Jamieson Diaries

Married | Mother | Millennial

All Posts, Dear Diary, DIY, Frugal Ideas, Holiday, Toddler Activities

3 D.I.Y. Father’s Day Ideas for Kids

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Father’s Day is this upcoming Sunday, June 18th, and most of us have procrastinated on buying a gift. For those of us who have little children we can still get away with the cute, handmade gifts, for Dad. My husband loves getting handmade gifts from our daughter, who actually turns three years old on, Father’s Day this year. While out shopping for the materials to make my husband’s Father’s Day gift I decided to come up with a list of,  3 D.I.Y. Father’s Day Ideas for Kids, to help out those of you struggling for ideas. Not only are the options easy, but they are cheap, and there is no wrong way to do them. 

I bought all of these items from Michaels. For those of you, who like coupons like myself, I highly recommend downloading the Michaels app for awesome coupons and deals. 

Father's Day Ideas

1) Painted Ceramic Mug: 

This is a great go to option for creative gifts. Especially for Dads who love coffee and/or tea like my husband does. They even make these cute painted ceramic mug kits with all of the necessary tools for less than $5 each. This allows your little ones to not only have fun painting the mug, but they’ll get to see their artwork being used every time Dad drinks his coffee in the morning. Pretty awesome, right?

2) Canvas Painting:

This adorable idea allows Dad to display this masterpiece wherever he would like. Canvases come in many different sizes. Which allows you, as the parent, to decide how much mess you would like to clean up afterwards. Ha! You can find most canvases on sale at your local art store, and the paint, and paint brushes are also cheap. Canvas paintings also dry quickly when you use acrylic paint.

Father's Day Idea

3) Handmade Father’s Day Card

This is the most classic and popular option of the list. We’ve been making handmade cards for special holidays since we were in Preschool. Honestly, they’ve been around so long because they never get old and are so adorable. You can use construction paper, markers, stickers, etc. Whatever is used it’s one of the easiest and most creative Father’s Day gift ideas. If you would like to take this craft idea to the next level, buy a gift card to Dad’s favorite store, and tape it inside the card. He will already love the card but a gift card is the cherry on top of the whipped cream. 

What are some of your favorite Father’s Day gift ideas? If you haven’t procrastinated like the rest of us, what gift did you buy for your Dad, and why? Feel free to share with us in the comments below!

Father's Day Ideas

Brie <3

 

All Posts, DIY, Frugal Ideas

5 Frugal Valentine’s Day Ideas

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As we all know, Valentine’s Day is seriously right around the corner. If you’re a last-minute planner like *cough* my husband *cough* then you’re probably trying to figure out what to do. Everyone complains about how expensive Valentine’s Day can be so here are a few ideas that go easy on your pockets. Read More

All Posts, Dear Diary

March Goals: Accomplished?

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Hello everyone, and happy (third day of) April!

I’m sure most of you noticed it’s been well over two weeks since I have posted any content. I decided to take a last-minute break from blogging during the remainder of March due to life being pretty crazy busy. Between birthdays (happy belated blog shout out birthday to my awesome sister, Taylor!), Easter, Spring, friends visiting etc. March was a pretty crazy month. I did some serious deep Spring cleaning around the house while my husband was gone for a few days traveling for work. Even he came back home and almost didn’t recognize the house himself. Ha!

Easter sort of snuck up on me this year and I wasn’t even a little prepared for it. I wanted to make Jordyn’s Easter basket myself, but like I said before, I was completely unprepared and ended up buying her one. It came with a basketball (which she loves) and some cute head bands, so it could be worse. Our awesome friends, the Jones’, were in town this Easter, and we threw together some last-minute Easter activities for the kids and an Easter dinner for a group of our friends.

For the month of March I almost completed all of my monthly goals. I fell short by ONE goal, my cooking Periscope broadcast, but it went hand in hand with me taking a break from blogging for a bit. I will try to do two Periscope broadcasts for the month of April to make up for the missed broadcast last month, though. However, all of my other goals were completed and I’ll share them below :-):

Date Night: 

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Our babysitter was pretty busy between school and work in the month of March which means we had a family date night instead of just a date night with the hubby and I. We went one of our favorite restaurants in town, Bert & Ernie’s, and had a great time eating yummy food. Jordyn is always added entertainment when we are out and about haha.

