Maple Cinnamon Cream Cheese Spread

A few months ago we participated in the Tour the World by Flower blog hop with our Red Clover Painting Exploration. This time again be participating in A Tour the World blog series, this time focusing on food!

Bloggers from around the world are sharing recipes and project ideas which focus on a key food from their state or country in this Tour the World by Food blog series.

For our post we focused not only on an ingredient our state is commonly known for, but also an all time favorite in our house: maple syrup.

I grew up in a family that made maple syrup, and used it often in almost everything and anything, (moving way beyond pancakes of course!): coffee, fruit salad, oatmeal, cookies, etc. 

Vehicle Week (Simple Summer Theme Week #3)

We're still really enjoying our Simple Summer Theme weeks even though summer is quickly passing us by. It's no secret we love playing with cars and trucks, so Vehicle Week was a lot of fun for the boys!

Week Three: Vehicle Week

One of my favorite things about this week was that we already own so many of the materials we needed. It also encouraged us to get out some of the transportation toys we already owned and hadn't used in a while. 

Roll, Count, Color to 100

We've been enjoying the Cool Math Series which has been going on this month. Earlier this month we shared 4 ways to Explore Symmetry at Home. Today we're sharing a new, homemade math game: Roll, Count, Color to 100.

For a while now, Big Brother has been interested in counting to 100, and he can pretty much do it as long as the gets a little help with the "tens." I wanted him to get a sense of what the tens actually meant, so I put together this math game. 

TRUCK inspired Sticky Collage

This month the Virtual Book Club for Kids author is Donald Crews. We read several of his books last year as we explored our Vehicle Week as they perfectly fit our Simple Summer Theme.

The book the boys enjoyed the most was TRUCK. The book follows one tractor trailer truck as it makes its way across the delivery route. The brief text and bold, colorful illustrations make it appealing to even the littlest reader. 

Build-A-Road Playdough Play

Toy cars abound at our house, so it's always fun to find new ways to play with them. One thing the boys really enjoyed this past week was this new playdough invitation, with a slightly new twist on our playdough recipe.

This invitation was one that was definitely high interest for all the boys, even though they are at slightly different ages. 

One Bowl Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

As we've shared before, the boys love muffins. Banana muffins are usually our go-to recipe as we almost always wind up with overripe bananas in the house. I'm always looking for ways to make them a little quicker and easier, which is why I've come up with this one bowl banana chocolate chip muffin recipe. Fast to make and easy to clean up.

When I make these, I always make them in our KitchenAid mixer, which makes the mixing fast and smooth. It had actually been a while since I made some, but we were pretty excited to enjoy a fresh batch this week.

Beach Week (Simple Summer Theme 2)

It's been a couple of weeks now, but we greatly enjoyed our second Simple Summer theme: Beach Week.

Ocean related activities are always some of our favorites! We had a lot of fun earlier this year with Big Brother's Ocean birthday party, so we were able to build off of that with even more fun activities. And even though it will be a while until we see the real ocean, this made us feel like we could almost be there. 

4 Ways to Explore Symmetry at Home

We're really excited to be participating in the Cool Maths series hosted by Peakle Pie, which is continuing for the entire month of July. Each day this month bloggers in this series will be sharing great and practical ideas for how to explore math at home, and make it fun!

We're often doing math at home, sometimes as a project or game but more often it is just part of our daily experiences and conversations.

This week we started exploring symmetry. To introduce the topic, we explored it in four different ways.

Symmetry is a geometry term. The symmetry we explored focused on the idea that a shape or object can have a line of symmetry. When an object is folded in half, or you visualize a line going down the center of an object, you can see that the other half exactly matches or mirrors the first half. 

Footprint Birdie Birthday Card

Sometimes we plan out projects that we know will turn into a post, and sometimes something turns out so cute we just have to share. That's how it was with this Footprint Birdie Birthday Card we created for a family member this week.

This week was our "Pamma's" birthday, and the boys were excited to pick her out a hummingbird feeder as a gift. To go with her present we decided to put together this sweet card. 

Fourth of July Star Wands

Every year we head to our local parade on the 4th of July. We love the fun of the trucks, floats, and of course candy.

Each year we usually bring small flags for the boys to hold, but this year we decided to switch it up and create something else a little festive for the kids to hold: Fourth of July Star Wands.

Homemade Strawberry Shortcake

It's strawberry season here in our neck of the woods, which means it's Strawberry Shortcake time. And to me, nothing says summer quite like strawberries.

I've been playing with our recipe a little bit and tweaked our favorite biscuit recipe to make it a sweeter version for shortcake. 

Monthly Goals: July 2015

I've been having so much fun enjoying our June Monthly Goals which included making a summer bucket list. You can find some of our summer bucket list moments over on Instagram.

But it's lead me to a new thought: making sure we don't over do it this summer.

July Monthly Goals: Plan to Unplan

We are one of those families who almost always have a plan. We're usually on the go, with things to do, people to meet, places to see. Even our "home days" have plans: projects to complete, to-do lists to check off and other work to finish up.