Happy Thanksgiving

I had so much to be grateful for this Thanksgiving that I wasn't even bothered by the fact that Larry had to work, just grateful that we are all doing well and he will have Christmas off this year! I was totally surprised when he called and said he would get off earlier enough to make it to my family's Thanksgiving celebration. It was so nice to be all together!

I hope that all of you also had a Thanksgiving full of good food, kind, relatives (my grandma is beautiful even in blurry photos)

and lots of pie!

You'd Think We'd Have Everything That We Need for Tiny Ford

Tiny Ford is not scheduled to arrive until the end of February, but I want to be able to focus on the holidays in between so I'm trying to get ready now. You'd think since we've already had a baby, and another boy at that, that we'd have most of what we need, but you'd be wrong. We knew we'd be moving a year after having Creed, plus, let's be honest, we were on a budget, so we borrowed everything that we could. Bouncy seat, swing, baby gym, exersaucer, bassinet: all borrowed from wonderful friends. And we inherited a stroller/car seat combo in great condition, but were in a car accident so the car seat had to go and we upgraded Creed to a bigger size, and then the handle broke off the stroller just before we moved and it couldn't be repaired so that didn't make the move either.

We're still planning to borrow a few items, but it's been fun to pick out some new things just for Tiny Ford. This probably seems like a materialistic post, but I love the idea of our kids being able to look back on this someday and compare it to what they will buy their kids. Plus, so much of my mind is filled with excitement for this new baby and I feel like this is one way to document that.

Even though we don't really NEED it, I couldn't resist this Baby Gym at Ikea. I love that you can take the toys off and rotate them with others.

And my mom bought us this Dwell Bouncy seat from Target, which just arrived yesterday. It has an Ipod dock, which I think is silly, but I had a really hard time finding one that could vibrate (essential as far as I'm concerned), wasn't covered in bright characters, and wasn't too expensive. I think this one is a happy medium and I really love it. Thanks so much, Mom and Dad!
And last, but not least, we had to have a stroller and an infant car seat for this baby. Creed REFUSES to ride in strollers so we didn't need a double (although I am sort of afraid that once the baby is being pushed in the stroller, he will want to be in the stroller too). All the strollers that I would love to have were WAY out of my price range so I've been watching the classified ads on KSL. After a few weeks I saw someone selling a Quinny Buzz. I did some research to find out how good of a deal it really was for a used stroller and came across an even better deal for a brand new one. It seemed like the price was way too good to be true, but the retailer just had one old color that they wouldn't be carrying anymore on super clearance so now Tiny Ford has an incredibly nice stroller for less that what I would have spent for one at Target. It has a memory foam seat that can recline or face backwards or forwards or can be completely removed to attach a car seat or bassinet. Larry loves that the handle easily extends so it's even comfortable for him to push. Creed has been taking his stuffed animal for walks in it. I have to admit though, that I feel a little weird walking around with it and having other moms look at me and thinking I would pay $600 for a stroller. Would you be self-conscious?
There are still a few things I'd like to get: a wrap to carry Tiny around (although I think I can probably make one), a swing (which we'll try to borrow), a bassinet of some kind since the baby will have to fit into the two foot space around our bed for the first few months somehow (which I would also love to borrow), new bottles (I tossed ours because they were made with BPA), a crib mattress (but that can wait until we move and this baby has a room). But overall, I'm feeling a bit more prepared.

Our 2009 Christmas Advent

We're gearing up for Christmas around here. I only need to pick up one more item for Creed and then I'm done shopping for him (actually I will probably even save a few things for his birthday). Unfortunately, I'm struggling to come up with ideas for the rest of my family so the only other person that I can check off my shopping list right now is my mom.

We're hoping for low-stress holidays around here so I'm trying to be prepared ahead of time. I usually put off getting our advent calendar together until the night before it starts, but this time I started last week. Years ago, I saw an Ikea ad using their gift boxes to create an advent and I bought the boxes and stashed them away until Creed was big enough to enjoy it. I hung it up in the basement above his train table using some 3M picture hanging strips that are like velcro so they can be pulled off the wall without doing any damage (I cut each strip into smaller pieces). Next, I need to figure out how to add numbers to them, then I need to fill them up with goodies and slips of paper with the activity that we will do that day. I'll try to post a picture when it's finsihed

I don't have them in order yet, but here are a few of the things I'm thinking about including this year (Since we're trying to make the most of our time in Utah, I tried to include several local events).

