The Adventures of Linds and Lyds

Halloween Crafts

2011-10-22T19:23:00.001-07:00

So cute little Halloween decorated gums (all Trident) for the girls to give to their classes on Halloween.

Dracula, Spider, Pumpkin, Witch's Cauldron, Pirate, One eyed Monster, BOO, Mummy, Vampire Bat, Frankenstien, Ghost, Werewolf and Witch.

Four little coffins that will be filled with candy, each girl has 2 teachers (1 teacher and 1 helper) . The girls picked their papers and will deliver these on Halloween. The coffins are paper mache and came 3 nesting sizes to a pack from Michaels. On sale they were $3.xx, not too bad for 3 coffins with lids.

Littlest PEt Shop Birthday Party

2011-07-18T12:37:00.000-07:00

Lindsay's turning 7!!!!!

Well it's only been one year since I last blogged. I think I only like to blog about my kids birthday parties :D

Lindsay wanted a party this year that was all about Littlest Pet Shop. I had to come up with some kind of inviation, I used photoshop a lot for this party. I started by creating this invite using images from google and a pic of Lindsay in her pet shop dress.

I found a really good deal on Walmart.com for the plates/napkins/empty goodie bags/blowers/bracelets/table cloth for $24.

I also found this super attractive skirt at a thrift store, it fit so Lindsay begged me to buy it and this will be the one and only time it is ever worn!

Here are the things in the goodie bags. I added some candy and found the cutest necklaces on etsy. This pic shows the penguin necklace. They are epoxied bottlecaps and were just about $2. Adorable.

I also made Pet shop hair clips, crazy daisys, using pet shop pencil toppers.

Coming up with snacks was loads of fun. I found these adorable pet food bowls at WM for 97cents each. They were such bright and happy colors that I knew they were perfect for our LPS table. I also made little labels using Photoshop and made up cute names for the snacks.

We had goldfish crackers, licorice, puppy chow, carrots, banana chips and ranch dip (not pictured/or named)

I made cute cookies, they were bright paw prints, patterned dog bones and number 7's.

I put some on sticks and wrapped them for the girls to take home for a snack later.

I also found the cutest chocolate mold at Michael's from Wilton. It had the mouths of a puppy, a bunny and a pig. When you hold the stick up to your face it makes you look like that animal. Adorable. These were packaged for the girls to take home as well.

This was my first time ever making a cake for one of my girls. My mom always does them and we recently moved far away and she can no longer do them. lindsay really wanted a tiered cake so I used an 8 inch round and a 6 inch round. At Michael's we found these animal print tattoos from the Ace of Cakes line. We also used a LPS cake topper we found at the party store. I wrote on a sugar cookie instead of directly onto the cake. Then just stuck the stick into the cake.

Here is the table with all the goodies!

We also had games.

I created 8 unique bingo cards using photoshop and google images. They used goldfish crackers as their cover-ups.

We also played a game called "What am I?" they had to guess what LPS character they were by asking yes or no questions, I stapled the pictures to their hats and later we switched about a few times and they seemed to enjoy guessing what they were.

To finish up each girl adopted their own LPS pet. Each girl got a take out box and decorated it with LPS stickers, foam stickers and crayons.

I had each take-out box marked with a sticker and each animal was assigned a matching sticker on their bottom.

Each girl got a little adoption certificate that we filled out before snapping a picture.

It was a lot of fun and I am sure the birthday girl had a great time!!!

Pink Cake!

2010-07-21T17:53:00.001-07:00

My mom did it again and made an amazing cake. We whipped out our well read Pinkalicious book and made the Giant cupcake look just like the ones Pinkalcious overate. I snagged a Pinkalicious figurine at BK earlier this year when they had them in their kid's meals.
The cake was strawberry with a buttercream icing in varying shades of pink and since your dying to know the cherry is the world's largest cake ball, no one ate it by the way.

And in case you don't like strawberry cake there were chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with Pinkalicous picks, they said "Think Pink" and had various pics from the book.

Here is the birthday girl getting ready to blow our her candles! I really just can't believe there are six of them!

She'll huff and she'll puff and blow those candles out!

Happy Birthday baby I hope you had as much fun at your party as I did planning it, I love you bunches and bunches and can't wait to see what we come up with next year!

Now onto Pirates in December for the only 3 year old girl I know that loves Pirates!

Pink Clothes and Pink Guests!

2010-07-21T17:39:00.000-07:00

You could never have a Pinkalicious Party without some pink clothes, lots of them!

I made 3 freezer paper tees and 2 giant pink tutus. Using the Cricut and some free hand painting the girls rocked it out in their Pinkalicious cupcake tees and the awesome thing is they can wear them again!

I didnt want to wear a giant cupcake tee so my is a little more sedated, it is Peace Love Cupcakes. This is in the mirror so it is flipped but you get the gist of it.

Here are some of the pink ensembles that are very girly guests decided to wear, I was so excited to see them all in pink they were all too too cute!

I just love this shot of Miss Lydia, she is just darling if I do say so myself!

This pic cracks me up, 3 little 6 year olds gossiping I am sure!

Group shot of all the pink divas that attended! We did have some little boys and they wore green put didnt want to pose for us!

Pinkalcious Food!

2010-07-21T17:13:00.000-07:00

I spent a lot of time thinking about pink food for a pink snack food buffet for our guests to munch on! I centered it around the chocolate fountian filled with pink white chocolate, it didnt work as well as planned but it was still yummy. We had different kinds of cake balls, rice krispie treats, several kinds of fruit, candy, cotton candy, pink and white marshmallows and cute little cupcake lollipops; some stuffed with a cake ball.

I also knew that I wanted some sugar cookies on a stick, so I baked some up and decorated them, there were flowers and PINK letters.

I found these cute little cookies at WM on sale a little while back and I thought they looked so dainty and girly and of course mostly pink!

Pink Ghiradelli chocolates and fluffy pink cotton candy!

Donuts, fruit and rice krispie treats waiting to be dipped!

Close up of the cupcake lollipops, some were stuffed with cake balls and some were solid white chocolate! Bakerella makes adorable cupcake balls on a stick, but these were just so much easier.

Boyish Goodie Bags

2010-07-18T09:39:00.000-07:00

No self-respecting 5 or 6 year old boy would want a pink girly goodie bag so I had to whip up 4 boyish versions. Like I said earlier in the Pinkalicious book she must eat green to return to normal, so the boys are getting green goody bags.

I snagged 4 green gumball machines at Walmart and then added some other green (yummy) goodies. They are getting a big ol' helping of green M&Ms, 2 transformers Jibbitz, a pack of green fruit sensations gum and we took a special trip to the candy store and bought a mixed array of green Jelly Bellys (my fave is 7UP, Lindsay liked Watermelon and we bought zero Jalapeno`) Topping the whole thing off is one Giant Green lollipop!

I hope the little men enjoy this on reprieve from PINK!

Girly Goodie Bags!

2010-07-07T16:05:00.000-07:00

Well this party is mostly girls, with only 4 of the greatest little boys ever invited!

I do have boyish goodie bags, but we will start with the girly ones, cause they rock!

Inside the goodie bags we have a mini PINK gumball machine, along with pink spree jelly beans, pink M&M's, pink princess tattoos, a small Littlest Pet Shoppe Jibbitz for crocs, a GIANT pink lollipop, pink candy lipstick, pink mini reese cups and a pink raspberry Ghiradelli chocolate. The best part of this goodie bag is a giant pink Daisy hair clip with a rhinestone center, along with a Pinkalicious pink hair extension clip (thank you Burger King for having these, and thanks for just selling them so I didnt have to eat your crappy food)

I packaged the whole shebang into a clear celophane bag and tied it shut and added the Daisy clip onto the outside!

Here is the side view with the darling Pinkalicious hair clip!

Yes, I am a terrible blogger...

2010-07-07T15:35:00.000-07:00

I realize it has been months since I've blogged, but really we are rather boring around here so you didnt miss too much!

I am in the process of planning this little firecrackers 6th birthday (doesnt really seem possible). So you probably know how I loved to plan a kid's party so here's how we start!!

This year we are celebrating with a big ol' Pinkalicious Party. If you aren't familiar with Pinkalicious, it is a book about a little girl who makes pink cupcakes with her mom and eats so many of them that she turns pink. She goes to the doctor and her only option is too eat only green things, she doesnt and sneaks more pink cupcakes and turns red!

It is a darling little book, if you have a little girl in your life look at it for her!

Anyhow, any good birthday must start with a cute invitation.

I knew we wanted a cupcake and of course it had to be Pink! We hit my mecca (Hobby Lobby) and had to find the perfect papers for our paper cupcakes.

Lindsay spied a pack of pink cardstock with 5 shades of pink, none were Blush and Bashful though. We snagged that at half off (a whopping $2.50) and some pink swirly openstock on 50% off as well.

We got to work!

I whipped out my Sweet Treats cartridge. I wanted this cart so bad and got it around Thanksgiving, this is the first time I used it (I have problems, yes indeed)

I cut the cupcake out in solid pink and then cut it out again in white and once again in pink swirly paper. Then I cut the liner, one with lines and one solid.

I glued the front of the cupcake together first starting with the non-solid liner, then the solid liner, then the swirly and finallly white. Next I tured the whole shebang into a pocket by only attaching the pink cupcake with glue on the edges.

After my cupcakes were done, I cut out a much smaller cupcake and added a big red juicy cherry to it. The small cupcake has the party info and slips right into the big cupcake pocket. To get the details you pull up on the cherry and voila`!

Next Goodie bags! Whoo hoo, I got those suckers down early this year! Sweet!

Cricut Cupcake Cuteness!

2010-02-05T14:09:00.000-08:00

I totally stole this idea from someone on the Cricut Messageboard, there is an amazingly talented bunch over there!! These are sock cupcakes!

Anyway, I made these for some of my friends that I am going out with tonight! The socks are from the Dollar Tree and I had the paper (duh!) and the red pom poms!

Thanks for looking!

Stamp your diecuts!

2010-01-08T11:10:00.000-08:00

Over at just buggin our newest challenge was to create something using a Cricut cut (of course) and the somehow jazzin up the die cut using stamps!

I whipped out one of my newest carts (Paisley) and created this little frog card for a b-day card. I used Stampin' Up mini background stamps to give him some tone on tone pizazz. I added stickles to his crown and around his belly!

Inky Fingers

2009-12-27T08:07:00.001-08:00

Over at just Buggin our newest challenge is Inky Fingers, using Ink to jazz up your Cricut Die cuts.

I used a lot of stars from George for this layout, I spread the stars all around the focal photo, across two pages. The ink adds a little extra deminsion and makes the stars pop off the page a bit.
The paper is Basic Grey and the title font is MIckey Mouse Font. Thanks for looking!

Just Buggin' Challenge 15

2009-12-12T05:43:00.001-08:00

This week is challenge 15 at Just BUggin! This challenge was to create something witha Holiday theme.
http://justbugginchallenges.blogspot.com

I am in the midst of doing a 12 days of Christmas celebration for Mrs. Fitzgerald, Lindsay's teacher. For the 7th day of Christmas she recieved 7 decorated gift bags. I'd share my dorky poem with you, but then you'd just laugh at me and my lack of poetry skills!

HEre are two of the bags that I made, all 7 used the Cricut and various cuts. These 2 used Very Merry Tags, A Child's Year and Winter WOodland. I added loads of glitter glue because sparkles make everything prettier!

Just Buggin' Challenge 13

2009-11-27T07:18:00.000-08:00

Here is my first design team project. The challenge was to sew your die cuts, it could be real machine sewing, hand sewing, stamped sewing or even pin stitching.

You can see other fun projects, or submit your own at justbugginchallenges.blogspot.com .

I had these pictures of Lindsay on a field trip to a local horse farm with her preschool class. I whipped out my Animal Kingdom cartridge and cut out the horse at 5 inches. I wanted to give him a more realistic mane and tail. I used my Bazzil Stich'z flourishes templates and laid them out to give him a mane. My advice for you is to only do one line at a time, when I started I put the whole design on with a pencil and all the dots made my head go crazy so I had to erase and start over.

Here are the two pages, I stitched little yellow x's on the corners of the journaling box and on the focal pics on page 2.

Here they are together.

And a close up of the title. The title font is Mickey Mouse Font cut at 1 (H and A) and 3/4 the rest the letters.

