Travel Care Package

My husband doesn't travel a ton, but it seems like every Spring he gets busy with conferences to attend.  He's got flights and car trips so I make sure to send him off with a little care package.  

I want to make sure that

A. He feels love from home

B. He has snacks and doesn't have to depend on airline/airport snacks

C. He knows he's missed

I usually include:

A note for every day that he's going to be gone -

 this time I had Olive help me write messages to Kevin 

and he said he loved seeing her artwork.

Granola bars

Snickers Bar

A pack of travel Kleenex

Minty gum

mixed nuts or peanut M&Ms

a small pack of his favorite beef jerky or trail mix

Olive and I had fun putting together Kevin's travel pack 

despite the fact that she wanted to sample every single item.

Do you have any other fun travel ideas for me?

Tuesday Talk Link Up: Chalkboard Eggs

I picked up these DARLING Chalkboard Easter Eggs at Wal-Mart last week.  They were $1.98 for a dozen and they come with a box of chalk.  I couldn't wait to decorate them with Olive.

 I prepped everything at nap time so Olive would wake up and find the eggs to decorate.  My friend Erin calls leaving an activity out for your kids to discover an invitation.  Inviting your children to do an activity that they've discovered has been left out for them.  Olive has loved every invitation that I've done for her so far.  I wanted Olive to find the eggs and start decorating them with just a little help from me.  I knew she'd be a little young for this, but knew that she'd enjoy it with a tiny bit of help.

Oliver wanted in on the action and thought the activity was for him.  Silly boy.

 I put a blanket on the floor so she could sit comfortably while doing her art.

An eye roll when I mentioned chalk wasn't for eating
and then checking out every color of chalk so she knew her options.

At first I held the egg while she colored, but then she quickly realized she didn't need my help.

 Just a few reminders that these weren't EDIBLE eggs and neither was the chalk.
Then she was back to decorating.

 Olive decorated her eggs for at least 20 minutes and would have kept going if we didn't put them away for dinner time.  I'm planning to get them back out and let her color as long as she'd like.

 She decorated most and I did a few for fun.
These eggs were a great activity to do together!!
Kids of all ages would have a great time designing their own eggs.
They wipe off easily so you could decorate and redecorate as much as you'd like.

LINK UP

I'm excited to announce that I got invited to start co-hosting Tuesday Talk with this sweet group of ladies every Tuesday!  Link up ANY post from the week, try to visit a few other blogs and make some new bloggy friends.

(Clockwise, from upper left:)

Becky - BYBMG  ~  Beth - Our Pretty Little Girls
Whitney (me!) - Polka-Dotty Place  ~  Elizabeth - All Kinds Of Things
Keri - Living In This Season  ~  Lauren - Simply Free
Teressa - Teressa Jane  ~  Mandy - Almond Place
Jess and Katie (Us!) - Sweet Little Ones  ~  Andrea - Mitchael Journey
Sarah - Abiding In Grace - Sarah Frazer  ~  Tara - Mrs. Coach Sims

We would love it if you would follow us in some way

because we'd love to connect with you!

<div align="center">
<a href="http://polka-dottyplace.blogspot.com/" title="Polka-Dotty Place"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkwfCFr9AXEgv3ETndnI3C_JCdTWaSGQwXVTve-oOCmkLLslJ1CQVNenqCb8uwChwspoznlUrtsuQvC-xZN5-IJRxUz_72ZAxTQVgafE1le_cD3Jw6kmaIVmHuxpFlREuoqf9bfiXIA6A/s1600/TuesdayTalk.jpg" alt="Polka-Dotty Place" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

An InLinkz Link-up

Easter at My House

I just put the finishing touches on my Easter decorations with one week to spare.  Better late than never - right??  I always leave them up for April and a good portion of May so I'll enjoy them for a while.  I take down anything that screams Easter after Easter and leave the rest of the bunny/egg/pastel things up on the account of SPRING.

It's our first Easter in our house so I really enjoyed figuring out where to put my decorations.  I've been collecting decorations for years and were gifted many of them.

