Tuesday, February 14, 2012

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!



Wednesday, February 8, 2012

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 – **Pattern  was available for free for limited time only, and will shortly be posted for sale.  (I'll add the link for that when available)  Enjoy the photos!



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