Gypsy Giveaway

2009-11-20T14:41:00.000-08:00

There is this up and coming blog called "The Gyspy Spot" and they are giving away a Gypsy, how cool is that!

All the details to enter are at this link, so go enter!

http://the-gypsyspot.blogspot.com

Card class cards

2009-11-16T04:44:00.001-08:00

I mentioned in a few other posts that I was preparing for a card class for my friends. My good friend, Aura, used to teach one of these every year for us to get our holiday cards done, but she recently moved away and it was requested that I do the class.

I was a little nervous because Aura is a really, super talented Card-maker. Her designs awe me!

I got a lot of inspiration from various blogs and tweaked some designs to fit my needs. One came from Christmas with the Cricut (love that blog) and a few were inspired by posts on Split Coast stampers, and still some were my idea!

I made 5 cards, but I am going to blog about 4 because the 5th one is one of my DT projects and I will post it on the DT blog first (in a week or so :D ).

Aura is a big, big SU! user, she used to be my sales rep, so I got loads of sets from her. I made 3 of my cards using SU stuff, and 2 more that were all Cricut.

This one was from Christmas with the Cricut. I loved that they used Designer's Calendar, which was the cartridge I won for being in the Cricut Chirp spotlight. I hadn't really used the cartridge too much so was excited to be inspired by their blog. If you haven't been there it is http://christmaswiththecricut.blogspot.com/.

Here are a few using SU stamps. I pulled ideas from a variety of cards on Split Coast stampers. I love the stamp set Deer Friends. It was a Hostess set that I scored on Ebay for $22. I love it!

This one was using the Mini Mates set from SU!, the paper is from Hobby LObby. I loved this paper, it is not your typical Christmas paper but I think it is just so classy!. I stickled the ornament with black and red stickles. I used the 1 and 3/8 punch to punch through the black layer and the Happy Holidays stamp is on the inside of the card.

Like I said, there will be one more, but it is for a DT challenge so I can't share it just yet.

Just Buggin' Challenge #11- A cute little card!

2009-11-15T17:34:00.000-08:00

I made cute little card for the Just Buggin' Challenge Blog. I was just made a member of their Design Team and although this project isn't a DT challenge,I thought I'd jump right in with this little card.

If you are a Cricut fan you can jump right in as well. The challenge was to use an animal die cut and if you don't have one you can create your own! http://justbugginchallenges.blogspot.com

I used this cute little reindeer head from Doodlecharms. I also gave him a Santa hat from Doodlecharms. For some 3-D effects I gave him a bright shiny Stickles nose and a fluffy white pom pom on his hat. For a touch more whimsy I gave him oversized oogly googly eyes.

The circles and scallop circle are all from Accent Essentials. I added a little Basic Grey paper and some ribbon and a hand cut tiny "for you" tag and the front is all ready to go!

To give this darling little guy a big sense of purpose I added a little strip of the same Basic Grey on the inside to form a pocket to hold a gift card, or good ol' cash! To make the pocket I just glued the paper strip on 3 sides and slipped the card in. To gussy up the pocket a touch I added a scalloped strip of paper!

I think I am going to give this cutie to my sister-in-laws new boyfriend for Christmas, well not with a blank CVS card! This little guy is sure to make anyone smile!

Just Buggin' Design Team

2009-11-11T11:35:00.000-08:00

There is this fun little challenge blog, http://justbugginchallenges.blogspot.com/, every week there is a challenge that involves using a certain Cricut cart, or a specific crafty item, like glitter. Anyway, the owner of the blog decided to create a design team. Some members will create fun projects weekly and others (like me) will make something bi-weekly.

I have so much going on with church, girl scouts, room mom stuff and just general school volunteering that bi-weekly is all I can squeeze in.

So pop over there soon and see what all these talented ladies have created to share with you!

Blog header

2009-11-10T17:28:00.000-08:00

Is under construction... okay that' s a lie it will be soon. I have to make it on the other computer, so for how you have a Thank-oween blog to view or maybe that's Hallo-giving. Either way, soon I will be ready for THanksgiving.

Got my new HP!

2009-11-10T17:15:00.000-08:00

So ever since I cancelled the Gypsy, I have been on the hunt for a netbook to run DS on the go. Well, I ended up getting a full laptop from HP. I got up insanely early, early as in most college kids were probably still awake from the day before!

Anyway, I was first in line to get the laptop at Wal-mart for their "Pre-Black Friday Saturday sales" I think they are supposed to have these sales every Saturday up to Turkey Day. It wasn't all that well advertised if you ask me, but the deals were pretty good.

My HP has the new Windows 7 and is awesome! I have also installed my Design Stuido on it and have been having a blast creating things. I haven't yet cut anything, but will really soon, I seemed to be bogged down right now with all my committments... yes I am a chronic volunteer :D

So hopefully after this card class I am teaching on Sunday I will be able to work on my own creations and blog about them!

Oh and just for your information I think Windows 7 rocks! It has some great features! My personal fave that I think is a Windows 7 feature and not an HP feature is Sticky Notes. I can put little digital post-its on my desktop screen to remind myself of stuff. I love it. Right now my sticky notes remind me that the girls have a pic appt tomorrow and I just deleted one that reminded me to go to McG at 1:45 and that our first Girl Scout meeting was at 3!!!

cancelled my gypsy!

2009-10-25T04:31:00.000-07:00

I still would love to have one some day and I love the carts that come preloaded on it, but after reading reviews and then reading more and more reviews I came to the realization that this product has great possibilities but was released a smidge too soon. It has a lot of flaws, some in the programming and some with the actual construction (some people were missing things as basic as the USB port)

So someday when the bugs are worked out and the price drops I will get it, but until then hubby has decided it makes more sense to get a netbook and load my Cricut Design Studio on there. I like this plan because a netbook can do other things too :D

So now I am waiting on him to find the perfect one of these. Darn thing will probably be black, not an awesome pink or grrrn, but I'll deal.

Early Christmas AKA I'm such a sucker....

2009-10-14T04:49:00.001-07:00

Cricut just released a new little toy called the Gypsy. I ordered it yesterday, I am trying not to think about what I spent, but what I saved (That's how my mom taught to me to look at sales :D )I used a coupon and got it for about 200 off (Or at least according to HSN's MSRP. Not that I'd ever pay that).
But it wont be here for a while, it has "extended shipping" but until then I will look forward to it!
The gypsy can hold your whole cart library, meaning I won't have to worry about lugging them to crops and you can create designs on the little screen by welding together shapes and letters.

It also comes with two carts already loaded, they are exclusive to the Gypsy and you can't get them anywhere else.

It also came with a new cart called, DESTINATIONS, I have no clue what's on it, I might love it, but if I dont I will try and get rid of it on Ebay and make a little of my money back :D

Goodie Gobblers

2009-10-10T13:52:00.001-07:00

My Aunt is renting a table at a craft fair the first weekend of November and she wanted me to create a few things to add to her booth.

I have a few things that I have already whipped up and wanted to share one of my creations.

You'll be shocked that not everything uses the cricut, however this project does :D

After creating these I have decided that I am going to make more for Lindsay's class. It'll be a nice little treat to take home after our Thanksgiving Feast, plus they are soooooo freakin' cute!

Here are my Goodie Gobblers!

If you're interested in how I made these tough! I'm not sharing....

totally kidding!

I cut out each turkey from the My Community Cart at 5 inches, then I cut out the blackout version as well. Next his tail feathers in brown. I inked each piece and traced around the shape fo his head. I colored his wattle, beak and feet and then stickled his wattle and beak for a little extra pizazz.

After everything was dry I punched 2 holes in each tail feather and laced a mini-tootsie pop through. You need the black out version to help keep the turkey stable and to keep his paper from buckling.

I think these would make adorable placecards as well, if you attached a small strip of paper with the person's name! Sooo cute!

Lindsay's fall T-shrit (made with cricut)

2009-10-05T11:51:00.001-07:00

So after I made Lydia's witch's feet shirt Lindsay really wanted her own shrit. After I started making this one she told me she wanted a Halloween one not a fall one, well at this point she will get what she gets and not throw a fit. The Halloween one will be coming along sometime soon.

My friend Sara, http://www.whimsies-whatnots.blogspot.com/, did this bulletin board for her son's teacher's classroom. Isn't it adorable.

She was inspired by this ad for Shaw Flooring, http://www.shawfloors.com/, so then I was inspired by her inspiration to create this shirt for Lindsay.

This is a one of a kind creation because sewing on all those leaves was very time consuming, plus I had to change the thread 5 times.

I think the shirt was worth it and hopefully Lindsay likes it!

I used George Oval 2 at size 1 1/4 to 2 inches and the tree is from Paper Doll at 10.5 inches Real Dial Size and the owl is 1 1/4 inches on shadow from one of the princess carts.

Excited!

2009-10-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

First I have another project to post later, my friend Sara is going to laugh at it :D (in a good way).

But I wanted to tell you that the Teacher's Lounge gift I posted here won the contest I entered it in and I got a free digital kit and another cartridge. I am unsure if I get to pick the cart, I hope I do, I dont want a duplicate.

But I had to share the news as I was super excited!!

A treat for the teachers... Cricut of Course :D

2009-10-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

I wanted to make a little treat for the teachers at Lindsay's school, so of course I turned to my cricut and my favorite cartridge Paper Doll Dress Up. I hardly ever use that cart for the dolls, alhtough they are cute! It has so much stuff on it and I dont think I can sing it's praises enough!

I also used Tags, Bags, Boxes and More, I have had it awhile and it is a great cart for little bags and boxes but I dont use it much so I was happy to dust it off.

I cut everything in the bag on Real Dial Size, which like the witch's shoes for the shirt, is super important becuase if you dont use RDS you item will be something itty bitty!!

It is important to note that the owl, love that owl, is from Storybook, as is the font on the front! I honestly bought that darn cart for the owl, don't tell my husband that.

I used a lot of stickles and ink to give everything more depth.

After I cut out everything and gussied it up I attached them to wood skewers that I had painted black, then I poked them in a floral brick in the bag. Tucked in some tissue paper and loads of candy for the teachers.

I am going to pop it in the teacher's lounge and they can take a piece of candy if they dare!

Here are some close up pics!

I think this Jack-o-lantern is freakin' adorable!

I layered 2 witch's pots, one cut in purple and one in black. I stickled the purple for frothing bubble effect and added the cut little frog!

That mummy, he is hidden paper doll and he really should be front and center! You can also see my owl, oh how I love him!

Just another all over glance!

This skeleton is hidden in PDDU as well and I think he rocks, I tucked him in a Dracula coffin!

I hope the teacher's like it!!

I couldn't have done this without my trusty cricut, which Lindsay now wants to use, can't say that I am onboard for that :D

Be sure to check out the latest Cricut Promotion, The Great Gypsy Escape! Purchase one of 4 new Cricut catridges for a chance to win a new Gyspy (handheld design studio for Cricut), $2,000 travel vouchers and even a $30,000 trip to one of 5 fabulous locations!

A little sad....

2009-09-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

When I first moved here I didn't have any friends, I lived here well over a year before I finally found some friends. Having a new baby helped, it was a instant bonding type thing.

Anyway, I met this group of about 8 women and their babies and we became great friends, we have really bonded during this time and had all our second babies (and in some cases third) together.

Slowly but surely the group is moving on with other things in their lives, we have one that moved back to England, another that moved 2 hours away, one is now in Mexico and today I find out one is moving to another state (about 8 hours away).

So while I understand that life changes and we all move on, I will still take this moment to be sad and miss my friends.

I love my Cricut

2009-09-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

I you haven't figured this out yet, then you really don't know me :D

If you browse the internet there are all sorts of contests out there right now because Cricut just introduced the Gypsy. It's a handheld device that stores your cartridges, instead of having to pop your carts in and out. I haven't gotten one, maybe someday, I am waiting for the price to drop and for the bugs to get worked out.

Anyway, right now on a message board I go to they are having a Cricut contest and I have submitted a few things I have made. I recently submitted the shirt I made Lyd and I am also submitting items I created for Lindsay's party.

Anyway, in case you can't remember what I made here is a link to pics of those things.

http://adventuresoflindsandlyds.blogspot.com/2009/07/to-oz-part-3.html

I also couldn't have made Lindsay's invitations without the cricut either.

http://adventuresoflindsandlyds.blogspot.com/2009/06/wizard-of-invites-are-done.html

Cuteness with the Cricut!

