Review & Giveaway! - Honey Bunches Of Oats

One of my favorite breakfasts of all times, is dry cereal. I know I'm a minority there, but the crunch of cereal is lost in the sogginess with milk. My husband thinks I'm crazy, but textures are just not my thing.

I have a few favorite cereals to keep on hand when I feel like a good crunch in the morning, afternoon and sometimes as an evening snack. One of my favorites is Honey Bunches of Oats. There is something about the combination of oats, granola and honey for a little sweetness. I can munch on this for many days in a row without getting tired of it (another thing I am known to do often).

I have always loved Honey Bunches of Oats, but now they are even better. They added more granola, which is definitely a plus in my books! Granola is one of my favorites as well!

The beauty of eating Honey Bunches of Oats is that it's also a healthy snack. While it may seem like a sweet snack, you are getting 10 grams of whole grain, 9 essential vitamins and mnerals and 4 nutritious grains with only 6 grams of sugar! Sounds like a healthy, low sugar snack that everyone can enjoy!

The great news is, Honey Bunches of Oats is giving away a free box of cereal to one of my lucky readers!  

Here's all you need to do:

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This giveaway begins May 30, 2012 and will end on June 13, 2012 at 8 pm. One winner with a valid entry will be selected at random using random.org. The winner will be announced and emailed and must respond within 48 hours to claim. Otherwise, another eligible entry will be chosen. Enter as many extra entries as you would like, good luck!

Disclaimer:  Thank you Purex Insiders and Honey Bunches of Oats for providing a complementary box of Honey Bunches of Oats for review as well as the coupon for the giveaway.  The opinions stated are my own and I did not receive any monetary compensation.

Tot School - What's on our shelves...

~~ Little Miss is 3 years Mister Man is 2 years ~~

I finally got around to changing up our shelves. I've been slacking since we have been spending so much time outside, but I knew it needed to be done. So here's what is on our shelves right now.

It's so much fun when they see new things on the shelves. The excitement is great and the way they watch each other, help each other, and figure out the new items is wonderful!

One of the favorites right now is of course the beads, my kids LOVE to pour and scoop! Mister Man is doing great picking up the tray, putting it on a mat, cleaning up and putting it back on the shelf.

Even Little Miss got in on the fun, even though she mastered this a while ago, it was new and exciting for the day.

They both also had fun with the can and rubber bands. Simple and easy to make and a lot of fun for the kiddos! I love items like that! This was a bit challenging at first for Little Miss but she quickly picked up and had a good time working on putting the rubber bands on and taking them off the can.

Mister Man was determined to do it himself.

However, he soon figured out it was harder than it looked and he let me hold the band and he would push the sides over the edges. But his favorite thing was taking them off the can, something he had no problem doing by himself!

 Little Miss loved the new challenging shape puzzles I added to the shelves this week. It took her awhile to realize how it worked but she figured them out and had a blast!

Even Mister Man tried, but he ended up having more fun just dumping the pieces out and putting them back in the container.

The colander and pipe cleaners was a lot of fun for both kiddos. Madi had fun putting both ends into the holes.

While Mister Man enjoyed pushing them all the way through.

Mister Man is beginning to really enjoy the tongs and shapes tray. Although it is hard for him, he gets better at the tongs everyday. He can now do really well when with opening and closing them and is working on picking up the items with the tongs. A little more practice and he will be a pro!

The old parmesan cheese container and straws was fun as well. Mister Man was really good at this so I dont think the challenge was quite there anymore, but you dont know until you put it out there!

Little Miss has also worked on her cutting. She is getting better at cutting but it still frustrates her at times so we limit this work and stop when it gets frustrating.

Mister Man took a try but it wasnt long before he stopped and moved onto something else.

Little Miss also had some fun outside, transferring water with the sponge. She did a great job and was quite proud!

Overall, it's been a good week for learning around here. Hope everyone has a great Memorial Day Weekend!

Foodie Friday - Clean Eating - Sunflower, Almond, Peanut Butter Granola

We've been eating clean for quite a while now, not horribly strict, but enough to tell a difference when we eat something processed. I have a ton of fun recipes for different foods, but one of my favorites is this clean eating granola. The taste is delicious by itself or in a parfait (my daily snack).

I found the recipe on Clean Eating's website, which is where I find a lot of my recipes. I altered it a bit, but here is the original. And below is my variation. I highly recommend it, it is simple to make and tastes so much better than any granola I have purchased at the store.

