I planned on making a writing caddy for our daughter, but we instead found this blue wire caddy at Joann’s on clearance and the little miss insisted we bring it home. Luckily it’s my style too, so I was thrilled to set it up at her play table in the living room. Inside it we keep:

- Letters and Numbers For Me activity book (published by Handwriting Without Tears)
- The complete set of Jan Brett’s free traditional coloring alphabet tracers stapled together with a this free downloadable Handwriting Without Tears Capital Letters Formation Chart
- Lined and blank paper

- Soft pencils and erasers
- Shape and alphabet stencils
- Protractor
- Maria the Scientist Paper Dolls
- Calculator (used primarily as a pretend cell phone)
- A set of butterfly play bank checks that you can download for free!

We keep the writing caddy on the child sized table by the window overlooking our garden. Adjacent to our birding materials (in the baskets/bags on the floor), we’re all set for everyday learning!

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We picked up this table and three small sized chairs at IKEA a while back. Why spend $25 per chair when you can buy a side table and stools on sale for the same price?! Put together, it’s the perfect set for a three-year old.

Our daughter plays there every day.

This week we clipped some flowers from our garden and placed them in a small bell jar on our play table, transforming the space from hum-drum every day to super special. YES! We finally have enough flowers to clip for bouquets! This is a first from our small, front-yard garden. After two years of hard work, the plants are finally filling out and flourishing. We’re thrilled.

So here we are in our living room, overlooking our garden. A special, child-sized place we eat meals, practice writing letters, and serve play food to our dolls.

Now we can enjoy the result of all our hard work in the yard with this bouquet of beautiful fresh flowers while we read, write, play all week long…

May we enjoy many more hours of fun here and savor fresh cut flowers ALL SUMMER LONG.

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Remember our holiday wreath that we made using an embroidery hoop and clothespins?

We decided to repurpose it for the rest of the year, until next December when we’ll fill it with holiday cards again down in our living room.

For the time being we’ve decided to place it in our daughter’s new big girl room, in the last bit of free wall space, next to a nerdy baby poster, her embroidered portrait and toddler artwork, and above our photo banner with glittery clothespins.

We intend to place photos from our recent travels (to New Mexico and New York) in the frame, but in the meantime we’ve clipped some older favorite family photos to the wreath for now.

A perfect fit for the space!

Now I need to work on updating her linens. Perhaps some embroidered pillowcases are in order or a tie dye project for the sheets. What do you think?

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Every week I try to keep the kitchen like this but, alas, I find the task to be impossible.

So instead I start my week off enjoying this temporary sense of calm, reminding myself that the kitchen will stay like this for only few hours (minutes?!) before the dishes begin to accumulate and the clutter piles up. I try to take a deep breath and enjoy the moment.

Of course, the kitchen isn’t really clutter-free. There’s always this giant pile of things I need to attend to TODAY… but we can turn a blind eye on that corner and just focus on the cooking space.

Clean. Sparse.

Ready to mess up!

Time to get cooking…

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The little miss picked this turquoise color.

I love all those reds and blue together. Delightful!

My daughter and I then arm wrestled over whether the strainer was destined for her play kitchen or my real kitchen.

I won with the condition that she could borrow it occasionally.

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