Recently Melody has started food therapy by seeing an Occupational Therapist. When she first started solid food, she did fairly well. She would eat almost anything we offered her. However over the last few years she has become a lot more picky. She has started giving up foods she once ate often, and now she is becoming even more particular about the foods she does eat. So we finally gave in and started food therapy after her 4 year old well visit.
These donuts are really delicious and semi-healthy using the air fryer. We tried a few flavors for our first attempt, but I will tell you that the cinnamon sugar were by far the best! And we even fried up the donut holes too!
When quarantine first started, I was on the lookout for some easy and fun crafts for Melody. I ran across this one on Pinterest. You take a piece of cardboard, and you draw hands and/or feet on it. Then draw nails on that.
A paper plate flower is a cute and easy craft that you can do for the spring or summer, or even as a gift for a parent or grandparent. All you need is a paper plate, some paint, scissors, glue, a popsicle stick, and green construction paper (or white paper colored green!). And if you are missing any supplies, you can easily improvise!
A few weeks ago we started a new chore chart with Melody to earn an allowance (we had one two years ago, but it was for learning not money). Brad and I sat down and determined 5 chores that she can currently do but may also need help with learning to perfect. These are not chores we expect her to do daily (for the most part), but we do expect her to do them when we ask her too. If she does them, she gets to put a magnet on her chart for that chore on that day. If she does not do what we ask, I placed a “X” on that slot. This helps us keep track of how well she did throughout the week.
This year I started using a daily Simplified planner for all of my day to day activities instead of The Happy Planner I have used in the past. Being a little over a week in, I have really liked the planner itself. I think it will become exceptionally helpful once Melody is in school. My big dilemma was now meal planning. There is a note section in the daily planner, but I found myself using it for other things and not having the room for meals. I thought about the weekly notepad I bought, but it still didn’t provide me quite enough space. One week while doing my grocery pickup, I was able to snag a weekly Simplified planner at Walmart. This is NOT a signature planner like the one I bought directly through Emily Ley. It was 1/5 of the price and not quite as nice as the other, but it provides me the space I was hoping for.
So after making BBQ Nachos at home, I really questioned why it took me so long to make this. It is really simple, and it tastes delicious. It reminds me a lot of the BBQ Nachos we get when we go to college football games. I used shredded chicken because of my pork allergy, but you could use any meat you prefer!
Melody loves using her dot markers. She actually will use them in place of paint in a lot of our crafts because they are less messy and she has more fun with them. Well during the early quarantine days when we first started crafting and schooling at home, I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut and draw a bunch of different dot sheets. This lasted two days, but she enjoyed it. Using the Cameo was likely overkill, but at the time we didn’t have enough ink in our printer to print our own. Now I just print them!
The last project we did for Melody’s Frozen birthday party was a wooden 4 we painted. I did this last year, and I thought it was such a cute and easy idea to add a bit more personal decor. I painted like the picture frame, and I displayed it along with all of her other decor. It was really easy to do, and we actually keep it displayed in her playroom with her princess stuff!
Melody has been in desperate need for a haircut for quite sometime. I sort of thought about doing it at Disney back in February last year, but it wasn’t quite long enough for me to part with. We thought we would have a trip to Disney in September, but with COVID that is looking more and more like it will not happen. So we decided to just go ahead and find somewhere local to get her hair cut. It was becoming to hard to brush and full of tangles.
July has been full of a lot of outside time at the pool and mainly inside time beyond that! It has been a hot month compared to the milder temperatures in May and June. We have tried to make the most of the last full month before school starts!
Prior to this year, I have been using “The Happy Planner” (2018 and 2019). I have used it for many, many years. However, I started following Emily Ley about two years ago. I became really intrigued with her planners and how pretty they were and their size. Earlier this year, she offered her teacher planners for only $10 so I bought one to use starting in March until July. I really fell in love with the quality of this planner and ended up deciding to purchase one during the launch back in April.
These air fryer croutons are probably my favorite homemade croutons thus far. I made a bowl full and they were gone that night! Super delicious!
Paper plate pizzas is another super easy craft you can do with your kids, and most kids can likely do this one solo!
My best friend decided to have an ice cream themed birthday party for her daughter. Birthdays during a pandemic are hard. Deciding when, who to invite, what to do is all near impossible. She decided fairly last minute on the party to help accommodate the girls dance recital and family. So she ended up sending invitations through text, but she still wanted them cute. So I helped her out and made a few for her. I wanted to share some samples below!
This is another craft Melody was able to help with for her Frozen birthday party. Like most parties, I made a pictures frame to frame a picture of her in either Frozen attire or with Anna/Elsa/both. For her help, I used tape to maker off the middle where she did NOT need to paint. I had her paint the top silver and the bottom blue. Once dry, I remove the tape and I painted the white middle.
I found this idea of paper spinners on the Crayola website. Melody is still a bit young to really enjoy playing with them, bu she was able to help with most of the craft.
So I made this door hanger many, many moons ago, ha. But it is super easy and was a gift for a fellow coworker. She actually hung it inside the office, so there are many uses for this cute burlap door hanger!
So our air fryer has become hugely popular in our household since we bought it a few months ago. And the lemon pepper shrimp was a hit and easy recipe. We could have easily doubled it for the two of us! Of course that is a lot of shrimp, but we love shrimp!
Like all events, a shirt was required for Melody’s Frozen birthday party. I was able to sneak out to Hobby Lobby safely during the pandemic to get a shirt, then I used heat transfer vinyl I had on hand. I let Melody pick the design, and we went with it!
