it our own.  If one didn't work out, I pitched the recipe and tried something new.  We mixed things up and tried things again and again.  I have to say-it was fun! 

Once I felt like I was ready, I opened a Blurb account (I chose this company to make the cookbook just because I heard they did a very nice job with the photo aspect and made it all easy-there are probably many good choices out there I am sure) and watched one quick tutorial on how to make a book.  I looked at some samples of recipe books already made and decided, of course, I wanted it to be very simple with full page pictures.  I downloaded the software and went to work, slowly but surely, entering recipes a little at a time...remember I just finished this and I started it in the beginning of the year.  

They have easy recipe templates.  Lots of choices of course, but I don't like lots of choices so I kept my blinders on and just went with the easy and quick templates.  I did have some food photos, and I had planned to have one for each recipe, but I decided that was just too time-consuming so I used some of my favorite family pictures throughout.  For the cover and the divider pages, I made a quick collage in Picasa and used that as my image.   I proofread, hit send, and chose what type of cover I wanted before ordering.  I would have loved to have a jacket, but I think for a cookbook that I'd be using everyday, I would have just ended up removing it anyways.

I exchanged this sloppy mess:

For this:
I was so excited when I got the email that it shipped that I stood outside waiting for 2 days and nights till it was delivered.   Not really but I wanted to.   I love it. 




(get it?)
The one drawback is that it is not super cheap...the cost depends on how many pages and what sort of cover you choose.  My book was around $65 I think-I used a coupon I found online.  To me it is worth every penny because I have a scrapbook type of cookbook that will be a family treasure. 

P.S.  You can find some of the recipes right now on Cooking On Clover Lane.  


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Need gift ideas?
Here's a list of our favorite, most-played with, delivered-to-your-doorstep, Mom-approved toys.

And here are our favorite games.
And our favorite books.
Here are some great teen gift ideas.
By age and interest here.
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11/2/11

Our Halloween Night


Andrew cried when he saw this.  The squirrels-those crazy squirrels...and this is after just ONE day.  But don't the two pumpkins look like they had a crazy, bloody fight?  I had to laugh.

Our dinner tradition.  The excitement level before 6 pm-trick or treat time-is at an all time high and just trying to get them to sit and eat is a losing battle.

I'm missing Matthew, darn!  He left for a friend's house already.  I will make him stand outside today, just so I have one for his scrapbook.  I have to get our front door traditional Halloween pictures. (Isaac was our hander-outer, boo hoo.)




My two cute tails.

It was a beautiful PERFECT Halloween night.  Chilly but clear and crisp.  I loved every minute of it.  Daylight quickly turned to...

Spookiness.

The two hours flew.

Oh boy.


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10/28/11

Gratitude for the Week




Don't laugh!  I know you are laughing.  It's pretty hard not to. I told him I thought we should put the Pokemon brand symbol on the back just so people know what he is and he said, "Mom everyone will know I'm Lugia, DUH!"

I am so grateful for this sweet little boy.

Oh, tell me I will miss Halloween costume sewing one day. I need to hear it!
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