New Recipe:

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I saw this delicious meal floating around Facebook and decided to give it a try while we had friends in town. It was SO good. The only downside was the Facebook video had no instructions or measurements besides the ingredients listed on the video. So thankfully it turned out so good!

DIY Project/Jordyn Activity:

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Jordyn and I did another “joint project” for the month of March. During my Spring cleaning of the house I noticed the upstairs bathroom had too much empty space on the wall. I went to Michaels the following day and Jordyn and I bought some canvases (they were a BOGO free sale too!) and created these masterpieces. Mine is on the left, Jordyn’s on the right, and in case you’re wondering: yes, Jordyn’s looks better LOL.

Twitter Chat:

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As usual, I participated in the #blkcreatives Twitter chat in March, regarding multiple streams of income. Although I could not personally contribute to the conversation, I still followed along with the chat, because I’m sure it’ll be useful to me one day in the future. It never hurts to learn more before jumping into things.

Natural Hair Style:

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I did bantu knots for my natural hair style in March and they did NOT turn out the way I wanted them to which is why it was put into the ponytail on the right haha. A for effort, right? I’m not sure what happened, but hopefully my April natural hair style turns out a lot better.

Nail Color:

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For March I chose my only darker green color for the theme of St. Patty’s Day. I love the sparkle of this emerald-green color. The color is called “Here Today…Aragon Tomorrow Suede” by OPI.

New Book:

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I finally jumped on the John Grisham bandwagon (20 years later) and LOVED this book. Talk about changing your life and perspective of everyday life for people who are fighting different battles than ours. I highly recommend this book be read by any and everyone because we as a society so easily judge those in different circumstances than ours.

Workout Reward:

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I actually worked out 21 days of the 31 days in March and felt so accomplished. I’m also only 22 seconds away from my half mile goal time. Seeing results always motivates me to keep going. I believe it’s also safe to say after three consistent months of working out, 20 days plus per month, working out has officially become a habit. Yay!

The goals I don’t have pictures of for March are my husband love/Kris appreciation gift and my random act of kindness. For my kind gesture for my husband I bought him some new hookah flavors. He loves his hookah and figured I would get him a gift he wouldn’t expect me to buy for him. Needless to say: he loved it.

For my random act of kindness, while at Dairy Queen one night getting my Oreo and Heath blizzard (it is amazing) I paid for the meal of the car behind me. I hope whoever was in the car enjoyed their ice cream/meal and pay it forward to someone else out there.

I hope all of your small and large goals you aimed to accomplish for the month of March were accomplished. Sometimes it’s hard to stay on track and work towards our goals but we just have to remind ourselves why we do it in the first place. I will be back next month to update you on my prayerfully 100% accomplished goals for the month of April.

Happy Sunday everyone and I pray you have a great upcoming week!

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Brie <3

[04.03.16]

 

All Posts, Dear Diary, DIY, Holiday, Toddler Activities

DIY Salt Dough Pumpkin Prints

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I have had quite a few people ask me how I made the salt dough hand print/footprint pumpkin craft for my little one, and I wanted to share the very easy process with all of you. I got the idea from @jessiebroad’s Instagram page who made almost the exact same craft with her children. The only thing I did different was a few extra colors and details. Here is the step by step process for making the little print pumpkins.

You will need:

1 cup salt

1 cup flour

1/2 cup water

2 oz. orange paint

2 oz. black paint

2. oz brown paint

Parchment paper

Rolling pin

*optional* liquid glitter glue

  1. Combine your salt, flour and water in a bowl. Knead together until combined as a smooth dough.
  2. Place your salt dough in between two pieces of parchment paper on the counter. Using your rolling-pin flatten you dough until it is about 1/2 an inch thick.
  3. Take your little ones foot and with a little force press down on the left side of the flattened dough to make a distinct enough imprint. You will do the same with their hand on the right side of the dough. However, aim for the middle part of the dough for each side so you have enough room to cut around the foot and hand print.
  4. Using a sharp tip knife, cut around the foot and hand print in the shape of a pumpkin. Make sure to include the stem in the cut out. Once the pumpkin has been cut out place it on a cookie sheet.
  5. Heat your oven to 200 F and place your salt dough in there for an hour. Allow about 30-minutes to an hour of cooling off after it has baked for the hour before moving on to the next step.
  6. Paint your pumpkin orange using multiple layers if necessary to coat the entire pumpkin properly. Give the orange layer(s) a few minutes to dry.
  7. Using a smaller paint brush, using the black paint, outline the foot and hand print. Once you have outlined the prints, fill them in with the black paint using a slighly larger paintbrush to save some time. Using multiple layers if need be to completely cover the prints.
  8. Lastly use your brown paint to fill in the stem of the pumpkin. Once the brown paint has dried if you decided to buy/use the optional glitter glue apply as much as you want to the stem. Let the pumpkin completely dry for an hour and you have a lovely Halloween keepsake for your little one!

