Beautification

There have been a lull in posts here because we have been busy, busy, busy. Our house is going on the market and I'm feeling:
Sad to sell our first home, that I love more than I thought I could in a city we've fallen in love with.
Tired after so much work, and we still are not quite done.
Grateful for all of the friends who have helped watch Creed so we could get things done.
Hopeful that the selling process will go well.
Nervous that we won't be able to find a place to rent that we can afford in Salt Lake.
Reluctant to move onto the next stage in our life when we're so very happy with life right now.

We've been so busy getting the house ready that we haven't had much time to focus on anything else. We're busy doing things that we really should have done when we moved in three years ago. We've never put any effort into our bedroom so you don't walk in and think, "Wow, what a master suite." We've cleaned up, taken the TV out, added new curtains, and finally put up some pictures. I want our engagement pictures to go in these frames, but since we're keeping personal photos to a minimum, I had to come up with something temporary to go in them and I didn't have a lot of time so this is what I came up with.

They are actually 8 x 10's in large frames, but they look small in this photo above our king size bed. I just put concentric circles in turquoise and brown and added some of our favorite words at the bottom of each one. We picked Thrive, Shine, Play, and Be. Which words would you choose?

It reminds me of one of Ali Edwards projects with the words she picks to focus on each year (and speaking of Ali Edwards, the other day Larry asked me all excited, "Steph, did you see that ALI EDWARDS commented on your blog?" I actually thought it was my friend Ali, but he had clicked on the link to Ali Edwards blog and I think that it's cute that he noticed and that he even knows who Ali Edwards is!) Basically we're just trying to make things look as inviting as possible. Hopefully someone will want to move right in!

Birthday Details

Ok, I know, I keep going on and on about Creed turning one, but a forgot a few things so this will be the last birthday post. I guess I can't help it because Larry and I were so excited for his birthday. We were laying in bed the night before his birthday and agreed that we were both more excited for Creed's birthday than we've ever been excited for our own birthdays.

I forgot to post a picture of his party invitation so here it is.

I used an illustration of the darling duckies from Olivier Dunrea's Gossie Series. They aren't Creed's favorite board books yet, but hopefully someday they will be because I LOVE them.

I wanted to make at least one of my gifts to Creed so I made him a T-shirt to match the Ugly Doll that I made him. He loves feeling different textures so I use felt, fleece, and terry cloth so his T-shirt would be fun to feel. I love making T-shirts so whenever I see plain T-shirts on sale I always pick up a few to keep on hand. T-shirts for boys usually have pockets sewn on them, but I just pick off the pocket and give it a wash and you'd never know.

Does anyone out there have an great birthday traditions? We always got to pick the restaurant for dinner that night and had the usual cake and presents, but that's about it so I'm trying to come up with some new traditions. I'm adopting one idea that I got from Candice. I can't remember if I read it in one of her articles or something else that I read through for her, but she come up with the great idea of putting together an album for CDs for each of your children and on their birthday adding a CD of your child's favorite songs from the year. Wouldn't that be so cool to have when you're all grown up? Candice has been the best at tracking down some of our favorite childhood songs and they have so many memories tied to them that flow out every time I hear them. This year I had it easy because I already put together a CD of my favorite lullabies for Creed, but I think I will add another CD of Creed's favorite like The Hot Dog song by They Might Be Giants from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Hello Delilah by the Plain White Tees (Since Creed was about two months old he's been "singing" along to this song every time it come on the radio, which was a surprise because it wasn't a favorite of mine or Larry's).

And birthday tradition idea number two, I want Creed to also have a library of his favorite children's books when he's grown up so he can share them with his own family some day so every year I want to give him either a new book that I know he will love (like the new Mo Willems Pigeon book that comes out tomorrow) or his favorite book that we've enjoyed from the library (This year it was a tie between Dear Zoo and Where's Spot). He'll get the book for his birthday and then we will take a picture of him reading the book (this year, courtesy of Candice, it was a picture of him sitting on our laps while we read it to him). I'll glue a copy of the picture into the book along with a longer list of his favorite books form the year. It will be fun to interview him to create the list when he gets older. I think Kristi of Everything Pink buys her girls each a Christmas book every year and then writes brief synopsis of each child's year in their book so this is sort of a different twist on that.