2009-09-25T04:54:00.001-07:00

So you can cut fabric with the Cricut. I knew this but had never undertaken a project that involved fabric until today!

As I stated earlier I have an extreme addiction to Halloween Shirts for my girls. A friend found a cut shirt with witches shoes on it, she recreated it with some pattern, but I decided to attempt it with my Cricut.

I pulled out my Cricut cart stash and found the Witch cut on Paper Doll Dress Up. This cart has sooooo much stuff, stuff you cant even see on the back of the box.

I was super excited to get started so I headed to WM and got a couple of fat quarters for $1, I bought the green and orange fabric in fat quarters and then just picked up some Wonder Under and plain black fabric.

To cut fabric with your cricut you first need to iron the Wonder Under onto your fabric. I whipped out a brand new Cricut mat because I wanted to be sure my fabric stuck really well. You stick down the fabric and pick out your cut. Before I started I cut paper to make sure my sizes were correct, I'd hate to waste the fabric.

I cut the witch's shoes at 3 inches, real dial size. That part is important if you cut at 3 inches without real dial size they'd be itty bitty! The spider is also from PDDU and is on the monster cut section. After cutting I peeled away the excess fabric and was left with shoes and a spider.

Next I cut the squares for the Witch's tights using George and a 1.5 inch square. They were also ironed on to wonder under.

After all your bits are cut out, iron them onto your shirt.

I free cut the bottom of the witch's dress, I didn't like the way it looked with the legs just ending in the middle of the shirt.

After ironing I had to zig zag all around the bits and I gave the spider button eye balls.

My model :D

Final shirt.. I added a yellow cross stitched mouth to my little spider friend.

I am considering cutting EEEK out on the Cricut and putting it on the bottom of the back of the shirt, but I wanted to share the cuteness so I haven't done that yet.

The cricut made this project a snap and you can find more info on the little machine that I love at www.cricut.com and you can find stuff about their contests here...

Let's pretend it's October!

2009-09-24T13:02:00.001-07:00

I have gussied my blog up for Halloween. It is one of my top two holidays. I just love it and I am raising the girls to love it as well!

I am in the process of creating (hopefully, if my sewing machine will cooperate) a cute little something for Lydia, that I will share whenever I finish it.

I should tell you about my addiction... Hi my name is Michelle and I am addicted to Halloween Shirts for my kids. They each have something like 15+. I ran into a deal last year after Halloween when WM had all their shirts for $1 and I loaded up. I am going to try to send Linds to school everyday in October with a Halloween shirt (except for color days, well unless they are orange and black color days!).

Anyway, I want to be the first to tell you Happy Halloween!

Circus, Circus...

2009-09-23T12:16:00.001-07:00

No, We didn't go to a hotel in Vegas. We went to the Carson and Barnes Circus that came to town.

It was actually a pretty nice circus. We went to another one 18 mons ago and it was odd, very odd, did I say it was odd?

Anyway, the first thing the kids did was ride on an Elephant...

4 kids was $24 to ride for 30 secs... that's $.80 a sec.

They had all the regular acts, animals, trapeze, contortionist, hula hoop girls, some motorcycle guy, clowns (AKA guys with red noses EEEEEEK) and cotton candy:D

Lydia was terrified and watched the whole show with her small hand clasped firmly on her mouth. If you popped her right hand off her face, she'd immediately pop the left one up.

Afterwards we found out she loved the "girls in orange with the pelephants" and hated those "guys with red noses". She got in bed with me last night saying that she couldn't sleep because of those red noses... poor baby.

I took loads of pics of everything. I did hate the lighting that they have in those giant tents!

Here are the girls in orange with the elephants.

This guy was part circus part side show. Freakin' weird. He must have been born without some normal body part, like ligaments or extra joints or some such oddness, I googled but didnt find him.

The girls liked the Hula Hoop girls too. Those suckers must have been heavy!

I always think the ribbon dancer girls are just so pretty and graceful!

EEEEK cover my eyes, it's a man with a red nose.

They paraded the animals all around and we were in "box seats" (ha ha ha) and they came really close.

There was this motorcycle dude who rode on a wire, well half way through it broke. The girl under him looked freaked out and they finally pulled it back and out of the way.

This odd human hamster wheel contraption was really close to us and the people walked on the outside blindfolded and even jumped rope.

They had these cute little puppies doing tricks too!

Just a little clown and circus girl dance action!

Cutest little circus goer ever! It was soooo humid and her hair looked soooooo fantastic it, me I looked like a hot poodle.

And here they are on their 30 sec elephant ride :D

Cutest Little Flower Girl

2009-09-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

On Friday, September 11 my step sister got married and she had the cutest flower girl ever!

Lindsay got all dressed up and dropped every single rose petal on the aisle runner. She thought she was hot stuff hanging out in the dressing room with the bride and bridesmaids!

Everyone was very impressed with her cuteness and I was very proud of her!

Give me back my crown!

2009-09-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

I suck at this blogging thing, so I need my "World's Worst Blogger " crown back! I get into a groove and then whamo I stop again! So I apologize for my suckiness!!!

I will blog today I promise!

However for when my suckiness abounds I will link you to some of the blogs I like to read, they are authored by people to don't suck at blogging ;D

But first I want to tell you about this contest at Cricut. I of course have a love for their carts and they just released #100. No, I dont have them all eventhough hubby thinks I do.

They are giving away 20 carts a week, you can post on this thread and get entered easy peasy!

http://www.cricut.com/messageboard/tm.aspx?m=5316808&mpage=1

This is the darling cart that is #100, it even has 3-D houses so you can make a cute little village!

http://www.cricut.com/shopping/ProductDetails.aspx?id=361&s=1&sc=2

Now here are some blogs I like to read...

http://www.bakerella.com/
http://www.whimsies-whatnots.blogspot.com/
http://bedifferentactnormal.blogspot.com/
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/
http://cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com/
http://www.princesslasertron.com/
http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/
http://www.skiptomylou.org/
http://www.cricutchristmas.blogspot.com/

So when my suckiness abounds you can read what I read :D

How to Make a Clapboard invitation

2009-08-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

I am posting this for my friend Missy, who is hosting a Hollywood Birthday party for her little ham Nick (It used to be Nicky, but he is growing up and dropping the y, and making me feel old).

Anyway, I am posting it here for 2 reasons... #1 it will show you that I havent forgotten that I have a blog and #2 if anyone else needs one here is a quick pictorial.

Step 1: Cut an 8.5 x11 black paper into 3 pieces. Two are 3.25 x 11 and the last is 2 x 11. Cut the 2x11 pieces in half again.

Now you have enough paper to make two invites.

Step 2: Fold both the 3.25 x 11 and 1x11 piece in half.

Step 3 and 4: Glue the large piece on one long side and the non-creased short side. This makes a pocket. Also snip a small slit in the center of the 1x11 piece. (this snip allows the top of the clapboard to open and shut)

Step 5: Put a strip of glue along the top (non-snipped side) of the smaller black strip.

Step 6: Now you have two pieces that are ready to go together. Line up the smaller piece with the larger piece, keeping the snipped in on the creased side of the large piece. Poke a small hole through both pieces and place a gold or silver brad, connecting them together.

This is what it will look like closed.

Step 7: Using a white pen, I used Uniball Signo, add all the "production information". If you search google images you can find a variety of clapboard images with ideas.

Step 7: Slip a small white piece of paper into the clapboard, include the instructions about costumes, party directions, RSVP info.

To Oz Part 3...

2009-07-22T11:46:00.000-07:00

This segment is all about games and decor...

I came up with 3 games for this little shindig!

The kid's favorite and by far the funniest was the scarecrow races. I had purchased 2 pair of jeans, 2 plaid shirts and 2 straw hats (all at garage sales for 10 cents and the hats came from the dollar tree). I used 2 Aldi bags turned inside out for the heads.

I had tied the pants ends and sleeves ends together and the neck hole and head together. The kids divided up into two teams (it worked out well for boys and girls, plus they always love that). After deciding teams the kids had to stuff, stuff, stuff the pants and shirt full! I was worried they'd be a bit timid about the straw but man they jumped right in.

It was a close race and the hilarious part was when they tried to run their completed scarecrows down the yard and scarecrow guts popped out everywhere. I wish I could have gotten the video camera to cooperate, it was hilarious!! They tied and I had to rustle up more prizes!

The little boy running in the last scarecrow race pic is my friend Sara's little boy Jack, http://www.whimsies-whatnots.blogspot.com/. I am going to have to crop this pic for her, because the look on his face is priceless, he loved the race!

With my handy dandy Cricut, I made Dorothy but the big problem was that she was missing a ruby slipper, I am convinced that the Wicked Witch stole it, crazy old Mrs. Gulch. thankfully we had a lot of helpers ready to "Pin the shoe on Dorothy"

I had to laugh at little Glydia (that's Lydia dressed as Glinda) wouldn't step away, she was fascinated and almost got a shoe stuck to her a time or two.

The third game was easy peasy, I found some clear high-heels at the Dollar Tree. I bought one pack and tried to paint them and since it worked I headed back for more. Wouldn't you know that they didnt have anymore. I went to ten Dollar trees around here as well as all over Indy with my mom. Finally I found 5 more packs. I painted them red and then they weren't ruby slipper enough, so I went back over them with red glitter glue. Each kid guessed how many were in the jar and the answer was 34, my mom actually won with 32, but I didnt give her the giant lollipop, I let Mr. second place Nicholas win, with a guess of 40. My fav guesses were 3 and 600.

Onto Decor...

Here is our door sign, inspired by the one on the door when the gang arrives at Oz.

We had to have the Field of Poppies represented, so I bought a bunch of fake poppy flowers at Dollar tree and snipped them apart and poked them in my flower bed. I had planted real flowers here but stupid bunnies and birds ate them. I was going to plant real poppies in May, but clearly I am not that good of a planner, they would have had to have been planted way back in October. Darn. These will do though!

I told my friends I feel like one of those old ladies that can't garden any longer so they toss fake plants outside. There is a lady here that does that, her hydrangeas look fab covered in snow and oh so believeable.

Each kid was invited to make their own munchkin flower pot hat, they picked their pot and flower and myself or my neice glued it on for them.

the day before the party my neice and Linds/Lyds blew up and tied these rainbow colored balloons to our fence. I thought we'd do a little Roy G Bv, but amazingly the balloon pack had indigo and we could whip out a full on Roy G Biv! Wahooo!

This really isnt decor, but it's cute and I forgot to put it on the food post. I took regular old bottled water and made them new rainbow colored labels.

They say "Land of Oz water" Guaranteed to melt the Wicked Witch in your Life and Quenches a Yellow Brick Road size thirst. Bottled in the fresh springs of Oz.

I had 5 tables, one was munchkin sized!

This one just has Glinda tuelle, a wicked witch hat and broom and tons of McD's munchkins, witches and flying monkeys.

Here is the scarecrow table, he had the most stuff becasue scarecrow stuff is easier to find. It is covered in a burlapy type fabric. I made the little laminated one on my cricut.

Here is tin man, with 2 spray painted funnels and speakers that played the entire movie soundtrack. Covered in silver fabric.

Dorothy had Bitty Baby, cricut Dorothy, extra ruby slippers, a toto in a basket. Covered in blue gingham!

Clearly I took this pic on an angle of sorts, oh well, you get the idea. Lots of lion stuff and furry fabric!

A repeat of decor... the yellow brick road and the house squishing the Wicked Witch of the East. Her legs are tissue paper wrapped hangers (bent) and white tights with electrical tape around them!

To Oz and Back... part 2.

2009-07-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

Goody bags... well regular old Goody bags wouldn't do for this party, so we had a Lollipop guild Shoppe. We had to "represent the Lollipop Guild" in style!

I had a lot of fun being creative for things for this shoppe and originally it all started with just thinking of having a bunch of different kinds of lollipops.

here is the sign I made using, my cricut and my new sesame st font.

Here are some darling little Dorothy inspired hair barrettes and a coloring book. It took a long time to figure out the pages and I was lucky becasue I found the pages online and saved them to photoshop for adjusting and wouldn't you know the site is no longer vaild. So I lucked out.

Here are some "There's No place like Home" chocolates, in the same of Kansas. And a pair of Dorothy shoes.

Good witches rock, so we had Glinda wands and patented traveling bubbles!

