Father's Day Gift....We make a Great Team (Football Pompom Weepuls)

Do you remember those very famous '70 - '80 little colored pompoms? They were called Weepuls and we used to give them to friends, family, for Christmas, birthdays.... The messages were beautiful and having these weepuls attached to it, made it more beautiful....it was just so trendy. So I thought this would be nice for Father's Day. We made these Weepuls using the colors of his favourite Football Team... :-)

Here is how I did it.
1.- Make a Pom Pom. Yo can use this tutorial or go step by step as I show you on these pictures. (I recommend to use this tutorial for the smaller pompoms and do the bigger ones using the cardboard.)

Create 2 donuts shaped pieces of cardboard 

Place the rings together and pull the wool making a loop

Make a knot and start to wind the wool around the rings.

You should have something like this. You can use one or several colors.

You can wind several layers...the more wool you use, the bigger the pompom

Move the wool a little 'till you see the cardboard.

Cut the wool around the edges of the cardboard. It is VERY important to keep your other hand holding the center of the cardboard.

Pass a lenght of wool between the two pieces and tie it firmly together. 

Remove the cardboard Rings (Cut if necessary)

Trim the pompom until it gets a tidy look

A nice trick is to hold the pompom several seconds above some steam. This makes the pompom very soft!!! 

Using felt, cut a heart that you can use as feet.

Some googly eyes, and done!

We wrote a very special message for daddy

And here we are...the 4 of us! (Look at the little girl with the pony tails on the left....hehehe)

Convenient Shopping

With a new baby at home my life has changed a little bit. Going shopping or going out was easy with my first born. I just took her with me, and voila. One hip for her, and the other for the diaper box! Now it is different....

• My daughter goes half day to school, (store opens at 10, have to pick her up at 12, baby store is 40 minutes away...)
• She needs to take a nap in the afternoon. When she wakes up, we just want to have fun, and not be in a store! (Of course)

But I need diapers! One 3 year old, one infant in a very heavy car seat, my bag, a diaper bag and of course the "here mommy, take this" stuff...Now what?

Searching the internet the other day, I found on Amazon a very easy way to buy baby essentials and actually save!

You get

• Free 2-Day Shipping on all diapers, wipes, and formula sold by Amazon

• An additional 15% savings through Subscribe & Save, our auto-delivery program

• Favorite brands like Pampers, Seventh Generation, Huggies, and Similac

The Subscribe & Save program offers an extra 15% off and free shipping on items you routinely use and keeps them coming every one, two, three, or six months. You can change your delivery schedule or cancel at any time.

I think this is the solution to my problems! Has anybody tried it before??? Please let me know! I am going to check it out!

This is the ad I found.

I'm Back!

I’ve been gone for a while because of several reasons. The first one because I felt so sick the first 5 months...I had no energy, I didn’t want to do anything but sleep, had nausea....sounds familiar? Well, yes! Our daughter is going to have a little brother! We are so happy! All this made us be very busy moving, having grandma (Oma) with us so she could help, prepare and celebrate our daughter’s 3rd birthday. A lot of things that kept us busy but now we are back on track and ready for our baby boy to arrive and ready to continue our blog.

Meanwhile the time has passed and my daughter has been growing so much. Each day she talks more and more. I have been studying a lot lately about multi-linguistic children since we are raising her using 3 languages (Spanish, Dutch and English).

She speaks and understand them very good. A very good website for bilingual and multi-linguistic children is Multilingual Children’s Association.

There are a lot of parents who have questions or experiences that can help you if you have any question. You could also try to read some very nice books about this subject. There are tons in the library or look here at Amazon: Multilingual Children

Since English is not my first (or second...but thirth lenguage as you may notice...) I need to study a lot more about this subject. I will let you know more how my daughter is advancing...

Earth Day

There was a book fair the other day near my place and I found these books which I bought. They are super cute. They are written by the same author (Jean Marzollo) of I Spy and other very good and known books. The illustration is beautiful, all made out of cut paper. Even though it is a book for a 4 years old who starts to read, my daughter loves it because she is starting to understand how things work in this world....I really recommend you this collection of books. They have several titles.

For the occasion of Earth Day, we read the book I Am an Apple (Hello Reader Science Level 1). We could learn how a little seed changes into a big tree with a lot of apples in it! We also read about all the things you can do with apples! Yammi!

Later we looked for some material so we could make our own apple tree...

I found loose fill peanuts, a toilet roll, a half Easter egg, paint, glue....

We put the half egg inside the roll to create a base.

We glued the peanuts and colored them green...(we used one of the peanuts to paint them. We painted the toilet roll using brown.

I still had some "San Valentine Day" hearts. These were perfect for our Apple Tree!

Happy Earth Day!

Looking for the High Rise Step Stool, Kitchen Helper or Learning Tower?

My daughter loves to see everything I do. When I am in the kitchen, she wants to be there and help! We have some barstools where she was trying to climb on, but I didn't let her since I thought it was not really safe. So surfing the web I found these 3 perfect options!

1.- The Learning Tower by Little Partners

2.- Guidecraft Kitchen Helper

3.- Guidecraft High Rise Step Up

I really liked The Learning Tower by Little Partners. My sister-in-law has one and it is really sturdy, easy to access (for the kid of course) and easy to clean, but too big for our kitchen.

Guidecraft Kitchen Helper was another good option because it folds so you can store it. But to store it you have to take out your tool kit, and right now, I don't have time for that....

So the last option was Guidecraft High Rise Step Up, which was a little smaller and not so expensive as the other two. My daughter loved it!

She climbs and gets down whenever she wants, and she loves it so much that some days she prefers eating standing so she can be on her stool.

If I had more space in the kitchen, I would have probably bought The Learning Tower by Little Partners, but this stool does the same function and it is light enough to carry from one point to the other...

My daughter loves to do the dishes and I let her! (Looks like I have one thing less to do, right? ummmm...No!

First I have to clean them and leave them in the sink... she thinks they are dirty and washes them again... It is so lovely to see her imitate me!)

Her you see her cleaning the dishes on her Guidecraft High Rise Step Up

MONTESSORI: This is a wonderful Practical Life activity and kids love it!