Tots and Me... Growing Up Together

Monday, October 28, 2013

Muffin Tin Monday: P

Though we have been having muffin tins most Mondays, they have not been "special" tins. I have just been giving the children their meal in the muffin tins. Today, however, I did get to make the girls a P muffin tin in honor of our new letter/unit.

Here is our P muffin tin:

P shaped cheese on a Piece of Pretzel

Potatoes

Whoppers (These are a part of their lunch because Tabitha got them from the harvest party at church last night. She was sharing with her sisters to show love, which is what we are learning about in our P:Penguin unit. Our Words to Remember are: I will show love to everyone, especially my family)

Petite Pickles

Peaches

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches Pointing up.

Harold had everything besides the pretzel.

Tuesday's Giveaway Link Up- October 29, 2013

Welcome to Tuesday's Giveaway Link Up with your hosts Karen @ Tots and Me and Emily @ Emily Reviews

So glad you could join us as we share our giveaways on Tuesday's Giveaway Link Ups.

Our co-hosts this week are Ashley from Forgetful Momma and Mellissa from Something Like Life.

This link up will be posted Monday at 7 PM est. and run all week long! Make sure you stop in as often as you can to list your latest giveaways.

Here is how to use the Giveaway Link Up

1. Post your reviews and/or giveaways, as many as you have, be sure to add the end date (family friendly please)

2. Help spread the word about the giveaway link up by grabbing our button, Tweeting or posting on Facebook. (Not mandatory- but it helps get more exposure to your giveaways as well!)

3. Take a moment to enter any giveaway that strikes an interest to you!

If you would like to follow the hostesses, we will gladly follow you back! Simply leave us a message to do so.

Thank you for linking up with Karen @ Tots and Me & Emily @ Emily Reviews along with Ashley from Forgetful Momma and Mellissa from Something Like Life.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Sunday Photo Round-Up: October 27, 2013

It's time for me to share my photo challenge photos from this week.
This week's Scavenger Hunt Sunday prompts were again taken from the Photo A Day Challenge prompts, making it easier for me to keep up with both.

Day 22: Change, Day 23: Your Mood Today, Day 24: Dark, Day 25: Welcome, Day 26: Depth of Field

Day 22: Change

We needed some change to be able to use the gumball machine at the library, so I asked the librarian to change my dime into 10 pennies.

Day 23: Your mood today

I was having a bleak and depressed kind of day on Wednesday.

Day 24: Dark

It wasn't quite this dark when I got to church today, but I thought the dark clouds would make a great picture. I darkened them up a bit with some editing.

Day 25: Welcome

We live right on the border between NY and PA, so we see this sign a lot welcoming us back home.

Day 26: Depth of Field

Originally I took this picture for the Fall challenge, but I thought it fit this prompt too. I still am not quite sure how to accomplish Depth of Field with my little point and shoot camera. This is the best I could do.

While this week's prompts were from the Photo-a-Day challenge, we skipped Days 20 and 21 so I wanted to make sure to share those too.

Photo-a-Day (October)

Day 20: Open

I was going to get a picture of hubby opening the door for me as he regularly does, but he was still in the house and we were getting ready to go visit my son, so I played around with the night setting on my camera. I think it came out pretty well seeing as I had to hold the camera still for ages.

Day 21: Then and Now

Lost a bit of color in the hills since the beginning of the month. I didn't find the exact spot on the road where I took the original picture from, but it was close.

Nurture Photography Challenge - Autumn 2013 Edition

It is that time of year again. Time to join in with Kristi at Live and Love Out Loud and Rebecca at Bumbles and Light for their Fall Nurture Photography Challenge.

This week's prompt is Red/Snapshot

Friday, October 25, 2013

Lovin' the Weekend Blog Hops: October 25-27, 2013

Welcome to Lovin' The Weekend Blog Hops with your co-hosts:

Karen from Tots and Me, Rena from An Ordinary Housewife and Angie from Snack Cups and Smiles.

Thank you to every one who has stopped by, whether this is your first visit or you have been a faithful ongoing participant!