Everyone thought the Green witch fingers (white chocolate) were funny! They cracked me up! Rainbow Chocolates were Lindsay's favorite!

I found these WOO pins on Ebay, I ordered two sets so Lindsay could have a complete set, I let the kids pick one from the shoppe.

Lots of lollipops! Dum Dums, ring pops, swirly pops, tiny lollipops, tootsie pops.

The kids enjoying selecting their goodies.

A few overall shots of fun fun stuff!

In the big pink tub are giant sugar cookies made to look like "Ruby Slippers" they were awesome!

I was impressed by the fact that the kids (sans my pal Bella) were very selective! They really chose the things they thought they'd like the best! Next is decor and games...

To Oz and back....part 1

2009-07-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

Part 1 is all about the costumes and food. One should always start with the food, that's the most important part of any party.

Funny thing is that I had so much stuff planned that I forgot I left these 2 platters in the freezer until towards the end and then I pawned a bunch of them off on my friend Sara :D

We have rainbow colored/munchkin size cake balls and chocolate Kansas (how do you make that plural, is it like deer/moose or fungus... maybe Kansai or Kansases or maybe it stays the same). We have have little yellow brick road cups (stuffed with a cake ball) and a ruby red slipper on top, also tiny chocolate ruby slippers becasue we all love shoes.

Here are some shots of the snack table. In the purple bin we have "Lions, Tigers, Bears Oh My" Trail mix (reese pieces, M&M, teddy grahams, dried cranberries, raisins, swirl chips, peanut butter chips and mixed nuts) We have also a container of "Taste the Rainbow" skittles and a cute set of bookends (now a napkin holder). Plus the rainbow plates from Big Lots.

Here we have chocolate covered pretzels made to look like "Diplomas of Thinkology", rainbow twizzlers, chocolate witch fingers, chocolate rainbows and "Somewhere over the Rainbow" Goldfish, plus grapes (something healthy to please the moms)

Melted Witch punch, her hat and broom survived the water Dorothy threw at her.

These were a labor of love, well the whole party was but these especially, they are tons and tons of ruby red slipper cookies. I have a friend who makes the best cookies ever and she shared her recipe and tips wth me and I came up with these.

Now to the most important food item. My mom made us this cake, isn't it darling. The characters are all represented and we used our collection of McD's characters.

It was hard to get a perfect shot, but you can definately get the idea. See the Wicked Witch of the East's legs, I love that part!

Now, if you haven't gotten sucked into the vortex of OZ by the pretty colors above, we'll move onto my darling (and I know you'll agree) daugthers in their super cute costumes.

Here is the guest of honor Lindsay "aka Dorothy". Her house just squished the Wicked Witch of the East and Lindsay stole her shoes! I'd like to send a special shout out to my Mother-in-law, the best costume making grandma around!

Here is Dorothy skipping down the yellow brick road.

Now here is my little munchkin, who was way too grown-up to be a munchkin, so we settled on Glinda. The skirt came for a garage sale for a dollar, we hacked it apart and sewed it to a leotard that we got for 49cents and viola` we have Glinda. Plus the fabulous hat I created for her and blogged about a while ago!

See I told you they were darling! More to come soon!

Updated bar stools...

2009-07-14T04:58:00.000-07:00

After I painted the counters, I realized that it made my mismatched bar stools stick out even more.

Here's the story of the mismatched bar stools. We bought our first house in June of 03, it had a island in the kitchen, we bought 3 matching barstools. We moved out of said house in November of 2003 (Eric was transferred), movers packed up our barstools and the ugly white dented one from the shed that the previous owners left there.

We used our 3 barstools forever and then little Lyds decided that she wanted to eat like a big girl and I didnt want to go drop $80 on a new stool. I got the white one out of shed and cleaned it up for Lyd and on we went with life.

The ugly one stuck out even more once I redid the counters, so I decided to paint them black. I tried spary painting and let me just say I suck at it. I get to close and I cant stand the smell and it's just not pretty.

I headed off to Ace and found some high gloss latex and we were in business. I sanded (sucky job) the chairs and started painting them.

I am very happy with how they turned out and I think they really bring the look together.

Here is a poor shot of the before chairs, but it is a nice shot of my counters :D

A couple of painting shots.

A poor shot of the finished products... but a good shot of my family :D

Easter Egg Hunt in June?

2009-07-01T17:56:00.000-07:00

Way back in April my brother and I planned an Easter Egg hunt at my dad's house (Okay, I should say I planned it and my brother did what I told him to do and bought eggs and candy to add to the pot).

Anyway, my mom was sad that she missed out and shopped the 90% off Easter sales and had a huge stash of eggs, small toys and goodies. We went to visit her on the 22nd and stayed for a week, on our first day the girls had this fabulous hunt and found tons of stuff and $15 each!!

Finally back...

2009-07-01T17:45:00.000-07:00

I'm sure that I have loads of blog posts to put up, but these came in the mail today and I had to share. My darling Mother-in-law (yes, I am super lucky, not only do I love my MIL, she loves me).

First I should say she is a wonderful seamstress and it probably took her no time at all to whip these up, it would have taken me days/weeks and then I would have pulled my hair out and given up. Anyhow, I asked if she could make a Dorothy and Glinda dress from the bitty babies that the girls have. She kindly obliged and these came today.

We added the red shoes, crown, basket, puppy and pink shoes from our stash, and to complete the look. They will surely look adorable at the upcoming party. And OMG it is only 3 weeks away. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Ode to a power sander...

2009-06-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

This is my new BFF, my husband's Black and Decker Cyclone sander. I am currently repainting my backed bar stools to go along with my kitchen makeover.

One was white and the other were all oak. Long story as to why. Anyway, the first 2 I decided to hand sand, let me just say that was a mistake. It took forever and still I didn't do that great of a job, I am praying that the primer keeps the paint from peeling :D

I finally got brave and be bopped out to the garage to the cabinets filled with all sorts of manly tools. My in-laws always get Eric tools for holidays, b-days etc. Well a while ago (2 summers ago I think) Eric bought a Black and Decker cyclone sander.

I pulled that puppy right out and went to town on the remaining two bar stools. It was like the angels were serenading me. This little thing makes the sanding soooooo much easier. You can switch between a circle sanding pad, great for flat surfaces or a more rectangular one with a pointy tip to get into those little grooves.

My hands do get a little shaky, but it is just the right size and isn't hard to handle.

So that is my ode to my BFF! I will hopefully have bar stools posted soon, I have one more chair to go and it is 2/3 sanded, but Lindsay told me to stop she was sick of the noise!

From this to that....

2009-06-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

I have been on the hunt for something that would work for Lyds to wear as Glinda's hat for the Wizard of Oz party. The crown is very oddly shaped and I knew I would have to be creative to make something work.

I found this little tin flower pot at the Dollar Tree and thought that I might be able to work with it. I really liked that the pot had some embossing already done.

First I studied a scrapbook paper with a close up of Glinda and her crown. Then I had to make a template to trace on to the flower pot. Here the pot is with the template traced onto it.

Nothing from my crafting stash worked to cut through the tin so I had to find hubby's metal snips in the garage. Even with them it was a bear to get through the top rounded edge, once I snipped that off it was easy to cut out the rest.

I tried to paint it with some acrylic paint but that wasnt working at all. I ended up popping over to Walmart and getting a can of silver paint. I gave it one good coat and then I had to solve the issue of sharp edges.

The next step was soooooo tedious. I had to take really tiny pieces of masking tape and carefully line them up and fold them over the sharp edges. Once that was done I coated the crown in another coat of silver to cover the tape and to cover any missed spots.

To give it one final dash of sparkle I added lots of silver and clear Stickles (that's glitter glue in case you didnt know).

I also added a white organza ribbon to tie under Lyd's chin. I actually think I am going to add elastic instead and no-slip drawer liner to the bottom to aid in keeping it on Lyd's head.

I am pretty proud how it turned out, I do wish it had some dangling bling in the front like Glinda does in the movie, but I think that would irritate Lyds and I am just praying that she wears it at all :D

Wizard of Invites are DONE!!!

2009-06-11T16:10:00.001-07:00

Whoooo hoooo the Wizard of Oz invites are finally done! The first thing that I can fully check off of my party to-do list!

I ended up going with the invite that has Dorothy and Toto on a cool foldy card. I couldn't have done these without my cricut, I used it to cut the cards from the Wild Card Cartridge, Animal Kingdom for Toto and also the Paper Doll Dress Up cartridge for Dorothy and all her clothing/accessories.

It did take some time to figure out the right cuts do to for Dorothy because there isn't a Wizard of Oz set on the cartridge. It would have rocked if there had been!

I stamped the outside of the card with a stamp I had on hand, it sort of looks brickish and did the trick so I went with it. The card opens like a box, closed using the flaps.

Here are a pile of inviations, I made 25 of them. It wasn't too bad using an Assembly Line, thank you Henry Ford.

Using a stamp with a witch on it I made tiny little wicked witch charms using shrinky dinks.

If you are interested the inside says....

ATTENTION ALL MUNCHKINS!

We're off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The Wizard requests your presence to help celebrate Lindsay's 5th birthday. So follow the Yellow Brick Road to Emerald City (then my address) on July (date).

RSVP: To Michelle, The Mayor of Munchkinland

I'd also like to send some props to my friend Aura who did a similar folding card for her son's pirate b-day!

Revamped Book Ends

2009-06-11T15:57:00.000-07:00

So I spied than adorable set of A-Z bookends at Hobby Lobby, and actually after further inspection I am even unsure if they are bookends or are just decorative statues. They were $16 per letter, and I really wasn't going to pay that. I supposed sooner or later they'd go an sale but for the life of me I can't figure out what catergory they'd fall under.

Last Saturday Lydia and I headed out to some garage sales and found 3 pair of bookends. One pair had ratty and torn teddy bears (not to mention dusty as all get out) on them, but they were pretty sturdy.

I bought a pair of A and Z letters were on sale at Hobby Lobby and made them $3 for the pair.

Then I removed the bears and tossed them away and then I sanded and painted the books black.

I also painted the letters black and then hot glued them together! They look pretty nice up on top of my fridge holding up my cookbooks. Especially my new favorite book "Hello Cupcake" totally cute book!!

Garage sale finds!

2009-06-06T15:48:00.000-07:00

So yesterday and today the girls and I headed out for garage sales. Oh how I love this time of year!! We found lots of great things, some things are ready to go and some need a little attention to make them work for us.

I swung by a local church and they had all the clothes marked 10cents. I got 1 pair of Old Navy capris, a pair of DKNY jeans, 2 WM capris, 1 pair of Silver jeans, a brand new Old Navy shirt and a shirt for a scarecrow for 70cents! Sweet!!

I got Lyds 4 new swimsuits, Disney princess, Dora and Land's End for 25cents each. I never buy adult swimsuits, that's gross, but I figure little kids wear swimmie diapers and these all look barely worn!

Here is a raggedy Disney princess dress. I (or Lydia) needs it for the fabric on the skirt. I paid $1 for it and the tuelle I found at the store was $6.99 a yard. My mom and I are going to deconstruct and form a new Glinda dress for Linds' Wizard of Oz party. Isn't the tuelle just perfect!!!

These candleholders were $2 for the set, I am either going to paint them black and put them on top of my fridge or they are going to go in the center of my dining room table.

Here is a pile of Little People animals and Noah. they were 10 cents each (so $1.50)

The girl's fav find of the day a Bitty Baby trike. I paid $5 and they sale for $20+ on Ebay and $10 to ship the little heavy sucker.

2 black shelves that already match the shelves in my living room, not sure what I am doing with them exactly but for $1 I bought them (they are $29.99 at Kohls)

Ugly, ugly book ends for 50cents, they are getting revamped soon!

Another set of bookends for the girls playroom when it gets redone. They were a whopping 10cents and who do you suppose they look like (did you guess Toto?). They are getting slightly updated soon! And may even come into play at the WoO party!

Even uglier bear bookends, They are sturdy adn those ugly bears are going bye bye! 50cents for the pair!

Just a general pic. I got a Rachel Ray 365 cookbook for $1.

clothes for Lindsay! All size 4T, which she doesnt even wear yet. but they are all Children's Place and Gymbo (3 two piece sets, 2 shirts, 1 dress, 3 jeans, 1 short and 1 sweater) $20. I figure that the 7 gymbo pieces alone would have been $100.

