Sugar Patch Baby

Chores For Children

2011-07-12T22:17:00.001-04:00

Most agree that having children do chores is a positive thing... It teaches responsibility, a feeling of accomplishment and the value of earning money (provided an allowance is associated with these chores, of course!). Keeping track of each child's chores can be difficult - for both parent and child! We found these AWESOME chore charts at Posh Little. They are colorful and modern and a great way to keep the family organized!

Love these! And better yet.. the KIDS will love these!

How to Make A Lemonade Stand

2011-07-06T21:24:00.000-04:00

Summer time.... Sweet summer, summer time! What seems to go hand in hand with kids and summer vacation? Lemonade stands! My kids love to visit them, and I happen to have a soft spot for little kids selling stuff, so we always stop. (Yes - the Girl Scouts SCORE BIG at our house! :)

I love how Staci at Just Sew Sassy turned an old desk into one AMAZING lemonade stand! What little budding entrepreneur wouldn't love to set up shop here?!?

Check out how she made this amazing transformation. Super creative and HUGE impact! I know all the neighborhood kiddos must LOVE it!

Great idea Staci! Thank you for sharing!

Creative Ways To Organize

2011-07-05T21:55:00.000-04:00

Keeping organized is a must for saving time and reducing clutter. I'm particularly fond of creative storage devices that make organizing fun and that look great too!

Kim at Everything Etsy features 13 Great Ways to Organize with Recycled and Repurposed Finds. It's a great collection of creative and attractive organizing solutions. My particular favorite is the suggestion with the baby food jars. LOVE it!

Thank you Kim at Everything Etsy for the great article!

Photos Into Art!

2011-07-04T16:08:00.000-04:00

Photos. We take them everywhere, all the time. At the beach on vacation... the kindergarten play... Christmas morning... randomly throughout the day to capture the cutest of cute faces our children make. But then what? They stay in a photo box or worse yet in digital form where we only enjoy on occasion. I know some of you are good enough to make scrapbooks which always impresses me. I absolutely loooove them - don't get me wrong... but there is a time factor here that I cannot seem to overcome. For this very reason, I GREATLY appreciate creative uses of photos, and classy ways to integrate them into our home decor.

I found a fabulous example of this on the blog called Isabella and Max Rooms. They feature a decorative element using a photo turned into art by Modern Bird Studios.

This has soooooo many possibilities I'm almost giddy! Let those creative juices flow... This would make a creative addition to any children's room theme.

Thank you to Isabella and Max Rooms for the great idea!

Potty Training Part II

2011-07-03T23:25:00.000-04:00

When potty training, rewards are a great way to reinforce a successful trip to the potty! From A Pumpkin and a Princess, here is here is an awesome Potty Treats Jar! LOVE this and I must say we'll soon be featuring one in our house! :)

Fop Five Potty Training Tips

2011-07-03T15:55:00.002-04:00

Potty training.... For some of us, we look forward to the days of no longer having to change diapers. For others, we dread the day our baby takes one more step towards being a "big kid." For all of us - its typically a challenge!

Here is our list of the Top Five Potty Training Tips:

5) The Naked Game - Many parents have found that wearing no diaper and no clothes can create a greater awareness of having to go to the bathroom. To use this strategy, dedicate a weekend to the initial training, and let your child go naked for extended periods of time. Before bath time is often a good place to start. Once the naked potty use is mastered, start adding the clothes back. First big kid undies, and then pants.

4) Target Practice - For those of us with boys in the house, it doesn't take long to figure out that aiming is a problem. Turn this obstacle into a game - it not only encourages potty use, but it helps get them going in the right direction. Take a few cheerios, they float nicely, and encourage your son to aim at them.

3) Praise - No better way to encourage a child to do anything than positive reinforcement. Give your child plenty of undivided attention, love and praise. Each time you have a successful potty, go overboard with the attention and praise. Children want to please and the additional excitement you create will help encourage going to the potty.

2) Stickers - A reward system is a great means to encourage potty training. Stickers seem to be a very popular choice. Create a board in the bathroom and reward your child with a sticker with each successful trip to the potty. Another popular alternative is covering a child's clothes with a sticker after each trip. This can create a constant reminder of the reward and help to remember to go to the potty with the need arises.

