Gracie's Room

When I first decorated Grace's room I loved it. Then I experimented and did some canvas painting for friends. After some practice I realized that I could do a better job, so here are some changes I made to Grace's room over the summer (and there's a couple more changes I will post tomorrow after I take some pictures).

First of all, I took pieces of wood, painted them, and mod podged scrapbooking paper and embellishments on them. These sit on her shelf. They are super easy and fun to make.


Next I painted these canvases and then cut out and mod podged scrapbooking paper on them. If you have never used or don't know what mod podge is, you're missing out! This stuff is my new BF!




These letters were originally painted light yellow, but I wanted to do something else to them. Since I had scrapbooking paper left that I had used for the canvases and wooden blocks above, I decided to use it on these letters. I traced and cut out scrapbooking paper to match the letters, and then I mod podged the paper to the letters.




Every little girl needs a hair clippie holder (especially Grace since I make hair clippies and she has at least one for each outfit!). I once again took the same scrapbooking paper and mod podged it to a piece of wood I bought at Joann Fabric for about 50 cents. I hot glued the ribbons to the back of the wooden piece and then hot glued wooden flowers to the bottom of each ribbon. I also added scrapbook paper that I mod podged to the wooden flowers.

Recent Projects

Here are some recent projects I made! My mom was teaching me how to sew, and our first project was this batman/superman cape. Love it! William wears it almost everyday. He wears it to daycare and whenever we are out and about. He gets so many comments on it, and some people will call him "Superman!" or "Batman!" This is what started the Superman and now Batman obsession.

I also made a couple hair clippie holders for my cousin's daughters. These are their "big sister" gifts. For an amateur and something that cost me about $5 total for both, I think they turned out great!

The other picture are two fabric pictures I made for the bathroom. I painted the bathroom (it had previously been a light tan color with nothing on the walls for over 2 years). I found a tutorial for the pictures on a website that I LOVE.
http://www.makeit-loveit.com/2010/06/decorate-my-home-part-19-3-d-framed.html








My cousin had a baby at the end of spring so I made these wooden block letters for his bedroom.


I made these for our master bathroom. Each place is a place of significance to Olly and me.

Saint Malo-Saint Malo is located on the northern coast of France. We took a ferry to Saint Malo for the day when I was visiting Olly in Jersey one time. This is where he proposed!
Two Harbors-When Olly visited me for the first time we went to Two Harbors for a few days. It was the middle of winter and there was a ton of snow. It was awesome! Good memories.
Cancun-We met in Cancun!
London-I visited London with a friend and Olly came up from Jersey for a few days. We had an amazing time in London. I will never forget our few days together in London. This was the first time we'd seen each other since we met in Cancun.

ZOO!

At the end of the summer we had one last outing to the zoo. William had never been to this zoo so I thought it would be a fun trip for us.

More Pictures

Gracie likes to crawl and hang out under the table. No matter how many times I pick her up and put her somewhere else, she always ends up under the table.









She gets so messy at meals that she gets a bath in the sink every night after dinner!

My Beautiful Girl

William's First Day of Preschool.

William recently started his first day of preschool! He goes 2 half days a week. He seems to enjoy it, although it's difficult to get any information out of him when I get home from work! We're glad he's in school with his best buddy, Owen. Owen and William had been doing to daycare together for the past 2 years. Unfortunately with our daycare closing, they are at different daycares now.

Some updates about William:

1. Now that we're back in our school year routine his behavior has improved (well, except right now he's having a tantrum). He was kind of a stinker this summer and did a great job of testing me!
2. He loves to watch TV :/ We really have to work to limit this. He used to be interested in toddler shows such as Dora, Diego, and Wonderpets, but suddenly he's obsessed with Batman, Scooby Doo, and Thundercats.
3. His favorite food is spaghetti and spaghettios (he is so my child as I loved spaghettios for a long time-well into adulthood).
4. His vocabulary and speech are amazing. He hears a word once, and it becomes a part of his vocabulary and he uses it in the correct context. Here's an example from about 5 minutes ago, Olly put a play stethoscope on his nose, and William said, "Get that bloody thing off your nose!"
5. He's afraid of the dark and monsters right now. We were out last night at the grocery store and as we were driving there he said, "It's dark now which means the monsters are going to start coming out soon." Of course he didn't believe me when I said there are no monsters. He had been waking up at night due to nightmares, but now that he's so busy during the day he's been sleeping well.
6. He wears underwear but we really have to monitor his bathroom use because he will wait and wait until he goes in his underwear a little bit. If we remind him and make him go, it's much better.
7. His imagination is amazing! I cannot believe the stories he tells-both true and made up with great details. I've commented that he tells better and more detailed stories than most of my first graders can.
8. Nothing gets past him! Yesterday morning on the way to daycare he said, "Mama, the other day on the way to daycare Dada forgot Gracie's milk so we had to go back home and get it." I know for sure that Olly would've NEVER admitted that to me! I'm sure he was thinking William would forget and that it would be their little secret. Ha!

