Happy Halloween!

Surprisingly, or not, our Halloween's have been themed by Liv the last couple of years. This year she wanted to be a princess, and so did Lily and I she informed me. :)  Daddy couldn't be a princess so he got to be the king.  It's nice that he is such a good sport.  I like to make our Halloween costumes and I knocked Daddy's out real quickly a couple months ago, and then nothing.  October began and I still hadn't started on the girls or my own.  My back was hurting with being pregnant and the idea of sitting down for hours to trace, cut fabric and sew everything together was just not sounding magical, so I kept putting it off.  Luckily Kirk and Ann came for a visit in the middle of October and Ann cut out all three dresses for me!  What a life saver!  After that I sewed each dress up in a few hours.  I was very happy I had thought ahead when buying the fabrics and gotten A-lined dresses.  It fit fabulously over the baby belly.

On Halloween night we had a fun neighborhood pot luck dinner.  Everyone came and ate and the kids did a parade and some prizes were given out for the costumes.  It was lots of fun.

After the pot luck everyone went trick or treating.  My girls would have stayed out all night!

Happy Halloween!

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Crafty Wednesday

So the other day I decided that I was tired of finding my girls bows all over the house. "What to do, what to do," I asked myself. I had seen a cute bow holder at a friends house and decided I was going to make one. I found an old frame in my closet, got some paint for the frame, some fabric and ribbon and got to work...

       Livvy and I starting to paint.  She was working
on a project while I worked on mine.

After wrapping the cardboard that came with the frame
in batting and fabric, I started to cut ribbon.

I glued one side of the ribbon to the back,  wrapped
it around the front and then glued it to the other
side on the back

Liv got a shot of me in action!                                        

                                     

  All done - well except for the frame                             

Frame dry, ribbon done - we have a bow holder!!      

When we were getting the things I needed for my project, we picked up a little wood frame for Liv to paint.

Working hard on her stencil butterfly.  It was lots
of fun, because we got to mix paint colors to
make ones we didn't have!

All done!  Liv did her frame all by herself, with a little
help from me holding the stencil.

We didn't make this today, but I thought I was also fun.  I made this for my sister for her birthday.  It has a small diaper changing mat that fits inside one side of the holder.  The other side of the holder holds a small wipes case and a couple of diapers.  The ribbon on front is also not glued down all the way across so you can clip things to it - bows, paci's, etc

                                                                                     

                                                                                         

Rainbows

So lately Livvy has had a fascination with drawing rainbows.  Today she came into the office from the kitchen and handed me a picture.  She had drawn and written the words on the picture all by herself and she couldn't have been prouder!

She then informed me that since she had drawn me such a wonderful rainbow that I needed to draw one for her.  She has been carrying it around since...

Chore/Responsibility Chart

So I decided I wanted to make a chore chart for Liv. I wanted one a little more interesting than just a Calendar sort of set up. I wanted her to be excited about it so she would actually do the stuff on it :) Anyway, I couldn't really find what I wanted, so I just made one up.

We keep all the flowers on the bottom till she
completes something.

I didn't want it to just be plain white, so we added
some ribbon to the bottom.

After she has completed something, she gets
to move the flower up to the top part!

We'll see how this goes and if it helps get things done.  I need to figure out some sort of reward system.  I was thinking of at the end of each day writing down how many flowers she has at the top and then giving each one a value.  Like 1 flower = 5 cents.  So at the end of the week if she has had 50 flowers then she gets $2.50. She is only 4 though and I know she'll just spend that money on candy, gum and cheap crappy toys.  Maybe she has to save half for a trip or something short term, but not right now. I don't know yet.  If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

Also if anyone is curious, these are the items in the flowers.  Get dressed, go to bed on time (not playing for 2 hours after we get in bed), practice letters or counting (something school related), read a book, make bed, play outside (or active play), take a bath, clean up toys, brush teeth in the morning, clear dishes off table, brush teeth at night, and put dirty clothes in hamper at end of day.

Projects

It's been so long since I've blogged that the thought of "catching up" is a little too scary. So I decided to post one one of some of the crafty things/projects I've done the past few months.

For Halloween (yes, Halloween, I'm way behind!) we were a Tinkerbell theme. Liv was Tinkerbell, Lily was Tiger Lily (the little Indian princess kidnapped by Capt. Hook) Daddy was Peter Pan and I was Tiger Lily's mom. Why wasn't I Wendy you ask? Well, I thought about it and at first walking around the neighborhood in a blue nightgown seemed a little weird, but at the end it would have just been easier. For next time then..

In February I got a crafty bug and made skirts for the girls...

And a little onesie dress for my brand new baby niece...

A scripture bag for Liv...

and a swing set...

This past week I decided to make a bed. It's sort of a long story, I do weird things like that sometimes. It's a little more rustic looking than I generally would go for, but I think it turned out pretty good! (just ignore the messy nightstands...)

Trash

While she was hiding in an empty diaper box today I told Liv, "Be careful or Daddy might not see you and throw you in the trash."
She incredulously replied, "Mom, I'm not a booger or something!"

Ha Ha!