One of our son’s favorite friends is a little girl who will be turning four soon.  She absolutely loves all things girly – princesses, dresses, dolls, and changing her own dresses and the ones on her dolls several times a day.  I was thrilled when I came across fabric recently that is ruched at the top and a bit poufy at the bottom, perfect length to be a dress for a little girl, already hemmed at the bottom.  All you have to do is get the chest measurement, cut the fabric to the right length, and sew one seam up the back.  Then you add a couple of ribbons as straps, and you have a little girl’s sundress that takes about 15 minutes to make.

There was a Tinkerbell fabric and I found adorable Tinkerbell ribbon to make the straps – all for about ten dollars. 

Once we got home, I used our son (roughly the same size as his friend) to get the measurement just right on the fabric.  The strip that I ended up cutting off was about five or six inches wide, and had the ruched fabric at the top… it was crying out to be made into a doll dress.

So the last time we went to Goodwill, I looked for a Barbie (our son’s friend loves Barbies) that I could use as a model for a dress.  They didn’t have any, but I found a bag that had a brand new Groovy Girls doll in it, for $2.99.  The bags are sealed, but they’re clear plastic so you can see a lot of what’s in them.  I could tell that the doll was in brand-new-with-tags condition, so I bought the bag and brought her home.

Bonus score:  Tucked in among a bunch of other stuff that we donated back to Goodwill, the bag also contained a little ziplock bag with ten Lego figurines!  Our son has recently gotten into small Legos (after a few years of playing with the larger Legos), and his grandparents got him a set for Christmas and another set for his birthday.  He had a total of 3 figurines before, and now has 13.  They have all sorts of parties.  It’s very awesome.

Anyway, yesterday I sat down to sew up a little dress for the Groovy Girls doll.  She came with one dress, but I wanted to use the little fabric offcut that I had.  Alas, my sewing machine bit the dust as soon as I started to use it – the thread was getting all tangled up and making a mess.  My dad is my sewing machine repairman, but we won’t be seeing him again until after we go to our son’s friend’s birthday party.

So I decided to hand-sew the dress.  Our son sat next to me, watching with great fascination.  Every few minutes he would say something like “wow, mom!  Look how far you’ve sewn already!”, which made me feel like a very quick seamstress.

I didn’t have enough fabric to wrap all the way around the doll (she’s a bit wider than a Barbie, which was my original plan), so I added a strip of the ribbon running down the back to connect the two ends of the fabric.  I also added a strip of ribbon around the bottom of the dress. The whole project took about an hour. 

Here’s our Groovy Girl, ready for the ball:

And here she is from the back:

I haven’t sewn the girl-sized dress yet, and I think that’s going to have to wait until after I have my sewing machine back in action.  Not sure that I trust my hand-sewing skills enough to make something that will need to be laundered on a regular basis.  But for a doll, it worked out just fine.  Our son was thrilled with the gift we’re giving his friend, and I know she’ll love it.  I love that he watched such a good gift come together from a three dollar Goodwill toy bag (which had bonus Lego figurines in it!!) and a little offcut of fabric.  Plus, we’ll still be able to make a really cute dress for his friend once I have my sewing machine working again. 

Both of my boys have birthdays soon.  One in April (turning one) and the other in May (turning four!)  As far as birthday plans go, my husband’s parents will be here visiting for the one-year-old’s birthday, but we have no plans to do anything out of the ordinary.  He’s turning one – as long as he has his family around to snuggle him all day, plenty of nursing, a bit of food here and there, and a clean diaper, he’ll be as happy as can be.

For our older son, his previous birthdays have been very low-key.  Just us and one other family with a trip to the park or just hanging out here at home.  This year he has more friends and is much more aware of the concept of a birthday and the fact that it’s his special day.  So we’re taking it up a notch.  We’re inviting five of his friends and their families to join us at one of our favorite parks for some quality kid-time.  The park has a great play structure (it’s gigantic – you can lose a kid in it if you don’t pay attention!) that our son loves, and lots of wide open space for kicking a soccer ball or playing with a hula hoop. 

