​I have so much fun putting together my annual gift guides. So, if you hate shopping or trying to think of gifts for everyone in your life, hopefully these ideas will work for you — more grown-up gift guides will be posted soon. As always, I love hearing from you with additional gifts and will try to keep the ideas coming on Facebook as we get closer the holiday season. 

Usborne Magic Painting Books
I shared these in Just 3 Things No. 10, but need to re-emphasize how fun they are for kids (and adults). These beautiful books just take water, a brush, and your relaxing headspace to create wonderful paintings. 

Cool Tableware (BIPOC-Owned Business)
For the kid with the parents who don’t want to sacrifice their cool design aesthetics, fun and exciting tableware can really step up snack time.  

Toddler Cutting Board Set
A set of toddler knives is on Luke’s Christmas list this year. He wants to “help” in the kitchen and I can get frustrated easily trying to find ways to engage him. I’m hoping he will enjoy slicing and dicing with these basic knives!  

Life on Earth Simple Bingo
This brand’s games are beautiful and this bingo set is appropriate for players as young as 3. 

Usborne 100 Paper Planes to Fold and Fly Book
This became one of my go-to presents in the past year. It works for kiddos across age groups and is fun for grown ups too. There are a few versions to pick from and enjoy. 

Do Good Daily (BIPOC-Owned Business)
My 1 and 3 year olds do not have the focus to work on this with me yet, but I love this set of tools to mindfully set goals for doing good every day.  

IKEA BYGGLEK Lego Box
These can be tricky to come by and folks like to re-sell them online for crazy prices, but if you have an IKEA near you they are definitely worth snagging. The Lego box can be paired with a kit to amp them up and are really great for 6-10 year olds who love displaying their little creations. 

Pantone Box of Color
I wouldn’t be themostcolorfulone if I didn’t recommend this colorful set of books for the littlest folks in your life.  

Not So Different (BIPOC Author)
This recently published beautiful book aims to "children to embrace their differences and celebrate diversity." 

The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey
This is not a toddler Curious George story, but instead the fascinating origin tale of its authors and illustrators. I found this in a Little Free Library and have really enjoyed reading it myself. Thriftbooks has some copies at great prices too. 

Eric Carle Magna-Tiles
Magna-Tiles are a pretty universal kid present, but add in Eric Carle’s beautiful illustrations and even the littlest toddlers will want to engage and build. Pair these with the associate book so that kiddos can build the story as it is read aloud to them. 

Magnetic Drawing Board
Yes, the Magnadoodle from your childhood is still out there and lots of fun. JJ loves our drawing board for at home and in the car. Keep it classic, gift this with another of your own favorite childhood toys. If the kids don’t like the toys, the parents probably will ;) 

Little People Lift the Flap Books
Both JJ and Luke love these books for some reason — it may just be us, but we hope the little folks in your life will enjoy them too. There is so much to look at on each page and every spread offers questions and talking points to think about as an adult reads along. 

Haus of Headrwaps (BIPOC-Owned Business)
Before having a JJ, I was judge-y about little girls with big bows — now I am very supportive of the cuteness factor and practicality. This site is unfortunately closing, but has great deals while supplies last. I think a cute bow would be the perfect thing to pull together any holiday gift. 

Build a Bouquet Snap Together Flowers
These are fun tinkering toys to keep little hands and minds busy. 

Removable Wall Decals
We are renting our home, so wall decals have been our go-to decorating item for our kids’ rooms. Definitely ask the parents before gifting these to make sure they are welcome and the parents are ready to put them up. There are beautiful options on Etsy, but if gifting, look for adhesive decals instead of transfer decals which are a bigger undertaking and not easily movable.  

Waffles + Mochi: Get Cooking!: Learn to Cook Tomato Candy Pasta, Gratitouille, and Other Tasty Recipes (BIPOC Author)
If you have any young chefs in your life or kiddos who enjoy the Waffles + Mocha Netflix show, this cookbook will be released in time for the holidays. Pre-orders are available now to make you feel really on top of your game. 

Alphaprints
These board books are great for little eyes and hands. They are super colorful and inspire kiddos to see and create things based on shapes around them. 

Play-Doh Shape Extruder
This is cheap, simple fun and Luke’s absolute Play-Doh toy. It is one of the few things in our house that keeps him truly occupied. 