I LOVED pulling out Olive's toe-lip painting from last year.  

We compared her feet and she's definitely grown a lot in a year.

 Olive loves carrying around Easter baskets so I put my breakable basket of eggs out of her reach and then put this wicker basket full of plastic Easter toys easy accessible for her.

 These carrots were a souvenir from a trip to Mexico and I wish I'd gotten more.  Kevin thought I was crazy for buying paper mache carrots at the time, but they are lovely and remind me of our fun trip.  I'd also love to make some carrot cake this week for my carrot cake plate.

When my parents came to visit I asked them to bring some of my childhood Easter decorations to me.  My tree needed a bit of a revamp since the white had turned more of a yellow color so my dad spray painted it pink for me.  My parents worked together to make my siblings these Easter baskets to use when we were little.  My dad did all the wood work and my mom painted them.  They've got our name and year 1991 on them.  I remember saving my money to buy this tree and little wooden eggs when I was younger.  I was really fun to decorate my Easter tree again.  

This little Easter table makes my heart happy!!

 I look forward to updating my chalkboard every month.  

It makes me want to make a few more chalkboards for around the house :)

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

What was your favorite decoration?

DIY Felt Bunny Garland

I stopped in Hobby Lobby last week since their Easter items were all 40% off and picked up a few things for Easter and a few things for Olive's bunny birthday party.  I'm planning to use my bunny decorations for her party.

I found these packages of 5 felt bunnies with pom-pom tails for less than $3 and they were 40% off so I picked up three packages.  I used twine and hot glue to assemble my garland.  I spent about $5 on this garland and they seem to be selling for much more than that in stores.

I tried different color patterns and ended up liking the repeated pattern best.  I precut my twine to the length I needed, folded it in half and started gluing bunnies on in the middle.  I had an odd number of bunnies so I did the same amount on each side of the middle bunny.  It worked out perfectly.  I also picked the garland up after attaching a few bunnies to ensure that they were hanging correctly.  

I put a line of glue on the bunny's back and made sure to put it in the same spot for each bunny.

 Let the bunnies dry completely for 15 minutes or so.

 I made mine to fit my mantle and LOVE LOVE LOVE how it turned out.
The wooden bead garland was a thrifty find from several years ago.  I got two long strands of these pastel wooden beads for just $2!!

Hoppy Easter week :)

Happy Friday!!

The weather has been close to perfect this week - sunshine, blue skies, flowers blooming and going on lots of walks.  I hit my 10,000+ fitbit goal several times this week which is always a win.  The weekend is supposed to be more of the same and I'm excited to have very few plans.  We are planning to go to an Easter egg hunt at our church and hoping to work out in our yard.  I'm wanting to plant some snapdragons and a few other fun flowers.  I'd happily put this week on repeat :)

The highlights of the week were:

// 1 //

We are bananas for BUNNIES lately.  My mom and I found these basket weave bunny treasures at two separate stores and knew they were destined to be bunny BFFS.  I love them to pieces and think they're adorable.  I also decided that Olive's beloved stuffed Bun-Bun was going to be my inspiration for her 2nd birthday - Some Bunny is Turning TWO!

// 2 //

I promise you that I did nothing to deserve a bouquet of fresh flowers, yet this one appeared on my doorstep one afternoon this week.  My hubby is a keeper.  Thoughtful all the time.

// 3 //

I've collecting things for Olive's Easter basket and am looking forward to assembling it.  No doubt her favorite thing will easily be the M&Ms.  I'm also putting together a couple's Easter basket for Kevin and I to share.

// 4 //

We had some fun chocolate tasting this week.  

I made these PB Banana Chocolate Chip blender muffins and they were so tasty.  Everyone approved.  We ran several errands this week and Olive was a dream at every stop.  That's nothing short of a miracle in toddler land :)  Kroger was giving out samples of their Easter chocolates and we tried all of them.  They were delicious.

5. Amazing weather makes us all smile.

Olive's a Daddy's girl - can you tell?

What was the best part of your week??

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