Our plan is to meet up with the other families at the park, let the kids play for as long as they want, and eat some snacks.  I’ll make our son’s favorite muffins (far more nutritious than cake, and he adores them), and we’ll also take along cheese sticks and pears for everyone to munch on.  Our little guy loves cheese sticks, but we only have them on very rare occasions.  I asked him this morning if he’d like to take them to the park on his birthday, and his face lit up like a light bulb.  He also loves pears, and they fit in nicely with my idea of simple food that is easy to prepare and take with us, and easy for kids to grab when they’re hungry.

That’s it.  No decorations, no theme, no party favors, no stress at all.  No cake to bake and frost and get just right.  It’s about as simple as a birthday party can get, and yet our son is absolutely thrilled with the idea.  He loves the park, he loves the snacks we’ve picked, and he loves the friends we’re inviting.  He’s happy, we’re happy, and I’m sure the other kids will be happy with the day too.  It will be fun for the parents too – who doesn’t love a day at the park?

Although I feel great about the simple birthday celebration we’re planning, I had a few seconds of doubt the other day when I saw a Pinterest board that a friend was creating with tons of ideas for her daughter’s fourth birthday party, which is coming up this spring as well.  She’s planning a fancy themed party with a homemade cake and lots of decorations and all the trimmings.  For a brief moment, I felt a tad bit guilty.  I’ll be spending all of about and hour getting muffins made and snacks packed to take to the park for our son’s birthday.  I’m not researching cake designs or looking for themed games to play.  I’m not doing much of anything beyond the original idea to spend his birthday at the park.

Then I remembered talking with a couple of my friends (including the one with the Pinterest birthday party board) last year after their kids’ birthday parties.  Both of them mentioned breaking down in tears the day before their child’s party because the cake wasn’t turning out right and the party planning was so stressful.  They both had fantastic parties (and beautiful cakes!) but they came at a high price – lots of tears and stress the day before doesn’t sound like a good way to spend a day.

So I quickly shook off my feelings of doubt and reminded myself that there’s no rule that says kids have to have fancy birthday parties with themes and oh-my-goodness-that’s-amazing cakes.  It does start to seem that way after a while, since pretty much every birthday party we’ve been to has looked like it involved a lot of work.  But it doesn’t have to be that way unless you want it to.  If you’re all about parties and decorations and you love baking beautiful cakes and the planning won’t reduce you to tears, go for it.  But if you’re like me, and you’d rather keep things a bit more low-stress, I’ll be the other mom you know who doesn’t spend a whole bunch of time planning elaborate birthday parties.  At least you’ll know you’re not alone!

This morning I took both of our boys on a spontaneous hike through an abandoned field near our house, looking for cool sticks and rocks.  We spent about an hour and a half just playing in the dirt, climbing over rocks, and finding various "treasures" of unknown origin.  As far as I’m concerned (and I think our son would agree), that was a better use of my time than planning an elaborate party.

If you love the birthday planning process, please don’t take this as a criticism!  This post is for the parents who would prefer to buck the trend of fancy birthday parties but feel like they have to go along with the crowd and spend lots of time and/or money in order to give their kid just the right birthday celebration.  I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.  And I know I’m not the only one who has noticed that there seems to be a bit of unspoken competition among parents when it comes to outdoing each other with their kids’ parties.  Social media like Facebook – and especially Pinterest – seems to be feeding the trend of increasingly elaborate birthday parties for kids as young as one.  For my own family, I want to make sure we never get on that train.  That seems easier than trying to get off later on. 

If you’re a fan of simple birthday celebrations that don’t reduce anyone to tears or require their own category in the budget, please share your ideas!

My little blog got a facelift today, thanks to my awesome husband.  It was time for a change, and I love the clean new look.  Both the boys are in bed and my husband is down in his basement office working late tonight, so I’ve had some time to just browse around online.  Well, and mop the kitchen and dining room floors.  For the first time since January.  Ahem.

So anyway, I found all sorts of great articles to share with you – I hope you enjoy my internet wanderings as much as I did!

