Friendship Bracelets

Gracie came in yesterday with her Rapunzel Polly Pocket and wanted me to show her how to braid--I went through it a few times and then she came in several times yesterday and today and showed me the beautiful braids she had put in Rapunzel's hair. I told her about friendship bracelets and told her she could make a few with some colored floss that I have in my craft closet, so we picked out some colors and she went to town. She did the braids on them all on her own and I just tied them on her and cut off the ends, then she made one more and interspersed random knots and straight places and got a plastic "reader" charm out of her toys that she got in school last year. :) I think they look so cute and bring back memories for me, as I loved making these when I was a kid. One of these days I will look up instructions for the knotted kind with more than three strands and show her how to make those. :)

Finally Sharing Pictures

I haven't shared anything in soooo long--I took some pictures of my favorite jewelry today and liked how this one turned out, so I decided to post it. They are real butterfly wings, either encased in resin (the blue one and the black and white one) or glass.

The blue one, bright green one, and multicolored ones are actually reversible. The blue one actually has a totally different species of butterfly on the other side; a red, black, and white "88" butterfly. The green one has a more muted hunter green/black color and the multicolored one has basically the same colors on the other side.

The butterflies are raised in conservation gardens, allowed to live their natural lifespans, and then the wings are used to make jewelry. I think they are so unique and GORGEOUS! I am lucky enough to own these four pieces (and they are even more vibrant and beautiful in person--they are not color treated or enhanced in any way--that's just how they look), but I am totally coveting more. I swear, I think I could only buy this type of jewelry for the rest of my life and be satisfied. :)

Anyway, enough about my butterfly wing necklaces---here are some pictures of my sweet, sweet girlies, who are getting SO big! The lighting isn't great on these two of Gracie, because the sun wasn't really up yet and I had to use the flash. We were showing off her new outfit and I thought she looked quite cute with her pigtails. :)

Here's Ava with her messy hair, in PJs, but with those devastatingly gorgeous eyes and bright smile. :) You can see the mess behind her, though I can't tell what it is. I think it's a doll baby and some heart-shaped paper confetti that I punched out for her.

Enough for now, it's getting late, but I just wanted to share. :)

My Beautiful Halloween Butterflies

Halloween Album

I started this Halloween mini album (8x8) last time I went to the Scrapbooking B&B (last year) and finished the last two pages this past time I went. :) I have decided to just pick one picture of my kids on Halloween and make a costume-themed scrapbook page and just stick it in this album, rather than creating a Halloween LO each year in their regular scrapbooks. :) I like this method and it's working for me. If you click on the pictures, they will enlarge to show some of the detail. The last two are my favorites. I have decided that I am going to pick the best picture of the kid from now on rather than trying to get a full-length shot like I did for the first couple pages in the album--makes for much better scrapbook pages! LOL! :) Thanks for looking and for any comments!

Scrapbooking Retreat

I went on a scrapbooking retreat at a B&B with some good friends a couple of weekends ago and I got a LOT done by my standards! :) This one was my fastest-completed page...took me about 10 minutes. The other ones required at least two hours of pondering. LOL! I used my trusty Dymo Label Buddy for the title (I think I used this on almost every project I completed this weekend--definitely a must-have tool!) and the quote was a rub-on from DCWV that I got a couple of years ago in a big stack of rub-on quotes. I only looked through like three pages of the book, found it, and made the decision to just go with it! I love the colors of this LO and the pictures make me smile. The center of the page includes some adhesive tape from Basic Grey and a couple of Making Memories rhinestones. I believe the blue patterned paper is by Doodlebug--I got it from my friend. :) Thanks for looking and for any comments!

Long-overdue pictures! :)

Quick shot of Gracie today...you can kind of see her "princess" hearing aids! :)

The "birthday girl" from a couple of weeks ago...she's SIX!!! She is laughing in this picture, probably because I told her not to laugh. That always gets her! LOL! :)

Ava at Gracie's birthday dinner. :)

Banner posting day!

So, last month we had a couple of visitors. We had some mourning doves build a nest up on one of the support posts for our deck's roof. Two eggs were laid, two babies hatched. As a funny "aside" story, Sean built this roof over our deck (attached to the house) a couple of years ago and we put shingles on top that match our regular roof. As you can see in the top picture (if you click on it to enlarge it), the nails are just poking through the plywood. We intend to put some beadboard or something up there at some point, but in the meantime we have always teased my mother-in-law about the nails because every time she sees them she cautions us to be careful with the kids and the nails (i.e. not to throw them up in the air under the roof and hit their heads on the nails.)

So, anyway, these babies hatched and about a week after that they left the nest. Over the weekend, we were pretty busy, but we intended to remove the nest because, though the birds are cute, they make quite the mess on the deck. I had researched mourning doves on the internet after the babies hatched and learned that they can have up to six sets of babies in a mating period. I told Sean to double check before removing the nest that no more eggs were laid, so he got a chair to peer in the nest--you guessed it, he forgot about the nails and got a minor puncture wound right at his hairline! He didn't get much sympathy from me (I was too busy laughing), OR from his mother, who got her "I told you so" moment. LOL! :D




These pictures aren't specific to anything, I just thought they were cute. :)

5-Year-Old and a Gel Pen....

