Friday Favorites!

It's the last Friday of Summer - how did that happen!?!  We've had a blast and squeezed in tons of family fun, but I'm always a little sad to say goodbye to Summer.  The days of making our own schedules, doing our own thing, flexibility, staying up late and waking up without an alarm.  Summer days are the best!

We did some back to school prep throughout the week and feel like we'll be ready to go on Monday.  I can't wait to tell you about our Friday Favorites.

1. Free the Arts and Craft Supplies

Have you heard about this movement??  #freethecraftsupplies - it's a movement on social media to actually use and enjoy the craft supplies you buy for your kids.  I tried hard to do it all month long in July.  I'd set out art supplies and let the kids create whatever they wanted.  I think they'd tell you this was a highlight of their summer.  They LOVED creating and making art messes.  I'd give them time to do this when Leo was sleeping and then we would clean up together.

2. Lunch Box Notes

I found the cutest lunch box note options at Dollar Tree recently.  They're labeled as classroom decor.  They're thicker than notepad paper. and will be the cutest notes for school lunches.  I won't put one of these in every day, but a couple times a week will be perfect for these bright and cheery notes.

3. Stuffed Animals

We're going through a big stuffed animal phase.  Any time we leave the house, the kids ask to bring a "stuffy" with them.  It's cute and sweet and so innocent.  I'll savor this phase as long as it lasts.  We visited several parks this week.  Early in the morning to try to beat the heat.

Please don't burst Leo's bubble and tell him that his BFFs are going back to school next week!

You never know what you'll find at the playground.

4. Captain Chaos

Leo learned how to climb our bar stools this week and the only person who's thrilled with this milestone is Leo.  He is into EVERYTHING.  He could use a baby body guard.

5. Jordan Bakery Box

My bakery & charcuterie business is booming!  It's keeping me just busy enough to be a fun challenge for me.  I baked lots of loaves of crusty bread, cookies and assembled charcuterie boxes this week.

6. Divide and Conquer

Kevin took Olive to pick out her school supplies while I went with Fletcher to meet his teacher.  They both loved the alone time to get to pick out their favorites for the school year.

7. Meow

Penny & Pearl have new favorite spots.  Penny loves looking out the window.  And look how good my Fiddle Leaf Fig plant is looking!!  I changed out the soil and water it once or twice a week.  It's super happy here.  And Pearl loves hanging out in the piles of stuffed animals on the kid's beds.

8. Limelight Hydrangea

My limelight is looking amazing!  It's filled with blooms.  They start out all green and then the edges turn pink.  It's beautiful!!  We have been seeing tons of butterflies this week!

9. The Fun Mom

I've tried to say YES more to fun, spontaneous opportunities that have come our way this Summer.  Last minute playdate - YES!  Movie night - YES!  Play in the rain - SURE!  The kids were thrilled.

10. Strawberry Pie

The kids helped me make one last strawberry pie this week.  Fletcher did a great job cutting off the stems and we all worked together to make the filling, roll out the crust, etc.  They love helping me in the kitchen.

11. Another day another park.

The kids spent their own money to buy themselves fishing nets.  They couldn't wait to find a creek to do some creek stomping.  It was hard to keep Leo out of the water.  The big kids caught fish, crawdads and all kinds of stuff in their nets.  They were super proud of their catching skills.

12. Class of 2034 - kindergarten here we come!!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!  We're sticking close to home and hoping to get some good rest before school starts on Monday.  

Linking up with Momfessionals

Kindergarten Kick Off

We've got kindergarten on the brain over here!  

Fletcher got to meet his new teacher on Friday and had his Kindergarten Kick Off party on Sunday.  I loved planning the event with a few of my friends who also have incoming K kids.  We did stations for the kids to rotate through and everyone had a good time.

Class of 2034!?!  That is WILD to me!

Tip: Take the time to make your kid's teachers feel special and appreciated right away!  Fletcher's K teacher told him in her back to school letter that she loves Snickers.  We picked up a treat for her and gave it to her at the open house.  She was surprised and thrilled!