1) Bribes - when all else fails, a bribe is a fabulous option. M & M's always seem to be a popular choice. Promise your child each time they go to the bathroom they get some M & M's. If your child has another favorite, go with that. Many parents have had success keeping a reward jar in the bathroom filled with treats. With each successful potty, they can choose one.

No matter which strategy you choose, stay consistent and constantly encourage. Positive reinforcement, no matter what behavior you are encouraging, is a magical thing.

Let us know any other tips you may have and best of luck!

Affordable Nursery Decor

2011-06-30T21:13:00.000-04:00

I adore affordable decorating ideas. Owning a baby boutique, we are always looking for creative ways to decorate baby nurseries. That being said, I HAD to share this idea I saw on another blog - Love Sweet Love.

So many possibilities... how cute would this look in a nursery?!?! What an affordable, creative way to add some flair! Thank you Love Sweet Love for posting such a great idea! For complete step by step instructions on how to make, please see their blog at the link below.

Love Sweet Love: Sweet Tute Tuesday #2-Family Blocks

Love Sweet Love

Sweet Summer Clothes

2011-06-30T18:41:00.001-04:00

We are very excited about the newest clothing lines featured in our baby boutique! These clothes feature fun, colorful fabrics, unique designs and the trendiest styles in children's fashion. We are confident the collection we have put together for our Spring/ Summer lines offers more style options than any boutique we have seen so far! We hope you love them as much as we do!

As always, thank you for visiting www.sugarpatchbaby.com!

Top 25 Children's Quotations

2011-06-28T21:50:00.000-04:00

"You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance."-- Franklin P. Adams
"A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine."-- Anonymous
"Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own."-- Aristotle
"Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them."--James Baldwin
"The best inheritance a person can give to his children is a few minutes of his time each day " --O. A. Battista
"Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home."-- Bill Cosby
"There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, employ someone, or forbid your children to do it."-- Monta Crane
"The children despise their parents until the age of 40, when they suddenly become just like them - thus preserving the system."-- Quentin Crewe
"Your children will see what you're all about by what you live rather than what you say." -- Wayne Dyer
"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."-- Albert Einstein
"We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body."-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Teach your child to hold his tongue; he'll learn fast enough to speak."-- Benjamin Franklin
"The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother."-- Theodore M. Hesburgh
"I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation Where they will not be judged by the color of their skin But by the content of their character."-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy."-- Sam Levenson
"Children need love, especially when they don't deserve it." -- Harold Hulbert
"If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters."-- Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis
"Children are living jewels dropped unsustained from heaven." -- Robert Pollok
"Good parents give their children Roots and Wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what's been taught them."-- Jonas Salk
"While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about."-- Angela Schwindt
"I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere."--James Thurber
"Child rearing myth #1: Labor ends when the baby is born."-- Unknown
"Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said."--Unknown
"Children are the sum of what mothers contribute to their lives. " --Unknown
"When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world." -- Zig Ziglar

Resource Box - © Danielle Hollister (2004) is the Publisher of BellaOnline Quotations Zine
- A free newsletter for quote lovers featuring more than 10,000 quotations in dozens of categories like - love, friendship, children, inspiration, success, wisdom, family, life, and many more.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Danielle_Hollister

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Photographing Your Kids

2010-10-19T08:26:00.000-04:00

With advancements in photography technology over the last decade it has become possible to capture frame-worthy memories on consumer level cameras. Today every smartphone on the market boasts a pixel rating that far exceeds most of the cameras from the early part of the 2000’s. With this rise in quality, parents can now take quality pictures of their children with most basic cameras…that is if you could just get all of them to smile naturally and at the same time. So how do you get a frame-worthy picture of all your kids?

Photo by thejbird

1) Location. The backgrounds should be interesting enough to entertain your children, but not so much so that it is distracting in the photos. Because of the differences in lighting, outside is usually best.

2) Candid shots. You have to accept that photographing children is very different than photographing adults. Children struggle to sit still much less strike a pose on cue for your picture. The easiest way to get quality pictures of your children is to just let them be children and snap away furiously. When kids are forced to pose the results you are looking for are often hard to obtain. Let them be themselves and they’ll forget you are trying to photograph them.

3) Change levels. Unless you have some serious photography skills - and can get some abstract, artsy shots- photographs of a child will come out better if you get down to their level. It will certainly be easier to capture the moment down there with them, then shooting from above.

