Easter Decorations

I didn’t get as many pictures as I’d have liked, but I’ll still share a few ideas. (Maybe I’ll have more next year when I am not trying to stay afloat after delivering a baby ;) I don’t know about you, but the more ideas I come across, the easier ideas flow. So, here are a few things I did in my home. ** Hung plastic eggs from the ceiling. I found these last year at Big Lots. They were about $4 a piece and I hesitated buying them, but my son’s face when he walked out and saw them was worth every penny! He was so excited! I just use a tiny push pin and it holds. **Use books to decorate! This is one of my son’s Easter books, and his newborn picture book. The colors matched well. The bunny statue my mom bought on a mega sale for me. I put two little plastic eggs in the pack on his back. **This normally holds decorative, tiled balls. I filled it with Easter grass and plopped some pretty iridescent eggs on top. Ta-dah! Instant Easter! **The table for Easter morning. I’m still figuring out Easter traditions. For me, it’s tricky to celebrate AND still make it out the door in time for church. Hmm…perhaps celebrate Saturday morning? The traditionalist in me doesn’t like that because Christ rose 3 days later! We’ll have to see.

It was a fun Easter, but I made a note to fill each egg with only ONE jelly bean. Holy cow did we have sugar overload in our house! Here’s my son enjoying one of MANY jelly beans! When does the drooling stage end?! And here’s our attempt at a family photo. Why must it always be so much drama? ;) Happy Easter!

5 Weeks to the Day

I’ve been incognito because baby Allie has made her appearance and has been with us for 5 weeks now! Prior to her birth, I was having a hard time understanding how I could love 2 kids equally when my heart has been so overflowing with love for my precious little Cooper. But, now that she is here, I get it!

I’ll be totally honest though, I did struggle with feelings of guilt for the first few weeks seeing Cooper struggling to adjust to not having quite as much attention from mom. However, he’s continuing to adjust, and seeing how much he loves his baby sister melts my heart to pieces. That’s all it is, just adjustment, and that’s a good thing for my little guy to learn. =) So…onto real life blogging, not just keeping you in the know! Speaking of Cooper’s adjusting, I busted out his first “Big Brother Gift”, today. I’m impressed he lasted 5 weeks without having an emotional breakdown from the adjustment. The only other “signs” of adjusting he had been showing was overreacting to certain situations (i.e. – I fell and it’s the end of the world, or temper tantrum because it’s bath time, that sort of thing, which is semi-normal for a toddler without the transition of a sibling).

He also shared 2 hilarious quips regarding little sister. The first was when a friend delivered us dinner and asked, “How do you like your little sister?” to which Cooper responded, “Mmm, she only cries.”

The second was when I was adjusting a nursing pad (I’m blessed with an abundance of milk and have to keep an eye on those squirmy suckers), and he started crying, “No, no, no…no getting out the food!!” Ahh, the way they express their frustrations crack me up!

The main purpose of my blog entry today was to share that the “Big Brother Basket” worked wonders! The situation which required the “basket intervention” was when Cooper woke up from his nap, wanting to walk around the entire house holding my hand, without explanation. Finally, he led me over to the swing and started crying, “You put Allie in so you can hug me!” I relented and sat there with my baby Cooper in my lap, embraced with the tightest of hugs for about 5-10 minutes. Allie got to cry a bit while I loved on my son. But, alas, I cannot keep Allie crying for too long. So, this is what I explained to Cooper,

“You know, Allie had a feeling you’d get frustrated that she would take up so much of mommy’s time, so she left you some presents! Let’s go get one that you can play with while I feed Allie.”

His first one was the Magnetic Fishing Game. He happily played with it on the coffee table while I fed Allie. We even had a little educational session naming the different types of underwater sea creatures! I’ll keep you posted on future situations requiring a “Big Brother Gift”. =) Until then, I’ll attempt to provide other fun ideas I’m attempting whilst learning to juggle two kiddos!

Birth Announcements

For my son, Cooper, I designed hand-made announcements before he was born 2 1/2 years ago and cut and prepared all the pieces before he was born so they’d be easy to assemble as soon as we had the adorable pictures to finalize them. My husband chided me saying, “You’ll never do this with baby #2!” I’m happy to have proven him wrong! Here was my son’s announcement, pardon the crooked factor, I scanned it in that way. To create it, I printed out the announcement part on orange-ish bazzill construction paper. I designed the size and layout in Publisher, but you could also do this in Word. I printed it out and THEN cut them. (Your printer will jam less if you do it this way) Then, I cut out brown bazzill paper for the background for the pictures. I found the ribbon at Michaels, and printed out the monogram on white bazzill paper. I printed out the pictures at Costco, 2 strips per 4x6 I had printed. I actually applied the Sepia tone in Publisher. If you’d like to know how, here it is:

C=0, M=60, Y=81, K=63

1. Right click on your picture, choose Format Picture
2. Go to Picture Tab
3. Click on Recolor
4. Choose Color > More Colors
5. Go to the Custom Tab
6. Change the Color Model to CMYK
7. Enter the above CMYK figures for Sepia
8. Click > OK > OK > OK

With everything pre-cut and ready to go, they were pretty easy to assemble. I had some friends over and we chatted while assembling. It was quite easy (well, I speak for myself, not my friends I suppose).

For Allison’s announcements, I wasn’t quite on top of things, but still managed to get them out within a month of her being born. I had sort of looked at ideas and knew I wanted the colors of her nursery. Again, I used green bazzill paper as the base of the announcement and printed them before I cut them.

