• Love It – Magformers Set

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    Brina loves creating things with the Magformers!

    The girls got a Magformers Set for their birthday.  Since then they have played with the set for hours.  A bunch of time was spent playing with them during their recent snow days when they did not have school.  I love it when they get a toy that promotes creativity.

    Magformers are bright colorful magnetic toys that you can use to build all kinds of items with.  The set we got contained squares, triangles, and pentagons.  They are easy to use and the magnets are enclosed so they cannot be swallowed by younger kids.  The pieces always attract, never repel, making it easy for anyone to stick two pieces together to build.  The magformers stimulate creativity, engineering, spatial awareness, coordination, and mathematics.  You can build pretty much anything you can image from balls, houses, pyramids, turtles, towers, and so much more.  This toy has sparked our kids imaginations over the past month and they are still pulling it out to play with it regularly.

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    Big ball out of Magformers

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    Of course knocking it down is always a fun task to do too

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    Brina built all the items in the book first than started creating her own inventions.  Love watching her read the directions and put things together.  She was pretty quick at it!

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    Magformers creation

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    She has spent hours putting together different combinations and items with this set.

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    Proud of her creation

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    Making some little items

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    So much fun

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    House

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    Karlie loves playing with them too.  She split her time between the magformers and reading some chapter books.

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    Myrtle the Turtle

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    Time to take this one apart and start on a new project

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    Having a blast

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    Neat creation

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    Fun toy

    There are many different Magformers Sets that you can get.  Amazon is a great place to look for them and you can read all the great reviews as well.

    “Love It” is a series of posts on items that I use regularly in my household that I love!  There are some items in our daily lives that make life more enjoyable, efficient, or just plain fun.  I will be sharing with you some of the products that have been given to us (or to me) that have made it to the top of my list.  It’s my way of giving a huge thumbs up!

  • What Are They Building Now!?

    Our family lives on a small quiet street.  All our neighbors are retired so when we start a project, specifically one in the yard, everyone is all “curious” about what we are up to.  One of our neighbors will sit on the other side of the fence in his lawn chair sipping sweet tea and watch us as we work in the yard.  After 10 years of being the entertainment for the neighborhood seeing him pull up his chair just makes me laugh.

    We live on what the kids call a “small farm”.  The property is over 4 acres with a big yard, creek, and woods.  The girls and pets love running and playing in our yard.  We’ve even done camp-outs, paintball games, bonfires, target practicing, and a lot of other activities in our yard.

    Okay…..so back to the neighbors question “what are they building now”?  A little over a year ago I was reading an article about goats, don’t ask me why, just happened to catch my eye during that time.  Now I am not a big fan of goat milk or cheese or meat so that wasn’t what caught my attention it was the part about what the goats ate.

    While the goat’s digestive system is similar to that of cattle, horses, and sheep they tend to prefer brush and trees over grass (they are more like deer).    The reason why that caught my attention was because with our 4 acres we have a lot of trees, leaves, and brush.  My husband and I had been talking a week before about spending some more time cleaning the undergrowth in the wooded area of our property so the article intrigued me.

    With all that being said our kids LOVE animals (dogs, turtles, horses, cats, you name it), it is one area they have in common. They have been asking for years for a horse (I don’t think that’s going to happen, at least any time soon).  A couple months earlier I teased my husband that I was going to get chickens for the girls to raise and so we could have fresh eggs to eat.  He vetoed the chicken idea mainly because we have too many wild animals that go through our property (turkeys, deer, racoons, possums, foxes, coyotes, etc….).  So when I brought up the idea of getting goats (more as a joke) I figured he would just laugh at my suggestion…..well, he didn’t.  He started researching it more and decided that if I was up for it we could consider the possibility in a few months.

    Well, a few months went by and we started preparing for the newest members of our family.  What began with a simple glance at an article turned into building a goat house.  Jake designed and built the whole thing by himself (well, with the help of the girls).  The girls were soooooooo excited!  Here are some pictures of the process:

    Brina hammering away

    Brina and Karlie having fun “working” on the goat house

    Daddy working with his two helpers!

    Brina & Karlie helping Daddy on the roof of the goat house

    Brina, Karlie, Mommy, and Skipper painting the goat house.  The girls picked out the color “candy apple red”!