Here are some pictures of his first day!

Once again...

My poor ignored blog! July 28th, really? I can't believe it's been almost 2 months since I posted! That means my baby is 2 months older! My William is over 3 1/2 now. Gee, a lot can happen in 2 months!

Grace will be 8 months old tomorrow. She is all over. She can slither faster than a snake. I say "slither" because that's how she gets around. She can crawl on her hands and knees, but if she wants to get somewhere quickly, she gets down into the "slithering" position. She's also eating like a champ. She loves to eat! She eats everything we eat: enchiladas, tacos, spaghetti, chicken, turkey, rice, toast, oatmeal, all fruits and veggies, crackers. You name it, she eats it.

She is still NOT sleeping through the night! :( Not even close. She's waking 2X on a good night, and 3X on a not so good night. On the 3X nights, Olly gets up once. By that time, I'm done going in there; I need my sleep! I think the only reason why her waking at night hasn't thrown me over the edge is that I look at it like a few more minutes I have with her that I miss during the day when I'm at work. I miss her desperately while I'm at work. It's a pain that never goes away. Luckily I have a job that keeps me very busy (physically, mentally, and emotionally) so my mind is often preoccupied. I miss her most when I'm leaving work and in the car to pick her up. I just can't get there fast enough, and I'm especially impatient on the days I get behind the slowest driver, hit every red light, and the train on 47.

Speaking of being away from her, we have a new daycare! Our daycare provider, Carla, (who we've had since William was 6 months old) decided to close her daycare and do something else. We were sad to leave Carla's-it was familiar, and there was a level of comfort that I was nervous about finding somewhere else. I was frantically searching for a new daycare for about two weeks. I was either told a)no room for an infant or b)I have space but you need to pay full-time rates. Ummm, no, I don't think so. William and Grace only go to daycare 3 days a week. We were not about to pay someone for the days W and G are home with Olly or my mom. That just didn't make sense-although I do understand it from their point of view.

So we started our new daycare the other week (Jennifer). We love Jennifer! She is close to home. I timed my drive the other day from driveway to driveway. We left at 8:18 and arrived at 8:20. How's that for close?!?! She does a lot of activities with William. He's always bringing home art projects and singing new songs. She cuddles and loves on Gracie all the time which I love. The other day when I handed Gracie over she nuzzled her face into Jennifer's neck. I have to admit there was just a tinge of "Oh my gosh! My baby is loving on another mama", but I was also happy to see that Gracie loves her and feels comfortable enough to do that with her. I also love that she serves really healthy food. This was a huge deal for me as William had developed a love for treats and processed foods :( Although at home we have very little of that. Almost everything she serves is all natural and/or organic. Grace eats lunch there, and Jennifer feeds her what the kids are eating or makes her something else. The other day she had fruit, broccoli, and chicken. Overall, it's been a really good fit for us. We do pay a little more than we paid before (and we agreed to pay for days we aren't there over holiday and school breaks), but it's worth it to find a good fit.

I'm still nursing and pumping at work. Pumping at work is so difficult. My time is so limited to even get my job done, and then adding in pumping time makes me feel like I'm always rushing from one thing to the next. I've thought once in awhile about weaning off pumping, but that means giving Grace formula and having to PAY FOR IT. I've heard it's expensive to buy formula, and since I already complain about money, I figure I better keep pumping! And once I stop pumping my milk supply will drop which mean that will soon be the end of nursing, and honestly, I'm not ready to give that up just yet. Since I made it to a year with William I feel like I need to (and really want to) make it to at least a year with Grace.

Here are some recent pictures of Grace!