My Hubby. Or, Why Things Don't Get Done.

I love my Hubby.  I do.  I mean, look at this face!  What's not to love?

And he makes cute babies, if I do say so myself.

He's kind, and caring, and funny, but he's ridiculously silly.  He keeps this saying in his wallet about how a man should always have the heart of a child, but I'm constantly reminding him that it doesn't say "behavior" of a child.  

I've never taken a running leap to try to touch the ceiling in the office of my son's school, but he sure has. 

He's also spray painted one of the windows of our home just because he thought it was funny when he threatened to do it and I said, "Don't you dare."  I guess saying that sealed the deal.  (He did scrape it off afterwards.)  

And I'd better not forget the time he gave the kids a bath outside with the hose!

He's definitely full of surprises, which is why I don't know why I was shocked when I asked him to take a head shot (you know, "from here up") pic of me for the blog's "Welcome" section and this is what I got.

Thanks babe!  

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FREE St. Patrick's Day Printables!

In the spirit of St. Patrick's Day, I've created a FREE unit!  The unit contains a pattern page, 3 part cards that could also be used to make a memory match game, beginning letter sound page, a number line 1-10 page, a number line 11-20 page, and a roll a dice grid game.

Here's a peek at what's in the unit:

CLICK HERE to download the FREE St. Patrick's Day Unit!

If you use the unit and blog about it, leave a link in the comments!  I'd love to see! Enjoy! 

Click Here to see places where this post may be linked up.

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A Walk

In the quiet of the morning.

When the children have gone off to school, and the people off to work.

When no one is on the path but the retirees and snowbirds, strolling hand in hand along the water's edge, who offer you a friendly smile and a well wish for the day.  Or the occasional mother, jogging behind her wee one who rides comfortably in a stroller.

When the loudest sounds you hear seem to be the squirrels searching the woods for their breakfast, or an occasional small boat rolling past.

This is when I'm feeling so blessed to live in a town as lovely as ours, where nature, beauty, and recreation for its citizens seems to lie in the forefront of official decision making.

Blessed to have places to take scenic morning walks away from the hustle and bustle of the modern world.

Soaking in the energy from the natural world that surrounds.

Enjoy your day.

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My Kid is Awesome

I'm sure yours is too, it's not a competition.  I  just seriously love my kid something fierce..  He's so sweet, and thoughtful, and smart. He wrote me this on his dry erase board the other day:

It says:
"I love Mom in whole entire world and in the whole universe. Love mom dad. "

Not only did it get me with the sweetness, but I can't even take how cute the long I in "entire/intiyr" and long U in "universe/unvrs" are (see the little line on top?).  Did I mention I love this kid?

What have your kids done to brighten your day? 

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Banana Oat (Literally) Cookies

That's right.  Cookies made of bananas and oats.  Period.  Unless your house is like mine, and then you have to throw in some chocolate chips.  If, however, you happen to be a non-chocolate-chip-needing household, well then, we're back to just bananas and oats.

Cinnamon might be nice though...  You see, that's the beauty of these cookies, you can basically add in whatever tickles your fancy, or add nothing at all.  It's completely up to you.

These have become our new Friday night treat, loved by all of us.  And I don't feel guilty eating them because it's almost like having a bowl of banana oatmeal, just in different form.

Alright, I know you're here for the recipe, so let's get started.

You truly only need bananas and oats in this ratio:

1 banana = 1/2 cup oats

The original recipe calls for quick cooking oats (those little, tiny oats) but we only ever have regular oats around our house.  Here's what I used for this batch:

 3 bananas
1 1/2 cups oats
2/3 cup chocolate chips
1 tbsp ground flax seed (I add flax into everything)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Mash your bananas well, add in the oats and flax, and mix.  Then pour in the chocolate chips (if you're using them) and mix.

I highly recommend parchment paper (it's non stick, and makes for easy clean up), but I was out this day, so I used the good old fashioned paper towel and coconut oil method for greasing my pan.  You must grease your pan if you don't have parchment paper!

Place rounded teaspoon sized scoops on pan, and bake in the oven for 15-17 minutes.  Once cooled, eat as many as you want and don't feel guilty about it - they're just banana oatmeal!!

