Preparing for my Hospital stay

I'm one of those people who like to know what's coming.

Mostly because I like to be able to think something through a little bit so I can have a rough plan in my head of how I would handle the situation.
I don't need to always be in-control or have everything figured out, but it's nice to have an idea of what I would like to happen...if that makes sense.

Even though I still have a few weeks until my little guy makes his arrival I've already been keeping a list of the things I want to make sure I grab when we end up heading to the hospital.

I am not going to schedule an induction, I'm planning on just letting my body do it's thing and let me know when our little guy is ready to make his appearance.
The hard thing though, is I obviously have no idea what day, or even time of the day I need to be ready to go.

With my first child, I wasn't really expecting him to come 3 weeks early.
But he did.

FREE Lego Valentine printable

I have to start out by saying I am kind of proud of myself for getting this posted BEFORE the holiday!
Yay!
For the last two years my son has taken a Star Wars themed Valentine to school.
It says 'Yoda Best' and it has Yoda holding a light saber, which is where you put a glow stick, (you can check that FREE printable out here).
Back then when we discussed him taking Valentines to school it basically came down to it being 'boy approved'.
At his school they don't write the name of each person receiving the Valentine, only who it's from, so he wanted something that would apply to everyone.
When we were discussing the Valentines he would take this year it was the same story.
He didn't want to do Star Wars again though, he wanted to try a new theme.
A grocery store near us has a bulk candy section and they have these candy Lego bricks.
My son loves them. so he decided he wanted to give those out with a little Lego saying.
This is what we came up with.
Pretty 'boy approved' if you ask me ;)

He was really excited with how it turned out, and that was good enough for me!

To put these Valentines together we first printed out the printable.

I created these so that you can just print them on a regular 8x11 paper.

There are 15 Valentines on each page, so we printed 2 pages.

No-sew Quiet Book: Faces

I was organizing pictures on my computer the other day and came across these that I never posted from last year! Yes, last January I started making my toddler a few quiet book pages to keep in our church bag to help entertain him at church. I posted the other quiet book pages here on the blog, but somehow this one fell through the cracks.

Even though it's already been a year my toddler still plays with these pages during church. I don't know if it's because he only gets to see them once a week or what, but it's nice to see them still being used!

 This 'Faces' page was really easy to put together, I wasn't worried about perfect shapes and design I just wanted something quick and easy that my little guy could play with, and this is what I came up with.

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Every so often I buy some bananas, with every intention of eating them of course, but it doesn't end up happening.

They always sit on my counter and never get touched.

In hopes of never wasting any bananas again, I turned to the internet to find an amazing recipe for banana bread.

I found this recipe from Rachel Ray and decided to give it a try. I did change a few things, and it turned out delicious!

I really like that it only makes 1 loaf of bread since I'm really the only one that eats it, and I end up scarfing it down within a day or two....anyways, on to the recipe!

Cheesy Vegetable Chowder

First post of the new year and it's a yummy, hearty soup for the cold months we still have ahead!

I, along with everyone else I'm sure, have quite a few recipes that are seasonal.

I only want to make them, or even feel like making them, at certain times of the year.

This chowder is a prime example of that.  I actually crave making this soup on cold winter nights.

As soon as the cold weather starts up this recipe is added to our rotations and it usually makes an appearance once every other week.

I love that it's full of veggies, creamy, flavorful, and filling.

I found this recipe last year on Pinterest and changed it up just a little bit to make it my own.

It's one of the ways I can get my kids to willingly eat broccoli ;)

Dice Alias Game Review

*I received the following product for free in exchange for an honest review here on my blog.

All opinions are 100% my own and honest.

With Christmas break these past two weeks I was so excited to have this new game to try out with my son.
This is Dice Alias by Tactic Games
This dice game is actually just one of the many variations of the Alias games, they also have Original Alias, Family Alias, and a junior version.

 If you've seen some of my other reviews of games here on the blog, you know that I love games that I can play with my son that are fun but also educational.
This game definitely fits that category!
Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Halo Birthday Cake

Everyone is posting about Christmas crafts, projects, decor, and recipes and I'm over here trying to catch up from almost a month ago...

Oh time, you never fail to amaze me.

Anyways, my oldest turned 7 last month and for his birthday this year he requested a Halo theme.

I have come to rely on this method of cake decorating now that I know how awesome the end results will be.

 What we have here is just tracing frosting on a coloring page.

I have posted this type of tutorial on my blog before for our Avengers Cake, Star Wars cupcakes, and Lego Star Wars cake.

 When my son decides on his theme we then turn to Google and find a coloring page we can use.

Click here to see and print out the coloring page we used for this cake.