We went back to school shoe shopping.  It's always interesting to me which shoes they end up deciding on.  Comfort and fast running shoes is KEY.

These cuties helped me blow up 150+ balloons to make our own balloon garland.

It turned out so cute.  It was the biggest one I'd made so far and it was the perfect photo backdrop for the kindergarten party at a shelter house at one of our local parks.  

Our theme was Up Up and Away!  They're off to K!

All the kids made their own name tag and then took their picture with the sign.

The kids rotated through stations - parachute, backpack relay, school supply bucket toss, balloon games, key chain making, popsicles and snacks.  It was tons of fun to get to celebrate heading off to kindergarten with all of our buddies from our mom's group.

I loved putting together the favor bags!

Airheads

Dubble Bubble

Bubble wands

Pop It key chains

Smarties

candy, school supplies and sunnies

It's amazing how much more calm, confident and just happy I feel sending my second child off to kindergarten.  With Olive, I was so nervous and stressed about all the unknowns.  This time around I am excited for Olive and Fletcher to be at school together and feel like I know the ropes at their school.  I'm no longer a newbie elementary school mom and it feels great!  Fletcher getting to meet his teacher and see the school on Friday made all the difference.  He's just excited to go to school!  We're hoping and praying it'll be a great school year for both of the kids.

My Hair & Makeup Routine Must Haves

Let's talk about make up today!  I don't usually post a lot of beauty/makeup related content, but I am excited about several new products I've added into my routine this Summer.  I like to mix high end and drug store make ups.  Ulta and Walmart are my go to spots.  I think Ulta is intimidating so I try to make myself always ask for help when I need help vs wandering around the store not finding what I need.   

Have you ever gone into a store or online to order a tried and true make up item only to find out it's been discontinued!?!?  Gosh, that's the worst.  That happened to me  with a favorite foundation I'd been wearing for years.  

I messaged a sweet blog friend who lives in the South and her make up always looks fabulous - hey Jess!  I asked her about a humidity friendly go to foundation and she recommended:

1. NEW- Lancome Teint Idole Ultra Wear - it's got SPF 15, boasts up to 24 hours wear & transfer resistant.  

There are 50 colors to pick from.  Hence why I needed help from the ladies at Ulta.  I asked one for help and she said they had a Lancome expert so she'd get her to help me.  She looked at my skin closely.  Grabbed a sample and bam.  She got it right on the first try!  She sent me home with 310 Bisque C and I've loved it all summer long.  It wears really well, goes on so quickly and blends really great.  I'd highly recommend it.  It's got 8000+ reviews on Ulta.com and it's SPLURGE at $47.

 2. NEW- Milani Baked Powder Blush color Luminoso

This blush is gorgeous!  It's got highlighter and blush in one and it's the prettiest shimmer on your cheeks.  It's $6.99 and can easily be added to your Wal-Mart grocery pick up order.  SAVE!

3. Water Proof Mascara

I always wear waterproof mascara.  It stays put so well and doesn't flake off.  I'm currently alternating Brown mascara from Maybelline Lash Sensational and Voluminous Million Lashes.

4. Tarte Shape Tape Concealer.

This stuff is great.  A little goes a long way.  It conceals and brightens.  It's a splurge at $29.00.  It has 13000+ reviews on ulta.com and I love it.

5. Make up brushes

Any mid range set of brushes will do :)

6. NYX lipstick or lip butter

This is a definite SAVE.  You can get the prettiest shades of pinks, reds, orangey pinks, etc. for about $5 a tube at the grocery store.  It wears really well and the colors are gorgeous.  I always have NYX lipstick and lip butter on me wherever I go.

7. Maybelline Master Strobing Stick

This pretty highlighter is great if you're using a more matte blush with no highlighter in it.  I wouldn't recommend using this and the Milani blush I mentioned above. It's got plenty of highlighter in it already.  This is a SAVE at around $5 a tube.

