The Lily Pad

Today my lovely assistant Madelyn is going to show us all how to make a gingerbread house using a milk carton, icing, graham crackers and candy. 1. Spread the icing on the milk carton to stick the graham crackers to. 2. Taste the icing. This is the renowned "Spread a little, lick a little" approach. 3. (not pictured) Carefully stick all of the graham crackers to the milk carton. 4. Add candy and sprinkles. 5. Use icing to add peppermints. Or just lick it... 6. Ta Da! Your house is complete, sit back and admire your handy work...and be glad nobody is going to live in crooked little house. Notice in the background that other kids had a significant amount of help from their moms. I am proud to say that other than sticking the graham crackers together and adding a small twizzler embelishment that was eluding Madelyn, she did all of the smearing, decorating, and eating herself. After you have made your house and eaten too much candy and icing, you may need to call a doctor about

Since about her second day of life I have called Madelyn my little puddin. It varies based on my mood, sometimes it's puddin head, puddin pop, puddin poop, you get the idea. The other day she spent some time in the drop in day care and when I went to pick her up, her hair was plastered to the top of her head like a bad toupee. When the workers saw my confused face, the explained that during snack they looked over and she had a huge glob of pudding on top of her head and was still eating as if nothing was wrong. They tried to clean it out but can only do so much short of sticking her head under the sink. So I wet a papertowel and attempted to get her head a little less goopy because we were meeting friends for a Christmas expo and were going to be out in public. My attempts were not very good and the following hairstyle was the end result. Add in the snowflake face painting and the red nose she insisted on having (as in wouldn't leave the chair until her nose was red like

I just watched the results show for SYTYCD and I think I need to boycott the show...but actually I should boycott America because they're the ones that voted. Warning...spoiler. I love Legacy. I have a huge crush on him and his dance style. I think he is one of the best dancers I have ever seen. I like the rawness of his talent, I get tired of seeing the over perfected moves and leg kicks, and feminine movements from the men. Don't get me wrong, Jakob is awesome and Russell is great and has that same raw feel, but there is just something about Legacy. I hate to think that Ryan made it through because of Ashleigh, because I am really tired of his stiff chest, wiggly hips business. He seems very fake to me and I just don't like his style. I think it's just the stiffness that comes with ballroom dancers and that is fine for his style I guess...I just don't like it and I don't enjoy watching him. I loved watching Legacy. I will miss watching him next week.

Proof of fall...on December 1. Leaves on the ground...see, just like fall. Nevermind the fact that it is was most definitely warm enough for us to be out in the leaves barefoot without even and hint of a chill. Cute little pigtailed dumplin playing in the leaves. We had a whole lotta fun crunching them. I am so screwed up with my dates and seasons and my internal calendar. Back in November somebody said something about not meeting until December and I said "Wow, we're gonna skip a month of meetings?" Yeah. It feels like October to me. I know we did Halloween and Thanksgiving, but the weather is screwing me up! How am I supposed to think Christmas when leaves are just NOW changing color and falling off the trees? That is September/October weather. Thankfully we'll have a nice shock of cold, winter weather in a few weeks.

Since I have been feeling and being crafty lately I'm going to start showing off some of our fun. I'm not really one who is concerned with age appropriateness for parent supervised crafts, so alot of things come out really fun. I also do crafts on my own without "assistance" and I'll show some of those off too. This is our fall themed craft, we had friends Paige and Emmalyn over to play with the salt dough and make a nice floury mess in the kitchen (seriously, Madelyn was the messiest, Emmalyn wasn't interested, and Paige did awesome!). We made salt dough leaf prints which I found on That Artist Woman. I didn't get any pictures of us rolling, patting, and "stamping" because salty doughy hands and cameras don't mix. After painting, while drying. What happens when toddlers meet paint and watch Mommy "paint on her face" each morning. After the coat of Mod Podge for sealing and shinyness. Madelyn painted two leaves and her handprint