She your pictures of your little ones masterpieces below 🙂


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Brie <3

[10.24.15]

All Posts, Dear Diary, DIY, Healthy, Holiday, Recipes

Healthy Halloween Snacks

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It’s that time of year again where we use all of the motivational speeches in the world to convince ourselves why we NEED to eat healthy and avoid the delicious Halloween candy that will be thrown our way. The only problem with this logic is…it hardly ever works because we don’t think of alternatives. Sure we may eat healthy for a little while, but we eventually give in to the copious amounts of snickers being shoved in our faces, and pretend like we have no clue what the word “calories” means. I was inspired by the company, Nuts.com to share some healthier alternatives to the usual Halloween candy and treats.”

I’m a realistic person who loves the yummy not so healthy foods just as much as the next person. It is because of this realism that I like to find the happy medium in situations such as this one. Having NO fun when eating healthier pushes most of us over the edge to binge eat, and having too much fun reverses months of hard work in just minutes.

With that being said, here are three healthy and easy snack alternatives to turn to this Halloween.

Jack-O-Lantern Oranges:Halloween 1

Yes, this is exactly what it looks like, oranges with faces drawn on them. Not only are oranges an awesome alternative for sweets because of how naturally sweet they are, but you get to be a child and draw/play with your food before eating it. Your Mom would be proud.

Apple Butter Teeth:Halloween 2

I love almond butter because it’s sweet, and is a great energy booster. For this snack you will cut an apple into slices and cut little “teeth” patterns into the slices. To make this look a little more “Halloweenish” I decided to add red dye to the almond butter to give a blood dripping effect. Not only does your food look creepy, but it tastes amazing.

*For some extra sweetness add a few dark chocolate chips on top, or melt it and dip half of your apple in it*

Banana Energy Pumpkin: Halloween 3

I call this little gem the energy pumpkin because it consists of whole wheat bread, almond butter, (I told you I love that stuff) and bananas. As you can see I dyed the almond butter black and the bananas orange for this particular Halloween snack. They are an amazing combo and when put together it serves as a natural energy boost. It is one of my favorite snacks to eat before heading to the gym.

These three healthy Halloween snack alternatives are great for everyone in the family to enjoy. What are some of your favorite healthy Halloween go to snacks? Share with me in the comments section! In the mean time, enjoy these guilt free Halloween snacks for the time being :-).

All Posts, Dear Diary, Healthy, Recipes

Peppercorn Roasted Garlic Olive Oil

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I randomly decided the other day I wanted to try my hand at infusing my own olive oil. I wish I had some spectacular story as to why I had this thought, but I was making the grocery list, we needed olive oil, I wrote it down, and BOOM I decided to make my own flavored olive oil. The End.

Okay, maybe not the END, but it is the end of the story. What made me decide to use roasted garlic and whole peppercorn as my infusing ingredients is also pretty simple. When I go to a restaurant that offers bread, balsamic and olive oil as an appetizer, I always add pepper to my olive oil. The roasted garlic spread on top of the mixture is what makes it amazing too. So I figured, why not try using these same ingredients for infusing my olive oil?

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I combined the ingredients to infuse the olive oil on, Friday August 7th. I even shared the process on a Periscope broadcast which was pretty fun. I strained and funneled the olive oil out of the mason jar, into olive oil bottles, on Wednesday August 19th.

IT IS SO DELICIOUS!

I’ve used the peppercorn roasted garlic olive oil for dipping french bread and sautéing vegetables for dinner. It has been amazing so far. I will post the ingredients and instructions below for those of you who would like to give it a try, or something similar.

You will need:

Olive Oil (I used the Pompeian brand)

Mason Jar

Roasted Garlic (2 bulbs)

2 tsp Whole Peppercorn

Empty Olive Oil Bottle

Mesh strainer

Liquid Measuring Cup

Squeeze your bulbs of roasted garlic into the mason jar. (You can find instructions on how to roast garlic on Google.) Add your two teaspoons of whole peppercorn to the jar as well. Now, add your olive oil until it is full. Put the lid tightly on the jar and store in a cool dark place for 1-2 weeks.

