Barbie Movie Mystery Solved!

This weekend we saw Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale at a local theater as part of the KidToons series. Check their website for show times in your area as different cities/theaters may have different showing dates. They also have a Buy One, Get One Free ticket on their website. The showing is a predecessor to the DVD release of this movie on September 14, 2010.

My daughter has recently discovered other Barbie movies. We have borrowed Barbie and the Three Musketeers and Barbie in a Mermaid Tale from the library and own Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper. One thing that always confused me was that the main character who looked like Barbie was never called Barbie, yet the Barbie name was in the title.This movie features Barbie as an actress and in her trailer is a poster for Barbie in a Mermaid Tale and she mentions acting in Barbie and the Three Musketeers. Mystery Solved!

We own the easy reader of A Fashion Fairytale so my daughter was quite excited to go see the movie. She was very intrigued by the references to the other movies especially Barbie and the Three Musketeers which is her favorite Barbie movie.

She loved the Flairies, not to be confused with fairies who have wings. The Flairies - Glimmer, Shimmer, and Shine - glitterize the fashions so she is now ready to add glitter to her clothes and have a fashion show. She has already asked about making clothes. Sorry, kid, wrong mom, I don't sew.

Now, if only she would like playing with Barbies as much as I did. I would gladly do a doll fashion show & buy a few extra outfits. Heck, I might even spring for the glitterizer playset. .

Think Fun Games - Extra 25% off at Amazon

Amazon.com is now offering an additional 25% off of select Think Fun Games when you buy two or more. The Amazon base prices of these games are 15-27% off. To redeem this deal, select two games from the list and add them to your cart. The additional 25% off will not show until you get to checkout. My daughter is a game lover, so this sale is of great interest to me.


My parents bought my daughter Zingo and she loves it. Each player gets a game card and the objective is to fill the card completely. On each turn, two tiles are revealed and you have to yell out when you see one you need. The first player to yell out, gets the tile. There are two sides to each card. One side contains less duplicates between cards making it easier. My daughter loves this game and has gotten quite good at it. It probably helps that she always plays the same card and knows what she needs without checking her card. I strongly recommend this game for kids starting about age 3.



Since she already has Zingo, I was considering Think Fast What's Gnu. This game uses the same tile slider as Zingo, but has letters that you grab to make 3-letter words. My daughter is just starting to read, so I see this game as being good for her in a few months. The reviews seem to indicate that this is good for early readers with help. I would be putting this away as a Christmas gift.


The other game I am considering is Rush Hour, Jr. which has a recommended age of 6-8. However, several of the reviews mention their younger children being able to do the beginner cards. In Rush Hour, you have to work to free a car from a given configuration. My daughter plays a similar game on my phone, so I may go for this game with What's Gnu.


If she did not already have Zingo, I would definitely be buying Zingo and What's Gnu for this promotion.

Discovering Reading

My daughter is learning to read. For a couple of years, she has been great at picking out store and brand names. She has also learned her name and can pick it out among the variations.

But, she is starting to recognize sight words. She surprised me two weeks ago by knowing how to read her colors. She brought me a color by number page in a coloring book and crayons. I figured I'd color a line under each word so she could do it independently. As I look at it she says, 4 is pink. With some encouragement she recognized red, blue, orange, green, and yellow as well.

It is a tough road, because she has a wonderful memory and can remember a story the second time you read it which means I'm constantly searching for new reading material.

Last year for Christmas, my mother-in-law got her a subscription to Highlights High Five Magazine. Each month she gets a new issue. Each issue has stories, hidden pictures, a recipe, silly pictures, a game, and more. For the beginning of the year, she was not too interested in the magazine, but lately has been devouring them. Yesterday, she was searching each magazine to check out the recipe and decide if she liked it. We made peanut-butter honey dip for bananas yesterday.

We were just reading a story and she wants to read it, but she also keeps looking to the pictures to figure out the words. I'll point to a word & ask her what it says and she moves her eyes up to look at the picture. She is starting to figure out to at least look at the first letter to match the picture with a letter.

I am also figuring out, that we need to carve reading into some part of the day other than nap or bedtime. At those times, she tells me she is too tired & I should just read it.

Painting Lesson Learned

Always keep your paint can on a drop cloth or other surface you are okay with getting paint on it. Fortunately, I did not learn this the hard way.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I am renovating the storage and organization in our laundry room/garage entry way. Earlier this week, my husband and I dug through our paint storage and found that the original builders white from 7 years ago was looking a little iffy. We had portions of two 5 gallon containers left of our "base" color from when we had the rest of the house painted 5 years ago. The one container had less than a gallon in it and the other container had about 2 gallons in it.

Today was painting day, so I carried both containers up from the basement. My dad arrived to help me paint. We stacked the plastic 5 gallon container that we were starting with on top of the other one, opened it up and let my 4.5 year old stir the paint. As my dad lifted the container to pour into the pan, I noticed a puddle of paint on top of the other can. Our can was leaking. Somehow the bottom of the can cracked. I am so happy that it didn't start leaking as I was carrying it up from the basement across our carpets. The puddle was contained to the top of the other jar, onto the drop cloth and just 3 drops on the linoleum.

We have finished the paint in the can and will dispose of it. I hope the other can remains intact as well as my other plastic cans in storage. I guess we need to be more careful how we handle the plastic cans.

Since the blog is about life with a preschooler, I should add that my daughter was an excellent helper. In addition to stirring the paint, she helped me tape the molding. While painting, she used a small roller and helped me roll the walls. She also used a brush to do the corner cut in. However, it was still helpful to have my mom there on call to clean her up and entertain her when she had enough (and we had enough of her help).

Laundry Room Renovation

As in many houses, our laundry room doubles as the entry way from the garage. As such, it becomes a catch all for storing many things. Last week, one of the mollys that holds our shelf with bins and coat hooks on the wall pulled out and the shelf was hanging by only one side. Since the wall needs repairing, I have taken this opportunity to redesign and hopefully improve our storage/organization in the room.

Currently, we have small bins on the shelf and four coat hooks, a shoe bookshelf, a rug for shoe overflow, a decorative key holder, and a folding chair to sit in. Then there are usually a bin for bottle/can deposit refunds, my daughter's school and church bags, and our swim bag on the wall.

I found a great bench at Home Depot and have bought 3 bins in different colors so we each have a place to store stuff. My daughter picked out a Princess coat rack (like this, but pink and saying Princess) which will be hung where she can reach it. I am replacing our decorative key holder with a message center and will add additional hooks for us. We will continue to use our shoe rack and our shelf with bins/coat racks. The hope is that we will be able to contain the overflow (not easy with 3 people who love shoes - they don't have to be expensive, we just like a variety). I have also bought a small shoe rack for the closet. Currently there is quite a bit on the floor and it would benefit from being able to have levels to stack items on.

We moved into this house 7 years ago when it was first built. We have painted the rest of the house, but did not paint the laundry room. With the damage to the walls, we needed to at least touch up the paint. We decided to go ahead and paint it from white to our "base color" for the hallways, stairwells, basement, and bathrooms. We had leftover paint from when most of the house was painted 5 years ago, so there was no additional cost.

I am really excited to have the new room organized. I cannot wait until we get everything hung and the room functioning again.