This time, I printed the pictures at home, just due to time. I had the “Sweet Song Bird” stamp I’d found at Michael’s. I stamped them onto pink bazzill paper. The little white strip with her birth “stats” is just printed on cardstock and cut to fit. Lastly I used a “Pioneer” Embellishment Glue Stick I found at Michael’s for $1.99 to apply the ribbon.  I only had to use one glue stick for all 50 announcements, plus 30 thank you notes. Here’s what the back looked like: The “a little birdie told me” was also a stamp I’d found at Michael’s and the little felt bird was in the dollar bin at Michael’s, a whole box of them! Awesome! I also used the glue stick to apply the felt birds. For the pictures and everything else, I used the Tombow Mono Adhesive Dispenser (they went by much quicker than the glue stick).

If you take the time to plan it out, it’s very doable. My husband took some to work and they LOVED them! It’s fun to see people’s reactions. Have fun scrapping and/or crafting!

Oh yes, and here are the thank you notes!

St. Patrick’s Day Decorations

Kristin over at Sweetheart Moments motivated me to post my tiny touches of St. Patty’s Day around my home. Simple touches, but my son notices and we get excited about the pending holiday. Also, I love getting ideas, no matter how small, by looking at what other people do in their homes in way of decorating. So…here are my small touches of green… The cute table runner ($11), mirror underneath it that’s meant for hanging (a bit of a splurge, but have more than gotten my money’s worth from it - $25), and the glass vase (I believe it was only $9!!) are all from HomeGoods. I filled the vase with white and clear glass rocks as well as cute little plastic shamrocks (on sale for .99 at Michael’s!) The small candle holders were on sale at Bed, Bath & Beyond for only $1.99 after Christmas. How perfect do they match the mirror?

I purchased these last year at Marshall’s, I think for $1.99 each. They’d be a cinch to make (but does it get much cheaper than that, even if you made it yourself?)     This is above my son’s toy bin. Cute little shamrock ornaments from Michael’s, on 70% clearance from last year. And we’re planning on making green eggs and ham for breakfast on the 17th, so we’ve been reading the famous Dr. Seuss! This is on a bookshelf in my living room. I obviously need a little something else to go with it, perhaps a shamrock plant? Hmm….oh well, somewhat festive for now. In my bathroom. Again, Michael’s 70% off after the holiday last year. Pardon my preggers belly captured in the pic. And…last but not least, our front door! My husband has this thing about keeping the peep hole from being covered. =) And, a green flag! Hope that inspires you a bit! If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears! Enjoy your St. Patrick’s Day!

You’re My Pot O’ Gold

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Here is the perfect example of why I test things out myself before posting ideas to my blog. Not that there’s anything wrong with this idea, it just helps to have a bit more…knowledge before entering into a “project”.

Supplies

• Pretzel Bags (from Michael’s – they are skinny! 2.25x9.75”)
• Rainbow Twizzlers (found ‘em at Kmart – and called about 6-7 stores prior to that)
• Gold Coins or Hershey’s Gold Nuggets (get the bags first, the coins may not fit)
• Cute tag to top it off!

I came across this super cute idea on The Busy Budgeting Mama, and thought they’d be fun to “throw together”.

Ha! My first challenge was finding the Rainbow Twizzlers. So, make some phone calls before you drive around.

Second, the gold coins I found at Winco would NOT have fit into these pretzels bags. Thankfully, I opted for the Hershey Nuggets because they taste far better than chocolate gold coins anyhow, am I right?

Lastly, arranging the Twizzlers and chocolates INTO the bag? Not terribly challenging, but you don’t just “fill the bag and call it done”! I used a bamboo skewer to help guide the items down into the bag.

If you decide to make them, hope my little tips help. There’s a free printable over at it is what it is here. Silly me made my own, just because. =)

Again…sorry to any friends who receive this gift and have the “surprise” ruined ahead of time. But I’m sure you’ll still enjoy your special treat.

The Handwriting Game

A friend invited me to join in this game to help distract me from my nearing due date (which she had no idea how much I needed distraction!), so…here’s my “handwriting”. Let’s just have it be known that I do not use handwriting. This is part of the reason I chose to never teach 3rd grade (when cursive is taught) and instead taught 5th and 7th. Anywho…here’s my lovely, real-life writing! (guess what? I couldn’t find a sheet of lined paper anywhere, so..thank you computer paper!) All you have to do is take out a pen and paper, answer the following questions and post it to your blog.

1. What’s your name / blogger name?

2. What’s your blogs URL?

3. Write, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.

4. Favorite quote?

5. Your favorite song? (Mine is constantly changing!)

6. Your favorite band / singers?

7. Anything else you want to say?

8. Tag 3 bloggers to participate. I was tagged by Kiera at ChambersMade.

I’m tagging…

Kristen @ oneplusoneequalsfive because this seems like something she’d do, AND she (unlike myself) has gorgeous teaching writing that ought to be shared with her blog readers. =)

Kristin @ Sweetheart Moments pretty much for the same reason I tagged Kristen, also…she’s newly pregnant and could use distraction from the HORRIBLE morning sickness!

and…Allie @ eat at allie’s because secretly I wanted to spell Allie again (also my daughter-to-be’s name, hehe). No…well, maybe. But also because while this is a cooking blog, you should all check it out. Her food photography is beautiful and she has yummy recipes! =P