She calls it Mela

One of the things I love most about being blessed to be at home with my daughter is all of the fun things we get to do together. We spend quite a bit of time doing crafts. We both enjoy them and they are always a fun activity. Kids should be able to make messes and get dirty without parents freaking out. Also, if it is a really messy craft we are making we will always throw on her "play" clothes. With her growth sports this is never an issue. If you don't have any clothes that you want your kids to "ruin" or get stained, hit the local Goodwill or thrift store and grab some. My daughter has an array of her own craft supplies I let her use. Everything from glue and scissors to markers, glitter and sand. It is always a great time doing crafts specially when they are teaching her something like words, etc......but I think the best crafts we make our the fun silly for no reason ones. I feel she learns from those crafts too, that I trust her judgment of what she wants to make and I think her ideas are important. I like letting her have a say. And she likes the way she feels when she completes it.

So, at times I do have a mama block where I can't think of some,thug to make or am "bored" with making things along the same line. I know with Pinterest and the Internet there are a million and one ideas at my fingertips , but I'm old school a lot. (And yes I do like 80's music too-HA!)  so what better thing to do than hit the local library. Now, I love to read and am grateful that my daughter loves books. She has quite the collection going. We read  anywhere from 3-4 books a night at bedtime and also sometimes in the day. She loves going to the library where I let her help pick the books, along with playing with their toys. So each week we leave with about 20-25 books just for her. If there is one she truly loves then it goes on my book list of one to buy for her as a gift. Anyway, last time we went I decided to look up if there were any children's craft books and all I can say is WOW! I was so excited to see an entire section! Score!!!

So we got a few fun craft idea books, but nothing that was jumping out at me. But one night in one of our three book selections for bedtime, I read her a story about a little girl and her apple doll. It was a cute story and Whammo! That was what I was looking for! Something new and fun to do together. The next day we gathered all of our supplies and we're ready to rock out making an apple doll of our own.  There are all different directions online on how to make one but if you want to read the story with your little one and then make one, the story is called The Apple Doll, by Elisa Kleven.
It is not a one day project it is more like a 3 day project. But the end results are so worth it.

My daughter named her Mela which happens to be Apple in Italian. 😍
So without further a due .......meet Mela

Until next time folks. Have a wonderful weekend!

Simple play

It's been a few busy days. Hope everyone is well. A recap of the last few days.....
I went to see a very close friend of mines son play a football scrimmage game. Now, I have never been a huge die hard sports fan. My personal opinion is some people when it comes to professional sports are crazy.. I have seen people so much as to get "their" team names tattooed on them.....I can not understand this concept. Unless, I personally owned a very sizable stock or part of the team you would not see me do that. I also think that the amount of money that they are paid is ridiculous, but again just my thoughts.  I do enjoy sports but am just not a die hard of any of them. So, we ventured on our little road trip, me and my daughter to go see my fav boy play. They live about an hour from us, so the night before I let my daughter pack her book bag with some things. Has anyone else ever let their kids pack a bag?
I am completely amazed at how their little brains work sometimes and the things they reason and make sense of. After putting her to bed I checked out her book bag to throw in a box of crayons.....this list is the contents that were packed...

1 Tablet
1 Doc Mcstuffins stuffed doll
1 Lego chair (no Lego people though )
1 Giant size car coloring book (no crayons)
1 rubber Doc Mcstuffins ball
1 strand of "let it snow" Christmas ribbon
Kleenex (boogie conscious)
Sunblock (she is very sun conscious)
1 "Frozen" mini flashlight (it was an early afternoon game)
2 small Highlights baby books and last but not least,
1 magic wand.

In the morning I told her that I put in a small box of crayons and she thanked me. I asked if we really needed all of these things and quite frankly was told "Yes, these are all important!" Ok then, I have learned what battles to pick and this was not one to bother with. Next, she came out of the bathroom with her Paw Patrol loofah and explained how "Marshall" really needed to come. This one was a no go for Mama, and I explained how he is a bath toy- not a lets bring him to a dirty field toy and then bath with him. She wasn't happy, but I think she understood. 
We packed up all of our yummy snacks and were on the way. One last thing grab the camera bag before walking out the door and we are off! The whole ride down she listened to her music and sang, didn't use anything from her bag of goodies and necessities. 
Once we got there we found my girlfriend and headed to the bleachers to watch the game. I was very excited to get to see her son play. I was also happy to get some photos and hopefully with the 200 pics I snapped there would be some really good ones. My daughter did awesome hanging around for 2.5hrs. She ate every single thing we brought as if she had never been fed before, but she still did amazing. She played on her tablet a few minutes and that was it. She didn't even touch any of the other things she brought. She played on the bleachers - with pretend "floors" of a house and was more than content to go up and down the bleachers as the upstairs and downstairs, kitchen etc...