I’m a week late to the party on this one, but Mr. Money Mustache has issued the Maximum Mustache March challenge.  If you’re looking for motivation and a group of other people all focused on making positive financial changes this month, head over and check it out.

I love this great homemade toy from Penny at Penniless Parenting!  It reminds me of similar toys that we made when I was a kid, although we just used yarn and string – I love the idea of using elastic hair ties to wrap around the nails.  Our son loves writing and spelling and he’s starting to really get interested in reading.  I think he would love this, and I’m thinking it will be a perfect project to do with him tomorrow.

This post at Simple Bites has a ton of recipes for making your own food from scratch.  Not just regular meal recipes, but recipes that tell you how to make staples like condiments that most people – even people who tend to cook all their meals from scratch – buy in a jar.

Another excellent homemade toy idea, this one comes from Budgeting With The Bushman’s.  Two tin cans and some string are all you need to make a pair of tin can stilts.  I can see our little guy having so much fun with this.  We don’t really buy any food in cans though, so I might need to raid the neighbors’ recycling bins first.  My dad made lots of stilts for us when we were little, and he would amuse us endlessly by making giant stilts for himself and walking all around the yard on them.  He just used long pieces of wood with little pieces of wood attached to the inside as a place to put your feet.

I love this DIY post about making blackout shades for your bedroom.  Monica and her husband spent just a few dollars to make their own blackout shades to go behind their bedroom curtains.  Looks like a relatively simple DIY project, and definitely less expensive than buying them already made.

Spring is coming… don’t throw your plastic containers in the recycling bin – plant something in them instead!  Here’s a great post about making your own mini greenhouse for seedlings out of clear plastic containers.  I’ve got a collection of small plastic containers right now that I’ll be using to start seedlings in the next week or so.  My parents start seedlings in clear plastic containers every year and they always end up with the most amazing garden.

Brave New Life is about a family’s journey towards early retirement.  It’s written by Mr. Brave New Life, but this post is written by his wife, giving her perspective on the whole adventure.  Although she was always the “spender” in the relationship and he was the “saver”, her post details how much she appreciates their downsized life and how much she’s looking forward to her husband’s early retirement.

Have a wonderful Friday and a great weekend!

I got inspired this weekend by Regina of Mommy’s Making A Mess (lots of good ideas over there!).  So our son and I whipped up some colored water and made our own ice blocks.  I don’t have any food coloring, so we thought about what we could use instead.  I had a beet in the fridge, so I peeled it (the beet went into our green smoothie) and we stuck the peels in a jug of water and swished them around for a while while the water turned a lovely shade of pink.

Then we hunted through the cupboard and decided to try spirulina and turmeric.  The water with spirulina turned very dark green (almost black).  But once the ice froze, we noticed that some of the spirulina had settled to the bottom and the ice chunks actually looked more blue than green.

The turmeric turned the water a nice shade of yellow, and while some of it did settle out as the blocks froze, the ice was still quite yellow in the morning. So are the insides of my muffin trays.  I think they might have a permanent gold look to them now. 

Here are the muffin trays after our son filled them up with colored water (plus a few with plain water for comparison).

We set them outside at about 7:30pm.  It was 36 degrees, so we told him it would be a little bit before the temperature was cold enough to start freezing water, but that by the time he woke up in the morning, they would be nice and solid.  His bedtime is 9, and in the hour and a half between setting them out and going to bed, he probably looked out the back door about six times, to check on his ice.  It was taking way too long to freeze as far as he was concerned.  Good thing it did most of its magic overnight while he was sleeping.  Otherwise, the anticipation might have been too much for him.

When he woke up in the morning, he ran to the back door and called for us to come and look.  He was so excited about his ice blocks.

He got them all into this pan and then said “I could just look at these all day, they’re so awesome!” 

Anyway, this is an easy, free (or nearly free, depending on what you use as food coloring) activity that you can do with your kids.  If you have food coloring in your pantry, you’ll probably get more vibrant colors than we did.  But if you don’t, you can have fun thinking of ideas for coloring your water.  If you live somewhere where the temperatures aren’t going below freezing at night, you could just stick these in the freezer over night (and I’m jealous too, by the way.  Definitely ready for spring around here).

