Catching up

Well I have been busy latetly sewing, rescreening our screened porch, installing a new ceiling fan and light in Mallory's room so I have not been able to post. I sewed two fabric trash cans for my car. My car is a trash pit for my kids. I have to feed them, mostly breakfast bars and snacks, in the car since we are always on the go and it is easy to give them something to eat in the car and it helps with cranky behavior. Anyway so my car is always a wreak. So I made fabric trash bags so that they can throw their own trash away. I got the idea from this great blog, Make it and Love it. I do not have pictures but I love them and they turned out great.

I also made a dress, well actually it truned out to be a shirt for my newest neice Lexee. It was really cute and also really easy to make also. I go the pattern from this website and I hope to make her another one soon.

This is the front

This is the back with the cute little buttons

There she is. It fit really well so I am glad that I did not have to do any alterations.

What a cutie pie.

This weekend our friends came over on Saturday night for dinner and my friend's husband is a professional photograhper. He owns Open Image Studio which is a professional photography studio in our town. He brought his camera which has an amazing lens on it and he let me shoot some pictures with it. It was really fun but it weighed about 10 poulds, at least if felt that way. So it was fun and the pictures did turn out a lot more crisper and the lens enables portrait pictures to be taken with the subject in focus and the background blurry. So here are some of my unedited pictures.









Monty took this picture

Mother's Day was very nice and relaxing. D and the girls made me waffles and D bought two great outfits for this summer and spring. The girls made me very cute cards and Nathan loved laying in bed with me. I worked out and then came home for lunch. D took the kids to his moms in the afternoon and I started sewing Mallory's bedskirt and tried to get my computer's internet working. So it was nice to have a couple hours to myself to think and to do things around the house without interruption and not having to do it after the kids go to bed. My husband always does a great job taking care of me on Mother's Day. He picks out the best outfits and he makes sure I get to take it easy. Thanks for a great day D.

I feel better now that I got to catch up on things I wanted to post. I will be busy this week and this weekend. We are having D's mom take the kids on Friday night and we are going to paint Mallory's room and get it all ready with her new bedspread/sheets/etc and surprise her when she gets home. For our kids 5th birthday we get them new bedroom furniture and bedding. Mallory does not really need new furniture so we are getting her a new rug, sheets, comforter and new paint. She picked out this bedding set from Pottery Barn Kids. On Saturday evening we are haivng her friends party. She is having only a few friends over for crafts, games, cake and food. Then on Sunday we are having her family party. So we have a busy weekend with lots of fun and excitment.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-seeing Nathan's face while he was running away from a chipmunk. He was running really fast and the expression on his face was priceless
-having fantastic weather
-a great Mothers Day

The doll house

I was suppose to post on Sunday but my computer Internet was not working so I was not able to work on it last night. So our week was a great week. The doll house came on Monday and the kids were so excited. They love it and I love having it in our house. My grandmother and late grandfather built it and decorated the house after Julianne was born. They have had it at their house for the past 7 years and we finally got it here. The detail on the house is amazing and my grandmother's decorating is also very detailed. We are so lucky to have this house in our house and we will keep it for our grandchildren. They constructed a Victorian Era house because that is the type of house that I would love to own. So here are the pictures. The pictures do not do it justice since we had to put in our basement so I had to take these shots in the basement under ugly florescent lighting and concrete walls.

Here are the girls opening the boxes of furniture


Here is the front

The top porch

The bottom porch and front door



Dining room. Don't you love the furniture and the chandelier

Here is the kitchen. It is hard to get to the kitchen from the side opening so it was hard to take this pictures.

Living room

A bedroom. Notice the curtains.

The master bedroom. Notice the bathroom fixtures like the tub and sink.


These two pictures are of the upstairs bedroom/playroom. I love the ceilings.

Well that is our new heirloom dollhouse. The girls love it. Nathan could really care less about it but I am sure when he gets older the girls will make him play with it with them. That is probably the best thing now since we do not want him to break it.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Having the doll house in our house. It reminds me of my grandmother and my late grandfather.
-seeing the girls enjoy the craftsmanship of the house and telling their friends to be careful with it.
-Great weather.