I did buy one ugly as sin blue wall shelf, it is getting an update and will hopefully look way different and be worth the $1 I spent on it! Plus it will hold a very special selection (that's Linds speak for Collection).

Counters part deux

2009-05-27T17:14:00.000-07:00

We redid them and they worked! Whoo hoo, they worked.

Eric and I did them together this time and we were very particular during the process. I painted them myself and then together we measured and timed and mixed and mixed and mixed.

It's amazing what following the directions will accomplish!

Here are a few before pics... Boring white counters, they had lots of stains. I bleached them all the time and still some stains remained. After Sara did her counters I knew that it was the solution for us.

All told my kitchen makeover is about $78. I have a few other things planned but you can see a sneak peek of how it is all coming along.

I have a window treatment in the works, as well as a bar stool update (long story as to why one is white and the others arent) and a wall treatment in mind. Those are in the works and I will show you those when I get them done.

Here is a break-down of costs (I am not counting the first screw up $, becasue well that would stink).

$60 gallon of Enviro-tex at Menard's
$4 fabric at Hobby Lobby (for window treatment)
$6 in paint (for counters as well as sprinkle rack, knife block, canister lids, salt and pepper shakers)
$5 flower pot for utensils (it matches my Kitchenaid perfectly).
$3 new black paper towel holder (originally $13 at Wal-mart... who pays $13 for a paper towel holder?)

Here is an overall shot. ( I do have plans for the 3000 kitchen magnets)

Here is the corner where out little TV goes as well as the black painted knife block.

The other corner, home of my third child, my Kitchenaid, as well as the aforementioned flower pot, my canisters with newly painted black lids and my sprinkle rack.

One of my favorite things... My sprinkle rack. It makes me smile!

Here is a close up of the counters. Amazingly this section of counter worked the first time. Who knows why.

And finally another whole kitchen view.

Link to Sara's blog with FAQ...

http://whimsies-whatnots.blogspot.com/2009/04/faq-about-counters.html

My mom rocks!

2009-05-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

She doesn't even read this blog, but I thought I'd post about her for the 10's of people that do read the blog.

I am just amazed at her awesomeness. She is an amazing person and a fantastic grandma, my kids (and neices/nephews) are so lucky.

My mom always steps in to help others when they need it, she volunteers for those less fortunate and she is just an all together great person.

What prompted this post you might ask?

Backstory... every week she watches American Idol and immediately following my niece, Jessica, calls grandma up and they chit chat about the preformances, that all by itself is neat, but not the coolest part.

I talk to my mom a handful of times each day (so does my brother... I hope my kids want to talk to me that much) Anyway, during a recent coversation she was telling me how she bought my neice (9) a surprise.

She ordered American Idol Live Tour tickets for just she and my neice. What a fan-freakin-tastic grandma memory is that going to be. The funny part is, she isnt telling Jessica just yet, she is mailing her a copy of the seating chart for the concert and putting little {you are here} {grandma is here} arrows.

I hope my kids realize how amazingly lucky they are that their grandma loves them so much and does so much for them.

One funny thing she does for my kids is mails them garage sale money. They love garage sales and we head out every Friday or Saturday morning with me on my bike and them in their burley for good deals!

So here's to you mom, I love you and you ROCK!

Here is a pic for you of her with 4 of her 6 grandkids. Jessica, the recipent of the ticket, is holding Linds!

Little Graduate

2009-05-20T13:11:00.001-07:00

Lindsay is done with preschool. Honestly, the only thing that I thing keeps me from being totally heartbroken is that Lydia goes in 2010! She sang several songs with her classmates and they rocked the house (well as much as songs about letter sounds, vowels, Bible Verses and colors can rock)
r.

Once the class was done singing each child went up front and signed their name and recieved a special book from Mrs. N! Lindsay had to have a little help from Mrs. Niebrugge, her fingers just don't obey!

The kids sangs several songs and after that we headed across the hall for lots of yummy sweet treats! To end the special day Lindsay picked her fav place for dinner, McDonalds!

And because a post wouldn't be complete without a small dose of Lyds, her she is enjoying a yummy ice cream cone cupcake!

I am so proud of her, I am still coming to terms with her going to kindergarten and being away from me for 7 hours a day... why do they have to grow up so fast!

Counter Update...

2009-05-16T15:14:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been so long. May is just pure chaos with soccer and the end of school and the girls wanting to be outside on bike rides or in the sandbox or in the water table.

Anyway, here is the update I was dreading posting. I was dreading it for 2 reasons. The first being that I didnt want to admit that I screwed up and second because I dont want to deter you.

So I painted my counters, just like my friend Sara, and they were gorgeous, I loved them.

Here is the bad part, I, unlike Sara, didnt mix the envirotex well enough. It is a chemical reaction so you have to have equal parts of the 2 containers that come in the box.

I waited and waited and they never set fully. The lady at Envirotex said I had to scrape and start over. At that point I was crushed, now I am ready to tackle it again.

My hubby wasn't too thrilled that they didnt work in the first place, mainly becasue he wasn't sold on the idea to start. He did his husbandly duty and helped scrape off the unset goo, which I might say was absolutely NO FREAKIN' FUN at all.

The counters are part-way back to normal, and I am ready to tackle it again. I asked for a Menard's Gift Card for Mother's Day (So romantic huh?) and now I am awaiting Menard's to have a bag sale where you get 10% or 15% off of what fits in the bag. I am hoping they have this sale next weekend for Memorial Day and if not I will probably just go ahead and do it.

So here is my advice to you.... MIX THE STUFF UNTIL YOU CANT MIX ANYMORE. Also I'd suggest measuring into a set of throw away containers before mixing together. The company says not to pour from the bottles because they might not be 100% equal, I know that Sara did dump from the bottle, because honestly that is what makes sense. But next time I am going to be hyper vigilante and measure the crap out of the stuff.

So I am hoping and praying that some heavy duty stirring & some Sara supervision will spell success in a few weeks.

I do have a some pics of the counters while wet and they sure were pretty.

Counter makeover!

2009-04-30T18:29:00.001-07:00

I will shortly be posting some pics of my new kitchen counters! I copied my friend Sara and her kitchen makeover (except I left my cabinets alone :D ).

Anyway, stay tuned for some fun pics!

Grandma J's visits!

2009-04-27T17:15:00.000-07:00

Grandma J's (or Daddy's grandma according to the girls) came from Nebraska to visit. Just like any grandma she brought the girls presents and of course they were super excited.

After presents we played outside and heard a sound that brings joy to any child! The ice cream man was making his rounds, this was their first time ever buying popsicles! They still havent finished the giant popsicles, they had a few licks and I popped them in the freezer and they have since been forgotten.

While Grandma was visiting Eric smoked a brisket, yumminess! Everyone loves that including the girls.

We also went out on a bike ride/walk. It didn't turn out like we hoped, Lydia ran to Grandma and Grandma scooped her up and immediately tripped on an uneven sidewalk square and down they went. Lyd hit her head on the sidewalk and wouldn't stop crying and she wouldn't allow us to sit her up. She cried hard for a solid hour and then we finally headed off to the hospital for her first (and hopefully last CT). Her head was clear Thank God, it did grandma and mommy a ton of good just to have her checked!

So that is all the happenings of Grandma J's visit!

Oreo Cake... AKA Chocolate Deliciousness

2009-04-27T17:04:00.000-07:00

First off sorry I havent posted in a while, I had some company in town (my great mother in law) and so I wasnt on the computer too much!!

Eric just turned 31, he says I am older than dirt, I am 1 month and 3 days older than he is. I tell him that if I am older than dirt, then his name must be dirt!!

Anyway, for his b-day he didn't fee like going out so I made his favorite meal (homemade Runza's). They are a beef and cabbage roll that is sold at a fast food resturant in Nebraska (Iowa and Kansas too). They aren't my fav thing, I dont even eat them. But I make them for him eventhough they take hours to make.

I was however excited to make Eric this cake (http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/chocolate-covered-oreo-cookie-cake-90307.aspx). I found the recipe during Lent and had given up chocolate so I was saving it.

It is awesome! If you like chocolate or oreos you will definately enjoy this cake!!

Cool blog giveaway

2009-04-18T05:50:00.000-07:00

Over at Dad-blogs.com they are giving away this awesome swingset and what kid wouldnt want to play on this all summer long. Lindsay and Lydia always want to be outside so this would surely entertain them and give me a chance to sit back with a glass of ice tea and watch them play.

And even better they throw in a cute little canon elph. Now I love my big canon but am forever saying "I need a small pocket size camera".

So anyway, if your kids would love this set pop on over and enter to win !

http://www.dad-blogs.com/the-blogs/community-news/372.html
http://www.kidscreations.com

This cant be right can it?

2009-04-17T05:54:00.000-07:00

This baby is going to Kindergarten? No way.

Yesterday was the parent's meeting at the school Lindsay will go too on August 18th. I think I almost cried like 3 times, then I got to thinking about Lydia going in 3 years and that made me want to cry even more.

I know she is ready and I know she will love it, but it breaks my heart just a little bit to imagine her heading off and spending the greatest part of her day away from me.

The teachers all seemed really nice and I am excited to find out which teacher she will have and how I can help that teacher out (what a lucky teacher to get me and my cricuts to help her out... ha ha ha).

So there will probably be a lot of tears from me and probably none from Lindsay in the coming months.

Easter

2009-04-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

The Easter bunny came to see us and the girl's were super excited. Lindsay woke up on Easter morning and said "Mommy, I was laying in bed telling myself how excited I was that the Easter bunny had left stuff for me, so I had to get up and see what he brought, but I had to stop and pee first".

Kids crack me up.

Anyway, that silly bunny had dropped off 2 baskets of goodies with very little candy, they had gotten plenty from the massive egg hunt the day before.

Lindsay got 7 Wizard of Oz jibbitz for her crocs, a Littlest Pet shop set a Dorothy magnet, a Peek a boo petite Glinda doll and a few small things.

Lydia got 7 pair of Dora panties since she is all potty trained (Go Lydia Go), 5 Dora jibbitz, a tiny soccer set and her own small pet shop set along with a few tiny things :D

After they investigated their baskets we got ready for church and they looked adorable in their dresses! They look so grown up, Lindsay was so excited to wear her white high-heels. By the end of church she took them off, she learned quickly that wearing high heels is no fun at all :D

Easter Egg Hunt

2009-04-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

For Easter we headed down to Terre Haute to spend a little time with my brother and his family and my dad and step mom.

We planned a giant Easter egg hunt for the 4 kids (my two and my brother's two).

There were about 240 eggs for 4 kids, they had a blast. We did make a bit of a mistake and some of the eggs had gotten wet due to a slight mishap and the jelly beans got wet and icky. Yuck, however the ants seemed to like it, double yuck. We threw those eggs out!

Easter Smores Revisited

2009-04-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

I still haven't tasted them yet, man is Lent over yet??

I did however create them in cute little Target pails. I think I like them better than the ones I posted from google images. I think they are adorable, if I do say so myself!

They were super easy. I did change the directions a tad.

1. I took the graham cracker crumbs and mixed the brown sugar in with them. I put all that in a ziploc.

2. Then I placed a cellophane goody bag in the pail.

3. The ziploc went in next in an upright position.

4. I placed the M&Ms around the ziploc.

5. I placed 8 peep bunnies standing up on top of the M&Ms.

6. I gathered the cello bag around the peeps and secured with the twist tie and curling ribbon.

*Hint you must place all the stuff in the cello bag while the bag is already in the pail.

I changed the directions for baking a tad as well. Instead of it ending up as a messy mixture, I turned it into more of a smore pie. You mix the crumbs/sugar mixture with butter and vanilla and then press into a pie plate or small square pan. Then sprinkle the M&Ms and cover those with the whole peeps.

Here is the original post just for your info :D

http://adventuresoflindsandlyds.blogspot.com/2009/03/easter-smores.html

(Notice Lydia behind the pails eating a peep... I think she is going to turn into a big blog of sugar.

The next Venus and Serena?

2009-04-02T16:33:00.000-07:00

Eric played tennis all through highschool and college, so he is convinced that he is going to teach the girls tennis (as well as soccer). More power to him, I was the least athletic child growing up so if my girls have some coordination I hope they rock at whatever sport they might choose.

Anyway, for Lindsay's 4th b-day Eric got her a tennis racket with Dora, well a few weeks ago he dragged it back out and took the girls outside to take turns.

