Three Things : Weekdays + Creative Family Giveaway

Love the daily scrapbooking. I feel inspire to DO! THX Jennie

WE love to just clean the home together on our weekend, and thereafter, a lovely cool drink to enjoy communicating with each other.

My favorite whole family thing is going to the park or going anywhere as a family - can be something as simple as going to the nursery or spending a little time in the hot tub - oh how he loves that (we don't turn the heat up too high).
My favorite time with my little one is "cuddle time" right before bed. We talk about his day and what his favorite thing was. It is interesting to see his point of view is. It is always something simple. On days where we may have some something fun it is usually something so simple that it just makes you smile and realise that the everyday things are what you will remember later in life.

Ali,
Now that my two sons are teenagers (16 and 18), life is way busier and we have fewer family dinners. Someone is always away.
One of the best things for us now is music. Yay, music! The boys and my husband all play instruments, and I'm just a big fan of all of them. We have had lots of fun this year with classics from the 70s and 80s, and often, the boys are determined to learn them. And then they have to sing for us. I love it.

we are so excited to be a part of a csa this summer and visiting the farmer's market where we do our pick up. i am envisioning lots of fun memories and some good quality family time this summer! on a more regular basis, my littles are all about 'dinner and a movie' every couple weeks. so fun!

My fondest memories are of my dad and I playing ping pong for hours and trying to get a high score for the number of consecutive rallies we could get before we missed. We also played a lot of games like Tripoly, Backgammon, Chess, Checkers, Yahtzee. Oh, and how could I forget!!! Generations (4 to be exact) would get together and play Scrabble...for hours and hours and hours. Good, clean family fun. My grandmothers were great at showing me how to embroider, sew, quilt, darn socks (yeah, I won't be doing that ever again! LOL) make really great pie pastry and how to make slips from impatient plants. So many great memories! Thanks Ali for triggering them and for the giveaway!
Suz

My kids are so into going camping lately. It is fun to see what we come up with to do when there is no TV or Computers around. Yesterday we watered the yard together and ended up in a water fight!

Our fav, family bond, is homemade popcorn the olf fashioned way, all sitting together on one couch and watching and enjoying our favourite movie, The Sound of Music. Just bliss..Love your blog Ali, love how you inspire all of us who have a creative streak and bring out the best in us. Thanks

Wahoo for a fun giveaway- that book looks awesome! Thanks for letting us know about it- with kiddos at the ages of 2,4 & 5 I need to get it for sure! It's hard to say what our favorite thing to do as a family is since we have so many... Right now I guess it is swimming together! With the weather hitting as high as 109 this week we are swimming together every day. (LOVED the layout of Simon playing in the sprinklers in his mask!) But any outside time really is a favorite time for bonding as we relax and chat with the kiddos- bike rides, walks, jumping on the tramp, etc!

Our son just turned 1. We love spending time together taking him to new places, like the zoo, and watching him as he discovers the world around him.
-Nicole

Hi Ali --
Great post. Happy to hear you're having warm weather. Here in Ohio, the weather has been very chilly and wet. Hoping to see 70's for the holiday weekend.
I would so love to win this book! My husband and I have a 6 y/o son and a 4 y/o daughter. One of our favorite things to do as a family is go just down the road from our house to a bike/hike trail. We head east and go a little less than a mile and are in the next county. Right off the trail is a home that is a small farm. They have some cattle and one day on one of our hikes, they were right inside their fence, which is maybe 15 feet away from the paved trail. Naturally, we ventured off the trail, a little closer to the creatures and I started taking pictures. Have a great shot of a bull looking right at me! I grew up close to the city, so this is the closest I've ever been to livestock! So happy the fence was there.
Thank you for offering this giveaway!

We like to go on long road trips together. And when we're on those trips, we only eat local. No chain restaurants or fast food! We enjoy exploring new places and eating together as a family.

Dinner together every night! We are lucky that my husband does not commute or travel out of town overnight, and so we always sit down and talk during dinner. I love it!

I am blessed with a husband who is very busy...and yet MAKES time to be with us. Whether it's just nightly wrestling with the kids...reading books together...family movie nights...dinner together...or just talking about our day. With such young kids we like to keep it simple, with the focus on being together...not just on what it is we are doing.

Our fav thing to do as a family of 5 is to go to the pet store. It's like a free trip to the zoo; birds, snakes, rodents, dogs, cats, fish...So much fun!

Hi Ali,
totally enjoying these layouts.
We love to do as a family is create. Whether that is pulling out fabric, buttons and ribbon to create anything from our imaginations or making a really yummy spaghetti sauce from what is in the fridge or putting photos together onto cards or layout pages to tell our stories. I love how spontaneous my nieces and nephews are with how they put colors together. No measuring involved just cut here and attach there to create some really wonderful, amazing and useful things. I am really blessed to have such a creative family - all very different personalities but what really bonds us is our ability to create.
Sharon F.
Oakland, CA

one of our favorit family things is to play gaes. our boys are only 8 and 5 so the variety is starting to grow, no more candyland and go fish all the time. currently we are stuck on monopoly jr and crazy eights crayola style!

This book looks great! I am such a perfectionist, it is often a challenge for me to complete a layout!!! I wish I would have had this book as a child...
Favorite family thing to do?? Hmmm... We love to go hiking as a family. There's nothing better than seeing a wild animal that our little one hasn't seen yet. We also love cooking together, and just having giggle fests.

At the moment our favourite thing is to play on the floor when Dad gets home for work and watch our 4 year old son try to make his baby sister laugh.

go for walks around the community - we always have the best talks on our walks

What a great giveaway! When the weather is nice my son and I go for a walk to the park or color outside. When the weather is less than cooperative we snuggle up under the blankets and read books together. He is only two so these activities don't usually last that long but we have fun, just me and him time.

I love taking an easel outside on a nice sunny day, grabbing some paints and just letting my two and a half year old go crazy with the painting. No stress for me that the paint will go everywhere and just some unstructured creative fun.

Right now, my favorite thing to do together as a family is go hiking/walking. This summer, I am looking forward to picnics at the park as a fun way to spend family time.
Another fun thing to do is travel, even just a quick day trip (with the cost of gas, that's all we can really afford it seems!!).
Lindsey

We have always played cards with our boys. It began with Old Maid, and then Go Fish. Some of their favorite card games right now are Phase 10, spoons, and golf.
Rita

Our most memorable, favorite family activities usually involve all of us dressing up crazy and going somewhere...Harry Potter characters, clowns, The Scooby Gang, etc. We even have a picture wall dedicated to our silliness. It's fun having 5 kids...would love more ideas from such a great book!