Overthinking it!!

Valentine's Day is coming up. While I don't go crazy about what to do for my husband this single DAY of the year (we have no plans or gifts or cards whatsoever), I do hope to make it a little something special for the kids. Using some ideas from Pinterest I want to...

make heart shaped muffins or pancakes for breakfast (it's also Hannah's birthday)

fill out one of these for each of the kids:

maybe have these for lunch:

hot dogs + spaghetti noodle + cheese

And that's about it. Now, this is where the trouble begins, both {big} kids have Valentines parties at school. Hannah and I {and Eli} have already made her valentines box, decoupaging scraps of construction paper to a shoe box. It now looks like pink and purple and white camouflage and was actually really fun (and EASY) for kids to do (we are DEFINITELY gonna do more crafts like that!!). But now I'm STILL debating on what to do for their Valentines!  

Last year Eli hand painted his own. He was the only one in his preschool class to bring handmade cards. This year I looked at store bought cards, but almost ALL of them say ridiculous things like "You're Mine" "Be Mine" "We'll be friends forever" or they were too princessy with messages about fairy tales OR they were animated skull and crossbones!!!  I'm sorry, but these are just KIDS. They DON'T have a lover. They WON'T be friends forever probably. Life isn't a fairytale. And I probably will never approve images of skulls and crossbones!  I don't want to be crude, but I do like to stay in reality and these messages start young.

I'm looking for something that simply says "Happy Valentine's Day" or "So glad you're my friend" or "You're the best!" Really. Why can't it be that simple?

I don't really want to spend forever MAKING something, but do I want to use up all the printer ink using printable cards with more appropriate messages?? Or am I totally overthinking this and should just get generic cards, knowing the kids don't actually care about the cards or take them personally???

Days like this

make me feel so grateful

that I get to stay at home 

with my little ones.

And some days

we don't get a thing done

like at all.

We spend our day

reading

and playing

and reading some more

and making messes 

and maybe even leaving it there
and staying in jammies
all day

and making silly faces

and taking pictures of them

and then editing them

and then collaging them

and then blogging them

and snuggling

but just for a minute

and then naptime.

because some days

you just gotta slow down

and enjoy.

The view from here. 2.6.12

It's such a beautiful morning today! Everything is sparkly white, the sun is shining, and there's no wind. It's COLD still but it's beautiful. So I snapped a few cell phone pics while I was out taking Eli down to the bus stop this morning.

Carter's been walking great today! Walking more than crawling and that's HUGE for him since he fractured his leg!  He goes in spurts though. He may walk great today and then go back to completely crawling for the next two days. He's getting there though, and that's exciting to me!

Today I've been busting through my cleaning schedule, and it feels awesome! Here I created a new cleaning schedule at the beginning of the week and then had the busiest week EVER and completely couldn't stick to it at all.  But having the check-lists is helping me tremendously and keeps my focus instead of feeling overwhelmed at the whole house! Next week it'll hopefully be more manageable as I do some every day instead of all in one day as I feel I am doing today! As for the chart itself, I'll post more about it soon!

We have had a FABULOUS winter here thus far, but tomorrow we may actually be getting dumped with some snow. It's okay though. I truly cannot complain.

Unless it's still bad Sunday, in which I'll complain because that's when we're scheduled to have Hannah and Carter's birthday party! And we want our families to get here, thankyouverymuch!

Playing guitar at church and for the first time leading a song. Quite nervous about it!  When I watch other people play guitar, then I makes me suddenly feel like I don't even know how to play it at all. Which is not entirely true, but it's how I feel anyway.

AND... I'm off to go make puppy chow for girls night tonight! Then back to scraping food off the dining room floor!

Have a great week, ya'lls!!!

White Pizza

... is my FAVORITE and it's so so so easy to make! And that makes me love it even more!

But, truth, I'm so not into making my own crust. So skip ahead to instructions after you buy a pre-made crust.  =)

To make EITHER Spinach Pizza OR Margherita Pizza

Brush the crust with olive oil.
Sprinkle mozzarella cheese over crust mostly covering it.
Lay on torn up pieces of fresh spinach (or pieces of fresh basil and tomato slices).
Sprinkle with a little more mozzarella cheese.
Add some feta cheese or ricotta cheese. (or neither)
Sprinkle a pretty heavy amount of garlic powder (and some dried basil if doing spinach pizza) over all of the pizza.
Bake about 10 minutes at 425, til melted.

ENJOY!

IN the picture. In the MOMENT. {Month 2}

I posted the first of this "series" a month ago, so maybe going monthly is a little more realistic vs trying every week! 

This has been a C.r.A.Z.y week schedule-wise. Just unreal. All good stuff, but just not our normal! ANYWAY, here's the story of today's pictures...

Every afternoon I put Carter down for nap first, then read a couple books with Hannah or do schoolwork with her, and then I let her "hook on" my back and carry her upstairs for her nap or rest time or whatever she ends up doing. Just depends on the day whether she actually falls asleep or not. When I was bending down to let her hook on my back today, I thought it would be a cute picture, so I got back up and grabbed my camera and we repeated for a few snaps.

Can you believe this sweet girl is going to be FOUR in 12 days???