Have fun!

Christmas is almost here, and I think I’m finally finished making felt food.   Here is the current food collection:

I’ve already posted pictures and details about some of this stuff, but I’ve made quite a bit more since the last time I posted.

We now have a pizza that comes apart for lots of pizza-making fun.  The crust has a piece of cardboard sewn into it to make it rigid, and then the sauce, cheese, and toppings are all separate pieces so they can be taken apart and put back together any way he likes.  The pizza pan came from Goodwill.

There’s also a banana that comes out of its peel.  I love this!

For my first attempt at the banana, I used four elongated ovals, but it ended up looking more like a football than a banana (so I stitched some laces onto it and gave it to my boys).  For my second attempt (pictured – I’m very happy with how it turned out), I used just three pieces of white felt, and made them much longer and thinner than my original try.  It worked much better.  The peel is three pieces of yellow felt and three pieces of white felt (all the same size as the three pieces of white felt that make up the banana).  This probably took nearly two hours to make, including both attempts.  It’s one of the more complicated pieces I’ve made, but it turned out very cute.

In addition to the banana and the strawberries that I posted a while ago, I’ve made an assortment of other fruits and veggies.  A watermelon slice, celery sticks (two of them are stuffed with peanut butter), a cucumber slice, carrots and carrot slices, banana slices, several varieties of berries, spinach leaves, tomato slices, apple slices, a lemon slice, a broccoli floret, and some asparagus.  Some of these I came up with on my own, and a couple were inspired by other sites.  (asparagus, carrots).  I just found a tutorial for a broccoli floret that looks much easier than what I did, so I think I might have to add a few of those…

I was browsing around on etsy looking for inspiration, and I found these adorable ice cream cones with removable ice cream and multiple flavors.  I had to make some.  So now we have an ice cream cone with four flavors of ice cream:  blueberry, spinach-mint (try it – it’s yummy!), vanilla, and raspberry. 

I’ve made three eggs.  There are still a lot of spaces in that egg carton, but not a lot of days before Christmas.  So he’s probably going to get an egg carton with lots of empty spaces and three eggs in it.

I found this adorable little Melissa & Doug muffin pan and oven mitt at Goodwill last week ($1.49 for the set) and couldn’t resist.  I made a banana muffin and a blueberry muffin to go with the cupcake that I made a while ago.  I may or may not get another muffin made to go in the fourth hole.  Our son has been using my muffin pans and filling the holes with blocks for about the last year (and then he sticks them in his “oven” which is the space under the coffee table).  So I’m thinking he’ll figure something out for that fourth hole if I don’t get another muffin made.

A slice of bread and Swiss cheese were among the first things I made, but I’ve now finished the sandwich – it has a leaf (lettuce?  Too dark?  Let’s say it’s kale.  That would be perfectly normal in our house), a tomato slice, and cheese.

And to round everything out, we have more felt dessert than we’d have in a whole year if it were real.  But it’s felt, so we can have as much as we want In addition to the slices of pie I made when I first started this project, I’ve also made lots of cookies, a brownie, and a slice of mint chocolate cake.

Cookies are easy and fun to make, so I made a bunch of them as Christmas tree ornaments for our nieces and several of my friends’ kids.

I’m pretty excited for our son to see all of this on Sunday morning.  And I’m proud of the fact that everything we’re giving him is secondhand or homemade.  The kitchen was a Craigslist find, and all of the pots, pans, dishes and utensils came from thrift stores.  And of course, I’ve made all of the food (and rescued some food containers from the recycle bin, like my husband’s half-n-half carton). 

In addition to the kitchen, we’ve got two other presents for our son, both from Goodwill.  I scored a large box of Lincoln Logs a few weeks ago, for three bucks.  They were in a generic brown cardboard box, but I happened to look inside and was thrilled to find them.  I had hours of fun playing with Lincoln Logs with my brother, and I think they’ll be perfect for our boys.  I also found a large box of Flexiwheels building blocks for $2.50.  They’re like Lego, but they can hook together lengthwise on hinges or be clicked together like Lego.    