8. L'Oreal Eye Shadow Palette 111

I bought this for myself for Christmas and it's been AMAZING.  It was a big SAVE at $14.  The colors are so pretty, are really long lasting and it has lasted for such a long time.  I use the darker shade on my brows with the angle brush and the lighter shades on my lids.  I love this and will definitely buy it again.  

And everything I mentioned above on my face here: I love it!  And it only takes me about 5 minutes max to apply.  I also need to mention the no crease twisty hair ties!  They're amazing.  They really leave no crease in my hair which is a miracle.  I've got them everywhere so I can put my hair up anytime.  I'd highly recommend them.

 

NEW - I am loving this Moroccan Oil hydrating shampoo, conditioner and smoothing lotion.  It smells amazing and it's done wonders for my hair.  It's smoother, shinier and feels healthier.  I bought the smaller size bottles to give it a try and plan to buy the big bottles when I run out.  This is my second tube of the smoothing lotion.  This is a SPLURGE that I'd highly recommend.

NEW - Aveeno Positively Radiant Skin Brightening Daily Scrub.  It smells amazing, is a gentle exfoliater and it leaves your skin feeling so soft.  This was a random grocery pick up addition to my Walmart order.  It's around $6 and is a great SAVE.  There's even an Ibotta coupon for it right now if you want to try it.  Or you can get an even better deal with my Amazon link below - it's marked down to $5.12 right now!

What are some of your favorite skin care and hair care products?

Here are my Amazon links to some of my favorite beauty products!  Thanks for shopping my links if you see something you want to try.  I appreciate you supporting my blog so much.

Friday Favorites

Happy August!  Gosh, Summer has flown by so fast.  I'm not quite ready for it to end.  It was a busy week over here.  Lots of back to school prep, enjoying summer, watching the Olympics, meeting up with friends, water balloons, a road trip and appointments for everyone.  I'm ready for the weekend!

Favorite moments of the week:

1. Christmas Lake Family Reunion

We drove a couple hours away to meet my parents at their Christmas Lake house for the weekend.  We checked out the water from the docks, played on the playgrounds and saw all the deer.  We had a blast and Fletcher asked if he could move there.  The weather was really nice all weekend.

Twins!!

I love a good buffet of everyone's favorite foods.  I made potato salad and chocolate chip cookies.

We look forward to getting together with my Dad's family every August.  My balloon garland was a pain to hang but it turned out pretty.

Fletcher deemed this the prettiest spot for a picture.

They loved all the new areas to explore and the big windows.  Their Christmas Lake house is decorated for Christmas year round.

2. Our Garden

Did you see my post earlier this week for Garden Fresh Bruschetta?  It was sooo good!  We also harvested zucchini and made chocolate zucchini bread.  It's been really fun to grow our own veggies.

3. Exercising

July was such a good month for me in the exercise department.  I made it a priority and felt so good as a result.  I'm hoping to keep up that momentum in August.  I have to lock the cats out of the bonus room because they like to hop on the treadmill with me and play with the belt.  It's not safe at all.  Crazy cats!

4. Rose of  Sharon

We have two Rose of Sharon bushes are they are just gorgeous this time of year!!

5. PreK Church Graduation

Fletcher got to go to his PreK graduation at church.  They gave each kid their own Bible and had the cutest campfire theme.  Kevin took Fletcher and I stayed home so Leo could nap.  They made smores, did crafts, got his Bible and saw friends.  He loved it!

6. Back to School Prep

We stopped in Meijer to grab Fletcher's school supplies.  He picked out everything in green and got some new Minecraft lunch stuff.  He was thrilled.  We get to meet his teacher today!  Yay!

 

7. Penny & Pearl

These sweet girls are about to turn one.  They the best friends and the best cats.

8. Appointments

We squeezed in all the well checks, dentist appointments and follow ups this week.  The kids are doing great and that makes me so happy.

9. Oh Leo

This guy has been waking up way earlier than everyone else.  I guess he didn't get the sleeping in memo for Summer.  So I wake up with him and we hang out in the playroom.  I caught him lounging on the couch, eating a granola bar, watching Cocomelon.  Living the baby dream!

