Favorite Summer Reading

Still don't have a camera charger! So here's something fun to get by on. I haven't written about any books for a while, so here are a few that I have loved this summer.

Fabulous Freezer Meals.  After coming across the freezer meals website, I ran to Deseret Book (also on Amazon) and picked it up.  I have a couple of freezer meal books, but this one is very practical for a busy mom.  Most recipes make enough food to eat one meal now and freeze one for later.  Also info on freezing staples to make cooking go quicker.

Peter's brother Larry got us going on the Hunger Game Series.  I don't read novels very often unless it comes highly recommended and we really got into it.  So hard to put these ones down.

Scott Kelby is the best when it comes to photography books. His writing is humorous and very easy to follow.  I have a photoshop book of his too. This Digital Photography series of 3 books is awesome!  There is a  fun little lesson on each page.  Lots of tips for anyone who is interested in improving their skills. I love devouring this information and trying it out. 

This is an old book, but a good one.  I have several books from the Eyre's and this is very useful.  They breakdown what young children need to learn about responsibility into 12 sections, one for each month.  There are ideas for lessons and implementing the values as well.  We are working on it with our kids each night before family prayer. 

Cute Book

This is such a great children's book. Not just for the kids, but for the reader as well. It is very animated. Grover does not want you to turn any pages once he finds out there is a monster at the end of the book and goes to great lengths to try to stop you. The kids get such a kick out of turning the pages against his will. There is a great surprise ending that the kids just can't get enough of. We probably have a couple hundred children's books but this is our most requested read so I thought I would give my recomendation. Check it out, they will love it.

Another Good Mom Read

I just finished this book yesterday. I really enjoyed the author's attitude and insights. I could really relate and I think we have similar personalities so that made it very fun to read. There are so many good insights into motherhood as well as humorous stories. I am definitely feeling more inspired and full of concepts that I would like to implement in raising my own children.

I am planning to read more books from this author for sure.

Super Saturday, Gardening, Playhouse, Other Projects and More

I finally unloaded my camera so I am going to put the whole shabang on here so I can count it done! I was actually sad that I haven't taken more pictures lately because we have done a lot of great stuff, but sometimes you just can't do it all. Here we go:

Super Saturday Crafts:

We picked crafts and classes to try to go with our theme "Home can be a Heaven on Earth".

FHE BOARDS:

The oh so popular FHE boards were a hit. This was my first time doing vinyl but I found a great site that sells this all in one piece so it was super easy to put on. Here is a link if you are interested, it was a great bargain too click here . I just bought the boards at Home Depot and had them cut to size. I got the shapes at Micheals. This is only a one hour project.

I love how there is one heart just waiting for our little arrival. It makes me smile everytime I walk by it. If we ever outgrow this board, I will just put 2 hearts on a hook to pair people together for a job. We are going to use our board tonight for the first time. I also love the font on this, it is called Papyrus.

GOSPEL STANDARDS QUIET BOOK:

Quiet booksare always good so we created a couple of different ones. This first one I came up with myself. I wanted to make one for primary children so I used the My Gospel Standards and went from there. Isn't this the cutest scrapbook paper?

Each page had a sentence from the Gospel Standards and a scripture to go with it. I downloaded pictures from lds.org Gospel Art Kit that corresponded with the words and had them printed in wallet size at Costco. We also used a sponge and an ink pad to distress the edges of the words to bring it all together. These are just dollar store photo albums but the ribbon through the binding really made it cute. For the last page of the book I printed a 4x6 of the Articles of Faith since primary children are usually memorizing those. I would be happy to email you directions and references if you are interested in making one of these.


NEW ERA QUIET BOOK:

This book was super easy. I didn't come up with this one, just found the idea googling. These are the New Era posters that you can order as postcards from lds.org. If you use the front and back cover you can fit 40 posters, which is 5 of the 7 sets of 8 that are available, so I just picked the sets I liked the most.

PROGRAM TRACKING/FHE BINDER (don't miss this one!)

This is the coolest thing every that EVERY LDS mom should have. It is a tracking binder for all of the programs our church uses including Faith in God, YW, YM, and Scouting programs. Not only is it a way to keep track of all your children's progress in one binder, here is the genious part. Each program has a page of FHE ideas that your children can do with the family to pass off requirments on family night! We had a stake activity and made these so we made them again for those who hadn't had the chance to get one. This one is worth its weight in gold.