This is the first Christmas that we’ve given our son presents, as it’s the first year that he’s really old enough to understand what’s going on.  We’re not giving our 8 month-old anything, although there are presents for him from Grandma and Grandpa.  He will be more than thrilled with the boxes and wrapping paper from his brother’s presents, and will likely spend Christmas morning snuggled up with us, clapping his hands and watching his brother.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend.  Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Solstice!  Remember to enjoy the simple things.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been tinkering with felt food for at least a few minutes every day.  I’ve had a few projects (like a banana with a removable peel – picture coming soon) that took over an hour to make, but most of the items have come together much faster than that.  Our son’s play kitchen is going to be fully stocked by Christmas morning, and I’m having so much fun making the food for him.  I even made a felt pizza for one of his friends, and a bunch of felt cookie tree ornaments for friends and family.  My felt pizza inspiration came from this site, although I made all of the toppings double layer to make them a bit more durable and easier to handle.  For green pepper rings, I tried several methods and ended up liking this one the best.  They come together in about five minutes and look really cute.  Our son was watching me make the pizza for his friend (he has no idea that I’m making another one for him) and he liked to line up the pepper rings as if they’re a pepper and then “slice” them apart using a butter knife.  The 3-D structure of this pepper ring style makes it more realistic for that sort of play.

So now for some pictures of what I’ve been up to. 

An ice cream cone, inspired by this site:

A plate of pancakes that I thought of after finding a huge chunk of tan felt at a thrift store for a dollar.  I only had a few minutes to sew that day, and wanted something that would come together fast.  I stuffed them with some leftover felt scraps to give them a bit of dimension, although I’ve found that understuffing is much better than overstuffing with felt food.

The plate was 50 cents at a thrift store.  The strawberries were inspired by this tutorial and are actually pretty quick and easy to make.  They’re just a half circle of red felt sewn into a cone shape, stuffed, and gathered at the top using a running stitch.  Then you add little yellow stitches for seeds and sew a leaf-shaped piece of green felt on top. 

A few days ago I found this site and loved all the pictures of food she’s made.  The tea bags were so cute I had to whip some up – they literally take about three minutes, although I spent about another three minutes embroidering the word “Tea” on the first one I made:

I also really liked her “infinity bread.”  I had been thinking of making tortillas, but I loved the idea of wraps that would hold their shape when you roll or fold them.  She said she was keeping her trick a secret, but just seeing the finished product got me thinking about how I could make a tortilla that would hold it’s shape when you bend it.  I looked in my craft supplies and found a wad of craft wire that had come in a box of thrift store embroidery floss.  It was pretty thin, so I twisted two lengths of it together to make a thicker strand.  I cut two circles out of felt using a medium size plate as a template.  Then I sewed them together with a seam that was about an inch in from the edge.  Next, I bent the ends of the craft wire (don’t want it poking through the fabric) and then tucked it in next to the seam I had made, so that it was hidden inside the one-inch flap at the edge of the tortilla.  Then, holding the craft wire in place as I sewed, I made another seam around the edge of the tortilla, just on the outside of the craft wire.  When I was finished, the craft wire was encased in the felt, with a seam on each side.  All that was left to do was trim off the excess felt to even up the edges, and viola!  A tortilla that holds its shape!

You can roll it up with a bunch of veggies inside (still have to make those…) and it will stay rolled.  Very cool.

I think the picture makes it pretty easy to understand how I did it.  You can see the two seams – the craft wire is in between them.  This project took about 15 minutes.  You probably have some flexible wire lying around somewhere (that junk bucket in the garage, maybe?).  You want it to be pretty flexible – I think a coat hanger would be too stiff, for example – so that little hands can bend and roll it. 

I have lots more food and ideas that I’ll share with you over the next few days.  And as always, I’d love to hear about your creative Christmas gift ideas – things you’re making or doing or re-purposing for other people, instead of wading through crowds at the mall. 