 

I hope you have a great weekend!  See you back here on Monday.

Linking up with Momfessionals

Family Book Club

We've been enjoying some good books together this Summer.  As the kids are getting older it's exciting to find books that they love and pair them with a project, craft, art or adventure.  We don't always do an activity with the books we read.  Trust me - we read all summer long and I'm just showing you a few book club projects.  I pick out books that are fun or inviting and come up with an activity to go along with the book.  We use supplies we already have on hand from the craft closet and have a good time enjoying books together.

I took some pictures of the books we read in July to give you an idea of how we do family book club.  It's nothing super fancy.  It just takes a tiny bit of planning to pull off.  It's really exciting to see the kids getting excited about books, following along with more complicated chapter books and we find ourselves referencing the books throughout our days.

I linked some of our favorite books in my post yesterday - Prime Purchases: Back to School

 

The Wold Needs Who You Were Made to Be By Joanna Gaines //

We LOVE this book.  It's beautiful and it was so fun to do some watercolor art with the kids.  The painted their backgrounds.  Then they painted the hot air balloons.  We let everything dry and did the cutting/assembling the next day.  They turned out so pretty!

Socks //

We read Socks together and didn't do any special activities.  We just enjoyed the book.

James & the Giant Peach //

We are wrapping up reading this Roald Dahl classic - James and the Giant Peach.  We have really enjoyed it.  We did art - paint your favorite scene from the story.  We watched the movie together.  And we did some peach investigating.  I let the kids cut apart a peach and check out all the little details.  They eat peaches all the time, but this was their first time looking at a peach seed up close.  It helped give them some perspective on this giant peach we've been reading about.

Make Your Own Adventure //

I was reading one of my magazines and it had this fun activity called Make Your Own Adventure.  It was a fun visual to do list of things the kids wanted to do for the last two weeks of summer.  I folded their paper into 16 equal sized rectangles.  Then told them they had to use at least 6 colors, put something different in every box and to think about how they wanted to spend the next couple of weeks.  They didn't need to worry about spelling or doing anything perfectly.  Just do their best.  They had tons of fun and really enjoyed presenting their lists to me.

And I've been reading Awaking Wonder by Sally Clarkson.  It's great so far.

What are your favorite summer reads?

Prime Purchases: Back to School

We are prepping for the kids to go back to school mid-August.  We've got a kindergartener and a 3rd grader!  They'll both be heading off to the same school together and that makes me very happy.

We shopped online for backpacks and lunch boxes - Pottery Barn Kids are our favorite.

Then I picked up the following favorite things from Amazon for back to school.  I'll include my affiliate links so if you shop through my links I'll get a tiny commission.  Thanks for supporting my blog!

I've got one more thank you to sneak in - THANK YOU for all of your sweet blog comments for my 10th bloggy birthday last week.  It made me feel so good to read all of the nice things you had to say.  Thank you for continuing to show up and read my blog.  I used random number generator to pick the winner: Congratulations to Kristen Peirce!!  Watch for your Amazon gift card to arrive in your inbox this week! 

I'm linking up with Tanya for Prime Purchases this month.

 Back to School themed Prime Purchases:

1. Class of 2034 metal sign

This seems crazy - talking about a high school graduation sign for my 5 year old, but hear me out.  I'm hosting a kindergarten kick off party for Fletcher so I ordered this sign.  It'll be cute for all the K kids to use and something fun for me to save for his graduation.

 

2. Yumbox lunch boxes

We have been using these for 4 years and LOVE them.  We love the Yumbox Original.  It holds tons of food and doesn't waste space inside the box like the Bentgo boxes.  These give you lots of room to pack a delicious lunch for your kids.  They make lunch packing faster, easier and there's so much less trash - no plastic bags required.  Both of my kids love using them and picked out new colors for this year.  Blue and orange for us.

3. Slim Freezer packs

These are so great to pair with the Yumboxes in an insulated lunch box.  They also work great for any kind of school lunches.

