Hey Mr. Postman look and see if there's a letter in your bag for me

Do you notice anything strange about this picture of our mail carrier?  Look closely.

Yes, on Monday he wore shorts to deliver mail in six inches of fresh snow.  Now, you might assume that he's wearing them because he needs to do laundry and all his pants are dirty so he only had shorts left to wear, but no, that is not the case.  He wears shorts EVERY DAY.  Whether it's 12 degrees or 102 degrees outside.  

I already thought he was a little strange because he seems to go to great lengths to avoid any children outside.  Scary dog in the yard? No problem, Creed poking a shovel into the dirt as I weed a flowerbed?  He walks across the street passes our house and crosses back to deliver mail to our neighbor and will come back with ours later.  At least, maybe he will or maybe he'll just deliver it to our neighbor as he seems to frequently do or about twice a month, he just won't deliver it at all.  I thought maybe it was just us, but my neighbor brought it up and said she noticed the same things.  I seriously thought he might be deaf because he always ignores our cheerful hellos until the other day I saw him giving someone directions.

Every time I see him, it just gets weirder.  Like now that it's winter, not only does he always wear shorts, he takes the shortest route possible even if that means tromping through the snow on our lawn instead of using the shoveled sidewalk, and walking straight through our planters stepping on bushes along the way.

It's not just me, that's strange, right?

Just Another Perfect Sunday

Adorable Custom Cake Toppers from Goose Grease

So I was talking to my friend Lisa about how I bought little wooden people, and I've been meaning to paint them to look like our family, but I keep putting it off worrying that they are too small and might be a chocking hazard so I wish I had some that were more the size of a Kokeshi doll.  

Lisa, being brilliant and handy was like, Tyler's dad (Larry's uncle) just got wood turning tools and so we should make them.  Ummm, yeah.  Like I have any idea how to do that.  I'm sure I would seriously injure myself if I tried.  I think Tyler has actually been taking some woodworking classes, but still, I didn't expect them to show up on Sunday with these.

Aren't they beautiful?  I love them so much that now I'm scared to paint them! The tallest one is about eight inches tall.  I've been telling Lisa that she should sell unfinished ones in her Etsy shop because wouldn't you love to have your own?  People could special order sets to match their families.

And that's not the only new love they introduced me to.  They brought along Tyler's special waffle iron to make Stroop Waffles.
Have you had these before?  They have a carmel filling in the middle of them, and I could happily spend the rest of my life eating them.  I couldn't even resist taking a bite before I took a picture.
I feel so lucky to have married into Larry's family so I have awesome, new built-in friends.  Creed is quite fond of them too and ran around this morning looking for Lisa since she was there when he went to bed.  It was cute to see him peeking into every corner calling, "Sheesha!  Sheesha!" And when I asked him if he really liked Lisa he nodded his head and made kissing sounds.  I hope that I didn't hurt his feelings when that made me laugh.

I want to be the kind of mom who . . .

I want to be the kind of mom who throws fun parties for family and friends.  

I always start thinking about parties this time of year when things are so dreary and we could all use something fun to look forward to.  I have seen some really great ideas for parties featured on blogs lately so I thought I would share a few with you.

Brittany from Tangled and True hosts a cookie exchange before Christmas every year.  That's not unusual, but I love the way she does it.  She not only has prizes for best chocolate and best non-chocolate cookies, she has prizes for best display and best recipe card.  The displays and recipe cards turn out so beautiful. I wish I was there!  See more details here.

I don't know this couple, but the details from their wedding make them seem so fun.  This was their save the date card.

And they made these signs to point people to their wedding (they taped a bunch of balloons to it so it looked like she was holding them).  I think both ideas could be adapted to other parties.  Can't you just imagine Creed smiling and pointing the way to his birthday party?

This little girl loved Green so her mom put together an all green party with a puppet show theme

I love the green banners and the green puppet show theater
A table full of green refreshments.
An adorable puppet show invitation

And my favorite detail, each guest got to take home their own little green finger puppet theater!

