I've started painting again!!!

 I've loved painting since I was in high school and took my first painting class. It's always been my me time, and now with the encouragement of my wonderful husband I've started to carve out time at the end of the night to paint! I've even started listing some on Etsy -- Here's  My store!!  I'm hoping to use any funds made to help purchase medical equipment for my son Chance, I'd like to get him a mount for his wheelchair to hold his ipad for school, and also a Kidwalk walker since insurance has denied us multiple times. I really hope this helps! Below are a few of my favorite paintings I've done. 

First week of trying summer school

Now that my 1st grader is on summer vacation he is making it very obvious he misses school. I know he loves his friends and teachers but the routine is also so important to him. So since I have been attempting (unsuccessfully) all year to get organized with homeschooling Daniella, I thought this would be a good opportunity to get going again.

So I got some more supplies, planned it all out for our first week. We did fourth of july theme activities and had some fun doing crafts and worksheets.

Chance was more interested in playing bubbles and watching movies but did participate a bit with his ipad apps that went along with our theme.

This next week I'm going to try and do a bit more than last week, I'm still trying to ease in to this routine but hopefully we will have some sort of routine by the time Chance goes back to school! My favorite site I found for printables http://www.overthebigmoon.com/

Babbabox Review - fun stuff for kids!

My husband found this BabbaBox company in one of his entrepenuer magazines awhile back. It looked perfect for Daniella since she has become so creative recently and I've been struggling with activities to help with our homeschool adventure. So we signed up and it took about 6 weeks before we got ours (depends on when you place your order- but it ships out the 3rd of the next month after your first order then every 3rd week of the month after that). It's a monthly subscription of $30 so it didn't seem to much considering how much it would cost to drive around and pick up the supplies and plan and find ideas. So this past week was pretty exciting when we finally got our box! Each box has a theme and this months theme was 'you are what you eat!'.

Everything is packaged so nice and neat and the instructions were easy and fun for my 3yr old.

All the supplies we needed to make the crafts were included I didnt need anything extra.
I also learned you can add a sibling pack for $10 a month to get double the crafting supplies!

 We had so much fun making our place mate, shopping list folder and reading our story next we will download our free app for the ipad (or android) that was included. There was also measuring cups so the kids can help with cooking and a pizza cutter for homemade pizzas. And a sample of all natural kids toothpaste! 

Daniella's placemat where she drew all her favorite foods and grouped them together.

reading our story

Our picture shopping list we made!

 I cant wait for next month and will post some videos of Daniella and I doing the crafts together!

                         

                                  http://happychaos4life.blogspot.com/p/disclosure-policy.html

Click the picture below for a 20% discount code on your first box if this looks like something you'd like to try with your kids! 

First days of summer vacation

Day ONE::

Chance is off school now! For the next 3 months I need to keep him busy 24/7. Today we didnt do anything special I'm sure he thinks its the weekend he spent most of the day watching movies in his room. So I've been scouring pinterest for tons of ideas, most of them messy, so that means lots of baths around here.

Isabella is still almost walking , Chance is almost walking and Daniella is always looking for opportunities of mischief. In fact Daniella sprained her ankle 3 days ago pretending to be a dog around the house!

Maybe I will be able to have some big project fun with the kids.

But I've made it my goal to just get through the day. Yeah big goals for summer 2012.

Day TWO::

We spent today at the BEACH! I should clarify before we get too far, my 3yr old Daniella is convinced our boxes of sand are the beach :) Easy to get there ... just outside the front door!! Now my 7yr old with his sensory issues doesnt really play in the beach, mostly because he will eat it, but Today I ventured to keep them busy first we had an all out Dance Party in the living room after breakfast throwing around all our big bouncy balls, but then Chance shortly got annoyed -- by my Dancing I'm sure! So we went outside for a little gardening and beach time!!! I figured I'd give him just enough to feel it on his hands but not enough to just chow down on chunks of sand... and it worked!! Daniella made sandcastles and Chance played in the sand on his wheelchair tray!! Now its bath time then lunch then movies until Speech Therapy... I can handle days like this NO PROBLEM!!! :D

New Projects

So now that summer is about to begin, I've begun the organization of the house in preperation of having all 3 kids home 3 months straight!! And since we live in the oven of Texas (San Antonio) with 100+ temps pretty much all summer, we dont get out much, hardly even the back yard as its just too much for the little ones! Of course we do have SeaWorld San Antonio 15 min away so we certainly take advantage of their water park as often as possible.

So with that in mind I started thinking of ways to declutter and make summer easier to have all 3 kids fully entertained at the same time. Last summer was easier since Isabella was an infant and basically ate slept and pooped, as infants do.

My first project was to purge the plastic toys which I kinda did, about 50% anyway, then I organized them all and gave Chance all the bigger toys in his room. Then I decided to use all the left over diaper boxes I had to build a toy bookshelf out of them!

Cut tops off and laid them out

Poked holes with a screwdriver and attached the boxes to each other with zip ties

Lots of tape to support it up, could use duct tape

final product except I will be adding contact paper on the insides and cover in fabric on the outside

Still trying homeschooling

I'm still plugging away at trying to homeschool  but she is definitely a challenge, I am having my own challenges of getting organized for it too, plus MIL has been here 5 weeks and totally thrown us off what little rythym we had, now D is watching way more TV than I'd like, and Isabella is not quite walking yet so its hard to handle her physically while trying to do stuff with Daniella so I'm kinda failing at it for now, I have 7 more weeks of MIL and I need to get something figured out soon. MIL has been great though, she does all our dishes and keeps the kitchen clean, so you'd think I have tons more time to do fun learning stuff with the girls, C has just started to get in to a good space neurologically so I think it will get better soon, hopefully before summer because all 3 littles home with me for 3 months we have to get more creative or I will lose my mind !! Last summer was great, although we were pretty much with out a vehicle I got through it. I think it will get better if we can move to a better neighborhood, and have a better living space for kids. We just ordered a subscription to a monthly kids craft box. So hopefully that will help jumpstart ideas! I am also hoping I start blogging more, I think this helps get my crazy thoughts more organized LOL ... I guess we will see!