Love Day

Ahhh Valentines Day.  Another one of those days that just screams "Celebrate Me!"  And I never pass up the opportunity for one of those, right? ;)

I don't know about you, but today I seem to be moving in slow motion and accomplishing not much of anything.  Thus the reason it's taken me two whole days to upload all the photos for this particular blog post!  But better late than never.  Here is what our Valentines Day looks like so far.

The Valentines cards I worked on last week include little valentines for the kiddos

with fun pop up hearts inside

and one for the hubby (inspiration found here)

As well as a couple of crafting sessions for the kids to work on cards to send out in the mail to all the granparents and other special people in our lives, including their teachers.

 I really liked the idea of some of the fingerprint cards I was seeing on Pinterest so I googled a whole bunch of fingerprint doodle ideas and let the kids pick their favorites.
Tyler's fingerprints, my "artwork":

Kaitlyn everything herself, design, fingerprints, doodling, writing - all of it.  It's so nice when the kids are big enough to just let them loose and watch them create.

Oh, and I printed out a pop up robot template (from Martha Stewart here) and let them each make one of those.

 And with that, we were all set for Vday - yay!

This morning was great. The kids are always so excited for special days and I do my best to make them extra fun. Kaitlyn was the first to bring out the cards she had made - she's such a sweetie when it comes to that kind of thing.
Breakfast was heart-shaped orange rolls and a "chocolate shake" (carnation instant breakfast fortified with a banana and an egg)

which the kids happily ate while I rushed around throwing together lunches. Can you believe I hadn't given them any thought at all? I ended up going with heart shaped Nutella sandwiches, red juice, red jello, applesauce, and some candy hearts. Luckily I had Valentines napkins left over from last year. And had remembered to print of Valentines lunchbox jokes (Kristen Duke comes up with great one for all the big events lately. Love them. You can find them here) and stuck a couple in Kaitlyn's bag (Tyler got another valentine picture since he can't read yet)

Oh and let's not forget the heart hair! I changed it up this year and went with a different technique than I've used the last few years. (instructions can be found here)

Then I happily took photos and got the kids off to school - still in my pjs I might add! The morning routine on holidays is a little crazy. It took me until 10:00 to get in a workout and manage a shower. And I've been in slow motion ever since. I'm going to do a big 'ole happy dance when I get this post posted, as that will be my biggest accomplishment of the day since then lol. That and going through all of Tyler's Valentines from school and helping him eat some of them - his suggestion, by the way. Who am I to refuse such a cutie?

Plans for the rest of the day are pretty low key. Neither Sam or I wanted to fight the crowds at a restaurant tonight so we are staying in. In fact, I offered to babysit for a friend, who took me up on the offer but they decided to go to the shooting range Saturday (some girls really know romance, right? haha) instead of out on the town tonight. So I repeat, we are staying in and keeping it low key. I printed off a Valentines maze (found here) to keep the kids busy while we cook dinner. Kaitlyn requested steak (heart shaped if possible hehe) so Sam will be in charge of that, and I will be trying my hand at making heart shaped french fries. We have a yummy dessert waiting for us in the freezer. And I might send Sam out to get a movie from Redbox. Sounds like a good night, right?

Happy Valentines Day everyone! I hope you all have a lovely day!

My First Crochet Pattern! Ruffled Baby Legwarmers

Good morning!  I'm feeling all productive today because for the second morning in a row I manged to work out and shower (woohoo) before having to get the kids ready for school. It's amazing what you can cram into a couple of hours when the motivation and energy are flowing.

I thought I would share a crochet pattern today - my very first attempt at writing one!  I made up a set of these baby legwarmers with a matching hat a couple months ago and when I got a custom order (you can visit my etsy shop here) for them this past week I decided I'd take the time to actually sit down and write up the pattern (as opposed to my chicken scratch notes I kinda sorta remembered to take when making the originals) and let you be my ginuea pigs pattern testers, ok?  Please, please try them out for me and let me know what you think, share photos, etc.  Thanks! 

Ruffled Baby Legwarmers – Newborn Size
Hook size J

Abbreviations:
CH = chain
SC = single crochet
DC = double crochet
dec = decrease/dc2tog (double crochet 2 together)
ST = stitch
A = yarn color A
B = yarn color B
BLO = back look only
SL ST = slip stitch
-weave in ends as you go, or come back later and weave them in with a needle
- pattern is for striped legwarmers. Would look great in a solid color as well – just ignore color changes if you are making a set with a single color.

