Valentine's Day Craft #1

I just finished my first Valentine's Day craft. The boys are finally old enough to appreciate the little things that I make for them. This is a class sample for an upcoming workshop that I'm hosting, but it's also going to be given to Nathan. I know the colors are girly, but it's Valentine's Day so I don't care. If you're interested in the supplies used, I'll be posting this and it's details to my scrapbooking blog tomorrow.

What are you reading?

I am currently reading the book pictured here by John Grisham. I love to read. At night, I often find myself checking to see the time at the end of a chapter and discovering it's 1:00am. Whoops!

When the boys are happily playing without me, I like to sit on the couch in the same room and read my book. The more they see me read, the more they'll want to read. Well, at least that's what I'm hoping. Already, both boys very much love to read books. It is not unusual for Nathan to sit quietly for 30 minutes flipping through books by himself (provided his brother doesn't distract him).

So, what are you reading?

Dajo Bags

One of my resolutions this year is to live more "green" in our day-to-day lives. I hate Ziploc bags. We use them, but I hate them. Frankly, I hate all plastic bags. When packing snacks for the boys I try to use non-consumable containers, but I can only fit so many of those in their small lunch sacks. I have mentioned that my boys eat a ton of food, right? Anyway, I just found this great company called Dajo Bags.


These reusable snack bags are FDA approved, Made In America and cute! I cannot wait to buy some of these. I just wanted to share.

Weekend Warriors

We began with this...


Had a little bit of this in the middle...


We now have this...


How do you spend your weekends?

Do not think for one second that we did ALL of this ourselves. The kitchen was the one room where we hired contractors to help us with the majority of the installation projects. Can you see us installing the 700-pound granite island ourselves??? That would have been awful!

I think I'm going to frame the photos of our kitchen "before" and "after" and hang them in whatever room we are currently remodelling as inspiration. The downstairs is almost finished! We still have to paint the entry and the living room, but that's nothing. We also want to install all new shelving in our two pantries...yes, two!

I'd like to thank the boys for putting up with the many contractors we've had in the house and the many cartoons we forced them to sit and watch while we demolished tile, ripped out cabinets, etc.

Wagon

I am so far behind in adding photos. These are still from Christmas morning!


Needless to say, the boys loved their new wagon from Grandma & Grandpa S. Ian pulled it into the family room after all of the gifts were finally open, climbed into it and asked his dad to tuck him in. Such a cutie.


Shortly after, Nathan climbed in as well to relax and watch a cartoon while Mommy & Daddy got dressed for the day.

Tagged

I've been tagged by Sheelagh! Visit Sheelagh's blog and admire her husband's excellent photography skills and her superb "momminess" (do you like that word?). Anyway, this tagging means that I have to post the 4th picture from the 4th photo on my computer, explain the picture and then go find 4 more people to tag. Since I don't store photos on my laptop I have plugged in our external hard drive (something we would grab in a fire before grabbing our cats) to find this 4th photo.


Here it is! It's a picture of me feeding Nathan solid food for the first time. He was not too terribly impressed with solids at first, although he did manage to gag down a few full spoonfuls of this cereal/sweet potato concoction. I absolutely HATE sweet potatoes so it surprises me that this is what I chose to feed Nathan.

Sheelagh was right, it was a lot of fun to explore this folder from August 2006. Oddly, I'm just now scrapbooking a bunch of pictures from 2005 and 2006 and I have these photos from Nathan's first solid meal in my stack.

Now, I tag the next 4...

Dalene at Fuzzy Little Snuggle Zoey
Jacqui at Sweet Notions
Bree at The Gilmore Family
Kim at A Day in the Life of Kissiefish (maybe she'll post more often :))

Christmas Morning

Pictures from Christmas morning...finally! (Sorry it took me so long, mom)


All they want for Christmas...cars, cars and more cars!


Some other stuff we found and put under the tree.


It wasn't until they were almost at the bottom of the stairs that they realized something was different about this morning.


