S'mores Charcuterie Board

Looking for an easy but fun treat?  This spin on S'mores was a huge hit at our house last night, and the best part was that it only took me about 5 minutes to put together!

I layered Hershey's chocolate on the bottom of a mini cast iron skillet and topped it with the marshmallows and popped it under the broiler for just a couple of minutes.  I added pretzel sticks to our board and they were so good dipped into the chocolate and marshmallows!  

If you want to follow along with more of our every day happenings, be sure to follow along on Instagram!  Be sure to tag me if you give this s'mores board a try!

-Emily

Quarantined Easter

Happy Easter!  This year's Easter celebrations were definitely different, but if I am being honest, it was one of my favorite Easters ever! Our morning was slower paced since church was in our living room and we weren't rushing to get out the door, and it was nice to be able to soak up and really enjoy those moments together.  The weather was nice, the kids were all pleasant even with an early wakeup call thanks to littlest sister (and you never know what you might get with two teenagers early in the morning!), and we just felt so much more grateful to be spending the day together this year.  I know not all families were able to do that, and I just am so thankful that our family has stayed safe throughout this so far.

I pray you all are doing well and staying healthy, both physically and mentally.  If there are any specific ways I can pray for you, please send me a message through here or my social media pages.  I know this is a difficult time for everyone and want to do my part to help in any way I can.

Since we have been in a stay at home order, no cute coordinating Easter outfits were bought for my crew this year, but we couldn't let the day pass by without a picture anyway.  I hope you all had a beautiful weekend with your families!

-Emily

Spring Break 2019

We survived Spring Break 2019!  The kids head back to school this week, and while we had a fun and relaxing week off, I am more than ready to get back to our normal routine!

My oldest daughter and I spent some time in Nashville visiting colleges at the beginning of the week.  It was so fun to take a road trip with just the two of us!  We laughed, cried, and saw some amazing sights!

Stood on the stage at the Grand Ole Opry!  It was such a neat feeling standing in that circle where so many legends have stood.

The Ryman Auditorium is absolutely gorgeous!

Lunched with Blake ;)

My girl.  

I am so not ready to be looking at colleges with her!!!  Can't she just stay in high school for a few more years?!

We finished off the week with the other 3 at our two favorite state parks that are a couple hours away from our house.  This is our annual Spring Break activity, and is one of our favorite traditions! 

Don't forget, if you want to follow along with more of our daily happenings, follow along on Instagram by clicking HERE.

Now, I am off to get these kids to school and start on the laundry!
I hope you had a fun Spring Break as well!

-Emily

Snowmaggedon 2019!

Did anyone else get dumped on by Mother Nature this weekend?  We got about a foot of snow here in the midwest.  It has been several years since we have gotten that much!  School let out early on Friday, basketball games were cancelled all weekend, and church was cancelled on Sunday, so we had a lot of time to play in the snow!  It was such a pretty snow, but by the time I finished shoveling all of it I could hardly move!  I am going to need a few days to recover! 

We did have a great weekend in it though!  Here are a few pictures when we ventured down the street to a park to play a little!

Leprechaun Shenanigans!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  One of my favorite traditions to do with the kids is have Lucky the Leprechaun visit on St. Patrick's Day.  Here is just a bit of the mess that he caused this year! (Excuse the low quality cell phone pics, it was late and I had forgotten about our little visitor coming! I was more focused on getting back in bed than getting good camera pictures ;) )  And note for next year, my youngest will not drink green milk so an alternative to cereal needs to be available for breakfast!!

Hope you guys have a fun week!

Customized IKEA Cart

Yesterday my oldest daughter turned 14.  (I'm still trying to figure out how that happened!)  Making her Mom super proud, she asked to take a trip down to our local Ikea store to do some shopping ;)  I stumbled across this cute idea from Polka Dot Chair on Pinterest a couple weeks ago and told her I thought it would be super cute for her room.  Click the image to check out the link to the original post!

We picked up this Raskog cart in the teal color to match her purple, gray and teal room.  When we got home I used my Cricut to create labels for each shelf.

We also grabbed this same utensil holder from the kitchen section that Melissa used and wire tied it to the side to store her flat iron and curling wand. 

I love how this turned out! It looks so cute in her room and is extremely functional at the same time-perfect combination! 

I have this same cart in gray in my craft room...I think it is time to dress it up with some labels too ;)  Any other great Ikea hacks that you have done?!  I would love to hear about them!  Feel free to link them up in the comments of this post! (Please limit to ONLY Ikea hack posts on this thread.  I would love for you to link up any of your other posts each week here on Inspire Me Monday!!  Any non-Ikea posts on this thread will be deleted.)

