First Time Mom and Losing It

**I received the product below free for my review. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be a good fit for my readers. All opinions are 100% my own.


For as long as I can remember I always loved crafting with printables. I started designing graphics and custom made all of the decorations and souvenirs for my sister's baby shower. I remember trying to do everything on a budget so I made everything myself instead of ordering from custom websites. Everything was coming along until I ran out of ink! Not only the black cartridge but the color one too. Back then cartridges were about 35 bucks each so buying that ink really set me back in my budget. Since then I started to only print what was extremely necessary like coupons and confirmations and only printed on the draft setting.


Now that I am homeschooling my toddler I saw the tremendous need to start printing again so HP Instant Ink came to the rescue! There are a lot of great homeschooling websites and pins that I wanted to print them all! With HP Instant Ink I #NeverRunOut of ink and I can print them all! With HP Instant Ink you are saving up to 50% on ink by having your HP Instant Ink eligible printer know when it is running out of ink and signaling a shipment of new ink right to your door. Instant Ink is extremely affordable too with packages ranging from $2.99 to $9.99 depending on how many pages you print monthly. I love that Instant Ink counts the number of pages you print and not what you print. You can print out all full-page photos if you wanted and it would still be the same price.
HP Instant Ink can be cancelled at any time and there is no annual fee however there is a really great 3-month offer.



I like to use our long car rides as fun learning time so I created these booklets that I could print and just take along with us. Making them is simple. All you have to do is print each page out and sew a long line of stitching to bind them. If you don't have a sewing machine you can just use a stapler.

Title Page
Colors Page
Letters Page
Numbers Page
Shapes Page
Coloring Pages

If you never ran out of ink, what would you print? 

**I received the product below free for my review. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be a good fit for my readers. All opinions are 100% my own.


If you are looking for fun, great quality and educational toys for your kids you have to check out the HABA brand. Last month I got to view a selection of their amazing toys for babies up to 8+ years. I was so excited when I got contacted to review some of their toys that I jumped at the opportunity.

HABA is a wood manufacturing company best known for their amazing wooden toys. They are expanding their toy catalog to plush and even textile toys that are all brilliantly made. I love that most of their toys have some kind of education aspect to it.


My daughter got to try out the Dress-Up Doll Lilli Magnetic Game. It comes with a metal container, 4 background scenes and 54 magnetic pieces that include clothes, hairstyles, accessories and even some cute little pets.


I love that you can put the scenes right into the back of the tin and the doll and clothes stick right onto it. This makes it perfect for those long car rides we take with her. I love how she just picks the background and chooses the right clothes. Her favorite is the school background where she puts the perfect school outfit on and accessories Lilli with books and eyeglasses. Since the pieces are made out of magnets it is very durable and can make it through the hundreds of dress changes my daughter loves to make. I also love how all the pieces get stored right back into the tin when she is finished playing with them.



We also got to play with the Butterfly Threading Game. It comes with a huge colorful butterfly that is made out of thick wood.


It is extremely durable so I know my daughter will get lots of years out of this one. It also comes with 3 threads, 42 tiles and 2 double sided templates. My daughter loved all of the pieces that came with it and had fun playing with and stacking up the tiles.


I took the opportunity to go over the colors and shapes with her while she was playing. Then I showed her how to thread the tiles onto the string. She had fun doing that for a while and then I showed her how to add the tiles to the butterfly. I had her pick a template and helped her put the tiles on. She had so much fun playing with it and I had so much fun teaching her how to add the tiles.



HABA has so many more amazing toys and I will definitely be shopping around their website often. Their products are also available at major retailers too.

Which HABA toy is your favorite? 

My daugher loves playing dress up with her dolls. She is forever taking off outfits and putting on different ones with her Barbies. She got this really cool Doc McStuffins magnetic play doll that she loved to change the clothes on so I decided to make that like more educational. I designed a paper doll and some clothes, laminated it and added some sticky velcro. Then I made flash cards for each article of clothing so she could begin reading and memorizing how the words are spelled.

To make your own Educational Paper Dolls and Clothes:

1. Print out the following printables: doll, clothes, flash cards.


2. Carefully cut out the pieces of clothing.

3. Place the pieces of clothing into a laminating sheet sleeve. Make sure none of the pieces of clothes overlap and has a little bit of space all around.

4. Laminate the entire sheet of the doll printable.


5. Cut fourteen little pieces of velcro. Remove the paper backing of 5 pieces of velcro and place the soft part of the velcro onto the doll where indicated.


6. Take the pieces of the rough part of the velcro, remove the paper backing and place it on top of the pieces of velcro that you added to the doll earlier. Place the pieces of clothing correctly on top of the doll and press down so that the sticky part of the rough pieces of velcro stick onto the clothing. Repeat this step for all of the pieces of clothing.


After playing with the dolls for a while my daughter now knows what each piece of clothing is called. I started showing her the flashcards and reading them to her and now she knows how to read hat and shoes. I know that she will be reading all of the words in no time.

I have been homeschooling my toddler since September so that I can prepare her for pre-k. We have been doing pretty good and I love downloading and printing out worksheets for her to work on. I usually laminate the worksheets that she will use over and over and give her a dry erase marker. I wanted to try something different as she was getting bored of the same worksheets.


I got to review these amazing and brightly colored liquid chalk markers that work great with glass. I decided to get some frames that I could slip the worksheets in to write on top of the frame. Since the liquid chalk markers were so bright, colorful and liquidy my daughter really had fun using them. They wrote really smoothly on the glass and were easy to clean up with just a baby wipe. She loved having so many colors to choose from and it helped her practice all the different colors she knows.


