Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Have you noticed?

Have you noticed
that I stopped posting
about the Quilt-Along?

That's because I'm so behind!

But now that the first of school craziness has died down,
my couch now looks like this:



It's going quickly
and I should have a completed
quilt-top SOON!

Monday, September 28, 2009

Not Me Monday




We have been working on the essential arm coverage of the cough/sneeze.
An annoying woman at church calls it the "Dracula Cover"
but she's annoying so I don't call it that.

However, we have been working on it.
Putting your arm up is not enough,
you have to actually cover your mouth.

Right?

So when I told my child to practice blowing kisses into her elbow (to get a feel for the right arm placement, right?), she most certainly did not raise her arm up and end up blowing her nose into her elbow!!! My directions are always clear. My child would never think that I might ask her to blow her nose into her arm....onto her jacket!

Oh my! Where would I be without Not Me Monday?!?

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Happy Birthday KIMI!!! (& reverse applique!)

Today is our fabulous friend's
nineteenth birthday!
Happy Birthday Kimi!

In a totally unfair post,
I'm going to show pictures
from a birthday party
that Kimi would have
absolutely wanted to be at
but couldn't because (ah-hem)
she chose a college
on the other side of the country.

So mean, I know.

Two has a church friend
that is currently attempting
to make blue and green
her new favorite colors.
(Because of cool older cousins.)

Here are my supplies:
*green shirt (from Target)
*blue fabric
*multi-colored fabric that contained blue/green AND pink/purple. Score!

I used interfacing and made an applique of the birthday girls' initial. I appliqued the letter a onto a big square of the blue fabric. Then the letter/blue background combo gets reverse appliqued onto the shirt!

It took me 30 min (seriously) to get the applique behind the shirt "perfectly" lined up with my template on the front of the shirt. Notice the strategic placement to ditch the original apple design of the shirt. So then I sewed about a 1/2 inch around my template, making sure the blue fabric was spread out nicely behind the shirt. Very scary, this is totally blind sewing! Here's what it looks like when you've done all that:



And then you must very bravely cut just inside the line you just stitched, through the shirt layer only, and cross your fingers like crazy that you got everything lined up enough that it ends up coming out pretty even like this:


Then trim up the back fabric (this is pre-trim):


Make a cute matching hair-bow to complete the gift:


And proceed to HAVE FUN at the party!

Happy Birthday Kimi!
I know Two and Two's church friend
would love to have partied with you!

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Muffin Tin Monday

Muffin Tin Monday is back!
Yesterday's was the coolest ever...
Build-your-own-burrito!

So here we have, clockwise from top left:
shredded rotisserie chicken, cheddar cheese, sour cream/guacamole,
carrots, rice, refried beans


The kids had a blast putting it all together themselves and were somehow not satisfied that I was only going to take a picture of the muffin tin! So here are the big kiddos:



They ate pretty good and enjoyed having the option of putting their food in their tortillas or eatting it straight out of the tin. What are your best muffin tin monday recipes?

Monday, September 21, 2009

Not Me Monday




At DaddyMan's summer work party (at the beach), I did not take my eye off of Three only to find him on the neighboring coworkers blanket. I mean, at the beach, I know to have my two eyes on my three children at all times!

When I saw Three, was most certainly not eating some of the neighboring coworkers food.

It most certainly was not a bag of Fritos....those aren't baby food!

Upon fishing out the fritos that were not in Three's mouth, I did not discover that they were reasonably mushed up. Six teeth could definitely not mush up fritos to a safe level....

So I certainly did not shove them back in his mouth for his enjoyment and let him finish eating them! Everyone knows chips are not baby food!

***********

At a recent dinner to Taco Bell (because we have a high class palate!) I did not get a run-down of a fellow customers attire.

It was not something like this:

Two: Look, that boy has a ponytail!

And a necklace...... but not a bracelet.

And an earring.

One: "It's not an earring when it's in your lip."

This conversation was not very loud and I was not totally embarrassed!


What have you not done?

Friday, September 18, 2009

Flashlight Friday

Now that it is getting darker earlier
Flashlight Friday has be reinstated!

Wahoo!
Once they are ready for bed
we turn off every light/tv/monitor
play some flashlight games
read bedtime stories by flashlight
and let the kids read in bed...
you guessed it,
with their flashlights!

They love it
and don't even realize
we snuck in some
extra literacy!

Feel free to try it!

Thursday, September 17, 2009

December 8th

Dare I say it?
Only 99 days until Christmas!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Birthday Recap

For One's party, we had a few contests to see
who else could be "first" on Three's first birthday.

Here is the final round of the thumb war competition
where One's cute friend RC.1 let Two win


A watermelon eatting contest:

Getting ready for cake time!



This is how Three plays Peekaboo! Great for a new hair-do!

Hurray!


We went to Red Robin after the party for a birthday dinner.

And when you are turning ONE and your mom is a bummer because she thinks you've already had more than enough dessert because of your birthday cake, your big brother and big sister get to eat your ice cream!