1. Put out our shoes for Sinterclaus

2. Attend a live Nativity

3. Go see the lights at Temple Square

4. Drink Hot chocolate and read a Christmas Story

5. Watch How The Grinch Stole Christmas

6. Visit Santa at the Sugarhouse

7. Drive around to see lights and give an award to our favorite house

8. Go to the Infectious Disease department’s Christmas party

9. Pick out a Christmas Tree

10. Make a snowangel or snowman

11. Read the Christmas story from the scriptures

12. Address our Christmas cards

13. Dance around to music from the nutcracker

14. Go to the Festival of Trees

15. Go to Candlelight Christmas at This is The Place Heritage Park

16. Attend Ward Christmas party

17. Ride the Polar Express (This one is expensive and I'm not sure if Creed is quite ready for it so I don't know if we will include it)

18. Make a gingerbread house

19. Make Christmas Cookies

20. Write a letter to Santa

21. Drop off gifts to the neighbors

22. Camp out around the Christmas tree

23. Visit friends and family around town and take pictures of all of them wearing a Rudolph nose or Santa Hat. Develop pictures and use them to decorate.

24. Wrap presents

What would you include?

Christmas is Creeping in

I know that it's not even Thanksgiving yet, but little bits of Christmas are starting to appear around the house.

I couldn't resist two Christmas items at Target this week. Creed loves playing with nesting dolls so I knew this would be a welcome addition to our Christmas decorations (as I've mentioned before, I'm trying to add more kid-friendly decorations that Creed is welcome to play with so decorating for holidays is fun for him too). They are not really well made, but Creed loves them so much that the smallest one is missing from this picture because he couldn't be parted from it. He calls it "Baby Snowman" and carries it all over the place. He even went to bed with it and insisted that Baby Snowman needed pajamas too so we had to tape some toilet paper around him so they could go to sleep.

I was also really happy to find a Mrs. Meyer's Pine scent at Target. Looking back, I wish that I would have picked up more because they would make great hostess gifts over the holidays.

More t-shirts and onesies

I had a few more friends who wants to learn to freezer paper stencil so we got together last week. Sorry if you're sick of seeing things, but I'm addicted! I made this one using a hybrid of the elephant I designed for the Sycamore Street Press alphabet print and this t-shirt.I made it so the tail wrapped around the back of the shirt.
And then I had so make some onesies for Tiny Ford too!
Too bad that I forgot to take photos of everyone else's projects!

Creed's New Look

Someone around here is really growing up. For months we've had a basket of Pixar Cars on top of the toilet just waiting to reward Creed for using the potty, but he absolutely refused until last week. Then there was no going back. I wanted to give up after four days, but now that it's almost been two weeks, we seem to be getting the hang of things (thank goodness!)
And to top it all off, he got a new haircut and I can't stop staring at this little grownup (who was not in the mood for any of these photos)!

Lisa has new Neighbors

Yesterday I got to hang out with Lisa, and when I asked her what she wanted to do, she said, "Make fairy doors" It's been way too long since I've done that! I even had plenty of parts ready to be painted so we got to work.

And now she has new neighbors in her baby boy's room.
Maybe I'll even get into gear and get a few listed in my shop.

Creed and Jesse, reunited

Creed's best friend Jesse was here visiting from New York for the first week of November and Creed was overjoyed. He talked for days about how he was going to see Jesse. While we were waiting for him to arrive, Creed insisted that he needed to wear the peacock costume for Jesse and he rushed out the door as soon as we spotted him out the window. They were both squealing with delight and ran to hug each other. When they are only 2 1/2 and haven't seen each other in six months, you'd think they might not care as much about each other, but you'd be wrong.

They didn't skip a beat and got right back to their old routine of playing cars and trains.

We loved seeing Jesse and Melissa and it was hard to see them go again. Creed and Jesse were both sobbing when it was time to say goodbye and after Melissa strapped Jesse into his carseat, he reached his arms as far as he could toward the window crying, "Creed! Creed!" as loud as he could. It broke my heart!
We can't wait for them to move back this summer!

Tiny Ford

Oh yes, This picture does say it was taken on October 20th and a month later, I'm just getting to posting it. Poor second child (although, I have to note my scanner wasn't working with my Mac and I didn't want to post this until I could post it with one of the ultrasound pictures, plus, I'm STILL throwing up at six months so I have to give myself a little slack).

We finally got to see a bit more of Tiny Ford and we found out that

It's

A

BOY!!!!!!!!!

That makes six grandsons on my side of the family, four on Larry's and no granddaughters on either side so this little one will have lots of older cousins to teach him all about the joys of being a boy!

And due to complications, we will get to see more ultrasound pictures of this little guy next week. We actually left this ultrasound appointment without any pictures because there was a small concern so I went straight from the ultrasound to another test and left so distracted that we all forgot about the pictures. Luckily, they were able to print them out later and Larry was able to go back another day and pick them up. I just can't stop staring at this picture and thinking it is all worth it!

My heart floated like a balloon.

The night after Lisa's shower, I came downstairs to find Creed watching TV like this, totally not posed, and it made me smile so I had to share.

Lisa's Baby Shower - Part 4 - The Party Favors

This is my last baby shower post, I promise!

I wanted to come up with some kind of shower favor that would be useful, because I've gone home with a lot of cute favors that I had no idea what do to with that eventually had to be tossed. I always want to burn CDs for people, but since we like to keep things legal around here and through I-Tunes you can only burn things seven times, a CD wasn't a party favor option until recently when I-Tunes made it legal to upgrade your songs for a small fee and have a hayday burning as many copies as you like. Wahoo!

