The Beginning!

Hello blog world! My name is Amanda, and I am a mama residing in Washington state. It's beautiful and green here, and we are surrounded by mountains and the Strait of Juan Defuca. I am currently a stay at home mom for now, and it's working out pretty good minus the fact that we only have one income, but we survive. It's not a bad life at all.

I've been wanting to start this blog for months now, and I am finally doing it. I do a lot of projects with my daughter and I would love to have a place to document all of them. She is three, turning four in May, and we are doing some Pre-K homeschooling and I also give her lessons about sabbats and Pagan traditions. We are also striving to live "green" lives the best we can, so we have a lot of projects that we do and I would love to share them all! I'm very excited to start this project and I hope I can make some new friends along the way.

Today we aren't doing anything too exciting. My daughter, Willow, is playing next to me at the kitchen counter with a sensory bin that I made for her about a week ago. If you don't know what a sensory bin is, and you have young children, you should definitely check them out!

Basically, a sensory bin is exactly what it is described as. It's a bin full of things that stimulate your child's senses. It is visually, texturally, and audibly stimulating, and can even stimulate their sense of smell if you add a scent to the bins contents. We are having so much fun with the one we made, and we plan on doing many more in all different themes. I recently learned about them from a mom in a group that I'm part of on CafeMom.

I have pictures! I take a lot of pictures, so be ready for lots of eye candy! I am a shutterbug at heart. It works out pretty good, because we get to document so many fun things that we do as a family. So here's Willow's "garden flowers and bugs" themed sensory bin...

She plays with this thing for so long, and it sparks so much creativity and imagination! The best part is that I didn't have to spend a single extra penny on it. We had all the supplies for this project right here at home. The bin is just a small sterilite container with a cover that I had kicking around that I bought at Walmart (about $1.50 when I bought it a couple years ago), the beans are some that we don't really eat so we found a way to use them, the flowers I bought at the Dollar Tree over the past couple years for various projects, and all the toys I dug out of her toy boxes.

I have found some great pictures on Pinterest of sensory bins using a wide variety of themes. Since we are a pagan family, we plan on doing some for the different sabbats, instead of mainstream religious holidays. I have also seen some with cute themes such as construction vehicles, ocean life, cooking, outer space, and seasons. Fun stuff!

Of course, you can buy things to put in a sensory bin if you want. In the future if we need to find some inexpensive store bought supplies I plan on checking out our local Dollar Tree store, Target dollar bins, yard sales, thrift stores, and JoAnn Fabrics dollar bins.

As you can see, she digs right in!

Have a great day, and I'll be back to post more silly, fun stuff another time.