4) Focus on the different objects. Great photos of children often come from focusing on their faces, specifically the eyes. But you want to remember all of your children's awesome little features, right? Get some shots of their hands, feet, eyelashes... it's often those little details that we parents cherish in photos in the years to come.

5) Try black and white. Even if you take your photos in color, changing the photographs to black and white lends a different feel to the photo. It's calming, serene. Certainly if you are planning on hanging a wall collage, black and white can unify all your photos for a more pleasing display.

In summary, allowing your kids to just play while you snap away furiously, down on their level, focusing on different features, will allow you to capture spontaneous photos that you will cherish. You may have to take a hundred shots to get three or four that you love but with digital photography the amount of photos you take is not a concern.

Although photographing children can be tricky, if you just let them be kids they will entertain themselves and give you ample opportunity to snap a beautiful memory that will hang on your wall for a lifetime.

Artwork, Artwork Everywhere!

2010-10-18T08:24:00.000-04:00

My kids are the most amazing artists in the world. No, really - they are. As a testament to their creative genius, I save it. ALL of it. From every tiny drawing, to large painting projects, I keep it. But what do you DO with all of it, you may ask? Excellent question. Storage is most definitely a problem. Clutter drives me insane, so I certainly cannot have container after container of art just sitting around taking up valuable shelf space. The garage or attic doesn't work, because there it's not accessible enough to look at it when I feel like reminiscing about how cute they look finger-painting. My brilliant solution? SCAN! SCAN! SCAN! Scanning their precious portraits is a wonderful solution to the artwork dilemma. Having a digital scan on my computer not only sorts their work by date, but it provides an excellent medium to view their work without dragging out all the originals.

Here is what I do:

1) Keep a nifty storage container accessible to keep artwork accessible. I choose a basket - attractive and functional. I keep it hidden in our entry way armoire, where all of our "stuff" - book bags, handbags, keys, mail, etc. stay hidden.

2) Once a month, I usually do this the last weekend of each month, take 15 minutes and scan in their most recent art projects. I keep a folder in my computer appropriately titled "Art" with subfolders for each child.

3) After scanning is complete, store original artwork in a more out of the way place; a box in the attic or garage works great.

This ongoing project takes just a few minutes each month and is oh so worth the time and effort. Not to mention, having a digital scan of all these beautiful designs really opens the door for TONS of other creative projects that can be made with their work!

Any more creative suggestions for storing artwork? Please let us know!

SPB's Top Five Healthy Snacks For Kids

2010-10-17T10:43:00.000-04:00

Most parents with children spend a good amount of time worrying about what our children eat. Do they get enough fruit? Veggies? Calcium? Protein? Are their nutrition needs being met? And what's with all those additives in food? It scares me to think about some of the additives in commercially prepared food. If I can't pronounce it, I don't want to eat it and I certainly don't want to feed it to my babies. So what to feed them?

Our Top Five Healthy Snacks for Kids

1) Popcorn. Who doesn't love it. There are all natural varieties that are DELICIOUS. They actually taste like salty corn. Yum-o! Orville Redenbacher All Natural Lightly Salty is a fav at our house.

2) Trail Mix. I prefer to make my own. The beauty of this is that you can't go wrong and you can choose your family's favorites. I typically make mine with raisins, almonds, cashews, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries, rolled oats - you get the idea.

3) Any of the above ingredients in trail mix make awesome snacks on their own.

4) Fruit/ Veggies. Fruits are sweet and refreshing and most kids will eat it if you give it to them. Crunchy apples, sweet bananas, kiwis, pineapple, grapes and melons have great nutritional value and they are delicious. Focus on what's in season for the best taste and best price. Veggie snacks - Carrot sticks, cucumber slices, sweet grape tomatoes, sugar snap peas, etc are all delicious on their own and even better with a dip like hummus or even ranch dressing. The secret to making fruits and veggies a QUICK snack anytime is to prep them when you get home from the store. This way they are ready in a second when your kids are hungry. Chop the veggies/ fruits and store them in individual containers accessible to your children.

5) Low fat Dairy. Yogurt, cheese sticks, and low fat milk are all wonderful snack options. Yogurt parfaits' with sliced berries and some homemade trail mix sprinkled on top makes an awesome snack and a yummy breakfast!

With a little thought and planning, your kids can reach for a healthy snack option easier than they can grab the commercially prepared variety! Enjoy!