Happiness Is…{dancing and dandelion seeds}

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending my ten-year-old niece’s dance recital.  JDubbs was at a concert so I brought the kids and we headed to the auditorium ready for some fun.

Em wore her tutu for the occasion.

It was so exciting not only to watch my niece perform, but to watch Em’s enchantment at all the older girls in their costumes up on the stage.  She sat in awe for three dances and then wanted to head onstage herself.  I literally had to chase her down the aisle and pick her up kicking and fighting to be let down so she could join in the performance.

After that we took a break and headed outside with my sister Jessie to give the kids a chance to stretch their legs.  We didn’t go far before a patch of dandelions caught their attention and we spent quite a while casting dandelion seeds to the wind.

Now my kids gather bouquets of them wherever we go.

Then back inside to see my niece perform 4 of her 5 dances.  I was so glad to be able to be there for her–even though we’re not too far away, our schedules often conflict with my sisters’ kids’ events.  I was so happy to be able to be there and for my kids to be there to share in her excitement, too.

Fun with family, enjoying our days.  Life is good.

So, what’s good with you?  Come join the fun at the Happiness Is… blog hop!

The Happiness Is… blog hop is simply a place to come, link up a post (not your homepage!) that made you happy recently (anything but a giveaway or review) and share it with the rest of us!  Photos, recipes, crafts, stories, moments, and anecdotes are all welcome!  Come peruse other amazing posts and meet fantastic new people in the blogosphere!  The only rule is to please grab my button (right sidebar) and link back to me in some way, otherwise you won’t be able to link up.  That way more people will come and learn about this uplifting way to promote your blog!

So, are you ready?  On your mark, get set, hop!



Welcome My Chocolate Peaces!

I have a very exciting announcement to make– a wonderful new blog, My Chocolate Peaces, has decided to join the Rub Some Dirt On It family!  I am so thrilled to be able to introduce you to Gina (aka The Chocolate Mom) and her incredibly diverse and fabulous site!

MyChocolatePeaces.com

My Chocolate Peaces is a beautiful blog that has so much to offer.  I was immediately struck by how multi-faceted it is.  Gina shares a little bit of everything; so much so that I asked her for a breakdown of her blog’s pages so that I could be sure to accurately entice you over to her site.

Her tabs are as follows:

Chocolate Creations- anything created by hand. This could be crafts, DIY, recipes, photography. Anything on the creative side goes here. These posts are usually Mondays, but I do have various photo tips throughout the entire blog if there is something that I want to point out about a photo
Chocolate Life- any lifestyle events. Graduation, traveling, birthday parties, stuff like that
Chocolate Health- I am a nurse by trade and post about various health topics here. I am hoping to post about more chocolate and health related issues here
Sweet Thursday- to highlight people doing “sweet” things around our communities. I want this post to be where someone can come and be inspired by those around them and get an extra dose of sweetness for the day (calorie free!).  There is a Sweet Thursday nomination form at the bottom of my blog pages in the footer and a link at the end of the last couple of posts
Chocolate Friday- anything chocolate on this day. Most of the time it will be a review of a specific type of chocolate.

As you can see, Gina’s blog is a great fit here because she loves to be creative, celebrate life, and appreciate and inspire those around her.  Her Sweet Thursdays remind me a lot of my Happiness Is…blog hop which also runs on Thursdays.  Can’t you see how great minds think alike?
For example, the last Sweet Thursday post was not only interesting, but was an excellent opportunity to give back while spoiling someone you love!  She wrote about how the Araya chocolate company in Houston, Texas has partnered with the Not for Sale organization to bring you a fantastic option if you were looking to give your mother some chocolate for Mother’s Day.  Then she goes into detail about how 95% of chocolate is produced unethically, using slave or child labor.  Gina shared an opportunity to give chocolates and give back with a percentage of the proceeds going back to the Not For Sale company.  That is something I had never considered, but will remember for future gift purchases!

Speaking of gifts and chocolatey goodness, Gina also has other amazing talents–like cake decorating and photography!

Click the photo for a step-by-step guide to create such an unbelievable cake!

There is so much more to Gina’s site than just these two examples, but you need to go explore for yourself!  You’ll get lost in all that chocolatey goodness in no time!  And don’t forget to reach out and follow My Chocolate Peaces through one or all of these social media:

Thank you to Gina for joining the family and I look forward to singing your praises in the future!

You Are My Sunshine

My darling Em is the sunshine of my life, and so I decided she needed a birthday party to celebrate how she warms our hearts.

The printables were gorgeous and added a nice touch to the table along with our You Are My Sunshine book.  I found some yellow galvanized buckets at the dollar store, which I filled with sun-like goodies (yellow Oreos and peanut butter cups) and a bunch of mini origami stars I bought from Etsy.