I think I might be on my way to needing a 12 step program for felt food addiction.  I can’t stop making food!  It’s so much fun, and the internet is overflowing with awesome ideas.  Here’s the stuff I’ve made over the last few days.

Bread.

With a piece of Swiss cheese.

Apple pie (inspired by this post but made without a pattern)

Cherry cheesecake.

Cherry pie (my favorite!)

Mushrooms (more veggies coming soon for a salad bowl… I didn’t have any veggie-colored felt until today).  My mushroom inspiration came from here.

And a cupcake.

I picked up a bunch of felt this evening so I have lots of color options now.  If you look at the stuff I’ve made so far, it’s mostly pink, brown, tan, and white.  That’s pretty much what I had in my felt stash.  But now I have lots of greens, reds, oranges and plenty of other shades for whatever foods come to mind. 

Hope you’ve all had a great weekend.  We avoided the shopping shenanigans that goes on after Thanksgiving and spent the weekend hanging out with family, working on our basement, and – of course! – making felt food.  I haven’t been very crafty for the past few years, so I think I’m making up for lost time.  But I promise to write about something other than felt food soon!

Over the last few months, several of our son’s friends have enrolled in Montessori-style preschool and daycare centers.  The parents have had nothing but good things to say about the switch, and my curiosity was piqued.  Our boys are home with us all day, and we have no plans to change that.  But I was wondering if there was more that we should be providing our three year old in terms of the environment where he spends most of his time.

The Wikipedia page about Montessori Education pretty much sums up most of what I’ve read about the concept, and matches closely with what my friends have described about their kids’ preschools.

The main difference between being at home with us all day and being in a daycare or preschool setting is that our sons aren’t interacting with other kids all day.  So we make an effort to get them out and about in social settings quite frequently.  This includes story time at the library, visits to friends’ houses, having friends over here, and impromptu trips to the park during times when we know there are likely to be other kids there.

But in terms of the environment we provide for our boys at home, we’ve always felt that it was pretty good, and now that I’m reading more about the Montessori style of learning, I feel even better about it.

We’ve spent very little money on the stuff we have, and our days are very laid-back and relaxed thanks to our refusal to over-schedule our family’s time.  Here’s what works for us as far as the environment we provide for our three-year-old.

First, and probably most importantly, we don’t own a TV.  Definitely one of the better decisions we’ve made as parents.

Our son’s toys are mostly things that require constant interaction and creative input from him.  Here’s what he plays with the most:

• A set of wooden railroad tracks and lots of trains to go on it, along with lots of cars and trucks that he includes in his train/vehicle play.  We got the train set on Craigslist and the cars/trucks came from Goodwill.
• The box of 2×4 offcuts, which he’s been playing with every day for weeks now.  He makes something new with them every day, and incorporates a lot of his other toys into whatever he builds.
• A large farm that includes a dollhouse-style barn, lots of fence, and numerous farm animals.  We got it at a garage sale for $10, and have added a few more animals from Goodwill.
• A large box of regular wooden blocks.  Some used to belong to my husband when he was little (my MIL saves everything…) and some came from Goodwill.  They are all shapes and colors and sizes, and include pieces from several different sets of blocks.
• A wooden castle that my parents made with our son’s help.  He likes to build train tracks that connect the castle to the farm and then invent elaborate stories about who is going where and what they are doing.
• Lots of little plastic and wooden people/dinosaurs/animals, etc.  These have come from a variety of places (mostly Goodwill and gifts) and he loves to involve them in whatever building he’s currently working on.  At the moment, he’s building train tracks and recreating the children’s book “Dinotrain” using his little plastic dinosaurs as props.
• All sorts of stuff from the kitchen.  Pots, pans, cookie sheets, cooling racks, spatulas, spoons, measuring cups…
• The sink.  He likes to push a chair up to the sink and have all sorts of fun.  A large cooking pot in the sink makes a great swimming pool for his plastic ducks and fish, and he also likes to use measuring cups to pour water into various other containers that he finds.
• His sandbox.  When the weather is nice, he’s out there playing in it every day.  My husband built it out of 2×12 lumber and we filled it with sand from the local landscape center.  If space is tight, a little plastic swimming pool filled with sand works well.  Don’t worry about sand getting in their shoes or on the floor.  That’s why we have brooms and vacuums.  Kids grow up fast, and before you know it, they won’t be interested in a sandbox anymore.  Let them love it while they’re little.