We also had a special guest speaker come from our stake to educate us on using Coupons. She has a very popular website at http://www.beingfrugalisfabulous.com/. She was really informative and had lots of stories of walking away with tons of stuff for just pennies. She showed us how she organizes it all and all the basics. Check out her site it is really neat.

Our other class was based on the Mix-A-Meal cookbook. Wow, there is so much you can do with these mixes to use your food storage and save time. We also learned about a really valuable food storage site at http://www.everydayfoodstorage.net/.

Salt Part 2:

Speaking of food storage, here is another salt picture I found on my camera. I guess i can see why this made sense to Tanner. If you have ever seen a Thomas video, there are often materials used like this to look like snow.

Gardening:

We are enjoying our little garden that we planted. There are only 7 or 8 plants, but the kids really liked this project and we love watching it grow. I can't wait for fresh vegetables!




Playhouse:

The kids have really been into this project as well, especially Dallin. Dallin worked hard every day at school for 2 weeks so that he and Daddy could build a little each night. They usually only had a few minutes before bed time. He never missed a second of the process and was very interested in every detail. Even if he couldn't help with a certain part, he never left Peter's side.

Here it is with a roof going up. Tanner is really a great construction superviser here, ha ha!

Here it is all built. We haven't decided what color to paint yet. Dallin really wanted the windows to have the latice crosses.
Dallin and Eden have taken the liberty to do a lot of wall decoration in there already. I didn't oppose it because it is really their space, so I stayed out of it. The inside is stocked with a plastic kitchen, food and table, and a couple of small throw rugs.

Since we know an electrician the house even got a light and a plug in for a radio. There are still many things we plan to do out here, but the kids are loving their house. They even slept in it one night already with Daddy. Next, I am going to get some of that chalkboard paint to put on one of the walls inside.

Other Projects:

Charts are becoming such a part of our lives, it just helps me keep the kids organized. This was a fun one we just made as we are starting to teach our kids a little bit about nutrition. We will be having a lot of Family Night lessons about it so this was to get us started. I bought the board at Walmart and the Letters at the dollar store. I just glued the ribbon on with tacky glue. The magnets are made from .75" magnets using glue stick, hot glue and floral marbles from Michaels. I googled the pictures and made a word document with the right sizes. If you are interested, email me and I will send you the picture pages.

Each child has a space where they have all the nutrition requirements for a balanced diet for a day. Whenever they eat something from a food group, they move the corresponding magnet over from the left to the space on the right. I used the USDA's charts for how many servings each person should get. The first letter of each person's name shows their designated area. The kids are really excited about eating foods for their chart and are already pretty good at figuring out food groups.

These magnets turned out cute, but really ended up being more tedious and expensive than I originally thought. Oh well, I love it now that it is done. There is bread, apple, broccoli, meat, and milk to represent each kind of food. This board is as much for me as it is the kids so that I can track how well they are eating(or how I am feeding them!)

A Take on Flannel Boards:

This is so cool! I found a website where someone had downloaded every flannel board story ever printed in The Friend Magazine and colored them in Paint. Click Here for the site. I just downloaded, printed them and laminated them. (tangent: I love having a home laminating machine! It is cheaper than running to Kinkos and I use it all the time. I have the no heat Xyron version that sells at Office Max for $50 that I love, but I noticed there is a heated one at Walmart that is quite a bit cheaper, something in the $20 range.) You can buy magnet strips for really cheap at Walmart and I just use this beat up magnet board that we had lying around to tell the stories with. It is great for telling scripture stories, the kids always beg for more.

These are just the Book of Mormon stories. I keep each story in a sandwich bag in this dollar store basket.

Fun Snack Idea:

This was something that my roommate used to eat back in my BYU days. I was trying to come up with some fun nutritous snacks for the kids and this came back to me (thanks Heather if you ever read this!) Crumble graham crackers in a little bowl and put sliced peaches on top. Drizzle with honey and oh my it is so good! It is one of my favorites now too!