I made some worksheets for her to work with that you can download below:

• Shapes Worksheet
• Numbers Worksheet
• Letters Worksheet
• Colors Worksheet

I love painting on shirts for every occasion because they are easy to make and affordable. Every time my toddler sees me painting onto a shirt she wants to be like mommy and paint one too. I like to let her craft and explore her creativity but I don't like cleaning up the mess. This is why I always get Huggies Wipes at Walmart. Since I got a new supply I decided to finally let her stencil on a shirt too.


First I created the stencil and printed it out. Then I traced it onto the paper side of freezer paper. I cut out the red stripes and and blue square of the flag. Then I ironed on the stencil to the middle of the shirt. Then I placed the blue square part of the flag back on and ironed it on. I also ironed on scraps of freezer paper to parts of the shirt that I didn't want my toddler to accidentally paint. Next I placed a piece of stiff cardboard into the shirt so that the paint wouldn't bleed through the back of the shirt. I then placed some red fabric paint on a paper plate and handed my daughter a sponge brush. I showed her how to paint inside of the stencil. When she finished painting the stripes I peeled off the part where the blue goes on the flag and let her paint it in. Let the paint completely dry and then peel off all of the freezer paper.


As soon as we finished painting I took out my Huggies wipes and cleaned away. I love that the triple clean feature really gets into the mess without breaking apart. Huggies is the only brand to have Triple Clean layers so I am confident that it will get the messes clean every single time.


Because Kids Outgrow Diapers, Not Messes* I always make sure to have the Huggies Walmart wipes on hand. I use them for everything from spills, to craft messes, to meal messes. They are super useful to have on-the-go too.


Walmart and Huggies want to show you the many ways to use the TripleClean wipes. Click below to watch the videos. You may find a new way to use them that you never thought of.

• 101:  HUGGIES® Wipes, the ONLY wipes with TripleClean* layers.
• Explorers: Don’t let a little mess get in the way of a lot of fun!  HUGGIES® Wipes helps ALL explorers stay in the adventure. #bestfriend
• The Cleaner: Ice cream #fail!  Watch how HUGGIES® Wipes saved the day from this on the go mess!
• Pasta Baby:  Question: What happens when babies and pasta collide?  Answer: HUGGIES® Wipes with TripleClean* layers.
• Playtime:  Playtime can be a dirty job.  HUGGIES® Wipes. Keep the play. Not the dirty.

A great Mother's Day present would be to have dinner ready quick and easy and something the toddler wouldn't fight to eat. She does love her pasta and tomato sauce so I started getting sneaky and adding some diced veggies to my homemade tomato sauce. As soon as my toddler spotted the diced green peppers she told me this is "yucky" and started picking everything out of her pasta bowl.

First I went to Walmart to pick up some veggies, cans of tomato sauce and Barilla® Penne. After trying to dice the veggies smaller and it took too long, I decided to dump everything into my food processor and pulse away. I added carrots, peppers, mushrooms and onions and pulsed until it was very finely chopped. Since the vegetables were chopped so finely it released a lot of liquid so I placed the veggies on top of a flour sack towel and squeezed all the moisture away.


After the veggies were dry, I added them to a hot sauce pan with olive oil and some minced garlic. I stirred the veggies until they were softened. Then I added a can of crushed tomatoes and a can of tomato paste. I added some seasonings and stirred on low heat for about 15 minutes. I let the veggie tomato sauce cool and put it into a mason jar to have for the week and some portioned out into ziplock bags in the freezer.


I love having Barilla® pasta on hand at all times because it is one of the few things my daughter will eat without a fight. She loves the penne pasta because she can easily eat it all by herself like a "big girl" I love it because it is super easy to do and with my prepared sauce it takes just minutes for dinner to be done.


Sneaky Veggie Filled Tomato Sauce and Penne (Printable Recipe)

• 1 box of Barilla® Penne
• 2 carrots
• 1 small onion
• 8 button mushrooms
• 1 green pepper
• 1 tblsp olive oil
• 1 large can of crushed tomatoes
• 1 small can tomato paste
• 1 tblsp dried oregano
• 1/2 tblsp dried basil 
• 1/2 tblsp onion powder
• 1/2 tblsp garlic powder

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Barilla. The opinions and text are all mine.

Hallmark made our Christmas super special last year with a visit to the North Pole Communicator at Times Square and a trip to their amazing store at the famous Rockerfeller center. One of the products from Hallmark that my daughter really enjoyed was the Rudolph Interactive Story Buddy. My daughter loved how Rudolph interacted with her when she said certain phrases.


With the amazing iReply technology, Hallmark has created another winner with the Request a Song Mimi doll. Mimi is an adorable little mouse that sings along to seven different original songs. All you have to do is press the button on her foot and tell her the song you want to hear. You can also say "Mimi's choice" and she will randomly pick one out for you. She also comes with a little book with all the lyrics of her songs so you can memorize or just read them as you sing-a-long with Mimi.


My daughter loves singing and probably knows all the words to every song on the Frozen soundtrack so I knew she would love Mimi. As soon as she saw hat the Mimi understood certain phrases like her Rudolph she instantly feel in love and hugged her. She doesn't know the words to the songs yet but I know in no time she will have them memorized. My daughter's favorite song is "Let's All Sing" and she loves to take Mimi by her hands and dance with her and she sings with her.


Click on the link to learn more about Request a Song Mimi. They also have a cool toy microphone and storybook that you can get to complete the set. You can also download a new song every month by clicking the link. We downloaded them onto our iPhones and connect them to radio in the car to entertain her on our long drives.