We would love for you to stop by each of the co-hosts and follow us, then feel free to add your links to any or all of the following linkies.

We also randomly choose a Featured host each week from the Lovin' The Readers linky. This week we are featuring Angela from Joy Focused Learning.

Here's what she has to say:

"Joy Focused Learning is a new blog I started at the beginning of this school year. I share about our journey to focus on the joy of learning. It doesn't mean that every second of our school day is full of smiles but it does mean that if something consistently isn't enjoyable we re-evaluate and come up with a new approach. I post a weekly wrap-up of what we did each week including ideas for outside learning time. I also share a lot of free printables ranging from Spanish Learning to Calendar Time to Science or Bible!"

Don't forget to link up to the Lovin' the Readers Hop if you would like a chance to be a Featured host next week. Please comment with a way to contact you, especially if there is not an obvious way mentioned on your blog. We would love to include a little write up about you and your blog in the next week's Lovin' The Weekend Blog Hop post, including a link to your blog. And you will get to include the linky codes on your blog. Sound fun? We're looking forward to getting to know our readers better.

Here's how this blog hop works. We would appreciate it if you would follow Tots and Me, An Ordinary Housewife and Snack Cups and Smiles. And please don't forget to visit our Featured Host. If you no longer have GFC please follow in some other way. After that there are three different linkies you can link to. Whichever one you choose to link to, please grab that button and share it on your blog (the codes are on Tot's and Me's sidebar). We'd love it if you could tweet or in some other way share about this blog hop, the more people who know about it, the more potential visitors and new followers of your blog. We'd love to meet some new friends this weekend.

Some people are more interested in just increasing their numbers, while others really want people who appreciate their blog and want to keep up with their posts. So, there are two separate blog hop linkies.

The third linky is for you to link up your giveaways.

If you are interested in increasing the number of followers to your blog via GFC, Linky Followers, email, Twitter, Facebook or Google+ link up here. We will follow you back if you follow us (just note which one you are linking to):

If you are interested in gaining followers to your blog who will read and comment and truly find an interest in your blog, link up here:

If you have family friendly giveaways to link up, here's your spot. Please make sure to include an end date for your giveaway.

We are so glad you stopped by. Please leave a comment if you link up and we will be sure to stop by and follow back.

Don't forget to check out my "Blog Hops" page for other great blog hops!!

Kids and a Mom in the Kitchen #59: Baked Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Rice Pudding

Time for Kids and a Mom in the Kitchen

(A weekly linky where you can share your special time in the kitchen, such a great place for learning. You can also link up Kid-Friendly Recipes)

The linky is at the bottom.

We wanted to make something the other day to use up some milk, but I didn't want to make regular rice pudding. After some debate, I decided to substitute brown sugar for the white sugar and add cinnamon to make Baked Brown Sugar and Cinnamon Rice Pudding. Though I prefer my regular Baked Rice Pudding this was pretty tasty too.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup uncooked white rice
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 Tbs cinnamon
1 qt whole milk, scalded (I definitely recommend whole milk. I have made it with lower fat milk before and it doesn't turn out right.)
2 tsp butter

First I scalded the milk.

In case you do not know how to scald milk, here are the instructions:

Rinse pan with cold water.

Pour milk into pan.

Slowly heat over medium low.

Stir continuously.

It is scalded when there are small bubbles around the edge of the pan.

You do not want it to boil. It took approximately 15 minutes.

You can find full instructions for scalding milk here along with instructions on how to do it in the microwave.

While the milk cooled we poured the rice, salt, sugar and cinnamon into a 1 3/4 qt casserole dish.

We stirred it all together.

I added the scalded milk.

Then I dotted the 2 tsp of butter on the top.

We baked it at 300 degrees for 2 hours.

For the first hour I stirred it gently with a fork every 15 minutes.

The top will be golden brown and it will start to thicken, but it will still be a bit runny. It will thicken as it stands and will have a nice creamy consistency.

(In order to get a nice creamy consistency the milk still needs to be a bit runny when it comes out. I have always let it cook too long because I thought it wasn't done as it was still runny. This however, caused the top to be too tough and the consistency ended up being too thick. )