Once you are ready to bottle the finished product, using a mesh strainer and liquid measuring cup, strain the oil in the jar to separate the oil, roasted garlic and whole peppercorn. Take the now separated oil and pour it into your measuring cup to pour the oil into the empty olive oil bottle.

You now have “homemade” peppercorn roasted garlic infused olive oil 🙂

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Brie <3

[08.28.15]

All Posts, Dear Diary, DIY, Frugal Ideas

5 Creative Date Night Ideas

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Grow up in the surrounding Chicagoland suburbs, one thing I didn’t realize until I left, is how many activities and attractions I had around me to keep me busy all year-long. Once summertime rolls around you can add the plentiful music festivals and other outdoor activities to the mix. However, my husband and I are currently based in Montana, and although Montana in general has really exciting and fun cities/towns, we unfortunately don’t live in one of those fun towns. I know, it sucks, but what living in this town has taught me is how to be creative and think outside of the box.

My husband and I have only been married for two years, and we hadn’t been on a date that wasn’t dinner and a movie, for quite some time. I don’t know about you, but as much as I love a good meal and movie, I want to do something else for once, or twice, all the time. I believe repetition is good to a certain extent, I wouldn’t categorize date night with the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with in the “good” section of repetition though.

When you don’t have a variety of established places to go for date night, you have to become creative and bring your own versions of the perfect date nights to life. These five creative date night ideas, are some popular date night ideas I recreated so couples in any location, are able to participate, and shake things up a bit. After all, who doesn’t love out of the box ideas that can be done in your own home or surrounding area? Exactly!

kitchen

I know, I know, this isn’t a new date night idea by any means. However, why not take cooking together to the next level and create a couples cooking show? How can you recreate a cooking show? Get out the webcam and/or what ever device you use for making videos, and create a “fake” couples cooking show while making dinner. Pretend you have a loyal audience who enjoy watching you two bicker back and forth about how to cut certain vegetables, and/or share a few cute memories about prior dates you two have been on. If you’re a shy person, it can be a video you two save to watch on a day when you need a good laugh. If you aren’t so shy and/or willing to put yourself out there, share the video with your social network family. Let everyone get a good laugh as well as a few “awww’s” in there while you two enjoy watching the reactions and replays of the night.

*If you would like to take it a step further: name your “cooking show episode” and make it bi-weekly or monthly entertainment for yourselves and loved ones.*

Boxers

I’m sure you’re thinking the usual buy something sexy and wear it for your significant other, but…that’s not quite the purpose of this date night idea. Most places, even smaller towns, have some type of store “adult store” nearby. (For example: Adam & Eve, Spencers, etc.) You will take a trip to your local adult store and each buy something for the other person. You will have the item gift wrapped at the store and present it to your significant other. You can both go into the store at the same time and buy your items at different registers, or one person can sit in the car while the other shops. Either way the anticipation itself is enough to keep you anxious and smiling from ear to ear thinking about being able to see the gifts. And clearly this usual leads to a happy ending for both of you…who wouldn’t enjoy this date night?!

*If you don’t have access to these stores where you live, you can order the items online earlier in the week and present them on the evening of your date night.*

Sunset

How does one make game night romantic? By lighting a few candles and watching the sunset while you play, that’s how. This one is pretty simple, but makes such a huge difference. Instead of playing games inside in the house, why not take your UNO or LIFE games outdoors? If there is a favorite park or location in your town, take a blanket, some candles, some wine (drink responsibly) and set up a romantic game night. Make sure you get there in enough time to have everything set up so you can enjoy the beautiful sunset as you play. This even works if you have a backyard and want to do your romantic game night without having to leave the house. Either way, it’s hard to beat nature’s beauty and fun with your significant other.