Toy cleaning weekend

Julianne threw up on Friday morning so we keep her home Friday morning from school. She ended up not really being sick. She threw up twice on Wednesday night, was fine the next day then Friday morning, early morning, she threw up again in her bed. She was fine by 9:00 am so I sent her to school. I don't really know what was going on. She was worried about making up her Fairy Tale story at school and she had makeup work to do on an animal research project so I do not know if she was stressing herself out or just had some wired food. Anyway she was fine but my point is that I did not go to spinning on Friday like I usually do and had the entire morning at home with the kids. This meant that I was able to de-clutter and get rid of a ton of toys. I got rid of most of the toys from the basement. I got rid of a ton of Little People sets, some old groovy girls, books, old naked barbies and some outside toys. I gave them all to Goodwill and it feels great.

We are actually cleaning because Grandma's dollhouse is coming on Monday. We are so excited to have it in our house and I am excited to see it again. It has been several years since we have seen this homemade house that my grandmother and grandfather made for Julianne. When it gets here I will take plenty pictures of it so that you all can see the handiwork, detail, energy and love that was put into this precious gift.

On Saturday we were greeted by the Goodyear Blimp flying over our house. There was a regatta this weekend at the Scioto River which is only about a mile away from our house and the blimp was flying over the event. Nathan loved watching it circle our house. He also loves finding sticks and other pointy features and making gun sounds out of them. He puts it right over his chest and says "ch". It is hilarious and it I love his scrunched up face. I was finally able to capture this moment in these pictures. This first picture is his face as he is saying "ch".







Some water fun


Mallory had her preschool performance and graduation on Thursday. She got to sing on stage and really enjoyed it. She tried to remember the songs before the recital but could not remember them. I took some pictures but they did not turn out. My friend, who is a professional photographer, took some pictures so when he sends them to me I will post them. She still has school for a couple more weeks so she is not done with school it was just a early graduation.



Nathan has had another minor asthma episode. I think that his allergy episodes are minor compared to his asthma episodes triggered by colds/viruses. He had a dry cough on Friday and then on Saturday he was breathing harder and had a temperature of 100 and then today he is coughing a lot more and coughing mucus up and breathing normally. I never gave him a treatment because he was not breathing very hard. It was only really when he was running that he was breathing extra hard. So we will see. His last episode was March 30th. An this one was May 1st so technically he did not have an episode last month. Which would be the first month he has not had an asthma episode since his first one last October. His arms are breaking out in eczema again like they did last spring and his legs are also breaking out more. He also has a rash on his belly which I am not really sure what it is. It does not itch so it is probably just something unrelated but it does seem wired.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-seeing a deer on my Friday morning run
-reorganizing our toys
-having a great weekend

Welcome our new addition...

Natalie

Great Deals

Well on Thursday I started preparing our house for the upcoming summer weather. It was cold and rainy at the beginning of the week and then by this weekend it was in the 80's. So all the winter clothes have been packed away and I started to get those out. On Thursday Nathan and I went to our local Goodwill store to see what goodies they had and we ended up buying 23 pieces of clothing for only 44 dollars. They were all great clothes. Most of the clothes were either from Old Navy, Gymboree, or the Children's Place. I mostly got Julianne some summer clothes, I got Mallory a few cute skirts, Nathan got three shorts and a shirt and I even bought myself 2 shirts. All the clothes were in great condition and I only had to sew one of Mallory's adjustable waist bands since it was fraying. I should have taken a picture of all the clothes but I forgot to. I also went back to the Goodwill store today after having gone through last years summer clothes and sorted them out for the girls as to what fit and did not fit. The girls have plenty of clothes but I noticed that Nathan did not very many shorts so I bought him 4 new pairs today.

I love shopping at these stores. Like I have said before, it is more about reusing these perfectly conditioned clothes than about the money. Sure it is nice to get great deals but I feel great knowing that I am not buying unnecessary clothes from a department store. If the clothes at the Goodwill/Thrift stores were not good quality or they were all over used I would not buy them but there are great gems in those stores and it is fun to find them and it is even better that they are priced inexpensively and I am not over consuming on new items.

The weekend was great. It was actually too hot and I was getting tired of it by Sunday. I refused to turn the air conditioner on so we suffered through the hot air and it finally cooled off today. This weekend I bought 10 more bags of mulch this weekend and spread that behind our shed. I could have probably used about 2 to 3 more bags to place in the corner but it will have to do for now. I also fixed the screen door on our screened in porch. I bought one of those screen door kits, cut the pieces to length, put them together, put the screen in and it fit perfectly. I love those 1 to 2 hour projects that are challenging, but not too challenging and can be finished in a day. I think the new screen fits tighter and will hopefully not blow off when the wind comes in (that is how the old one broke, it fell out of the door too many times). It will also keep the bugs out and I will not have to keep re catching bees and putting them back outside because the kids are scared of them.