Top Band:  use color A for entire band
CH 6
Row 1:  turn, skip 1^st CH, SC in remaining 5 STs
Row 2:   CH1, turn, SC in BLO across (5 SC)
REPEAT row until length of cuff reaches approx. 7” (this takes me about 25 rows) making sure you have an odd number of rows in total.
Ch1, turn, SL ST both ends of the cuff together to form a circle.  For striped legwarmers, fasten off and change colors, if not just hold cuff with right side facing and continue

 Leg: 
Row 1:  with color B, SC in the end of each row of the cuff, join
Row 2:  CH3, DC in each ST around, join and fasten off**
Row 3:  if doing stripes, you will now be changing color every row starting with color A; CH3, dec***, DC in each ST around, join and fasten off
Row 4:  color B, CH3, dec, DC in each ST around, join, fasten off
Row 5:  color A, CH3, dec, DC in each ST around, join, fasten off
Row 6:  color B, CH3, DC in each ST around, join, fasten off
Row 7:  color A, CH 3, dec, DC in each ST around, join, fasten off
Row 8:  color B, CH3, DC in each ST around  (circumference should now be approx. 6”), join, fasten off
Row 9:  color A, CH1, SC in each ST around, join (this is where we start the ruffle, do not change colors any more)
Row 10:  CH 3, 2DC in each ST around, join
Row 11:  CH3, (2DC, DC) around, join, fasten off

 Make 2 - you want one for each leg, right?

*pattern is for newborn size.  You can add rows for larger sizes.  I’m working on size adjustments for the pattern but don’t have them all together yet.
**when changing colors I use the invisible join (can find a number of tutorials for this online – or use any join/color change method you are comfortable with) and start my next row a few stitches over from the end of the last one.  I find this leaves a much smoother finish over all.
***to keep a smoother circle as I go I like to vary where I do the decreased on each round, sometimes at the beginning, some in the middle, some other places, never putting one decrease on top of another

 Simple enough right? Now grab the pattern and get to the yarn store - I'm anxious to see all the fun combinations you come up with!
*I'm considering listing the the pattern for sale at some future date and your input would be much appreciated.  Thank you thank you thank you :)

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Colorful Valentines

 Gotta love it, right?  All those boxes of broken crayons.  Yeah, not so much. My kids like to take home all the restaurant crayons so we've got quite the collection going.

I've been wanting to try out one of those Make Your Own Crayon tutorials that are all over the place on pinterest for months now.  Or maybe even years.  And with thoughts of Valentine's Day soon approaching, I finally got around to it.  woot woot
It really is an easy and fun project to do with the kids, but one that's a little time consuming due to waiting for the crayons to cool.  We ended up doing multiple sessions of this over a period of days before we had enough for both of the kids' classrooms.
You can find all kinds of instructions on the internet, but here's the 411 from me.
-take all the broken crayons, strip off the papers and cut them into little pieces.  Ours were about the size of a pencil eraser.  We did a big batch of this at the beginning and then organized them by color to make things easier later

 -place pieces into shaped baking molds.  You can find them in most craft stores, ours just happen to be ice cube trays from Ikea which worked just fine (though I was nervous they wouldn't hold up to the heat as well).  This is where the kids get to have fun and be creative.
-put in 300 degree oven until crayon pieces melt.  It took ours about 15 minutes.

 -take out of oven very carefully, so the colors don't run together.  Let cool completely.  It took ours a couple of hours, but I was being extra careful.  And I'd moved on to other things so usually we didn't do the next batch until much later.
-gently take them out of the molds.  Be careful!

Tada! All I had to do then was print up the wording on cardstock

and figure out how to attach the crayons to the cardstock. Hot glue didn't work. Glue dots did though (the thicker kind), as did double sided foam tape (scrapbookers sometimes call them Dimensionals).

Lovely! And I'm so happy to have them done well ahead of time. Now if only I can come up with something equally cute for the teachers...

2012 So Far

Wow!  Time is flying by so fast, sometimes I feel like I can hardly catch my breath.  Hard to believe we're already more than a month into 2012.  Time for a quick update, as putting it all down here in black and white not only keeps me centered but serves to remind me that the last month didn't completely pass by in a blur of cleaning, meal planning, and school drop offs.

Utmost in my mind and most successful so far is the push to get the kids to try new foods.  Kaitlyn has earned her 30 things for our family vacation and Tyler is about 2/3 of the way there.  I can already see an improvement in mealtimes in that Kaitlyn almost always eats the majority of what I have fixed for the main meal, Tyler has a little more variety in his diet (which really helps since we also switched prechool venues this month, er in January - long story on that one - and I now pack a lunch for him every day) and even Sam has added a few new veggies to his diet and has been pretty complimentary about the changes in our eating habits.  We also have a very successful outing to a restaurant (something we had backed off on entirely as we hated wasting money on uneated meals) and very high hopes for what that means for future outings.  Meal planning still takes an inordinate amount of time and energy, but that's bound to happen with as hard as we are pushing this and how creative I have to be to keep the momentum going.  I am going to keep up with the One New Thing Every Day system for at least the month of February, then see where we stand at that point.

It took me a couple weeks of fits and starts but I am now mostly on a good track of working out regularly and eating healthy and estimate I have lost about 3 pounds so far.  Hoping for even firmer determination this month and much more impressive results soon.

I have had my share of crafty days and projects, fulfilled a good handful of etsy orders, had a few photo sessions and learned a few things photographically, and even had some help updating the look of the blog and logo (what do you think?  you like??)

In January I managed to sort and purge all of the kids toys as well as sort through all of the boxes in our two storage closets. In the process I found the boxes of scrapbooks and decided to put some of them out on the bookshelf in the playroom. The kids discovered them one day and had a good time looking through their baby books (neither of which, I was again reminded, are entirely finished urgh).

