Meet the Hills

Got Book Love?

Are you familiar with Melissa Taylor’s Imagination Soup?  It is a cheerful and insightful place to discover the best new children’s books and fun activities.  I really love this site and am passionate about literacy which is why I was so excited to recently have the privilege of pre-reading Book Love by Melissa Taylor.

Click on cover to see more reviews at Amazon!

Here’s my Amazon review…   Continue reading

Journey 2 Family Fun Night

Careful with my baby!

The The Doodles and Jots gang, minus me, went to see Journey 2: The Mysterious Island and couldn’t stop talking about it.  They kids LOVED it so must they wanted to buy the DVD.  Dad, on the other hand had mixed reviews.  He had a hard time getting past the logic gaps in the story line.  He also found it to be a tad suggestive, a bit cheesy, and contained one of our pet peeves: attitudey teens.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, a sequel to the 2008 movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth stars Josh Hutcherson (also in the first movie) as Sean Anderson, The Rock, Luis Guzman, Vanessa Hudgens, and Micheal Caine.   Continue reading

13 Spooky Reads!

Halloween Children’s Book Favorites…

It is Halloween year round here!  My kids just love all things Halloween.  My son has a costume catalog full of tape repairs that he peruses on a regular basis.  My daughters loves our Halloween book collection and has her favorites at the library too.  I don’t remember liking scary things at all as a kid!  Isn’t it interesting how kids are like us in lots of ways and not like us at all in others?!  Lots of people are attracted to scary things.  I wonder why that is?

Even though it is not my favorite, if it gets them reading I am all for it!  I supposes if they had nightmares I might think differently.  I think it helps to keep it age appropriate.

Continue reading

Art Instruction Books for Kids

Today I am featuring a guest artist, my 6 year old daughter!  Possibly inspired by Press Here?  I don’t know, but I love this simple polka-dotted piece!  She also has her own blog, check it out at Coloring Book Center!

* * * 

You don’t need art instruction books for your kids.  It’s the truth!  Give them crayons, markers, construction paper, and they naturally know what to do with them.  Don’t interfere, don’t hover or tell them what do do.  Just show your interest in what they create.  Provide them with good lighting a comfortable chair, and work table and let them go!

Continue reading

Eat better while saving time and money!

Marble counters are on my wish list!

Are you in charge of the shopping and cooking for your family?  You do dread it?  Do you find it hard to shop with kids or have trouble finding time to go solo?  Do you spend too much on impulse buys and forget crucial items even though they are on your list?

Having your groceries delivered could be for you!

I have recently started having my groceries delivered again and I am rediscovering all its advantages!

Continue reading

Which utensil are you most like?

Discovering what makes you special and learning to embrace it is the basic theme from the picture book Spoon by Amy Krouse Rosenthal illustrated by Scott Magoon.  It is told from the unique, novel, cute, and a little funny perspective of a spoon and the illustrations are a perfect match.  My kids and I loved this book.  And we were so excited to follow it up with Continue reading

Easter Innovation

bunny napkin sketch

Every once in a long while, you come across genuine innovation in a sea of spin-offs.  And when you see it you, in such obvious brilliance, you find yourself wondering, why didn’t I think of that?!  I made such a discovering this morning at my local Rite Aid.

In the seasonal aisle, right between the Peeps and some budget bunnies Continue reading

“Balloons over Broadway” & puppet to print

I know my daughter really likes a book when she goes and grabs it or requests it the very next night.  When I also like the book, I seriously consider buying it!  That is how it happened this week with Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade by Melissa Sweet. Continue reading

Fractals

Spiral shell

We just got through reading Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature, a wonderful picture book written by Joyce Sidman with beautiful detailed scratch-board illustrations by Beth Krommes.  The illustrations are bold, colorful, and full of texture.  It is about reoccurring shapes in nature specifically the spiral.  The book show many examples, explains some of the functional benefits (for example an animal might curl up in a spiral to conserve heat), and celebrates the inherent beauty of spirals.  At the end it also explains spirals as mathematical patterns.  Continue reading