4. Pop It Key Chains

Aren't these so cool for back to school?!?  My kids are really excited to add them to their backpacks this year.  They're also going in the favor bags for Fletcher's kindergarten party.

5. Patches

We ordered some cat patches and a fun mixed bag of patches to add to the kid's lunchboxes and backpacks.  They can't wait to decorate their bags.  It's a fun way to make Fletcher's backpack seem new this year since he's reusing his backpack from PreK.  Those Pottery Barn Kids backpacks hold up so well!

6. Back to School Books

I love adding a few new books to our back to school book library.  They're usually about first day jitters, being brave, making new friends and the importance of being yourself + knowing how much we love you.  We added these to our library this year and I'll also include a few of our classic back to school favorites.  They all ship fast if you need some back to school reading for your own kids.

The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be by Joanna Gaines

It's such a sweet book showcasing how each person learns differently, works differently and has their own strengths.  The illustrations are beautiful and it's a really charming book.  I'd highly recommend it for your kids or your students.

Time for School Little Blue Truck

If you're a fan of Little Blue Truck, this book will be an instant favorite.  It's charming and sweet and it's funny to see all the farm animals load up on the school bus.  As we've come to expect, Little Blue Truck finds a way to help and look out for others.

A Skunk in My Bunk

This is the perfect rhyming book for your early readers.  It gives kids who are learning to rhyme and hear patterns the confidence to participate in the book.  They are encouraged to wrap a whole family of words and the book was even interesting to my older kid.  We'll be doing more with this book throughout the year.

First Day Jitters

This book is very relatable and easy for kids to connect with.  Everyone has the first day jitters.  The book story line takes a surprising turn that well help everyone feel more at ease on the first day of school.

Thelma the Unicorn

Don't try to be someone you aren't.  Stay true to who you are!

We Don't Eat Our Classmates

This funny story is all about the dos and don'ts of trying to make new friends in a new classroom.  It's funny and silly and has a great message about making new friends.

The Friend Ship

A crew of animals is on the hunt for the friends on the seas and eventually they realize that they are surrounded by friends.

Kitties on Dinosaurs

While this may not sounds like a back to school book, it's a great story about trying your hardest, making a new plan when your first plan doesn't work out and finding friends in unusual places.  My kids both loved this sweet and silly story.

Garden Fresh Bruschetta

The kids got to try bruschetta when we on vacation in Florida this Summer.  We all really enjoyed it and put it on the top of our wish list when our homegrown tomatoes were ready to enjoy.

The kids have loved helping me garden.  We check on the garden every day.  The tomatoes have done pretty well along with our herbs and zucchini.  We're still learning how to grow some of the other things we attempted.

We waited until we had a big bowl full of tomatoes.

We planted a mix of yellow, sweet, cherry and more bite sized tomatoes.

The mixture is so yummy and pretty!

 

Ingredients for bruschetta:

a rainbow of bite size tomatoes halved

yellow onion finely diced

purple onion finely diced

chives

basil

salt & pepper

garlic salt

olive oil

 

Bread:

baguette

olive oil

Parmesan cheese

Combine all the above ingredients to your taste and let the bruschetta mixture marinate.  I let this sit for about 30 minutes before serving it as an appetizer.

 

Slice your baguette and place the slices on a baking sheet.  Drizzle the slices with olive oil and broil until just slightly browned.  Immediately top with fresh shaved parmesan.  I did this on about half of the slices of bread.

Truthfully, the baguette that I got in my grocery pick up order was pretty skinny.  It made for small bites.  I think in the future I'd go with a little bigger slice of bread so that it could hold the bruschetta better, but this tasted amazing.  We all licked the appetizer plate and there were zero leftovers.  The kids loved the tomatoes and the bread.  They picked out the onions and were very proud to be eating food that we grew. 

The perfect Summer dinner - steak, potato salad, watermelon, corn on the cob and garden fresh bruschetta.  Yum!!

I'm going to make this again as soon as we get enough tomatoes.  I might even add a little balsamic drizzle to it.  Stay tuned :)