Take turns... ha ha ha ha NOT. That didnt work, there was a fight and off we headed to Target for another racket. Thankfully they had another Dora, however this one is a tad different and now the fight over the new one. UGH you cant win with kids, really.

Eric put a little eye hook through a ball and hung it from the tree, now they take turns whacking the ball and we try really hard to keep them far enough away from each other so that no one gets a concussion.

and yes Lindsay is in the backyard in her pajamas, and the pants aren't even her's they are Lyd's!

Potty trained?

2009-04-01T13:46:00.000-07:00

Lydia started showing interest in Potty Training (well mainly in panties) last week, so we headed to Walmat and she picked out some Dora panties.

I explained to her that Dora doesnt like to get tinkled on and she promised not to tinkle on her. Well, amazingly she has done super dooper! We headed out last night to eat pizza and that was the first time I let her leave the house in panties. I came armed with an extra pair of pants and panties but we didnt need them. Twice she said she needed to go and she did!

We came home with dry panties and I only put a diaper on her at night, for the last 2 nights she has woken up and insisted on going potty in the middle of the night. So she is really getting the hang of this whole potty thing!

I understand that she may just up and decide that it isnt worth her effort and revert back to diapers, but for now I am excited to have to less and less poppy diapers to change!

Here are a few pics of my baby growing up too fast, also it should be noted that she refuses to use the potty chair and is only happy using the big potty!

And because I dont want to offend I will note that there are no nakey bits showing!

Twilight Tide Pettiskirt GIVEAWAY!!!!

2009-04-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

Check out this adorable pettiskirt. I think I need to encourage my fantastic Mother in law to whip up some for the girls.

How adorable!!

Twilight Tide Pettiskirt GIVEAWAY!!!!

Wizard of Oz...

2009-03-30T18:14:00.000-07:00

Okay I have been whipping up a handful for prototype invites. I would love if you'd leave me a comment on which you like the most and if you have any ideas for a different version or something to make these versions better!

There are 3 pics of the first. First I will say that I stole the general idea from a good friend who made an adorable Pirate invite for her little boy using SU stamps. I of course whipped out my cricut. After many looks through the Paper Doll Dress Up book I came up with this. The little charm is a shrinky dink with a green witch that I made.

I also used Animal Kingdom for the little Toto. I also realize that she needs some socks, I forgot those.

This is how the card opens, I cut the card out with my Wild Card Cricut Cart. If you dont quite get how it works from the pic picture how you close a box by folding in opposite flaps. The card works the same way.

Number 2 is the whole gang made with PDDU cart. That took some time and needs some fine tuning, but you get the idea. If I go with this design I need to find a brick pattern embossing plate, I dont feel like drawing in all those bricks 20 times.

Card three was my original idea, mainly because I am in love with my SU scallop punch. the shoes are from Cricut too.

I found this paper at a scrapbook store and bought like 8 sheets of it, thinking I might do something with it for the party, not really sure about that now?? Again I used my SU scallop circle and a Lots of thoughts stamps.

This one needs something, i am thinking orange poppies or something. The yellow sleeve slips off and the card opens like a gate. I cut teh shoe out of the paper I used above.

Thanks for any input, I did buy like 6 sheets of Wizard of Oz stickers at Hobby Lobby for 1/2 off, so I have to figure out how to use them in the Thank you cards!

Sprinkles...

2009-03-30T18:06:00.001-07:00

Alright, I have way too many sprinkles. I love to whip up a batch of sugar cookies or cupcakes and let my kids go to town sprinkling everything up!

They love it and I love to watch them, plus eating the creations is a bonus (unless my butt starts to grow).

I had so many containers that my spice cabinet was hazardous to open, you never knew if sanding sugar or non-pairels were going to knock you on the head. I had to come up with a solution. And free is always preferrable!

We got a spice rack for our wedding (8 years ago) and more than half the spices were unopened and clearly expired. I had no use for dill weed, mustard seed and other unknown spices. I used garlic, parsley and pizza seasoning, the other 13 were brand new. I trashed all the contents and washed up the rack and bottles and filled them with every color of the rainbow in sugar!

I still need to make little circle labels for the tops, but for now I am thrilled with how pretty the bottles look on my counter and bonus when it is time to decorate a treat I just have grap the whole rack and the girls can spin til they see what floats their boats!

I have 3 empty bottles (well 2 now, I filled up one after I took the pic) and I have my eye on a few sprinkles at Hobby Lobby!

And because she's adorable here is my little sous pastry chef!

Amazing Chocolate free ice cream

2009-03-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

So Eric and I gave up chocolate for Lent, it has been difficult. I dont think I eat tons of plain chocolate but there is chocolate in so many things, cookies, brownies, cakes, ice cream, tons of candy etc. So it has been hard to find snacks or things to calm the sweet tooth!

Today at the store Eric was searching and searching for something to curb those cravings.

He came across this, Light Turkey Hill Peanut Butter Mania ice cream. YUM. It has chunks of peanut butter cookie dough, peanut butter swirls and peanut brittle all in vanilla ice cream.

So the girls and I cracked it open for a little after lunch treat and it is awesome!!

I even melted a bit of peanut butter and drizzled it over the top. next to chocolate I think Peanut butter is my next favorite dessert flavor.

So if you are wanting to try something new, knock yourself out with this, plus it is on sale for $2.50 this week at Kroger.

Props to my friends blog

2009-03-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

My friend Lorie has a really great blog. She always finds and links all sorts of fun things that she discovers on the internet. And she does it all while she takes care of 3 kids, me I struggle to update with just the 2 girls :D I am doing better though, dont you think.

Anyway, I can always find inspiration from her blog, Be Different Act Normal, and maybe you can too.

I need to make some sidewalk chalk, lots of it in yellow... wonder how that will go!

http://www.bedifferentactnormal.blogspot.com/

Soccer Forfeit

2009-03-28T11:01:00.000-07:00

The weather, in true Midwest fashion sucks today! It is rainy and cold and just plain old yucky. We are even supposed to get snow today, 2-5 inches for our tv viewing area, we are probably closer to 2.

So hopefully next weekend we will get to play a game. I wish the Y would have cancelled it, but the guy that runs wouldnt make that decision. So our coach cancelled our game, after half our team was going to attend. Not sure how good we would have done if Linds and 3 other kids were our only team!!

So sooner or later I will have soccer pics!

Old Parties (lydia)

2009-03-28T06:07:00.001-07:00

Lydia has only had 2 birthdays but she has had 6 b-day parties. Her b-day is so close to Christmas that we celebrate in Nebraska with Eric's family while visiting for Thanksgiving, then we celebrate at home without friends and lastly we celebrate in Terre Haute with my family when we are there for an early Christmas.

Her first b-day was ladybug themed, for her Neb party we ordered a cake from the grocery store and she opened a few presents.

For her home party, I made little mini ladybugs cupcakes. They were Dark chocolate cake with cherry filling and creme cheese icing. they were amazing!! I also made a bunch of homemade candy, including peanut butter balls and white chocolate bark! We had chocolate chip cookies with red and black M&Ms.

I was lucky to find little ladybug cellophane bags and I spent a ton of time seperating black M&Ms from Halloween and red ones from Christmas M&Ms, each kid went home with stickers, a lady bug picture frame craft, the M&Ms, and other candy and treats and the girls went home with cute lady bug hairclips.

I had a lot of fun with the Cricut for this party too, there were ladybug everywhere!!

(Lindsay really enjoyed her red iced cupcake)

Terre Haute party, Gradma made the adorable lady bug cake and we had some more lady bug cupcakes and different candies from her Decatur party. Grandma made her her own little mini lady bug complete with antennae!

Here 2nd set of 3 parties have already been posted, here are the 3 links to her sock hop party.

I will say that to date the Sock Hop was my favorite party, but maybe Wizard of Oz will dethrone the 50's!!

http://adventuresoflindsandlyds.blogspot.com/2008/12/final-2nd-birthday-party.html

http://adventuresoflindsandlyds.blogspot.com/2008/12/birthday-party-take-2-aka-my-party.html

http://adventuresoflindsandlyds.blogspot.com/2008/12/birthday-party-take-1.html

Old Parties... (Lindsay)

2009-03-28T05:30:00.000-07:00

I have planned a whopping 6 b-day parties for my kids. I am sure that at some point I will just decide to throw a wal-mart cake at them and call it good, but hopefully they are over friends parties before that happens!!

*******************************************************************************

Sesame Street....(their nursery was SS also, I love me some Sesame St. gang) This party has the least themed stuff, my MIL made the goody bags on her embrodier and my mom did the cake, I made the cute cupcakes!

Here's our mom's group in attendance at Lindsay's first b-day, Brooke the really tall one has a job at the hospital so we dont see her anymore and the other four of us, along with others still hang out 4 years later :D

Miss Linds eating her cake, sorry it's sideways.

the AWESOME Bert and Ernie cake!

My cupcakes! We had some really blue tounges after eating Cookie Monster.

Cute goody bags!

********************************************************************************

Lindsay's 2nd b-day was a zoo theme, and I realized when pulling up these pics that I didnt get very good ones. I do have better ones of her eating cake, but the aren't the correct way. I had really cute reuseable zoo bags and zoo sippers, hats, stickers and tons of other stuff. I am sad I dont have a pic!

Here is her giraffe cake, with Tootsie Rolls antlers (or whatever a Giraffe has)

Here is the b-day girl with her presents!

Zoo animal cupcakes!

Not wanting her pic taken eating her cake!

**********************************************************************************

Third B-day is the first time Lindsay picked a theme. This year it was Curious George, and honestly I was thrilled with that because I actually like George, I can sit and watch his show, he is much better than some other shows kids like.

We had cute Monkey Brownie Cupcakes with Nutter Butter ears and vanilla wafer noses.

Georgie cake, it is the same pan that made last years Giraffe.

We borrowed my brothers small bounce house, the kids loved it.

Lindsay eating her cake and smiling for her 3rd b-day pic!

Some snacks. We had Georgie's all over but I dont have pics of them.

Pinata hanging from the tree!

Pinata loot!!

Cute little 7 month old Lydia!! I miss those chubby thighs!

***************************************************************************

4th b-day was Care Bears which you have seen, but I will link :D

http://adventuresoflindsandlyds.blogspot.com/2008/07/well-linds-turned-4-on-sunday-and-i.html

Wizard of Oz Party

2009-03-28T05:17:00.000-07:00

I am having a blast planning Lindsay's 5th b-day party. Yes, I know it is 4 months away. But she picked the theme a long time ago and to be a little frugal I start planning these things far in advance. I am quite blessed that the girls b-day's are far enough apart that I can spend loads of time on each kid.

We are doing a Wizard of Oz theme. She is OBSSESSED with Dorothy. It all started with McDonald's Happy Meal toys and we collected the first set of 8 of Wiz of Oz. Then we found some shoes at a Thrift Store and then McD's had a set of 12 toys, so of course we had to have those too.

After that whenever we saw something Dorothy Lindsay had to have it! So now I am in the throes of planning her party.

I have thousands of ideas bebopping around in my head and if you have any please feel free to share. Right now I cant decide what invite I want to use, I am making several prototypes and hopefully will post them for your critique soon. I am praying that they wont take as long as Lydia's! But Lindsay has more friends so I have to make more invites... eek!

I think, in order to keep new posts that I might make a post of some of our old parties :D

Easter Smores

2009-03-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

So my friend Sara (http://whimsies-whatnots.blogspot.com/) mentioned these Smores to me today. So I came home and had to google them. They look awesome and delicious. I really, really am craving chocoloate since I gave it up for Lent over a month ago. I am sooooo making these on Easter Sunday.

I also think they will make cute little Easter treats from my nieces and nephews. I did find a different cute option where they used mini-pals, they have them in the dollar spot at Target, plus they are more useful when empty than an old jar!

I stole both these pics of google images :D and the recipe from google too!

INGREDIENTS AND DIRECTIONS:

1. Reduce 1 sleeve graham crackers to crumbs.

2. Layer 2/3 of the crumbs in a 1 quart jar.

3. Place 8 marshmallow bunny peeps standing up, facing out around the inside of the jar.

4. Press them up against the glass, but don't squash them.

5. Carefully spoon remaining crumbs in the center of the jar to support the bunnies, pressing down to keep it snug.

6. On top of this pour 1-1/4 cup Easter M&M's.

7. Spoon 1/3 cup brown sugar into center of M&M's, gently pressing with a spoon.

1. Empty the jar contents into a bowl. Snip the bunnies into bits with kitchen sheers or cut up with a knife. Return the bunny bits to the mixture. Mix well.