*For those who live in climates where it is cold most of the year (like where we live) you can set this up to do in the car. Find a nice place to park the car and where you can see the sunset. If you have an SUV set up your romance in the trunk area (fake candles of course). If you have a car lean the seats all the way back so you two can face each other in your seats to play your game(s). I would suggest only card games if you don’t have a larger area for a board game.*

HP

Is there a movies genre or series you both enjoy watching? For my husband and I, we LOVE the Harry Potter series. (Who doesn’t?) For our first wedding anniversary we actually watching movies one through six before we decided to give our eyes a break and go to bed LOL. It super simple and really takes no effort, but it’s one people tend to forget about. If you want to make it a little more fun, go to your nearest store, buy your favorite movie theater candy, some microwaveable popcorn, and drinks. Remember you’re going to be home so you can even buy alcoholic drinks to watch with your movie ;-). If you have tons of blankets and comforters, set up a comfy theater area on the living room floor while you watch. Movie the couch(es) if you have to make more room. Just make sure you watch and enjoy!

*If you start to run out of movie ideas to watch, you can even pick a new show to binge watch on Netflix or Hulu. Also, during the holidays try to do themed movies for the particular holiday being celebrated to get you in the spirit.*

Dance

One of my bucket list items is to learn how to ball room dance. I particularly would love to learn how to samba and tango. They are such intimate and sexy dance styles. My ultimate bucket list dance item is to samba on a beach in South America to a live band. Ahhh yes. Okay, back to reality, where we live we don’t have options for these dance classes, but thankfully it’s 2015 and we live in the age of technology. You and your significant other pick one dance style (or you can each pick one) and lookup the dance on YouTube. Pick your favorite instructional video and get to learning! Not only do you get to learn something new with your significant other, you’re exercising and having fun doing it.

*Once you’ve gotten a little handle of the dances moves, start learning about the best music to dance to and discover new artists and music together.*

If any of you try out these date night ideas, leave a comment or send me an email about what you loved and didn’t love. I hope you couples enjoy these ideas, and always remember, date night is supposed to be fun!

Date Night Image

Fun fact: all pictures used for this post are personal pictures I have taken, except for the “YouTube Dance Lessons photo, which happens to be my husband and I, on our wedding day. 🙂

Brie <3

[08.09.15]

All Posts, Dear Diary, Healthy, Lunch, Recipes

Quinoa Burrito Bowl Salad

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One of my favorite quick food stops, that fits into my “cleaner” eating, calorie counting lifestyle, is the shredded chicken salad from Cafe Rio. If you have never been to Cafe Rio, their handmade tortillas are AMAZING. I am willing to eat only lettuce and dry chicken if it means I can eat that tortilla. Which is 420 calories on it’s own…yikes!

Well, I came home from the gym one night and wanted a Cafe Rio chicken salad REALLY badly, but did not want to drive 15 minutes into town to get it. (Give me a break, HIIT workouts are draining) I decided to make my own healthier version of the salad using whatever I had at home. When I order the salad at Cafe Rio it consists of; one flour tortilla, one scoop black beans, lettuce, cilantro, light tortilla chips, one teaspoon cotija cheese, and half a serving of cilantro lime vinaigrette. Luckily for me, I had a majority of these ingredients, or something similar, available in my refrigerator or pantry. So, I got creative and made my own chicken salad bowl. This is the recipe I created, feel free to change and/or add more of your favorite veggies. You will need the following ingredients:

1 tsp olive oil

1 Fajita sized flour tortilla (140 calories) or 2 corn taco sized tortillas (40 calories each)

1 small shredded chicken breast (3-4 oz.)

1-2 Tbsp sharp cheddar cheese

1 cup quinoa (1/4 cup uncooked)

1/4 cup canned black beans (drained and rinsed)

1 cup romaine lettuce

1 cup spinach

1 Tbsp chopped red onion

1/4 cup canned corn

cilantro (as much as you would like)

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Heat the olive oil over medium high heat and brown tortilla on both sides until a very light brown color. Once tortilla has been browned, place it in a bowl and push down until the tortilla lines the inside of the bowl. Take washed lettuce and spinach, place in bowl (on top of tortilla). Add shredded chicken, quinoa, black beans, and corn (you can combine these ingredients together in a separate bowl before adding to salad if you would prefer). Then top the entire salad with the chopped red onion, cilantro, and cheddar cheese. Now it’s TIME TO EAT!

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* I had half a serving of cilantro lime vinaigrette dressing leftover in my fridge from a Cafe Rio visit earlier in the week, and used the remainder for this salad. However, for future use, you (as well as myself) can find homemade dressing recipes online. I usually use Pinterest when looking for yummy recipes such as dressings. Or you can just make up your own healthier dressing using some olive oil, lemon or lime, and salt and/or pepper.
Brie <3

[04.12.15]