You can also find this post at:



  Green Thickies Healthy Vegan Friday

Twelve O Eight Pretty Things Linky Party

The Self Sufficient Homeacre Wildcrafting Wednesday

Lady Bird Lane Weekend Show Off Party

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Sponsorship Info

So, I've been posting on the blog for over a year now, but until recently, I had no idea that there was a whole, real blogging world out there!

When I began this blog, I was just documenting our Preschool adventures.  Then, when Little Guy ditched me for real school, I couldn't give up the blog, because well, I liked it!  

Now, I've realized that blogging is a community.  

It's become part of my morning routine to see what's going on with the blogs in my Bloglovin feed. 

Wow.

I spend my mornings reading about strangers lives.

If you're not hip to this world of blogging, it sounds kinda crazy when I put it like that.

But I'm assuming that if you're reading this, you're probably in the same boat as me, and you know that these people are not strangers.  I've gotten to know them, care about them, and tried out their recipes and crafts.  

This blog has been growing with the quickness in the past few months, and I hope it keeps growing, so I'll get to meet more great bloggers.

You can contact me at: marshmallowmudpie@yahoo.com if you'd like to see some stats.

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School Valentines

I saw this adorable valentine idea on Pinterest where a picture of a child was holding an actual lollipop. I thought it was really cute, except that said picture was captioned, "Valentine's are for suckers." I don't think that saying would fly in Little Guys school, but the lollipop idea was great, and I couldn't pass it up, so I decided to make my own version.

I took a pic of Little Guy with his hand out in front of him like so:

I uploaded it to this super easy photo editing site called PicMonkey  You don't have to create an account or anything. You just upload the photo you want to edit, edit it, and save it. There are so many Valentine's Day features right now, so I got to work making Little Guy's valentines.

Here's what I came up with:

From there, I uploaded the pics to Walgreens and ordered standard 4x6 prints.  They were ready to pick up in around an hour.
I cut slits into the top and bottom of Little Guy's pictured fist, and inserted the stick of a heart shaped lollipop.  Voila!

It was $6 (including tax) for 30 (I got extra for friends and family) photos, and $3 for the lollipops (although I'm sure you could find them cheaper).  So for $9, we've got personalized, adorable valentines for school!

  

*You can also find this post at:

 Sugar and Dots

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How to Make Sun Dried Tomatoes

Hubby and I are not big fans of raw tomatoes. Yes, we know how good they are for us, and we try. Really, we do. We hold ourselves back from saying, "No tomatoes" in restaurants, and we make ourselves stomach them. Okay...sometimes we simply have to pick them off.  But the point is, we know they are good for us;  it's just so hard for us to eat them raw.

Once cooked, however, we can totally handle them. Heck, I'd even go so far as to say we really like them!  We especially like sun dried tomatoes, but those puppies are kind of expensive. Around $5-$6 for 4 oz of organic sun dried tomatoes. Yeesh!  

Did you know you can easily make your own sun dried tomatoes? Well, you certainly can. And if you get your tomatoes from the farmer's market for dirt cheap like I do, it's next to nothing to make them yourself.  I got a bunch of roma tomatoes for $1.20 at the farmer's market last week, I have a rosemary plant (bush?) growing on our back porch, and I already had olive oil. And that's all you need to make sun dried tomatoes yourself, so I got crackin! 

Here's how you can make them. You need:

roma tomatoes

olive oil

rosemary

Start by washing and halving all your tomatoes. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.

Once halved, use a small spoon to scoop our the center, leaving yourself a little tomato boat. (Save those centers, they will go nicely in some pasta sauce or chili - or if you're braver than I, you can top a salad with them).

Place your little tomato boats in a bowl, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with rosemary.

Then place the oily, rosemary sprinkled boats on your baking pan, scooped side down like in the pic below.

Bake at 200 degrees for roughly 6 hours and there you have it! Sun dried tomatoes! Once dry you can put them in a zipped bag in the fridge, or you can put them in a mason jar and cover them with olive oil and put the jar in the fridge (that's what I do).

*How do you use sun dried tomatoes?    

You can also find this post at:

and at:

as a part of Your Green Resource.

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I Have a Button!

Hooray!  Whoo-hoo!  Yipee!  I finally figured out how to make a button!

Check it out:

<center> <a href="http://www.marshmallowmudpie.blogspot.com/"> <img src="http://i376.photobucket.com/albums/oo206/melindacollazo/beachbutton_zps91178ba4.jpg" border="0"/> </a></center>
I feel so grown up.  ;)

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