Initially, all the boys noticed were the two Toy Story stuffed cars. They were thrilled since these reminded them of their very own halloween costumes this year. They each sleep with their respective stuffed toy at night.


Nathan asked for "green Chick Hicks" at least twice a day for the month leading up to Christmas. We already had one, but somehow it was lost and he wasn't able to properly re-enact the scenes from the movie without it. (I already have a second back-up ready to go for his birthday in February).


Ian, showing off his "Mommy Special Lightening McQueen" as he likes to call it. It's the "mommy" to the smaller version of the same car. My kids have cars instead of dolls.


Nathan, tractor tipping. We have to record this and figure out how to share that video with everyone. The sound effects are adorable!


Nathan, hugging his new bear.

Christmas Pajamas

I am so far behind with my posts. Oh, well. Things have been so busy, blah, blah, blah. At least our downstairs home improvement projects are almost complete!

We let the boys open up one gift each on Christmas Eve--new pajamas! Ryan hates this tradition. He firmly believes that absolutely NO gifts should be opened until Christmas morning. Oh, well!




Ian loves to rip everything apart. He didn't care much about the pajamas, but he definitely enjoyed the wrapping paper.


Nathan seemed happy to receive pajamas. Had I known that it would take him forever to open his gifts the following morning, I think I would have let him open a few more on Christmas Eve. We had to beg Nathan to open his gifts on Christmas. He's such an odd one.

Memories

I just uploaded this layout to my scrapbooking blog, but I had to add it here as well. This is Ian back in September 2006...the first time he received stitches. I say the first time because I KNOW that we will be rushing him to the ER for more stitches in the future. Remember, this is the child that scooted off the futon the first time he learned to scoot/crawl. Ryan was cleaning up something in the room and Ian waited until he wasn't watching to make his move. Was that ER trip #1 for Ian? I think so.



This is a very simple layout. I inked the edges of the patterned paper, typed up my journaling on the computer and kept the embellishments to a minimum. I'm trying to complete 31 layouts during the first 31 days of the year...I'm 3 behind already. I'm trying to not cheat and count a 2-page layout as 2 layouts. I'm sure that come January 30, my rules will have changed.

Christmas Eve...at the park?

We had the perfect Christmas Eve. The weather was delightful and Ryan and I were able to take the boys to the park. The park on December 24, can you believe it? Being able to share the holiday with family and friends would have been lovely. However, that being said, there is something wonderful about enjoying a low-key holiday with no one but the kids. They certainly don't care if the spare bathroom is spotless or if the entire floor throughout the house is picked up.


Nathan would spend hours in the swing, if only we were willing to push him that long.


Ian has his own way of doing things.






I think Ian is winning this race!


Nathan was content just running around outside. Boys belong outdoors, that's for sure!

Fascinating

I can remember going to the store with my mom and buying this (annoying) Christmas carousel thing. It plays about 30 songs and can be turned up way too high. Since half of my Christmas decorations are still missing, I had a temporary lapse of judgement and dragged this thing out. What was I thinking when I put it within the boys' reach??? Oh, well, they were obviously very interested in the darn thing.


What is that face that Ian is making? He's a weird one.




I could barely drag Nathan away from it.

This One's for Jacqui

I went a little nutty at JoAnn Fabric the day after Thanksgiving. Here's the flannel that I purchased...and only the flannel. I bought a bunch of felt, a 10-drawer rolling cart, some sewing notions, scrapbook paper and probably a few other things that I just can't remember at the moment. Oh, I went to two different locations too. What makes this so incredibly nutty??? I barely (and I stress that word) know how to sew anything! I'm determined that 2009 will be the year that I learn. If I remember, I'll post a picture of the one sewing project I have completed so far.

Calling All Scrapbookers

Hop on over to my scrapbooking blog: delovelyscrapbooks.blogspot.com for a fun challenge! It's my 31 Layouts in 31 Days challenge. The winner will receive a Cloud 9 Designs page kit!

Oh, and can someone please explain to me why the heck I cannot get links to work on my blog?????