I'm not a scrapbooker but between this blog, and some fun traditions like these, hopefully we'll have a fun record of Creed's life that he can enjoy when he gets older.

Hairclip tutorial

My friend Kate asked me how to make hairclips for little girls so I figured it was time for a tutorial. I had 15 minutes before I was heading out, and these clips are so easy that was plenty of time to make two clips (or even more if you don't have a little one that wants to help you and jump on and off your lap).

First gather supplies:
hairclips
ribbon just wide enough to cover the clips
scissors
fabri-tac glue to glue the ribbon to the clip
silk flowers and buttons or whatever you want to use to decorate the clip
A needle and thread if you are using buttons
a hot glue gun to attach the flower if you are not using buttons
I think these clips are actually for holding roller in your hair. My friend Reba bought a bunch of these clips at Sally Beauty Supply, I bought this pack at Target, but I don't think they will work as well because they close together at an angle so I think they will slip out of hair unless you add a strip of craft foam in the middle to keep them from slipping out of soft baby-fine hair. If your using Grosgrain ribbon or some other ribbon with a lot of texture I think they will probably stay in hair well, but if you're using satin ribbon or something else slick, you probably need to add craft foam to the middle anyway.

First, glue the end of the ribbon to the inside of the top of the clip.

Next, if you're using a silk flower to decorate the clip, pull it off of the stem. It should look like this.

They are not usually glued together so just pull the base of the flower off and then slip the plastic middle out. (sometimes I leave the middle, but in this case it was cover with fluffy yellow stuff that didn't seem suitable for a baby's hairclip so I'm putting button in the middle instead).

Fold the ribbon around the clip and mark where you want the flower to go. Then sew the flower to the ribbon with the button on top of the flower.

Trim the thread and glue the ribbon across the top of the clip.

Fold the ribbon the rest of the way around the clip and trim it where it will meet the center of the clip.

Then glue the ribbon the rest of the way around the clip. I clip it on a piece of paper while I put glue on the back of the clip so I don't get glue on the ribbon on the top of the clip.

Here's the final view from the back.

The view of the middle

And from the front along with another clip that I made.

If you aren't using a button to secure the clip, you begin the same way. Pull the flower off of the stem.

Pull off the base of the flower then cut off the part of the center that sticks through the back (you want the flower to be as flat to the clip as possible so it won't be torn off).

Pull each piece of the flower apart and then glue each piece back together. I used fabric-tac, but this is where hot glue would come in handy because it dries a lot faster. You don't want to use hot glue to glue the ribbon to the clip unless you work quickly because you want the ribbon to lay very smooth on the clip.

Then glue the flower to the clip.

And there you have it.

Have fun making your own!

Creed Turns One

You already got a preview in the comparisons on the last post, but here are Creed's one year pictures. Larry happened to have the afternoon off and he had a few minutes to help me with these and it was so much easier with his help getting Creed's attention.

Creed is still very attached to his binky, but we're working on only having it during naps and bedtime so it only made it in the first photo.

I love this photo of him cracking up over Larry.

In honor of his his first birthday, here are a few of his peculiarities, that make him such a sweet, funny little guy. Once in a while he'll roll a ball back and forth with you, but most of the time he'd rather play ball by himself, and he doesn't throw the ball, he kicks it. I think he's going to be a soccer superstar because he's already really good.

He won't eat solids mixed with liquids so he won't eat fruit mixed in yogurt or soup with chunks in it, but he'll eat it all if it's separated. He also won't/can't drink from a sippy cup with a filter in it, because he doesn't get how to suck on it. We give him sippies with out filters which is really messy now that he drinks a lot of whole milk. He also won't keep his sippy cup on his highchair tray, he takes a sip and hands it back to us and points to it or signs when he wants another sip.