2. Melt 1/2 cup butter; add 1 teaspoon vanilla. Pour this over the dry ingredients, mixing well. Pat into a greased 9" square pan.

3.Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes. Cool and cut into bars.(Makes 9 to 12 bars.)

*Option - leave bunnies whole; combine remaining ingredients and place the bunnies on top; then bake as directed.

*This gift jar may be created to suit any holiday for which marshmallow candies are available.

World's Worst Blogger ever

2009-03-26T05:49:00.000-07:00

that'd be me. I stink at updating and everyday I say "Hey today you should update"

I blame it partially on the fact that I never dump my camera card and I always want pics on blog posts.

Anyway, I am going to try and do better.

Update on us. Last month after my last blog post Lydia was in the hospital for 4 days, that really threw our life off for a bit. It ended up being some hinky virus and she has been fine since, Thank God.

Lindsay is officially ready for Kindergarten (tears from mommy), she did her Kindergarten Screening for readiness and was just fine. I was worried she wouldnt talk to the screener but she chatted her up just fine.

She is also getting ready for her first Soccer game on Saturday. She got new cleats and they are adorable. We had to buy a size 9 eventhough she wears a 7. Nine was the smallest we could find, I guess she can wear them for a few seasons!

I turned 31 on the 16th, Eric says I am older than Dirt. His birthday is next month, exactly 1 month and 3 days after mine. If I am older than Dirt, I guess his new name is Dirt.

I will try later to post some pics of different things. Hopefully I will get first soccer game pics up soon after Saturday!

The winter of sick kids

2009-02-08T05:56:00.001-08:00

So since Dec 21 (oddly enough the first day of winter) someone in this house has had a stomach bug 10 times. Right now, Lindsay and Lydia are both suffering from it and I am out of ideas as to what to do from them.

I have thrown out their toothbrushes, bleached the cups, sprayed Lysol on anything and everything that held still long enough and washed bed clothes as many times as humanly possible.

The Dr said "Quit giving them milk" I actually thought it helped, I was wrong.

So if you have any great ideas (aside from calling the Dr, which I am doing tomorrow) let me know!!

Snowy Day

2009-01-15T06:44:00.000-08:00

We havent had much in the way of snow yet this year, I am sure our time is coming and I look forward to one big snow, just one anything over that is just overkill, I mean really one big snow gives me the chance for cute pics and then it can be spring.

Anyway, we got a little snow, just over an inch and the girls wanted to play. It took about 30 mins to bundle them up in snow suits, coats, 2 pair of socks, boots, 2 pair of gloves, hats and scarves. Thankfully once the bundling was done no one said "I need to potty".

We headed out into the freezing cold, at this point it was about 10*, as I sit typing this today it is like -9* (with a -29 windchill) so 10* is like a heat wave!

There certainly wasn't enough snow for a snowman, so Lindsay made a snow "castle" to me it looked like a snow lump, but her imagination is better than mine I guess.

After a bit the neighbor girls, Natalie and Gabby got home and they played with us as well.

Then we came in and made yummy marshmallow laden cocoa.

Scariest Post ever!

2009-01-15T06:41:00.000-08:00

Lydia learned to make a scary face, not sure where she picked it up, I have a suspicion that Lindsay taught her.

It is so funny, she runs around the house growling and making this terribly frightening face.

Prepare yourself, hold onto your seats, you are about to find out that fear is real!

Cool Contest

2009-01-08T13:29:00.000-08:00

If you are a scrapper and have heard of Project 365, you may know that this kit is sold out, way out.

Well this blogger, http://happydaisyaz.blogspot.com/2009/01/project-365-giveaway.html, is kind enough to be giving away her 2nd kit, you can enter to win at the above link!

A couple of scrapbook pages :D

2009-01-06T17:23:00.000-08:00

Here are a few layouts I recently did. I actually scanned a few more but havent stitched them together yet.

I used stuff from my stash and nothing new :D The little silver circle in the upper left says precious, but it didnt scan well the hearts say Lydia Mae and Sweet Girl.

This is an interview I did with Lindsay, basically asking all sorts of questions and putting her answers on the shapes. She wrote her own name.

Linds and her best pal at the orchard.

Resolutions!

2009-01-06T15:53:00.000-08:00

I came up with a couple of resolutions this year. I am really going to try hard to lose around 10 more lbs, I am about 28 down from when I got pregnant with Lindsay, so that is awesome, but I'd like to lose that last ten, we'll see how that goes :D

My other resolution is much harder to keep I think, I am challenging myself to do 1 scrapbook page or 7 a week, in case I miss a day, but get 2 done another day. Also, part of this challenge is using the supplies I have and not buying new stuff for at least a few months! I did have to break down and buy some paper, I was completely out of light pink because as the mom of 2 girls light pink is often used :D

Hopefully I will have some layouts to share, if I work up the desire to scan the darn things and stitch them together!

Zebra Fun

2009-01-05T06:50:00.000-08:00

Last year Lydia got this bouncy Zebra for Christmas and she was too small to do it until recently, pretty sad huh, to have a toy for a year and not really get the full benefit of it! Well she is making up for that now, she loves this thing and will sneak upstairs to play with it, lucky for me it is really, really loud and I always know where to find her!

Trip to Build a Bear and Springfield

2009-01-05T06:38:00.001-08:00

Kelli and I decided to head to Build a Bear in Springfield with all 5 kids for Lydia and Ashlyn's birthdays, Lydia is 2 days old than Ashlyn. And Kelli's b-day falls right between the girls! Because of these Christmasy b-days we wanted to do something special!

First we had an uber-fun drive in crappy weather to Springfield, but we got there and had a nice lunch at O'Charleys and then headed to the mall..

Linds and Nic built the boy moose and Lindsay dressed hers in Christmasy pjs and Nicholas' was a super hero! ON the same token Lydia and Ashlyn built the girl moose and all four mooses sing "Jinglebell Rock", Lydia's was wearing an elf outfit and Ashlyn's was a princess!

Even Abbi D got in on the action and built a puppy!

Piece of advice, if you ever like the yearly Christmas animal at BAB wait until around the 15th or so, as the drop in price a lot! Instead of $18 a moose and $4 a sound it was $12 a moose and $1 a sound, so that was cool!

After the BAB we headed over to the carousel and the kids loved that! Then they saw Santa, but there arent any pics of that :D

We have decided to go again every year to make the girls' b-days a little more special!

Final 2nd birthday party!

2008-12-22T07:50:00.001-08:00

Every year (well for the last two years, but every year in the future) Lyd's final party will be after we celebrate after my family's Christmas.

My mom took Wilton classes at Michaels and has become quite the cake decorator.

She made Lyd's cake this year and it turned out so cute! I will tell you though that she had to amputate Barbie's legs to fit her in the cake and said "I dont know how Jeffery Dahmer did it"

The girls wore their poodle skirts for the third time and mom made Jess and Syd their own skirts and Brent and Will got all gussied up Greaser Style! Brent even went so far as to grease his hair back and broke out his leather jacket! They all looked great! Mike even found candy ciggarettes (I dont know if I spelled that right)for the boys to fold up in their sleeves!

Lyd opened more presents and half way through she left, I checked on her and she said "Bed". Poor kid wanted a nap more than presents! She did finish opening and believe it or not, right after she got her second wind and wouldnt nap for anything!

Christmas with my family!

2008-12-21T13:18:00.000-08:00

We celebrated an early Christmas with my side of the family on the 13th. The kids got way, way, way too much from Grandma and Grandpa as they always do. This year was a bit of an improvement though, seeing as we did fit in the car to come home, unlike last year.

Instead of a huge meal we opted to do a big breakfast and it was a hit! Here is the whole gang before eating (minus me, as I was taking the pic).

Here are mom's 3 kids and our six kids...

Here are a few pics of the six kidlets opening their load.

and the big surprise gift of this year was mom's Kitchenaid, poor Mike had to haul himself and kids to the Marshall, IL Walmart on Black Friday and deal with some crazed line cutting lady to get this for mom. We all chipped in and she was super excited. She has been volunteering at a local food bank/kitchen and has been a baking fool making cakes, cookies, pumpkin bars and brownies every week, so the new Kitchenaid will come in handy.

I have had mine for a couple years and I love it still, heck I even did a scrapbook layout dedicated to my beautiful mixer. Hopefully, mom will love her's as much as I do mine.

Leaves

2008-12-21T13:13:00.000-08:00

We had a warmish day last Sunday and the girls went outside to "help" Daddy rake up all the leaves!

They had a great time jumping in and out of the big ol' leaf pile! I was cracking up at Lindsay's huge smile!

aDORAble

2008-12-21T10:57:00.000-08:00

Lydia's friends Truman and Addy (and Miss Aura) got her this darling Dora backpack. She loves Dora and her being on a backpack just made her super excited. She takes a backpack to the Y while I workout and as soon as she opened this gift and put it on she said in her tiny little Lyddie voice "Por da Y" (that's For the Y, in case you are fluent in Lydia-ese).

I dont honestly think I have ever seen the kids smile quite this much, she was thrilled to bits and didnt want me taking it off.

Christmas Party at the Museum

2008-12-21T10:48:00.000-08:00

Every year hubby's work rents out the local children's museum for a Christmas Party, the kids love it. They feed us pizza and cookies and we get to see Santa (and this year Mrs. Claus) and then have the run of the place.

Also, check out Miss Lydia's sense of style. For her b-day Miss Kelli got her this adorable tutu and she had to wear it that day! It is awfully cute, dont you think?

Birthday Party Take 2 (aka my party).

2008-12-21T04:59:00.000-08:00

My sister said her third party was "my" party because Lydia could care less about a theme, I really think that is wrong and that "my" party is her friend party that she has at home!

Alright, this is going to be picture heavy! We had her 2nd party on the 10th, because her BFF's b-day is the 17th, 2 days after her's so I bumped her party up to seperate the girls parties by a week.

We had a 50's sock hop and once I got going on this way back in August I was amazed at how much stuff there was out there to find for this theme! I found some adorable balloons at the local party store and some Christmas ornaments that were perfect for a Dec b-day party favor, plus blow up guitars and microphones and rubber duckies

I got some old records and melted them in the oven and those "bowls" held our goodie bags! The goodie bags contained a soundtrack, rubber ducky, pink M&Ms, tiny gummy cheeseburgers, hotdogs, cokes and fries, and some other candies. Each family got to take one ornaments home.

We had "cheeseburger, fries and shakes" as a snack, they were all sweets though, no real food here! I added to the diner theme by emptying out tiny bottles of ketchup and mustard and refilling them with red/yellow icing for the kids to put on their fries and cheeseburgers.

I also had a record tray of truffles, complete with little peanut butter records.

Here is a pic of her menu complete with special Lydia-centric prices!

The kids all loved dancing and playing instruments to Lydia's soundtrack and of course the girls got to wear their poddle skirts again, and this time I got in on the dressing up action!

My friend Sara, a super crafty gal, made this adorable posing board for us, it matched our invitation and all the kids (and some moms too) loved posing behind it. Lindsay and Lydia still pose behind it most everyday!

Cookies with grandma

2008-12-20T16:57:00.000-08:00

Janet got to experience the joy of baking with 2 toddlers and had 4 extra hands to help make cookies for everyone!

The girls had a blast dumping and pouring all the measured ingredients into the mixer. They must have dirtied 10 measuring cups, because they each had to have their own and they each had to put in the exact same amount of ingredients. It is amazing how they seem to see that one girl may have gotten to put in one more spoonful of chocolate chips!

Anyway, the cookies were good, not as good as they would have been had Janet been uninterrupted but they did have lots of extra little girl love thrown in!

Santa Train

2008-12-20T16:54:00.000-08:00

This was the first year that we were able to make it to the annual Monticello Santa train.

Oh what fun, we met up with some friends on the train and had a great time, well most of us did. Little Lydia and our friend Ian didnt like Santa all that much :D

For those of you who may not be familiar the Santa train is old fashioned pullman cars that drive through Piatt Co. and you get lunch (a PB&J with cookies, chips and Capri Sun... yummo!) Santa comes and visits each child in the car and gets and earful of wishes!