Okay, so let me set the scene here. After lunch, shortly before I was going to put Ava down for her nap, I gave the kids some paper and crayons and went to lie down with a book on my bed (not even 20 feet away from the kids--door open) for about 15 minutes. I heard the sound on the TV turn off and asked Grace what she was doing. She said she wanted to pause it and draw Foofa from Yo Gabba Gabba because Foofa was on the screen. What I didn't know at this point was that she got a black gel pen out of my pen cup on my desk to draw Foofa. She actually did draw a pretty good rendition of Foofa.

Here's Exhibit A:

Apparently Foofa was going to a luau. I can only assume at this point.

After that, I guess she decided she was lacking some excitement in her life. Ava in the meantime had stripped off her shirt and threw it on the floor. It's a regular occurrence in my house--I can barely keep the girl clothed. Hopefully it's just a phase. :)

TV volume resumed at this point and the girls started cracking up. I called for Gracie to leave Ava alone and at that point the girls got (now I realize) suspiciously quiet. Not sure who instigated the little endeavor I am about to divulge, but I can only guess. Here's what I discovered when I walked into the living room not five minutes later.

Exhibit B:


Let me just go ahead at this point and reveal exhibits C, D, and E.





Anybody want a couple of (usually) cute kids? Since I caught it so early, a lot of the ink wiped off with just a wet rag, but you can still see the remnants of it on Ava especially. Now I am wondering if this was all a secret plot to play in the bathtub. Gracie said she wanted them to have makeup on. NOT a good look, kid, NOT a good look. ;)

Crafty Things

As I said, DH was out of town this weekend and I got a bunch of crafty things done. :) The three pictures above are a Kindle clutch that I made for my Grammy. She got a Kindle for Christmas and I found a tutorial on YouTube that was pretty easy to follow. I had all of my scraps out anyway from my doll quilt project that I started on Saturday night (see below for finished picture). :)


This is the reason I had my sewing machine out in the first place. Gracie got this doll bed from Santa at Christmas and I have been seeing a bunch of quilts on Two Peas lately. I used scraps from the Rag Quilt that I made for my niece for Christmas two years ago along with one other fabric that I only had five little squares of. The squares started out at 4 3/8" by 4 3/8" and I used a 1/4" seam. The finished product is chock-full of errors, but Gracie likes it. I machine bound the quilt because I wasn't about to spend hours upon hours hand binding a quilt with really uneven seams. Oh well. I think it looks pretty cute overall. I whipped up the pillow cover this morning before I put my machine away. It's also full of errors, but Gracie will be excited (she hasn't seen it because she is in school). :)

Thanks so much for looking and for any comments! :)

Our Weekend

Sean was out of town this weekend and it ended up snowing about 3-4 inches on Saturday morning. Gracie was DYING to play in the snow, so during Ava's nap time I bundled her up and she went out for about 30 minutes or so. She had a blast. It was actually the first time she has really played in the snow, like rolling around and stuff. When she was younger she just didn't have the balance to be able to walk in it without falling down and we didn't have snow boots or anything. My MIL actually bought the snowsuit when Gracie was a baby (it's a size 18 month and it's HUGE)! I was just about to put it in the Goodwill bin when I realized that it's SO long that it would probably fit Gracie now. We have about four layers underneath the snowsuit and coat as well along with two hats, a scarf (really a receiving blanket that Gracie plays with her dolls with), gloves, and woolen tights. Like I said, she had a blast and will definitely be doing it again before the snow melts. :)

Raggedy Gracie

Gracie's Halloween costume photo shoot from today. :) What a cutie she is.

Party Pictures

We have a party for Labor Day every year on Saturday night of the weekend, which just happens to coincide with our town's fair. Sean and I took some pictures of the girls right before the guests got there and we got some cute ones. Saturday was also Ava's second birthday, though we didn't celebrate her birthday until last night because of the Fair Party. Does that make us horrible parents? I have some pictures of Ava in her birthday gear that I will post in a minute...she looked ADORABLE!




Sean took this one when I was inside, finishing up with the party preparations. I really almost gasped when I saw the love on Gracie's face. This was the picture he snapped just a second later:





Okay then. I guess Ava wasn't in a loving mood, huh? :) I will leave you with this one. Can you tell they are holding hands? Warms a mother's heart. Awwwwwww........

:)

TONS of pictures

There was good light in my bedroom yesterday and I had Gracie come in my room to try to snap some pictures. I had her lying on my bed and as soon as I snapped the shot above and the picture showed up in the window, the baby shot of Gracie at almost 6 months old immediately came to mind (please don't mind my early scrapbooking attempts--it was a little mini book I made and this was one of the BEST pages. LOL!) Does anyone else get chills by the similarity in the pictures, or is it just me? They were taken in the same spot, albeit now with better lighting and a better camera. I think I am going to make an updated mini book of all of the new Gracie pictures and store the two albums together. This is why I love to scrapbook! :)