That’s the list that comes to mind off the top of my head.  He plays all day long, using his imagination, building stuff and creating stories to go with what he makes.  He loves to show us the stuff he’s made, and often asks us to come and play with him.  But he’s never bored and he’s almost never confined by structure we’re imposing.  We provide toys that require a lot of creative input from him, and he does the rest.

We do require that all of the toys be cleaned up at the end of the day.  For a long time, that was a challenge, as he wanted no part of it and had to be coaxed and prodded to clean up his messes.  But recently he’s started cleaning up without being prompted and last night he said to me “I don’t need you anymore when I make a mess, because I’m able to clean it up myself.”  Music to a mama’s ears!  We usually all pitch in and clean it up together each evening (it only takes a few minutes because everything just goes into bins – blocks in one, trains in another, farm stuff in another…) but it’s great to see him doing his share.  Cleaning up and meal times are the only real “structured” times that we have during the day when he has to be doing a specific activity that we’ve laid out for him.  The rest of the time, he’s playing and creating his own structure.  We read lots of books, but there’s no specific time or schedule for this – we just fit it in around everything else.  We talk constantly about the stuff he’s doing and the things he’s creating with his toys, and we do our best to answer all of his questions throughout the day.  We don’t have structured “educational” activities, but our son knows his alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes etc. and is starting to be really interested in reading and understanding how letters come together to make words.  He comes to me throughout the day and says things like “house starts with H!”  We’re confident that his academic skills are fine, despite not being in a structured preschool environment.

I did some searching around to see what other parents have done if they wanted to set up a Montessori style preschool environment in their homes.  Some have pictures of beautifully-arranged preschool toys that are all made of wood and look just like the toys you find in a Montessori preschool.  And some take the concept very seriously, following the “rules” of the Montessori environment quite closely.

Our living room doesn’t look like what you might picture when you think of a traditional Montessori preschool.  But on closer inspection (especially if you watch our son play for a few hours), it’s obvious that the specific toys aren’t really the issue.  As long as you have toys that invite discovery and creative play, and little or no TV time, you’re probably on the right track.  You don’t have to spend a fortune on fancy toys and learning tools for your kids.  Limit their screen time and provide them with toys (which can be free or nearly free thanks to thrift stores and Craigslist and the great outdoors) that lend themselves to creative, imaginative play and problem solving.  Let them get wet and dirty.  Don’t worry about drilling them on the ABCs and 123s.  Instead, let them help you bake a batch of muffins and count aloud as they add scoops of oats and raisins.  Keep life simple, let your kids be involved in the things you do on a day-to-day basis, and encourage their creativity and imagination.  Good things will happen – without a lot of money or stress.

I’ve written this post from the perspective of a stay-at-home parent, but I think that the basics can apply to any family that’s looking for inexpensive, simple ways to provide a nurturing environment for their children during whatever time the kids are at home.  I hope it helps!

Over the last several years – ever since my husband and I decided to have children – I’ve read lots of books and articles about the idea of giving up the supermom ideal and getting over the fact that we can’t “do it all” if we want to do any of it well.   The Minimalist Mom recently wrote about rejecting the supermom ideal and I think her post will resonate with a lot of people.  Basically, it’s all about prioritizing, and doing the things that are truly important to each of us, rather than trying to do it all.  It’s an excellent reminder to focus on what matters and well worth reading.