I served lemonade out of a spigot into mason jars I got at the local hardware store.  We liked them so much that we use them for drinking all the time now!

All those decorations plus some golden doilies from the party store for sun decorations on the windows, streamers, balloons, fresh flowers, lots of family and one birthday girl added up to a pretty glorious way to celebrate!

Em had a ball.  She absolutely loved her party outfit, the decorations, the gift bags, and being around her family.

But as I’ve told you before, she does have her moments.  And baby girl can pout with the best of ‘em.

Oh, life is hard when you’re two!

Nothing a little birthday cake–with a Cinderella candle–can’t fix!

What a blessed day.

And afterward, everyone unwound by playing games, hanging out, and Miss Em could not be torn away from her new Rapunzel doll and her golden hair.

Well, she could, but only to try to put Rapunzel’s shoes on Daddy’s feet.

And her own.

Happy Birthday to my delightful little Em!  You may be a handful sometimes, but we love you and your spirited ways.  Thank you for being our sunshine!

Etsy Finds For The Birthday Girl

Em is a very loved, very special, and very spoiled child.  She had three, count ‘em, THREE birthday parties last month!  The first was just with us, the second was with extended family, and the third was with friends.  On her actual birthday, we kept it low key and celebrated as a family of four, with guest appearances by Nana, Papa, and Auntie Jenny to help make it special.  We let her open her presents from us and had a very small cake which she picked out at the grocery store.  Yes, we bought the cake at the store!  We had three parties and I made one cake, which my dog eventually ate, so you can’t expect me to be any more domestic and make her three.  She was content with her pretty pink by cake from Hannaford and Princess water bottle.

JDubbs and I were able to still be minimal in the gift department and Em was still so unbelievably happy.  Birthdays at this age are such a surprisingly joyous occasion for little ones–they really are happy with anything.  We bought her a pink silk scarf like the one she loves at school, a floor puzzle, some Golden books, a doll, and my two favorite gifts which I found on Etsy.  First, a fairy ring that I absolutely love and the kids enjoy, maybe not as much as me.  I got one for each of them (click the photo to be sent to the shop).

Not only are they beautiful, simple, and fun, they make great props for photo shoots, as I found out last weekend!  Kids of all ages love playing with these, pretending to be fairies creating rainbows or just running like mad with the ribbons streaming behind them.  Simple pleasures.

And my only nod to her Disney princess obsession, knowing rightly that she would be inundated with that stuff at her family party, were these fabulous Disney princess-inspired wooden peg dolls like the kind I made for my kids a couple years ago.  Click the photo to be directed to the Etsy shop.

To say she loves them is not quite sufficient.  They’re precious and well worth the money if you’re trying not to sell your soul to Walt Disney; I am trying and failing.

So more on her fabulous You Are My Sunshine party tomorrow, but I believe in supporting small businesses, and wanted to share these wonderful shops by letting you know about my Etsy finds!  There are so many gorgeous handmade gifts out there that can make an extra-special gift for someone you love.  I’m so happy that I bought these for my two kids–worth every penny!

Compound Word Eggs

I saw this idea on Pinterest way before Easter, and I had big plans to do it ahead of time so that you could read it and plan to save your plastic Easter eggs for just this activity.  However, I never got my act together–in fact, I even forgot to save eggs myself!  Luckily, I saw all the Easter stuff on clearance at Walmart and bought 30 of them for 30 cents a few weeks ago, and I have just been waiting for an opportunity to work this creative homeschool activity into our busy days.  Well it rained all of last week, so I had nothing better to do than to turn lemons into lemonade and whip up a literacy lesson or two with Jax.  Even Em tagged along at the end of this one!

So without further ado, please allow me to introduce Compound Word Eggs.

Compound words, as any good English-teacher-on-hiatus knows, are words made up of two words put together.  Like doghouse.  Dog is a word, house is a word, and if you put them together you get doghouse, a compound word.  This is definitely not an idea that kids need to know in preschool, but since we are familiar with the concept from Word World–episode Sandbox Surprise; I highly recommend it–and know the catchy little song from there that explains how you stick two words together to form a new word, I thought playing with compound words would be a fun way to pass a rainy afternoon.

Luckily my son is as big of a literacy dork as I am.  He was all in.

We sat together while I put the words on each egg using stickers.  I wanted him to be sure he could read each word by himself.  I think at this age it is very important to have the compound word parts be the same color, so he can eliminate incorrect word pair choices by color.  But some words had multiple options for pair partners, so sometimes he mixed it up.