Lindsay was super excited to tell the man in red that she wanted an Easy Bake muffin maker (It makes real food MOM!!) and a My Little Pony Amusement Park... hopefully Santa comes through for her!

Lydia had no desire to express her Christmas wishes to Santa, she however was deeply in love with her bag of doritos, I think her face and hands were orange for the whole weekend!

Birthday Party take 1

2008-12-20T16:30:00.000-08:00

Okay, if you know me you probably know I am less than thrilled to have a child whose b-day falls close to Christmas. My mother-in-law swears that Lyd will grow up fine, seeing as she and Lyd have the same b-day.

Because of her b-day's date I think I always go above and beyond to make her b-day special, she gets 3 parties. One in Nebraska with her aunts, grandparents and a few family friends. Then she has 2 more to look forward too.

We ordered her cake from a local grocery store and eventhough this is a small party, I do like to keep it with the same theme as her big at home bash. I ordered a cake that copied a High School Musical cake and changed the colors to pink and black instead of red and yellow, it could have turned into a cake wreck (http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/) very easily and luckily it didnt. Lydia was very proud of her cake and it shows in her "I am so excited I am going to dive into this whole cake face first" smile.

The girls got to don their poodle skirts for the first time, didnt their grandma do a fab job making them!

Happy Thanksgiving to all! (aka the whole fam damily)

2008-12-20T16:19:00.000-08:00

We took a family pic, all nine of us while visiting Neb for Turkey Day. It was rather interesting getting the little remote for Colleen's camera to work and getting Linds and Lyd to smile or at least look interested in the pics! We did get a spectacular one of everyone looking fab, but Lydia had her finger in her nose. Oh the joy of toddlers!

We finally got a decent one, which will be heading out in the senior Marion Family Christmas Cards.

Lots of posts!

2008-12-20T16:18:00.000-08:00

I am going to go on a posting frenzy, I have to do this or my friend Sara might hunt me down!

I am dividing them in several posts so that they are easier to follow :D

Christmas Pics and b-day Pics

2008-11-25T07:17:00.000-08:00

While visiting nebraska I planned on getting the girls pics taken at Portrait Innovations. I planned it this way because the PI closest to home ticked me off with their crappy photographer Miss Lack of Personality Erin.

I also planned it this way so that I would have grandma's extra set of hands!

here are the results!

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This is Lyd posing for her b-day pics, the first thing you should know is she HATES with the fiery passion of 10 burning suns, getting her picture taken professionally. Lord knows I take it at home all the time, but professional pics are her arch enemy.

We did get a few little mini smiles, but the pout and boa pic stole my heart!

Here are a few of our little model in training, Lindsay. She basks in the glory of flash bulbs so she was right at home in the studio. And I learned again that there is such a thing as a stupid question. People at the studio were dingy enough to ask "Is there hair naturally curly and blond" "No you ding a ling, I am a glutton for punishment and I curl it everyday"

Here are some of them together. Lydia never did smile, but she wasnt screaming and running away from the tree like last year, so it was a big improvement!

Forgive the fact that 2 of these are sideways, I am on my FIL's computer and dont know how to edit them on there or in blogger, so just turn your head sideways :D

And last but not least little Lydia just trying to survive the inhumane treatment of a photo shoot with some dignity intact.

Lyd's 2nd b-day invites

2008-11-13T15:31:00.000-08:00

Now i must say I have never been thrilled with Lyd being born near Chirstmas, I feel like a Christmas baby is in the unfortunate predicament of having their b-day over shadowed by Christmas.

Anyway, Grandma J says that it is okay because she and Lyd share the same b-day and she turned out a-okay.

I go a bit above and beyond for Miss Lyd's b-day because of this situation. This is a long winded attempt to explain why I made invites that had around 30 pieces/steps. Yep, 30. They took a long time, but turned out super dooper cute!

Here is the invite, and just in case you dont get it (as if) she is having a 50's sock hop party! Just wait til you see pics of the party and pics of the very special thing my friend Sara is making for us ( you are going to be so jealous)!

This is my proto type, the new ones have a bow in the girls hair and a scarf on her neck, becasue I know you care to know that!

Lyds wants to say HI.
nm cvjbvjchkxck j ,cvhjkcf88n nhjghub hi

10 lbs..............

2008-11-03T05:42:00.000-08:00

I weighed the box of candy that we ended up with after all our Halloween exploits were said and done. We ended up with 10 lbs of candy and various other goodies, wow! I let the girls pick a piece of two a day and in a few weeks I am going to go through the box and pulling out their favs and sending the rest to the homeless shelter that my mom started volunteering at.

Eric said I was weighing it to see how much weight I would gain if I ate the whole box, big dork.

Trunk or Treat

2008-11-02T17:22:00.000-08:00

The day after Halloween our church had a Trunk or Treat for all the kids, basically parishoners brought candy and opened up the back of their cars and trick or treaters from church came to each car! It was a lot of fun.

After the trick or treating we went into church and awaited the winners of the age group costume contests and the pumpkin carving contests and had a yummy snack of cookies and cocoa. After our snack we headed back outside for 1 more go around to the trunks, this time the girls (with candy bowls already entirely too full) decided to pass out the candy.

Lindsay was convinced all day that her updated costume of Tinkerbell riding a unicorn was going to win hands down, I tried to tell her that she might and she might not, but she was totally convinced. Well she did win, this is her 2nd win, she won as Cookie in 2005 and Lydia won last year as the tortoise to Lindsay's hare. The prize is always a half-pound Hershey bar, just what we needed, more chocolate :D

We (I) also won for carved pumpkins, you can see the winning pumpkin in my previous post, the cat in the window pumpkin. We won a pumpkin pie and a bag of hershey kisses. I froze the pie to share with my family in a few weeks since Eric and the girls don't enjoy it and I really dont need a whole pie plastered to my butt.

Here they are going to some of the cars, one had a fun spider ball toss.

Here is Linds and during the costume contest (Lyd wouldnt stand still for a pic during her age group), and Tigger isnt in Linds' age group, he ran into stand with the big kids. Her competition was 2 batmen, a storm tropper and Winnie the Pooh.

Cookie enjoying a cookie, some lady at church said she heard that Sesame St. is turning Cookie Monster into Carrot monster, well if that's true that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Here they are passing out their treats to lots of kids!

Happy Halloween!

2008-11-02T17:13:00.000-08:00

For the last 2 years on Halloween Lindsay requests that we get a Jack-o-Lantern pizza from Papa Murphy's take and bake. She thinks they are hilarious and declicious. So we started our evening with a yummy (and super easy) dinner and headed out to trick or treat with our neighbor girls, Natalie (American Idol singer) and Gabby (ER doc).

We trick or treated lots of houses and the girls did a good job, Lindsay's unicorn costume did get a little heavy toward the end of the evening but she was a real trooper. The best part was that when we were done trick or treating we got home in plenty of time to hand out candy to a few kids ourselves!

We also lit up our nifty pumkins, you can't tell in the pic but the small one is on it's side with a stem for a nose!

Pumpkin Carving Party!

2008-10-30T11:33:00.001-07:00

We had our pumpkin carving party on Wednesday October 29th. Our baby group and 2 neighbors came and brought their kids in costumes and a pumpkin to carve!

The dads had loads of fun using the carving stencils and trying to end up with the best pumpkin at the end of the night!

The younger kids got in on the action by painting some tiny gourds and mini pumpkins!

Everyone had a great time and went home with full bellies and cute pumpkins.
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Here is the whole Boo Crew in their cute costumes, we were super safe with 3 Spidermen in attendance!

Everyone carving or painting their pumpkins, I think the garage might smell like pumpkins forever!

Our finished ghosty pumpkin!

A couple of snacks, cake balls dressed like pumpkins, oreo balls and cookie dough balls!

Ghosty brownies, forgive his droopy eyes it was a long night :D

Boo at the Zoo

2008-10-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

On Monday, Oct 27th my mom brought my 4 neices and nephews in to Decatur so that we could head to Boo at the Zoo at Scovill. My aunt, cousin and their friend Daisy came along as well.

First it was really darn cold that night! So a lot of the kids' costumes couldnt really be seen due to their winter coats, hats and mittens!

Here is the whole gang, Unicorn (Lindsay), Alice in Wonderland (Sydney), Bunny (Will), Witch (jessica) and Cookie Monster (Lydia).

Everyone heading into the zoo!

A Frozen Cookie monster!

Brent, who is far too grown up to dress up!

Unicorn, Bunny and Alice all very cold, but excited to get their treats!

First Date

2008-10-30T11:14:00.000-07:00

Okay, daddy didnt like when I called it that, but I am sticking to my guns, becasue what else would you call watching a movie and eating snacks with a boy :D

Kelli took Linds and Nicholas to their churches Halloween Bash. The kids got to hunt for the treat bags and then had yummy snacks and watched Monsters INC.

Here are Lindsay in a costume from her dress-up box since her real costume is too hot for an indoor party!

Here she is with her date Optimus Prime, aka Nicholas!

Halloween Haunted Gingerbread Houses

2008-10-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

Alright, my friend Kelli and I are a tad on the crazy side. Every now and again we subject our kids to the things just in order to have adorable picture oppurtunities. We thought the kids would have a blast decorating these gingerbread houses and they did, but we didnt exactly count on how dirty they'd get eating the icing!

Here are the 4 kidlets with their houses ready to be decorated!

BFF's Lindsay, Nicholas, Lydia and Ashlyn

Here they are really getting into the icing and candies!

Lydia had a blast spreading on the icing!

Such little artists!

I am not sure if Lydia and Ashlyn put more icing on their house or in their mouths!

The final boo-tiful products!

Pumpkin Patch Take Two

2008-10-21T08:23:00.000-07:00

Alright I warned you that it was coming. We went to Black Bart's Pumpkin Patch yesterday with some friends from Baby Group.

The girls had a great time, I decided to take Linds and Lyds through the corn maze, who knew it was so darn big, we were gone a long time.

Lyds did a great job posing, she has recently learned to say "Cheeeeeeese" or something such as that and it is hilarious, unfortunately she is getting that cheesy toddler grin to go along with it.

We came home with a bag of mini gourds and 3 more pumpkins, (one is green and so cool) they will come in handy when we have our party next week.

Here are some pics :D

Visiting Peoria!

2008-10-17T14:19:00.001-07:00

Our good friends moved from the big D to the big P (peoria) and we miss them tons, well 2 times a year Eric has a Raquetball Tournie in Peoria so we used it as a great excuse to spend the weekend with them!

It was tons of fun, and lucky me when they had a previous engagement I got to head to several stores we dont have (including Michaels, an awesome scrap store... scrapadoodle, and the girls got to go to Build a Bear and get an outfit for their animals).

The girls had so much fun being together again, they have been missing each other terribly. They were super excited to see each other and they had a great weekend!

Here are some darling pics of the princesses!

Plus one of cutie patootie Zach sleeping in his swing!

Pumpkin Patch Take One

2008-10-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

This is only take one because we are going at least 2 more times, this time we went with my mom, my grandmother and my aunt, plus Linds and Lyds and my 2 nieces, 2 nephews, my aunt's little grand daughter and my cousin's 13 year old son.

Anyway, my mom had the nerve to say "Are you bringing your camera?" Well my friend Kelli said "Does your mom even know you, you always have your camera."

Maybe it's true, but I dont want to miss that perfect kodak moment!

We went to THe Great Pumpkin Patch in Arthur, IL, if you have never been and live near enough GO, it is super fun and they have millions of gourds. Plus Martha Stewart had them on her show.

Here are some fun pics!!

Here is the whole gang, minus me (Of course I am behind the camera)

Here's me and the LMMs!

Everyone (except Lyds) sitting on a giant pumpkin!

Lyds with her pumpkin of choice!

This is Linds and her fav Cousin Jessica, Jessica is our little mother hen, she takes care of all the kids and makes trips much more relaxing for the rest of us.

Brent and grandma, such a cute boy, I wonder how much longer he will pose with his grandma!

I just thought this was too sweet!

Here's my baby, she was looking through the fence at goats but I zoomed in on her sweet little face!

Here are all these girls, Syd, Lyd, Jess, Eva and Linds. They are on the smallest bench and I dont think Syd was enjoying the limited seating.

These are some of my fav pics, to get Lyds to smile my aunt was acting like a loon, but I appreciated just for the little grin she made Lyds have!! Plus these pics of big sis Lindsay pulling our wagon of pumpkins and Lyds are too cute!