It was a great day. We all had a nice time and it's nice to see with all the gadgets and toys that, kids still use their imaginations and play in the simplest ways, which sometimes is the most fun.

Dinner this night was not as gourmet as most nights because of time etc., but I still managed to whip up a little yummy breakfast for dinner. Mine was the vegetarian option. Hubbys was the ham, and daughter was no potato.

I do try to always use amazing fresh ingredients and healthier options when I cook. So, I only used one potato to divide between me and hubby. I also rarely ever use white potato but it worked well for this. The pics don't do the meal justice. 
I baked the potato in the oven. When it was done, I let it cool for about 10-15 mins and then I scooped out the insides. I put them aside. I chopped up some red onion, and a little bell pepper, and threw it into a pan with a little extra virgin. Some sea salt and pepper and let that fry up nicely, when the veggies got soft I added in the potato and a little more seasoning. Meanwhile, I made the eggs and a little cheese with them. I also chopped up some ham. When the eggs were done I mixed them with my pepper/onion concoction and scooped it all into each potato half. Back in the oven and bing done. Quick , yummy, and satisfying. 

My fav big boy is in the white on the right hand side! 

and of course a few snaps of dinner :) Like I said the pictures don't do justice on this meal.

Thats about it..... I will be posting very soon. Have a beautiful Thursday folks!

Greetings

Hello everyone!

So, I am new to the blog scene but am ready to jump right in. A little about me, I am a happily married lady. I am blessed to have 1 child. She is amazing and you will hear all about her and our fur baby. I love my family. I love life. I love food. I love a lot I guess, which is a great thing.

I plan to get a blog out each week. I hope to hear from many of you and feel free to share my blogs. I do not confess to be an expert at anything, quite the contrary I am like the old saying a " jack of all trades, master of none".

I have always had a love of food, and my belly shows that quite well. (HA!) I love good food. Not "fast food" junk food. My junk food is good quality, rich spoils that I should probably not indulge in as much as I do , but hey, I'm pretty sure no ones cause of death was ever, death by gelato. ( oh and I guess I should apologize now, I crack myself up a lot ~you'll get used to it. 😄

A little more about me, I am a vegetarian for a long time, about 32 yrs now. As a kid I just could not decipher the difference between people eating beef, chicken etc.. To people eating our family pet. They all were animals to me and it didn't make sense. Especially........in a life where there was something called PASTA! Why would you ever want to eat an animal when there was carb heaven instead! So I refused and decided at 10 no meat would ever go in my belly again. It was hard growing up in an Italian family to understand that I did not eat meat. My grandmother would make a meatball soup and say" it's ok, it's only meatballs, you can still eat it" . LOL!
It took a long time for anyone in my family or even friends to understand as I was growing up. ( I did it before it was even a trend -ha ha ha)

So, anyway my love of food has never left me. Nor, is the fact that although I do not eat meat, poultry or seafood ever dazed me on cooking it for my family. I don't do well with recipes most of the time. I kind of just cook by what I think. I am getting older so I should start writing them down. ( I confess the other day I got out of the shower with the conditioner still in my hair-oops- like really these types of things happen to us as we get older?? )

This is dinner from last night. I made orecchiette pasta with cauliflower and bell peppers in a pesto sauce. Now, the pesto sauce was a total combo because I did not have enough Basil for traditional pesto and I also did not have enough pignoli nuts (what kind of Italian am I?!) so I improvised and it became a walnut pesto sauce, made with basil and cilantro as to those are what I did have. Either way it was a win win! My 3yr old loves pasta. However, bad mama- now knows that sautéing the veggies is not a good idea when it comes to her. Her meal last night took about an hour of compromise because "mama, there is something wrong with my cauliflower!" "It's got brown on it" " I like my cauliflower white color mama". I did not win in the end. I did however win extra sautéed cauliflower for myself. Score!

So that's about it for today. Can't wait to get to know you all and share these fun things and day to day goings on with you all. Have a great one! Ciao