Firefighter Turkey

My second grader came home this week with a fun turkey project!  He was given a turkey printed on a piece of paper and had to find a way to disguise him without just coloring him with crayons.  So of course, we decided to make him into a firefighter!  (Although, I must be honest that he did ask about making it a minion at first...)

We used scrap book paper for his gear, some firefighter stickers that were on clearance for accessories, pipe cleaners for the hose, glittery blue paper for the water, and topped him off by coloring his feathers like fire.  It was a fun project to work on with him!

Minion Cupcakes

If you have been around here for even a short amount of time, I am sure you have come to know the love of Minions in our family!  My third kiddo especially has a great obsession love of them.  I was recently looking back through some old photos and found these pictures of the cupcakes I made for his birthday 2 years ago.  I figured with the renewed excitement over Minions right now that I would share them with you! They were a big hit for sure ;)

How can you not love these cute little guys?! 

Homework Supply Drawer

After school can seem to get a little crazy around our house.  I have tried to put some routines in to place to help make things run a little smoother, but definitely the most helpful thing for us is to have everything needed to get homework done in one location.  In our old house I actually had a homework station set up in our basement, but found that having it down stairs away from the rest of the house was not very functional for us.  So now we have the space to let the kids do their work on the main floor of the house so I have a drawer in our kitchen buffet that is dedicated to homework supplies. 

No one ever has to ask where a pencil is or go searching for a ruler.  Everything they need is right here.  I still have young kiddos going through school so crayons are still a part of our homework routine, and I also keep extra erasers, glue sticks, tape, and scissors.  In the back of the drawer I also stash some flash cards and a set of pretend money to help kiddos as they are learning about that.  

It certainly is not a fancy set up, but it sure does make things run a little easier at time to study!  Now, speaking of homework, I am off to make sure these kiddos are getting theirs done! 

Minion Valentine Box

I have mentioned before that my 7 year old son has an unhealthy addiction to minions!  So, when it came time to decorate his Valentine box for school this year, I knew what I had to do for his.  This was actually easier than I thought it would be, and he was SO excited with how it turned out.  He couldn't wait to show all of his friends at school today!

I think he turned out quite cute if I do say so myself :)

Storing Toys in the Living Room

With four kids, we certainly have had our share of toys in our house!  Now that my three oldest are able to play on their own, it is easy to keep their toys out of the main living areas. But my youngest still needs to stick around where ever we are so having toys, books and puzzles on our main floor is a must. I also want to maintain an inviting spot for guests though (and honestly, I don't want to be staring at toys all day every day...I have this little cleanliness OCD things that kicks in ;) )  so I keep her toys on the main floor discretely tucked into this little basket. 

I found something that would blend into our decor so it wouldn't stick out and scream "toys live here!"  I also love this solution because it keeps control of how much is in the space-if it doesn't fit in the basket it stays in the play room or her bedroom. Over the years I have used different baskets and storage items that have fit in with our room at the time, but I especially love this one for the size.  It can store a lot but not to the point that it feels like you are going into a black hole when looking for something in it!

My favorite part is that when she is done playing, we are having people over, or when all the kids are in bed for the night, we can quickly toss it all back in there and still feel like we are in an adult space and not in the middle of a toy store ;) 

Thanks for stopping by today!

End of School Celebrations

My kids finished up their last day of school Monday afternoon.  Tuesday morning at 8:38 I heard the words.  The words every mom dreads to hear in the summer.  "Mom, I'm bored."  What?!  8:38 on the FIRST morning of summer?!  You've got to be kidding me! Wow.  I think I've got my work cut out for me this summer!  But before we jump too far into summer, I wanted to share with you how we celebrated the last day of school for our kiddos!

We strung streamers all over the kitchen and put up this little sign I made.  We don't always do gifts for the last day of school, but this year each of our kids had a pretty big accomplishment or award given to them so we decided to get them each a little something special which we put at their spots at the table.  (And my 2 year old got a gift too-a potty seat and big girl underwear!  Her present for the big kids being out of school is that she is going to be potty trained-well, maybe that is my present?!)

Then we hung streamers in the doorway between our Butler's Pantry and Kitchen for when they walked in the door.  (Funny story, our little dog REFUSED to walk through them!  Scared her to death!)

And to make sure the fun began as soon as they got out of school, we filled the van with balloons!  Which of course meant there was a balloon fight on the way home.  Good thing we live close to school ;) 

And to top it off we kept with our tradition of blasting "School's Out For Summer" as they got into the car and we drove home.  It was a fun afternoon for sure!  Happy Summer!