Pinkalicious Book Night

You know how we usually do movie nights? Well, I had been seeing a lot of birthday parties based on the book Pinkalicious and decided to pick up the book at the library this past week. It is a very cute story and Ashlyn loved it! So I thought it would be fun to do a book night instead of a movie night. It was a lot of fun so we're going to be trying to do at least one book night and one movie night a month.

Anyway, in Pinkalicious a little girl eats too many pink cupcakes and turns pink herself! The doctor says the only cure is to eat green food. So for dinner we had pink and green foods.


We had our favorite sandwiches... pesto (green) mayo, provolone, and tomatoes on sourdough bread. We also had grapes, celery with peanut butter, strawberries (half of them dipped in pink chocolate), and of course pink cupcakes!

As you can see in the picture, two of Ashlyn's stuffed animals joined us. It looks like her pig and puppy ate one too many pink cupcakes! ;) (That pink puppy was the best purchase we could have made while waiting in the Jacksonville Airport a couple of months ago... she LOVES him!! And she immediately named him... wait for it... Pink Puppy. :D )

We read the book before and after dinner. Ashlyn even read it to us once or twice. She has just started to really like "reading" to us. She memorizes things really quickly and actually gets really close to saying the whole story on a lot of her favorite books!

And if you decide to do a book night with Pinkalicious, just make sure you don't let your little one into the kitchen with unguarded pink cupcakes. Because you might just see your little one walk into the living room, licking frosting off her fingers. Then you might, let's just say, walk into your kitchen to find this.

Wordless Wednesday - Thinking Disney Thoughts

I've been in a very Disney mood lately, so here's a sweet picture from January. Ashlyn was star struck when she met Aurora, her favorite princess!

Muffin Tin Monday - Springy!

Yay for Muffin Tin Meals! They're definitely fun. I haven't been very good at doing them every week, but I did manage to throw together a simple one today for Ashlyn's lunch. I guess it ended up being a kind of spring theme.


She had a butterfly-shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwich, watermelon, key lime pie yogurt with butterfly sprinkles, and blueberries. Sounded yummy to me, but Ashlyn's not big on blueberries or watermelon. Weird kid. ;) I think she'd love watermelon if she gave it a chance. She took one bite the day we bought it and she hasn't tried it again. Oh well, I'll keep offering it! I've made watermelon popsicles before and she absolutely loved them so maybe I'll just have to do that again. They were definitely super yummy!

To see what others made for MTM this week, head on over to Muffin Tin Mom!

Time4Learning

Recently Rockabye Butterfly, one of my favorite sites to go for inspiration on homeschool-type activities for Ashlyn, held a giveaway for a 30-day trial to Time4Learning. And guess what... I won!


So I've been invited to try Time4Learning for one month in exchange for a candid review. Time4Learning can be used for homeschool, afterschool and summer skill sharpening. Be sure to come back and read about my experience!

Decorating with Frames and Free Printables

I believe it was last Thanksgiving that I fell in love with all the free printables that are available online, especially around holidays. I went to the store and bought a cheap frame (it is an 8 x 10 frame with the mat but the picture area is 5 x 7) with a particular Thanksgiving printable in mind. The frame was about $5 but I know you could find one cheaper at a thrift store or dollar store or something (we just don't exactly have an abundance of those here... or any). I put the printable in the frame and decorated around it (I can't remember who I got this exact one from, but I found similar ones here).


And after Ashlyn made a super cute craft, I put that there, too.


Anyway, I loved it so much that I wanted a printable for every holiday! I don't have pictures of any of them between Thanksgiving and now because, well, I didn't think I would blog about it! But it really has been a great addition to my decorating. For example, even though I don't have any other decorations (yet) for St. Patrick's Day, I printed up 2 printables I found (and I promise now that I want to share the different things I put up, I will remember who I get these printables from so I can give credit and you can find them, too), bought a smaller frame, and put them up on our moveable island and completed it with a piece of greenery. Sometimes in the smaller frame I put a picture instead of a printable, like on Mother's Day I had a picture of my mom and me with a beautiful quote in the bigger frame.

I started to miss having something there in between holidays so I found another printable with "Keep Calm and Bake On" to put in the larger frame, put a picture of Ashlyn and me baking together in the smaller one, and put my stress cupcake with it! I bought the stress cupcake at Bake It Pretty, one of my favorite baking supply shops, but as of today I couldn't find it on their site. They have a ton of other great things, though!


I love it. :) It is cheap to do and easy to change for different holidays or moods (and our camera battery charger is nicely hidden behind the big frame ;) )! I am also very much looking forward to having access to thrift stores, dollar stores, craft stores, etc. to decorate this space (and all other spaces) better. Yay!

Movie Night - Sleeping Beauty

image from Amazon

We had our latest movie night on Wednesday. We've been busy and distracted lately with our move coming up (I will update on that when we get some definite information) so I ended up not planning a whole lot and before I knew it, our movie night was here! We watched Sleeping Beauty.


There's our beautiful little princess. :) She loves playing dress up so she was excited to put on her Aurora dress and tiara. We had banana and chocolate chip pancakes and sausage for dinner (sleeping - breakfast - it worked for us!).

Aurora is one of Ashlyn's favorite princesses (Rapunzel and Aurora go back and forth with her for the #1 spot) so we had plenty of toys to decorate with.


There was more I could have used, but this was perfect for our laid back movie night. :)

I wanted to have a craft of some sort, at least a coloring page, but it just didn't happen. Like I said, I just didn't sit down and plan for this one like I like to do. Oh well, we still had fun! What movie do you think we should do next?

Muffin Tin Meal - Mmmmmm

Well, I was slacking and didn't make Ashlyn a muffin tin meal this past Sunday, but I made her one on Wednesday. Each week I teach Ashlyn a new letter (she recognizes all the letters but I'm also teaching her the sounds they make as well as numbers, shapes, etc. She LOVES school!) and this week is the letter M. So I decided to make her a letter M muffin tin meal!


She had Macaroni and cheese, corn dog Muffin (recipe from Once A Month Mom - I add corn to our corn muffins), and M&M's all in Muffin liners on a Minnie Mouse plate. The M&M's were from a color sorting/counting activity I did with Ashlyn and I told her that she could have some of them for a snack so it inspired me to do this. The rest of the meal just happened to be leftovers from the night before so it was really easy and she loved it!

For more muffin tin meals, check out Muffin Tin Mom!