New Dress Up Storage & Organization!

Tah dah! Everyone at our house is now a princess... due to our wonderful new dress up organization for the girls' dresses and accessories! It works as great storage when the items are not in use and gives them easy access to use things during play time!

We had originally seen a dress up station on Wayfair.com, but my husband thought it was something he could tackle and do himself. We came across blogger Jess, that had that same thought on "Craftiness is not Optional", which even contained a link to another site by Ana White that had some plans for similar designs! He went to work on ours and came up with a design that would work great in our play room.

My husband put it together over a few weekends, with some additional work time being added on it by using a router on all of the edges to give them a rounded finish - so there were no sharp corners in the girls' play area. We picked out paint at Lowe's (Valspar "Plum Burst" 4002- 10B, in case you're looking for it!) - and made our own stencils on some card stock using a font in the word processing program on our computer. I think it turned out beautifully!

The top shelf has storage space for tiaras, cowboy hats, and the pirate hat... if it was ever not in use!

Lots of room to hold the ever important dresses & tutus!

The bottom has a bin that is a great little cubby for purses, shoes, and jewelry:

It has been a great addition to the play room! I will do an updated playroom organization video soon!

Here's the reveal of the dress up station to the girls for the first time - and a mini tour of their dress up items (so far, ha!) in their collection:

The girls loved it, as you can see here!

Cupcake looking all grown up in her Rapunzel costume!

Peanut enjoying the dress up selections!

Great job to Daddy and Grandad - and a very special thanks to Craftiness is Not Optional who was a great help in giving us inspiration for ours, and the plans by Ana White that she linked on her page that gave Daddy a great place to start for ours!

Review: Kodiak Cakes Flapjack and Waffle Mix!

I was contacted by Kodiak Cakes to review one of their products, and while I don't normally accept food reviews and initially was set to decline, I changed my mind after some consideration . The concept of a healthier box mix without preservatives intrigued me and I also appreciated that it is a family owned business, being a former entrepreneur myself.

So I accepted the review and received two boxes of their FlapJack Mix to review (along with a super cute apron!) - I set off to try my hand at making some pancakes!

They really are straight forward, dare I say... easy? To make... Instructions were quick to follow and it just took 1 cup of the mix to 1 cup of water, a bit of whisking, and we were off!

They cooked up quickly, 1 minute on the first side and 30 seconds for the second, and turned out great! The true test was the taste... and they passed with flying colors! I would definitely say they tasted better than "other" box mixes I had tried in the past, and I thought the consistency was great. Light and fluffy, not too thick or thin, the 1 cup to 1 cup ratio worked out great for me!

I will be looking for other Kodiak Cake products at my local Target stores, as most Target stores recently started stocking their products. Will let you know what I find in an upcoming Target haul!

See the full video review here:

** Items shown in this review were sent to the reviewer complimentary for consideration of the review. This was not a paid review. All opinions are my own.

Gymboree Semi-Annual Red Balloon Sales is Online & In-stores!!

Gymboree's semi-annual Red Balloon Sale (or 'RBS') starts TODAY, online and in stores! Known for its great finds from last season's lines and stock up quality, the price points are $.99, $3.99, $6.99, and $7.99!

I'm hoping to find some winter gear for the girls' closets!

Check out last's years' RBS haul:

Hopefully, if I can find some good deals in store - there will be a Gymboree RBS Haul for Summer 2013 forthcoming!! Happy shopping!

Preschool at Home: Week 16 & 17!

Week 16 - Navigating Numbers!

Week 16 of Preschool at Home was all about "Navigating Numbers"!

'N' was our letter of the week, and as I'm sure you can guess from the title, our focus was numbers! We counted to 40, and worked on simple addition and subtraction. I also found some great number match worksheets in a kindergarten readiness workbook that Cupcake really enjoyed completing, so I will look to include skill activities like those in the future.

Our craft for the week was a 'N is for Nest' letter activity:

Our learning board:

And I especially loved using this Fisher Price Market toy, to play a checkout game with Cupcake to do some simple addition and subtraction - it worked great!

Week 17 - Happy Home Week!

For Week 17, our theme was "Happy Home" week, Earth Day was on Monday of this week... so we did a few Earth Day activities, talking about recycling and doing a recycling sorting worksheet. The letter of the week was 'H" and since we were a bit under the weather in various ways (colds, allergies, you name it...) we did our basic activities and had a handful of special events that were in our schedule as well, so it was a light week for our preschool activities.

Our craft for the week was a 'H is for Horse' activity:

Next up! Dress-up week... which I'm sure will be a hit with the girls!

Preschool at Home: Week 15 - Growing Grammar!

For Week 15 we talked about "Growing Grammar" and the letter 'G'!

We had a special play date planned that worked perfectly with our theme, where we painted some garden pots to plant flowers and vegetables in to watch them grow this summer.

Also, we completed some worksheets on the letter 'G', nouns (the part of grammar we were focusing on for the week), and did a 'G is for Giraffe' craft! Since giraffes are a particular weak spot of mine, I had a slight obsession with them while I was pregnant with Cupcake - and decorated the nursery with a jungle animal theme centering around giraffes - we did a "Mommy & baby" giraffe theme craft. I colored the spots on the mommy giraffe and had Cupcake help me glue it together, she colored the spots on the baby giraffe.

I thought they turned out great!

Preschool at Home: Week 14 - Fantastic Feelings!

Week 14 of Preschool at Home was 'Fantastic Feelings!' week, where we talked about different feelings and emotions, since Cupcake has started to show interest in talking more about feelings. I had recently found a number of books to add to our collection on feelings, so we focused on those over the week and also did some feelings worksheets as well.

The letter of the week was 'F' and we did an 'F is for Fox' craft project!

I also incorporated feelings in an upcoming busy bag exchange that we are taking part in, and I will share that project in a future post - but the exchange happened to be the following week so it didn't line up exactly timing-wise with feelings week. We will continue to talk about feelings off and on in the future though, since Cupcake more interested in understanding what different feelings mean.

Pre-School at Home: Week 13 - Egg-cellent Easter Week!

Week 13 of preschool at home was Egg-cellent Easter Week!

We did some fun "letter E" craft activities:

And had some fun Easter events like an egg hunt, as well!

These were the girls' Easter egg baskets - and you can check out what was inside in the video below!

Thanks for stopping by! Happy Easter!

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