For example, he took the sand from sandbar and the man from snowman and turned it into sandman.  I’m not sure if that’s even a real word, but it gave us a chance to talk about Mr. Sandman and sing that song from the 1950′s (not so much Enter Sandman by Metallica).  Toolbox was easy, but I also created the option to create mailbox and shoebox, so there were some alternatives to the same word.

Anyway, Jax was a huge fan of this game because it was a kind of challenge, and he had to figure out which words sounded right.  His favorite was when he discovered the word baseball.  He used his typical manly face and said, “All right!  BASEBALL!”  And he was wearing his Sox shirt, too.

Now I’m not an expert on literacy; I just know what works for my kids and since they are little reading rockstars, I think perhaps I may be on to something.  But one thing I do know for sure is that kids, especially boys, love to learn by doing–by manipulating things with their hands and fingers, thus imprinting this information deep in the foundation of their brain.  In other words, if your kids don’t like to sit still and read books, try thinking of other hands-on ways to make reading fun!

After Jax had solved all his compound word puzzles and Em had woken up from her nap, I still had plenty of eggs left to recycle a great idea I have shared with you before, but it bears repeating since it’s so fun and easy.

All you have to do is write capital letters on one side of a plastic egg, and its corresponding lower case letter on the other side.  Then break them apart and have the kids match them up.  This was difficult for Em because her lower case recognition is pretty inconsistent if the lower case letter doesn’t just look like a mini version of its upper case partner.

But that was fun, too, because Jax got to play the role of teacher–one of his favorites.  I separated all the capitals into one pile and all the lowers into another, and Em would grab an upper case letter and identify it.  Then she would go look for its partner based on color.  If she found one she didn’t know, she’d hand it to Jax and ask him what it was.  This happened quite a bit and he loved being the big shot big brother.  Then they were both proud of themselves when they found a matching pair.

Em was still grumpy from her nap and not at all ready for her close-up.  But although she wasn’t photo-ready, she did have fun.

But when Jax started building two-letter words, she quit.

Whatever, show off.  Enough learning for today, Mom.  Let’s go have a tea party.

Dorky mom, out.

Happiness Is…{fun with photography}

I was excited for my mini sessions last wast weekend, but especially looking forward to this particular shoot.  These beautiful kids belong to a high school friend of mine, and I had yet to meet her baby boy!  Plus, we collaborated on Pinterest to create this really fun scene, although my friend Marci did all the work–I just had to put these little darlings in my sights and click away!

These two siblings love each other, are really well behaved, and are as sweet as can be.  What more could I want for a photo shoot?

How about one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken? I think this photo of Madison is gorgeous, if I do say so myself!  If only I could get shots like this of my own kids!

What a beautiful family, Marci!  Thank you for the opportunity to play with them and to see you all!

One photo shoot edited, four to go!

The Happiness Is… blog hop is simply a place to come, link up a post (not your homepage!) that made you happy recently (anything but a giveaway or review) and share it with the rest of us!  Photos, recipes, crafts, stories, moments, and anecdotes are all welcome!  Come peruse other amazing posts and meet fantastic new people in the blogosphere!  The only rule is to please grab my button (right sidebar) and link back to me in some way, otherwise you won’t be able to link up.  That way more people will come and learn about this uplifting way to promote your blog!

So, are you ready?  On your mark, get set, hop!



Spring Cherry Blossom Art

Looking for a homemade Mother’s Day present that looks gorgeous and requires little mess and stress?  Look no further!  Create beautiful cherry blossom art from recycled materials–the perfect spring decoration!

Here’s what you need: paper, paint, and a plastic bottle with a star-shaped bottom

First, draw the branch of your cherry blossom art.  We used brown, but Alphamom, where I found this idea, used black.  It actually looked a little more Asian-influenced that way, and I really liked it, but we had no black paint so that was why I changed it up.  Then dip the bottle’s bottom into some paint to create the flowers.

Then dip away to create the blossoms on your tree!

Jax absolutely loved it.  He was very meticulous about where he placed his blossoms, and would oooh and ahhh every time he dipped the bottle.

His sister, on the other hand, was a dabbing machine!  She wanted absolutely no assistance, yelling “ME DO IT!” any time I tried to help.

Yup, she’s two.

In the end, I had two totally different, but equally beautiful cherry blossom trees!  I framed them and gave them to my mom for Mother’s Day last weekend, and they were a huge hit!  I love making my mom happy.

Later we added grass and a few leaves here and there to add a bit more color.  My kids are in a very literal stage–in their mind, trees have leaves and are connected to the the grass–so grass and leaves were a must!  They did those in their own style, too.  Art that tells a story about who my kids are is my favorite kind, and based on the smile on my mom’s face, hers too!

Happy Mother’s Day to you all, but especially to my beautiful mama!

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