BEST PANINIS EVER.

I know, paninis are a pretty random topic and I am no food blogger, but I made these the other night and they were too dang delicious to keep to myself. Dave was shocked that they didn't have any special aioli or sauce or anything because they were just so yummy and it seems too simple a recipe for that much tastebud OOMPH. :)

We've tried lots of panini ideas over the years. Pinterest is swimming with ideas for different kinds, but we've had so many mediocre ones that one this good had to be passed along.

First of all, if you don't have a special panini pan or press, don't worry! Alton Brown from the Food Network said on one of his episodes of Good Eats that if you wrap a brick in aluminum foil and put that on top of your sandwich in a regular frying pan, it will work just as well. Or you can do what I used to do before we got a panini pan, and just smush your sandwich with your spatula really hard :)

20 MINUTE DIY LIGHT TABLE

If you follow me on Pinterest, you know I have an obsession with light tables. I want to buy one, but a sensory item that costs more than $10 is definitely not going to be cleared by the accounting department (aka Mr. Raising Kinley) so I have been collecting do-it-yourself ideas for literally two years.

They all do it differently--IKEA supplies, fairy lights, lanterns, light strips, actual tables that you cut holes out of with power tools, teeny tiny, ginormous. You name it. Someone has used it to make a light table. And I have pinned their idea.

It was all just so overwhelming to me, I guess. I need someone's idea to be THE idea. The best of all of the methods squeezed into one.

I finally read a blog post the other night about another mom's homemade light table and I thought to myself, "Dude. Just do it. Just gather up the stuff and DO IT ALREADY."

EASY DIY RAINBOW RICE OR PASTA

Scoop it.
Measure it.
Throw it with glee from corner to corner.

RICE, baby! The ultimate sensory bin filler!

Plain rice is fun, but dyed rice is even better. And you aren't gonna believe how incredibly easy it is to step your rice up to the next level.

DIY LIQUID WATERCOLORS

Did you wander over here looking for our fabulous liquid watercolor recipe? Don't worry -- it's not gone forever, Kinley and I just took it over to our new website, hellomoonpie.com :)

Just click right here to head straight over to it!

OUR NEW (AND IMPROVED) PRESCHOOL PLAN

When I started planning our preschool year, I read a million blog posts and ideas from other preschool at home moms and I thought I had come up with the world's most perfect plan.

I wrote a detailed plan for every subject, every week from the end of August until the beginning of June. I printed out cute little schedule cards for each moment of our preschool day, laminated them and hung them up in a neat row and imagined exactly how each perfect day was gonna go. I had a big long chat with Kinley about exactly how school would be, beginning with when we would wake up all the way through to "afternoon recess."

And, then we actually started.