I don't have any pictures today. I know that my camera has some pictures but I can't remember what they are now. I will get them off tomorrow and load them on within the next few days.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-spring temperatures
-D going to yoga with me today
-my lovely kids
-seeing my extended family this weekend

Happy Earth Day

Well we celebrated Earth Day by not doing as much stuff as we wanted to do. We planted some apple seeds, the kids made art out of our recycling bin and we meant to go on a walk and pick up litter. We did not make it on our walk today but we will do it tomorrow. The kids like picking up litter so we will make a point out of doing it tomorrow.


Julianne made the earth

Mallory made a bird

I did not have as much time to do Earth Day activities with the kids since the Red Cross Humanitarian of the Year Award luncheon was today. It was a luncheon honoring my my dad and my aunts. It was a great luncheon and it was nice to see everyone and to see all the activities that the Red Cross participates in and to learn about our foundation and what organization it gives money and time to. I was also involved in videotaping my thoughts and ideas about giving back to our community and how this family tradition was passed onto me. They played this video which also had my cousins taped on it and others who have been helped by my family's giving. There was also a representative from Columbus City Council presenting a proclamation thanking our family for their giving and help within the community. So it was a nice event. I took Julianne with me and I think she enjoyed it.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-that our family is able to help many other individuals and organizations
-spending time with Julianne
-Jessica and Jill for helping me out with Mallory and Nathan
-my lovely stressed out husband

Some goodies I bought

Well I have been meaning to get to this local Generation Green store by our Trader Joe's store for some time. So today Mallory and Nathan and I went in there and for me going there is like going to a fabric store. Now I am not a clothes, shoes, housewares, furniture shopper. My Achilles heal in shopping is fabric stores and green living/organic stores. There is always something that I want or do not have in those stores and if I don't watch myself I could spend a lot of money. Well so we visited today and they have so many cool things in the store. They have tons of lunch packing stuff from Tiffin tins to metal lunch boxes with little compartments for different foods, they have recycles toys, tons of baby stuff (like usable sized saddle blankets) and lots of other cool stuff.

Well I was in this store because we have been having issues with Julianne and her lunch likes and dislikes. We started out the school year with packing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That lasted for about a month and then she decided that she did not like my bread (it was whole wheat bread) because it was not soft enough. I tried different breads (I refuse to buy white bread so she had little alternatives) and it still did not work. So we switched to ham and cheese but she did not like the cheese because it got too warm and she did not like that. Since Christmas we have been making roll ups which consist of tortilla with cream cheese and ham. This was a favorite when she was in preschool in Tennessee so we went back to that. Well that worked for a few months and now she is tired of that. So I went back to packing peanut butter and jelly. Well the lunches have not been eaten and she comes home grumpy and continually has a headaches. So that means that I have to deal with the wrath of Julianne after having not eaten or drunken enough all day. Additionally she does not like the juice box (what kid does not like juice boxes) that I pack she just wants water. Well we don't have a container small enough to fit into her lunch box. So for the past month I have been thinking about getting a smaller container and this was my day.

This is what we bought:

It is a small drinking cup and container to store hot/cold food. So we are going to start packing water and warm food so that she actually eats something. She wants me to pack a hard boiled egg for tomorrow, which is a strange requests but hey we will try anything. But I think that putting pasta in the container will be a good idea.


This is an adorable alternative to plastic bags that I could not pass up. It is called Snacktaxi. I hate using plastic bags for all the lunches that I have to pack her so when I saw this I thought it was genius. I was actually mad that I did not think of this idea. It is such a waste of landfill space and resources to make plastic bags so I was thrilled to see this idea. What it basically is a layer of cotton sew to a layer of nylon/polyurethane with a Velcro closure. You use it and then wash it in the dishwasher/hand wash or even throw it into the washing machine. They have different sizes for sandwiches or smaller ones for snacks. So I bought one and may make a few of my own that meet our needs.

Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-ingenuous ideas such as this cute plastic bag alternative
-shopping at stores that value organic/chemical free/recycled/fair trade practices
-our newly spread mulch