Book Report

I borrowed this book from the library a couple of days ago, what a fun read! I have seen this family on TV and been fascinated at how they run their family with 18 children. The book has a lot of interesting stories about their life and background and their financial and parenting philosophies. My favorite thing is how much they emphasize that children are blessings from God. Sounds like Peter's parents, go figure. This strong Christian family is the least worldly family I have ever seen and I think that is very commendable. They have obviously been blessed for their faith in the Lord. I picked up several ideas that I would like to incorporate into our family and overall it left me so inspired to be a better teacher, example and leader for my children. It is a quick and uplifting read that I highly recommend.

Frugality at its Best

I am excited because today is a holiday. Everyone in my family is excited because we are heading to six flages, but that is not really why I am looking forward to today. My older kids are really into books, we read for at least a half hour before bed each night and they beg for more. They will stay in their beds and read for a while after that even. We use the library a lot and we have a growing collection of our own that I slowly gather when I find the right deals.

Today, being a holiday the Goodwill is having a sale, 1/2 off of everything. That means childrens books will be .50 for hardback and .25 for paper back. I am so stocking up on our way out of town! Those are my approved yard sale prices but they have a huge selection. I don't know if the sale is nationwide, but could be worth checking out. My budget is $20 so can you imagine how much fun we are going to have??? That would only buy a couple of books at Borders.

I have blogged about it before, but we love to buy our kids games and puzzles there too. A game for a couple dollars totally beats 10-20 bucks at Target. I got Eden a brand new Fancy Nancy game there the last time we went.

Potty Time

I have heard about this book a lot and with the pending decision to go ahead with Tanner I finally went and got it. I haven't read it yet, but I am hoping that it will get me all exited about this task. Potty party here we come!!! Oh, and I am sure more poop stories for my blog...

The Giving Tree

This is one of my favorite children's books. I finally bought it a few days ago and was exited to read it to the kids. I haven't read it for years and then at the end it made me cry!!! I never thought I could turn into more of a cry baby but this proves it is possible. I don't think the kids noticed and Peter was nice enough not to make fun of me. Anyway, it is a very sweet book that I recommend if you have a children's book collection :)

Autism Book

I try to always stay possitive, but every once in a while I find that I get a little autism depressed. These are times when I am so tired and frustrated and I feel that no one in the world understands what life is like. One evening I was having such a hard time I spent a long time at the bookstore looking for some kind of comfort in the autism section and left empty handed. Then I finally found this book on Amazon. Its full of short stories that are uplifting and hopeful and I find that when I am feeling down it really does give me a cup of comfort. I am happy to say that I have not needed it much at all lately because things have been going so well with my little Dallin. Still, I am so glad to have it when I am having those "moments".

Louder Than Words

I read this book last week and wanted to give my little book report. Jenny McCarthy is an actress who has a little boy with autism. This is just a book about her journey. Not everything she went through is the same as me but I found so much in common with her and what it is like to be a mother with these challenges. For some reason it was really nice to relate to her. I didn't like how she used bad language, but other than that I found it well written and very descriptive. Anyway, I enjoyed it and thought it was funny how she kept bringing up the missionaries. I guess when her son was having seizures all the time she called them and asked them to come and bless her son. They did and then they kept coming back to try to teach her the discussions. In the end she did take the first discussion and admired their great faith, but that was it. It was a good read and only took 4 or 5 hours to get through.

The Secret

I just finished reading the Book The Secret. I mostly wanted to know what all of the hype was about. I think it has a lot of good points and found a lot of parallels with gospel beliefs, but I think it may be a little extreme for me. Basically it is the idea of the law of attraction and if you are always thinking positive thoughts, you can have anything you want. Its like you have to believe that you already have something and it will come to you. I liked the suggestion about losing weight for example. Tape your dream weight over your scale if you have the habit of weighing yourself so that you believe that you already are that size. Peter thinks I should try it so that I don't complain about losing weight anymore. Of course this thinking goes with whatever it is that you want. I tried it on my way to Wal Mart the other day. All the way there I thought about how grateful I was that I got a parking place in the front. It worked! Not only was it in the front, but it was THE BEST spot in the whole parking lot. Crazy. If nothing else, after reading this book I think I will be more grateful and not complain much. Has anyone else read it? What were your opinions?