Virtual Dance Class (BIPOC-Owned Business)
For families that aren’t comfortable or able to get back into in-person activities, it may be fun to gift a virtual experiences like the dance classes offered by Lovely Leaps. 

I’ve been Christmas shopping for Luke and JJ for a few months because it is fun and relaxing for me haha. I’ve been doing my best to buy everything used or re-sold new with pretty great success thus far. My favorite places to shop include:
Bears Repeating (Local to Lehigh Valley, PA)
The Kids Clothesline (Local to Lehigh Valley, PA)
Three Peas Children’s Consignment (Local to Ann Arbor, MI and Shipping available)
Just Between Friends (Find your local sale)
Mercari (Shipping available - try my referral link for money back) 
Thriftbooks (Shipping available)
Facebook Marketplace (Local to you and Shipping available)

Happy shopping to you all. Hopefully these ideas will help for the kiddos in your life, plans for toy donations, or any gift exchanges you get roped into as well. 

1. Postcard Apps
I was really good about writing postcards while on summer vacations as a kid. And my friends were great about writing them to me too. They were fun to pick out at souvenir shops and they were equally fun to receive in my mailbox at home. For just a few dollars, you can pull photos from your phone into a cute layout, write a short message, and send a postcard to your friend, parents, nieces or nephews, whoever! What is more summer than sending a postcard from your travels or from your staycation? It’s also a great way to send a last minute birthday/anniversary/whatever card. Try MyPostcard to get started.

2. Skorts
I’ve always loved skorts. I have very fond memories of a plaid skort from Strawbridge’s that I rocked in middle school. Anyway, my skort-love continues into my stay-at-home parenting days. They are functional for play-grounding, but feel more put together or at least summery than some of my other day to day athleisure. Per usual, I’m buying mine at Eddie Bauer these days.

3. Usborne Magic Painting Books
This is masked as my kid recommendation of my Just 3 Things, but these are really for me. These are $10 a pop and my 1 and 3 year olds only deserve Dollar Tree $1 versions, but these are way better. With the magic of water and a relatively steady hand, you can feel a sense of artistic accomplishment even when someone is whining and pulling on your non-dominant arm. There are so many to choose from, but I’m most excited to dive into the Famous Paintings Magic Painting Book. Doing these outside with a cool drink is summer time winning. 

Keep on summer-ing!

​It’s been a while since I shared Just 3 Things — these are my posts that provide, you guessed it, “just 3 things” as quick, practical inspiration for you. I hope you find something useful in today’s 3!

1. Thriftbooks
   Do your kids play rough with the pages and flaps in their books? No just mine? Do you hit the renewal limit on your book club books before you’re through them? Oh, again, just me? Well, just in case you ever have these problems 🙂, you can rely on Thriftbooks, They have a great selection of used books. Most of what we’ve purchased have been retired library books and we love giving them a new home (or a great price).
2. Multi-purpose Toys
   We live in a small space and one of my son’s absolute favorite words is “more.” These two things do not go hand in hand. I love finding toys that we can put to multiple uses and provide fun for both of my kiddos, despite their two year age gap. Right now, I’m loving our play eggs, yep, our play eggs. These things work for so many things: (1) play eggs in our play kitchen, (2) grocery items when we play store, (3) egg hunts, (4) identifying colors and shapes, (5) fine motor skills practice, and (6) memory games to name a few. Plus, Luke and JJ both love playing with them. These are the eggs we have, but you can find many varieties at different price points. These make a great Easter basket fillers too!
3. Leaving Old Pictures in Frames
   I belong to many minimalism/organizing FB groups and the rise of printing photos on canvases has led to questions about what to do with those canvases when you want to hang new pictures. I stick to framed pictures for family photos or prints (including my kids’ originals) I know I will want to change regularly or even every few years. If the frame allows, I love to keep all of the pictures that have been in that frame right there together. That way, every time I go to update my frames, I get to experience a time capsule of memories. It’s a much more tangible and nostalgic way to relive memories than the digital “On this Day 7 Years Ago” reminders that pop on my phone for some reason. And it brings me a great deal of joy.

I’d love to hear your ideas for multi-purpose toys to give us inspiration for things to add to our Activity Jar. Let me know if these 3 things spark anything for you and I’ll be back with more soon.