Sunflower Almond Peanut Butter Granola:

• 3/4 cup sunflower seeds
• 2 cups oatmeal
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup slivered almonds
• 4 tbsp natural peanut butter
• 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
• 1/2 cup raw honey
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 300°F. Combine ingredients in a bowl and mix until evenly blended.
2. Press mixture in a baking pan and bake for 40 minutes.

You really could vary the nuts and try different versions. Since I pretty much crave this, I haven't done any variations, however, I am sure I will be ready for a change soon so I will probably work with this one to make the next!

Enjoy!

I will do it myself!

It seems crazy to me how much independence my kids have come upon in the last few months! It seems that everyday they are doing something new on their own. Little Miss has been dressing herself for a little while now, and although there is sometimes a bit of frustration, she has been doing great! She is also cleaning herself up after meals, cleaning up her own messes, making her own sandwiches and snacks, putting on her toothpaste and brushing her teeth (with a quick check and brush from me as well). 

She loves to try and do pretty much anything on her own, which I love and hate. I love watching her work hard and figure out things she isn't sure about. But I hate the messes it creates sometimes! For instance, she wanted to paint her own nails. I set up a towel under her and let her go at it. She loved it!

 It was a great learning experience for her and she did a great job. But the mess it created was crazy!

In addition to Little Miss, Mister Man has been showing some more independence as well. He is constantly saying, "I will do" and taking his turn at trying something new.  And he has just recently started swinging in his big boy swing!

He is following in his sister's footsteps with the independence and I know soon he will be wanting to do everything she does. Until then, I am enjoying the small steps towards independence.

Tot School - Numbers, Letters and some other fun!

It's been quite busy around our house so Tot School has taken a back burner for a little while, however, we have managed to sneak in some fun activities. Here are a few things we have been doing.

I created a fun cookie sheet activity for Little Miss with magnetic numbers and a counting sheet. She had fun counting the flowers and putting the corresponding number in the box.

She then had fun working on putting her numbers in the correct order 1-9. She did it wonderfully!

She has also been working on her letters, writing and sounds. She has the sounds down pretty well, and can tell you what most words start with. She had fun doing a some word puzzles, and even surprised me by sounding out the whole word to figure out what it said.

She also has been working on writing her letters, sidewalk chalk one afternoon, became a fun game of rainbow letter writing. She is doing great! She can now write almost all of her letters, although not all of them are correct. We are working on them all and she loves to learn more and write words!

She has been more and more interested in the Kapla blocks. So we had fun building stairs. She had a great time figuring out what number of blocks we needed to make it one step higher.

Mister Man has been busy with colors and although I dont have many pictures of him working he has been doing a great job of identifying colors. He loves pointing to colors and saying their name, although he almost always says "yellow" before he tries to really figure it out! We are working on matching colors as well, he can do it when he really feels like it, otherwise I am wasting my time.

I am also working with him on using tongs and sorting. He has been having fun working with the tongs and colored shapes. He gets frustrated sometimes, but when he really focuses he can do it well!

I am hoping to get some new activities put together for them this week, so hopefully next week's post will be filled with new ideas!

Construction Paper Hopscotch

~~ Little Miss is 3 years Mister Man is 2 years ~~

One afternoon, I decided to use construction paper in multiple colors to make hopscotch in our living room. It went from a small game of hopscotch to many different creative ideas in no time! The kids had a blast.

Here's what I did:

I took 10 construction paper rectangles (I had to repeat a color because we are running low on our construction paper), some masking tape and a marker. I put them on the floor, taping as I went, then took the marker and wrote numbers on them in order. (I actually would like to do sight words with Little Miss down the road, but she's not quite ready for that yet).

Then we played hopscotch.

Soon, Little Miss decided to take her numbered golf balls and was matching the numbers.

When she finished that, I got some popsicle sticks and she counted the number of sticks to put on each number.

Mister Man had fun going to stand on each color I would call out to him.

Then they had fun finding items that matched the colors. Notice they are all books and her tag reading. Can you tell she loves books?!?!?

Overall it was a great afternoon game or maybe I should say games! It would be great for a rainy day or too hot to play outside day! Any other games that you can think of to go with this?

Farm Fresh Friday - Strawberries

We had a lot of fun strawberry picking yesterday! Lots of delicious farm fresh strawberries, 3 year old love and some messy hands and mouths! All which makes some great memories!