He pretends to wash his hands every time he sees hand sanitizer.

He blows whistles by turning them around and breathing in.

When you say yes, three times out of four he'll grin at you and shake his head no like he's arguing with you.

He loves to go outside and has started bringing me his shoes when he wants to go out or standing at the door and pointing outside while he whimpers.He's been able to slide backwards down the stairs for a while, but now he's figured out how to slide off of our taller furniture too.

He's rushing all over the house now so this picture of him carrying about the phone fits him really well. Plus I had to post it to disprove my mom who said, "Creed is really chunking up these days." He is a healthy chubby baby, but I'm doing him no favor because I layer him a lot too.

He loves wheel, balls, lights, dogs, and penguins.

In addition to bobbing up and down and waving his arms around, he has a sweet new side to side dance move.

He still "hides" at least a few times a day by burying his head in pillows with his whole body sticking out, and he emerges with a huge grin.

He signs for food and to tell us he's all done, but he's also picking up a lot of real words. Most people can probably understand him saying mom, dad, and kitty, but probably only Larry and I can understand him saying all done (ah duh), cracker (CR), goldfish (gu), car (ca), and water (wuh).

It's completely astounding how much he's grown in a year. He's seemed full of personality when he was born, but now he's bursting with it. I can't wait to see what the next year brings. There are so many things that we're exciting to introduce him to as he's growing up and becoming more interested in the world around him. It's hard to remember what life was like before he was around because he's our whole world now.

Now and Then

Now

And Then

Now

And Then

Now

And Then

Wow! When did he grow up?

Stringham Time

The Stringhams moved to New York this week and they stopped here along the way. We talked them into staying for an extra day, and we loved having them around.

Creed loved having older cousins around and followed them everywhere they went and they were very patient with him.

Candice took some one year portraits of Creed, even though he would have rather been playing with his cousins, and I can't wait to see how they turned out. I am seriously so lucky to have her as a sister. We were so excited to see the Stringhams after so long. Larry always packs a snack bag for our visitors' trips home and he had the Stringhams' ready before they even got here.

Fun was had and matching outfits were worn.We hit their favorite Columbus restaurants, Donatos, Chipotle, and Jeni's. Do you think Larry had too much sugary ice cream and Jeni's?

Happy Smingus Dyngus!

Love Larry, Creed, Stephanie, and a semi-wet Kirk!

A few weeks ago, our friend Kirk, who is in graduate school studying Russian and happens to be taking a Polish class, told us about Smingus Dyngus. It sounds like a made up name, but oh no my friends, it's for real. Every year on Easter Monday Polish people run around soaking each other with water. Kirk says it's crazy and everyone participates so you'll see old men hobbling around the corner with buckets of water and people leaning out of their apartment windows with hoses attached to their faucets. You can read a little more about the tradition here.

Around 9:00 Larry joked that since Kirk is the only one that we know of that actually knows about Smingus Dyngus, we had to celebrate by soaking him. I was on board immediately, but he told me, "No, I'm old and it's late. I have to go watch the Golden Girls and eat fiber and go to bed!" After thinking about it a bit, we couldn't resist the temptation. We packed up Creed, some water guns, and a big cup of water and headed to Kirk's.


He wasn't home when we got there so we had a chance to scope things out and come up with a plan of attack. Kirk's neighbor was watching us from his porch so Larry started to explain about Smingus Dyngus and he actually responded, "Oh yeah, I know about Smingus Dyngus." Random!

Just as we were pondering leaving the cup of water on the ledge above his door with fishing line tying it to his doorknob and a little sign saying, "Happy Smingus Dyngus!" (which would totally not work, but still would have been funny) Kirk arrived home and we were able to attack. He may not look to happy in this photo, but he was laughing as he said, "I can't believe I've been had on Smingus Dyngus!"