I’m fully on board with that idea, but I see it as the way to truly be a “supermom” rather than feeling like I’m giving up on the idea of being “supermom”.  The way I look at it, being “supermom” has nothing to do with juggling 75 different hats.  To me, it means focusing my energies on the things that will make my life and my family’s life as great as possible.  That has nothing to with carting my boys off to lots of different activities, scheduled play dates, or advanced early learning preschools.  It has nothing to do with having a spotless house every second of the day (although I do like to keep it reasonably clean).  It has nothing to do with keeping myself so busy that I never have time to read to my boys or build snowmen with them.  It has nothing to do with trips to Disneyland or themed birthday parties or working extra hours to be able to afford the newest toys and the best professional photographer to take pictures of my little guys.  The list goes on and on here, and will be different for each of us.  I may not give a hoot about themed birthday parties, but another mom might love them.  Go for it.  Just make sure you’re focusing your time and energy on stuff that actually makes you and your family happy, rather than what you think is supposed to make you happy, or what you see other people doing.  Trust me, it might not be making them happy either.

Instead of saying that we’re rejecting the ideal of being a supermom (ostensibly, the mom who “does it all” – a career, a family, a perfect house, PTA meetings, lessons for every activity under the sun, etc.), why don’t we just focus on the fact that there’s really nothing “super” at all about that sort of life, for the vast majority of people.  True, there may be some people – I imagine they are few and far between – who truly thrive on constant stress and are actually able to devote themselves 100% to numerous different aspects of a fully-packed schedule.  But I think that most of us – if we’re honest about what really matters and what really contributes to our enjoyment of life – feel better when we don’t try to do too much.  When we have a little downtime in our days.  When we don’t fall into bed each night completely exhausted and dreading the alarm clock, but also already running through the next day’s to-do list.

We all have to earn a living.  We can adapt our lifestyles to fit a lower income if we prefer to work less, although that’s not appealing to everyone. Some families choose to have one parent work full time and the other focus on the house and children full time.  Some have both work full time and share the household duties.  Some mix it up with part time work for both parents.  Some are single parents who have to do it all.  In our house, my husband works full time at our business; I work very part-time at our business and spend most of my time taking care of the children and the household chores.  It works for us.  If we choose to have children, we have to figure out the best way to go about raising them – it won’t be the same for everybody, nor should it.  Life is not all fun and games, and it would probably get old pretty fast if it were.  But once we pare down to the basics and get those covered, we have options in terms of where we focus our time and energy.  Saying no to some of the activities and expenses (that are sometimes initially seen as necessary) might be just the thing we need.  Less is more when it comes to filling up our days.  Instead of a several hours at the mall shopping for the perfect Christmas gifts for everybody you know, spend a those hours reading books with your children or playing tag with them at a local park.  Catch up via phone or skype or email with the people for whom you would have been buying gifts.  Instead of feeling exhausted at the end of the day, you’ll feel great.  And you won’t have to work as much to earn money to pay for all the gifts.

So instead of saying that we’re giving up on being supermom (which makes it sound a bit like we’re throwing in the towel), let’s say instead that we’re focusing on what really matters.  We’re giving up the extraneous stuff that was just draining our energy, wasting time, and making us feel badly about ourselves because of the constant comparisons with other moms.  And that leaves us free to truly be supermoms.  Or superdads.  Or superfriends.  Or super-whatever-is-most-important-to-us.

For the past several weeks, my husband has been spending his weekends building stud walls in our basement.  He’s making great progress and should be finished in plenty of time for our framing inspection (it has to be completed by the end of the year).

Building stud walls means lots of 2×4 offcuts.  They were starting to stack up in the basement, and we had planned to give them to my parents to use as firewood.  Then one day our son was down there with us and started stacking them up to make a house.  He was having so much fun with them that we filled an old Rubbermaid storage container with offcuts and brought it upstairs.

For two weeks now, that bin has been sitting in our dining room.  And every day our son empties it out and builds all sorts of awesome stuff with the chunks of wood.  He makes houses, cities, castles, porches, roads… it’s pretty much endless fun.

These blocks are easy for him to pick up by himself at the end of the day and put back into the container.  They don’t end up under the couch or in our shoes like their miniature cousins.  And he absolutely loves playing with them.

If you have small children and a construction project going on, a box full of offcuts is a great free toy.  If you don’t have your own walls to build, check the free section on Craigslist.  There are always people giving away scrap lumber, and you could just chop it up into child sized pieces.