And speaking of birthdays, this idea for a grownup birthday party would be amazing!  Rebecca was turning 30 so she threw herself a big Hollywood style movie premiere.  Guest were notified a few months early so they could produce their own films up to five minutes long.  Then Rebecca rented a theater complete with red carpet unrolled out front and told her friends to dress up.

She provided the popcorn and movie theater candy and had "cigarette girls" walking around with trays of fortune cookies and mints. I think it would be so fun to watch the films your friend made in a big theater.

Mixing up a perfect Sunday

Since Larry only has Sundays off, having church at 1:00 has been a challenge.  I was so happy when the meeting time changed to 9:00 am. After church there's time for lunch and naps and then we still have a whole afternoon to spend time together.  

This Sunday was perfect.  After dinner there was still time to make Snickerdoodles and snack on cookies and milk with Creed.

And after he was off to bed we watched Holiday Inn.
Followed up by To Kill a Mockingbird
And then I went to bed with a contented sigh.

Well, It wasn't quite like hanging out with Columbus's Jungle Jack, but . . .

The Randalls invited us to join them at Jungle Jim's on Saturday.  Now, in the past, if you described something as, "like Chucky Cheese only with carnival rides for little kids too," I would NOT be interested, but for about $5.00 Creed got to ride to his little heart's content and who could resist that?

Luckily, Laura and Sara were there to ride some of the ride with Creed because . . .

The rides were not made to fit me . . .

Or Larry!

Winter Doldrums

We're trying to stay entertained during our time inside so we have been doing lots of this (Oh, how a slinky can entertain for hours)
And we've been spending a lot of time in here.  My mom set up a fort using a card table to entertain Creed while we were visiting for Christmas.  Larry set this one up when we got home and Creed loves to spend his time here.  He pats the spot next to him asking you to join him and then insists that you sing a million verses of "The Wheels on the Bus".  Larry said he ran out of verses the other day and found himself singing, "The gum on the bus is stuck under the chair, stuck under the chair, stuck under the chair . . . "

It's even cosier at night in your jammies.

What's on our Flor?

Our landlord had a few quirky rules in our rental contract like you must never under any circumstances move your refridgerator (Really?  Why would we do that?),  we may only clean the bathtubs with Windex (which I didn't think would work well, but luckily it does), and you must have rugs in all of the rooms with wood floors and they must extend to within at least three feet of all the walls.  So we have a rug in the living room, a rug in the family room, but we have a one-year old who is a very messy eater so I didn't know what to do in the dining room.  I didn't want to spend money on something that would inevitably be ruined.

Well, a few months ago, we finally found a local business that sells Flor carpet tiles so we could check them out in person (which I really recommend doing because there are so many different textures and it's hard to know how they will look and feel from the site).  These tiles are perfect!  They are cheap (at least we picked a very cheap style), you can stick them together in any pattern and even cut them up, we can just take it apart before our next move and come up with a new configuration at our next home, but the best part is you can pull tiles out of the rug and wash them in the sink or if one gets really stained it's easy to just replace one tile instead of the whoel rug!

Creed was excited when the box arrived and got right to work putting the tiles together.
We played around with a few different patterns and I wished I had figured out what I wanted earlier and ordered a different number of each color.Anyway, this is what we ended up with and we are so happy with it.  

How do you shop?

I have very different clothes buying theories for Creed than myself.  When I'm shopping for Creed's clothes, I check the clearance racks of my favorite stores for anything cute that catches my eye and also happens to be cheap.  I don't care what size it is as long as it is his current size or larger.  If it's his current size, it goes into his dresser when we get home and if it's larger it goes into some plastic drawers I have in his closet, sorted by size.  Some of my friends think it's weird when I pick up something in a 5T and Creed's wearing a 2T, but now that he's getting bigger, he should be wearing the same size all year or at least through two seasons so he'll need clothes for warm and cold weather in every size.  This way when all of his pants suddenly seem too short, I just open up his closet and pull out the next size instead of going shopping and being forced to pay full-price  for clothes that I don't even think are that cute, but we have to have to cover poor Creed's ankles and wrists.