To me, it was a reminder of just how quickly time passes and how fast my kids are growing.  Look at the difference in sizes between those baby handprints and the kids' hands now.  Amazing.  And sobering.

This is just one of many reminders I've had lately that my kids are definitely out of the baby and toddler stage and firmly involved in this crazy business of growing up.  And I need to actively make the most of the time of I have with them at this age, remembering to enjoy all the moments with them instead of pushing through and into the next ones.

So.  Quick list for February includes: 
-getting Tyler to his 30 new foods and taking us all on a short vacation
-buying those nightstands I've been going back and forth about for weeks :)
-learn some new photo editing tricks and also start the photo project I have had in mind and didn't get to in January
-daily exercise/activity, eat healthy
-knock a few more projects off the projects list!
-enjoy the moments

Legos!

If you have kids, you know that trying to keep all of their toys organized and out from underfoot is one giant, never-ending task.  With the recent Christmas holidays and influx of new toys, the task is even bigger.  And the biggest culprit this year is all the teeny tiny bits and pieces that go along with little boy toys like Legos and Transformers.  Anyone who has stepped on an overlooked piece or tried to put together something and not being able to find a part knows my pain.  I happily managed to come up with a couple of tricks to deal with the mess.  (No, not by getting rid of them entireley, though I do have an entire stack of older toys in the garage waiting to be donated)

I ran across the Lego Playmat idea on Pinterest a couple months before Christmas and when we realized that Tyler had entered the Lego Collecting stage of life I quickly added one to the list of projects/gifts to be made. 

I took two yards of felt, drew a giant circle on it (using the high tech method of pen and string)  and cut it out.  Then I sewed a length of jute (figuring yarn was too flimsy and full on rope was too bulky) into a little pocket all the way around the outer edge, making sure to leave a few spaces to access the jute.

The only decorative touch is his name, which I cut out of scrap pieces of fabric and ironed onto the outside of the mat using Wonder Under.

 And that's pretty much it! lol  The premise is that Tyler will play with the Legos on the mat, thus minimizing lost pieces and the chance of stragglers all over the house.  And even more brilliant, when clean up times comes, instead of tossing it all in containers we simply pull on the cord and turn the mat into a Santa Sack style carrying bag.

 The top doesn't close as completely as I would have liked, but for a first attempt it works pretty well.  And Tyler actually does use it.  Yay

 (forgive the sickly looking photos - it was a series of nasty weather days and couldn't be avoided or you wouldn't be seeing photos at all.  Plus I'm still too lazy to learn how to work Photoshop properly.  It's on my list...)
 Oh, I almost forgot!  Another inspired idea on Pinterest was to take old jeans and cut them into sections for building roads.  This works out perfectly as they were no cost, took almost no time, and are versatile enough to work with Lego creations, Hot Wheels, Transformers and monster trucks alike.

Raise of hands.  Who here despises all those little instruction booklets and can spend hours trying to figure out how to transform Optimus Prime into "vehicle mode" and still not get it right?  (enthusiastically waving my hand over here)
Christmas morning left us with a 6" stack of those little instruction sets and the realization that if we lost or destroyed (some were already torn at the seams) any of them we would regret it later.  Inspiration hit a few days later - thank goodness!

I laminated all those instruction sheets, punched holes in one edge, and stuck them all in a binder.

The ones that were a litte large for the book, I simply folded over.

 And the ones that were larger than a single sheet (like those insane 200 step Lego ones that take 2 days to put together)?  I just slid those into page protectors and added those to the binder too.

Next on the list - Pottery Barning (yes, I turned it into a verb.  Don't tell you don't do that too :)  ) out the arts/crafts bookshelf in the playroom.  Any great organizing tips you may have are welcomed...

Getting in the mood for

Valentines! That's right, I'm trying to stick to my goals and get ahead of things and that means getting a jump on Valentines Day. I actually have all the Valentines for the kids' classmates ready to go out - but that's another blog post. Today I wanted to show off the crafty cuteness from yesterday's little get together with a couple of my friends. Actually it was our second attempt for the month. Life being as it is, our first craft day last week was kind of a no-go and our reschedule only worked for half of the ladies that were originally in on the plans. No worries, I'm learning to take whatever life gives me (and use the no shows as excuses to have fun one on one with them later) and roll with it. And we all know that crafty with buddies, be it one or ten, is always a lot of fun. Yesterday was no exception. I really enjoyed myself and the crafts turned out super cute.

I did 2x4 pumpkins for October, and trees for Christmas, so when a friend asked if we could do Valentines crafts this month my first thought was "what can we make with a 2x4?" :) This is what I came up with.

I always regret not taking out the camera before everyone goes home because each one has it's own special look. This time in particular I really loved how the other sets turned out too. Remind me to take photos next time, someone, please!
I like my set so much I'm pretty sure I need to list some on etsy and share the love, doncha think?

And for our second craft, a Valentines themed shadow box. I'm really in love with this concept. Don't be surprised if you see a green version in a couple of months...

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