We did a "no gifts" party but my friend made this awesome card!
She's uses a brush lettering technique found in this book here. Love it!

Monday, September 14, 2009

Shuf-fle Step!

Two's dance class starts back up tomorrow.
It's a tap and ballet combo class.
Ballet is first,
then they change into their tap shoes
for the rest of the class.


Here are Two's tap shoes,
the generic tap shoes from Payless:


Notice a problem?
Most 4 yr olds can't tie their shoes.
It takes a long time for one teacher
to tie 12 pairs of tap shoes.
I want my moneys worth from the class....
I do not want to pay for 10 min of shoe tying
every week!


So I bought this:




Looped it through the holes of Two's tap shoes
to figure out the length I needed
for it to fit on Two's foot
and overlap just enough to stitch together:




See? Three little stitches:




Then I tied the original ribbon in a cute and even bow
(yes, it took me a few tries)
and tacked the bow onto the top layer only (very important!)
of the elastic loop I just made.


Aren't they so cute?!?
And yes, I will be bringing my elastic to class tomorrow
to offer to do this for the other kids' shoes.....

just like I did last year! :o)


Hey, a $1 investment in exchange for "extra" class time?
You just can't beat it!

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Sunday

At Three's Birthday party today:

Friday, September 11, 2009

Three turns ONE!!!

Today is Three's First Birthday!!!
We celebrated by going out for ice cream.
We are high class so McD's doubles as our ice cream parlor.
Three loved the strawberry milkshake


Then we went to the park
where the world's best big sister
took him down the slide


It's so hard to take a picture of this wiggly boy!
He might not be looking
but at least he's still!
And so adorable, I might add. :o)


We ended the trip with his favorite....the swing!



And a family shot for mom!

Happy Birthday Baby!
I love you!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Shrinky Dinks

We got crafty with Shrinky Dinks today!
I have an organization idea that needed some personalization.
I'll share that later,
but what a trip down memory lane
to do Shrinky Dinks again!!!

No more smurfs....
these were Make Your Own!



Watching....it seriously took about 60 seconds!
Perfect for kids (and who are we kidding, moms too!)



Look how much they shrank!!!
I don't know why I was so surprised!



Close-up of finished product:


We used Crayola marker. It ended up running A LOT! The green and white stripes are so blurred now. Next time I'll use colored pencils.

This was so fun!


Shrinky Dink 12 Blank Pages at Joann's for $5
(We used 2 pages for ours.)
Oven at 325 degrees for 1-3 min.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Sunday Love

The camera battery was dying.
We only had one shot.

What can you do?!
:o)


Friday, September 4, 2009

Laundry Excitement!

In an attempt to be both frugal and green,
I made my own laundry detergent!
*gasp*
We were using liquid store brand detergent
which was running us about $15 a month.
I haven't broken down my exact cost but from researching others,
this homemade version will cost about $12 a YEAR!

Yes people, a Y-E-A-R!!!

Interested?
Here are my ingredients:
1 bar Fels Naptha soap
1 cup Washing Soda
1 cup Baking Soda
1 cup Oxy Clean



First, I grated my bar soap on the teeny-hole side of my grater:


I left it to dry out (took a few hours) and then blended it to dust.
I just used our magic bullet.


Combined all the ingredients:
That was it!!!
2 Tbs/load


So here's the important part....the first load....

I washed a sheet,
DaddyMan's running gear,
and some bath towels.

Pretty mega duty stuff, right?

It was awesome! DaddyMan is training for a marathon. He's not just running around the block, he's running 8-12 miles, so his running gear is gross! Now, in full discloser, I admit to not smelling the dirty laundry (sorry, not going to happen!). But the clean laundry was totally clean and fresh smelling and looking!

Here's what I learned from looking at other laundry detergent recipes:
*If you can't find the Fels Naptha, others have used Ivory.
*In my area, I could only find the Fels Naptha and Washing Soda at Fred Meyer (Kroger). It's on the same aisle with the laundry detergent. I think others have also been able to find them at Walmart.
*Some recipes called for Borax, but considering one comment said it was optional and also "great at killing roaches" I left it out.
*Since Borax is apparently a great cleaning agent, I opted to use the OxyClean instead.

Another resource w/ 10 detergent recipes including liquid detergents here.

Let me know if you try it!

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Lost the kids

So I didn't really lose my kids today
but they played in the backyard
for SIX HOURS!!

And they never once came in
because of a spat!

I'm telling you, it's a miracle!

Of course, they came inside looking like this:



And I ended up with the time to do this
for One's (First Grade!) class:


Names for their desks
Names on peel-and-stick envelopes for who-knows-what
First 100 Spanish frequent words
First 100 English frequent words

Let me tell you, writing with a sharpie?
Does wonders for your handwriting!
I think I might need to start doing it all of the time!
(Although I do confess my hatred for curly-q letters...)