When It comes to buying clothes for myself, my theories are definitely changing.  I used to feel like I couldn't afford to be trendy.  With Larry in medical school, I needed things that were classic enough that I could wear them for years, not a few seasons because I couldn't afford to replace them.

Last year, when Candice moved in with my parents for the summer, she ended up staying for most of a year so as fall rolled around, she found herself without any warm clothes.  She went out and she bought herself seven new outfits, one for each day of the week.  Candice used to own more clothes than anyone I know, so I was surprised how happy she was with her new wardrobe and she explained that she bought seven outfits she absolutely loved and felt so cute in and when she got home, she was going to throw out most of what she had.  She had tons of clothes, but but some of them were really old and she just couldn't bring herself to get rid of them because they were ok.  I'm totally that way.  If it doesn't have a hole in it, I feel like I need to keep it and continue to wear it.  Candice inspired me to go through my closet and throw a lot of clothes out because I don't love wearing them.  Now I can't necessarily spend more on new things than I already would have, but when I'm shopping I try to check myself and ask if I'm buying something because it's cheap and it will do or if I really LOVE it.  Because wouldn't we all rather have a few outfits we really love than a closet full of things that are just ok?

Finishing

So far I'm sticking to my New Year's resolutions so I finally got around to finishing a project I already had supplies for and make new curtains for our kitchen.  You know Larry and I are not country/rooster sort of people so these curtains have been driving me crazy.  Luckily they are attached with clips and easy to swap out so I bought fabric to make replacements months ago.

I kind of liked to tulle at the bottom so I copied that finally put together these new curtains.
We're just renting this house, but little changes like that make this house feel a lot more like home.

And now for more pictures of Creed

Because you know you were just thinking, "I need to see more pictures of Creed.  You can never see enough pictures of the CUTEST kid in the world!" (Ok, maybe the only the grandmas were thinking that).  Well, here's a very long post to update you on the life of Creed at 21 months.

Every time someone opens the fridge he pushes you out of the way and climbs in to check everything out.  He LOVES to eat.He thinks one of the Wisemen in his nativity set is saying, "Swiper no Swiping!" because he fell in love with Dora the Explorer this month, and you only need to see the show twice to know what will happen on every single show.He's a snow eater.  It grosses me out and I can't get him to stop.  He keeps telling me it's yummy.  Every time we step outside he's stuffing snow in his mouth whether it's old or new.Seriously, every time!Other than eating snow, he doesn't seem to notice the change in whether and wants to do all the same things he likes to do outside in the summer.  He tries to go on walks with his wagon, and he likes to sit in my car and pretend to drive.

And his squirrel doesn't hibernate.

He loves to cuddle.  If I lay on the couch while he's awake, he sits right on my stomach and plays with his toys or looks at books.

He's more attached to his blanket than ever.  He tries to take it everywhere and he can't sleep without it.  With his blonde hair and light blue blanket, he looks like Linus as he drags it around.

He loves perfume.  You cannot leave perfume or cologne in his sight or he will carry it around and try to spray it on everything.  If you put some on, he insists on having some too.

He loves to pull books off of my shelf and sit under my craft table flipping through them.  He almost always chooses the Boxcar Children even though there are picture book everywhere.

He says, "Hewwo" in a tiny voice that makes everyone he greets smile.

The other day we were playing with his train while the TV on in the background in the next room.  Suddenly he ran away and I walked in to find he'd dug out his pith helmet and put it on because Mickey was wearing one.

He's discovered pockets.  He can't get his hands in himself, but he loves walking around like this.

He loves wearing mittens for the first few minutes after you put them on, and he waves at everything to show them off.

He cries if you sing "I Am a Child Of God" to him during the day because that's what Larry always sings to him as part of his bedtime routine so he thinks you're going to try to make him go to sleep.

Today was semi-warm so we headed to the zoo and it was the first time he wanted to climb up the slide and go down by himself.  He did not want me to touch him, which shocked me because a month ago I could not convince him to go down without holding my hand.  I can't believe he's getting so old.

Happy Wednesday!

with love from the happiest snowman on the block.
And yes, we were both in our pajamas!