For Lisa's shower I put together a list of lullabies that I thought she would love to share with her little one (similar to the list I posted in the past with a few new discoveries).

I figure that even if you don't have a little one, you'll babysit a niece or nephew or grandchild and its always handy to know a lullaby or two. Is there anything that you would have added?

Lisa's Baby Shower - Part 3 - What we did at the shower

I knew that Lisa likes baby showers with some sort of activity since it makes it a little less awkward when a lot of the guest don't know each other. I wasn't sure what to do with such a big group, but finally decided to try embellishing onesies with fabric designs since that could be a simple, fast project so people could rotate through. I drew up a bunch of simple designs (most my own, you'll recognize them from some of my prints for Sycamore Street Press, and a few others that I couldn't resist adding). Then Lisa's mom provided the onesies and I picked up some fat quarters of fabric and Heat & Bond. I just laid out scissors, a cutting mat, circle punch, and pencils and let guest go to town.

I think they actually had a lot of fun making them. I even heard a few that were planning to make more at home, which made me feel good.

We hung the finished onesies as part of the shower decorations
Here are a few so you can see how simple and cute they turned out (Sorry they all have horrible lighting, but I sent them home with Lisa, of course, so I couldn't take photos later)


I struggle a bit with baby shower games because I'm not a fan of most of them. They can be gross or awkward and embarrassing for both the guests, and the guest of honor. I spotted a shower game that I loved a while back, available here, and made a similar quiz with Lisa's help. I was happy with the way that they turned out and wish that I got a picture of them all lined up.
The other game that we played was a name game, where guests tried to name some children's book characters that I provided pictures of. I hosted this game at another shower, but this time I blew up all of the pictures and framed them.
Then of course after the games and food, we oohed and aahed over Lisa's gifts as she opened them.

Lisa's Baby Shower - Part 2 - The Shower!

So I woke up the morning of Lisa's shower knowing that my house was a mess and I had no party decorations since I'd been busy planning games and activities. Whoops! Luckily, I bought extra paper for the invites so I started cutting and sewing and ten minutes later, I had a simple garland.

I also made a bunch of paper airplanes that I hung around my chandelier with fishing line (Pardon the backlit picture with no one smiling)
I was so grateful that Lisa's mom was in charge of food and I only had to gather drinks. I collected a bunch of different orange drinks in individual bottles and thought I went overboard and had way too many, but ended up with just enough.
And I couldn't resist these adding these blue paper straws.
I used extra scraps of paper to put little flags around one of the cake plates
and little paper airplanes for the mini red velvet cupcakes that Lisa's mom made.
She did such a great job with the food. She even made cookies using only orange M&M's

And had a lot of orange and blue candy.

The other thing that made things look really festive were the big round orange balloons Lisa's mom ordered, because Lisa LOVES balloons.

I hope Lisa felt spoiled on her special day!

Lisa's Baby Shower - Part 1 - The Invitations

Last weekend, I hosted a shower for my lovely friend Lisa, who is expecting a baby boy to arrive in the middle of December. I made the invitations myself, and I had to make 30 of them so I tried to keep things simple (you know I tend to go overboard). For some reason baby girl themes come so much easier to me (ironic considering that I only have a son) so after some brainstorming, I decided to go with paper airplanes because I thought it would be cute to have paper airplanes all over at the shower for decorations, and I've never seen anyone do that.

So here's the invite:

I made everything turquoise and orange because those are the prominent colors that Lisa used to decorate her nursery. I picked up some scrapbooking paper in those colors and cut them up and folded hundreds of tiny paper airplanes during our long drive to and from Disneyland. Then I used them like confetti and stuffed some in each envelope. I even found paper from American Crafts that was orange on one side and had paper airplanes on the other side that I printed the invites on so this is what they looked like from the back.
I designed some quick corresponding labels and printed them on my inkjet printer, but if they get even a tiny bit wet, they run all over the place so I covered each one with clear packing tape and cut them out.

Doesn't it always feel good to look at a stack like this that you have completed?
More shower details to come soon!

Creed takes a Trip to Zions National Park

So the second weekend in October we had no plans and I IM'd Lisa at work to ask her what she was doing that night. The answer, nothing. So I asked if she and Tyler were up for a spontaneous trip to Zions National Park and a few hours later, we were off.

We spent the night at Lisa's sister April's (thanks April!!!!!) and spent the next day roaming Zions. Mind you, Lisa and I are very pregnant and Creed is only two so we only made it through a few hikes, but it was such a beautiful way to spend the day.

Creed was so good about hiking a lot of the way by himself.
The only part I regret is that we forgot to bring along Creed's National Park passport to be stamped. At least Lisa took these pictures so we can remember the trip well.
The weather was perfect!




That's Larry and Tyler under that giant tree. Don't these pictures make you want to abandon your computer and head outside?