I had a plan to make some garland for the kids’ birthday coming up next month, but then realized every day deserves some fun, colorful garland! It is an age-old dilemma for parents, “is it ok for me to just throw away my kids’ artwork?” In my opinion, YES! "Enjoy and recycle.” That is my motto whenever we find ourselves with a stack of paintings or when we gift  some of Luke’s art to friends and family with no obligation to keep forever and ever.

But, it can also be fun to find ways to display some art or re-purpose into room decor. Enter, the very easy kids artwork garland. Luke’s paintings and crayon drawings may not be great works of fine art, but when you chop them up, there are some subtle, beautiful details in each piece. 

What you’ll need…

• Stack of artwork
• 3” circle punch (or scissor for freehand or any shape punch)
• String or thread
• Transparent tape
• Scissors

Let’s get started… 

1. ​Measure the space you plan to hang the garland to determine string length and approximate number of cutouts required.

​2. Punch away until you have your desired number of cutouts.

3. Lay your shapes out face down at preferred spacing, drape string over the line of cutouts and tape down to each shape securely (make sure to leave extra string on ends for hanging).
4. That’s it, you’re ready to hang! 

​If kids artwork isn’t your speed, you can try this with photos, holiday cards, postcards, even magazine or catalog clippings. I’m looking forward to collecting more art so that we can add a few more strands to this window.

There are bigger problems in the world, I know, but one of my Mom challenges right now is stir-craziness that leads to tv watching. Luke's not much of an independent player and there are times that I think I am actually losing my mind playing with the same toddler toys over and over again. I have told friends that Luke's Christmas presents were sort of presents to myself because they would be providing some variety to my daily experience. I'm trying to roll out simple solutions to battle the boredom and to cut back on our tv watching. If you don't have kids, today's idea may still be of interest, so stick with me (pun intended -- you'll see).

The Activity Jar 

This is #20 from my 21 for 2021 list and it's as basic as it gets, but it’s working. Get yourself a jar (we’re using a finished applesauce jar [plastic for when Luke runs away with the jar]), a pen, and some jumbo craft sticks. Write down a simple activity you can do with your kid(s) or they can do on their own on each stick. And voila, you have an Activity Jar. We are going to focus on kids’ activities here, but you could apply this to:

• Grown up activities
• Cleaning or organizational activities to tackle
• Shows to watch
• Restaurants to order from
• People to call or write a note to
• Prompts to journal about

The key for our kids’ activity jar is simple, like no to minimal setup required for the activity! How this helps:

• Is one response to when your kid is screaming to “watch a show” — suggest, “let’s pick a stick"
• Redirects attention to toys that you haven’t been playing with
• Reminds you to integrate some educational fun into your days
• Can be a fun item to have on the counter or shelf if you take some time to decorate the jar or pick a fun container
• Allows you to display a list of what you did that day with your kids*

This last one is really important to me. There are days when I feel like we’ve completed absolutely nothing and that the day was a parenting wash. It’s great to be able to look back at what things we did and to be able to ask Luke which sticks he remembers completing. So, we got a pocket chart from the Dollar Tree to display our completed sticks on a bulletin board. 

​We’ve been at this for a few weeks and we generally only do one or two sticks each weekday as transitional activities. We were even able to use a stick when we were leaving Luke with a babysitter, my Dad <3, to avoid the normal departure meltdown. I keep a running list of sticks I’ve made in my phone so I don’t accidentally make duplicates and so that I can jot down ideas as they come to mind. Here’s what we’ve got:

• Find 3 sheep anywhere in the house
• Do 100 jumps on the trampoline
• Do 10 jumping jacks
• Read a Curious George story
• Write a letter with a picture to a friend
• Play grocery store
• Make paper airplanes
• Dance to New Light by John Mayer
• Play doctor check up
• Paint with watercolors
• Build a dog house with magnetic tiles
• Build a castle with magnetic tiles
• Read a story with a silly , really fast voice
• Make silly faces in the mirror
• Find 3 cows anywhere in the house
• Draw a picture of a train
• Draw a picture of something that starts with L
• Look at a photo album
• Do a numbers puzzle
• Do a letters puzzle

Some of these are really specific to our family, but others I’m sure you could adopt right away. Again, I will mention, NO to MINIMAL setup — don’t make this hard for yourself or the babysitter. We will be looking forward to adding activities for warmer weather and for things that the kids can do together as JJ gets more mobile too. Happy activity-ing!