More Dress Up Fun

I just love to see my daughter's creativity during dress up.

Isn't she a cutie?

Handmade Christmas Gifts

Amazingly, even with the new baby, I was able to make a couple of gifts for Jr. and Nichole this year. Thank you, husband, for helping me out.

My friend, Brittney, made a fairy princess skirt and talked about it on her blog. It was so cute, I wanted to make one for Nichole. So, I followed her tutorial but made my own changes to personalize it.

Instead of gluing jewels to the bottom (I found it is helpful to put something down there to give it a little weight), I strung beads through the ribbon, as well as a few bells to give it some jingle (but not too much).

Nichole loved that it had bells on it. She got all dressed up in some of her other fairy gear and enjoyed posing with her new fairy skirt.

Jeremy suggested I make a tool belt for Jr. to use with his Handy Manny tools. He even drew out a diagram to give me an idea- pockets and loops to hold the tools. I am learning to sew as you may remember from Halloween, but sometimes it takes me a long time to figure things out- did I mention I'm a beginner? Handmade Christmas presents require the recepient to not know what's going on so I was trying to work on the tool belt while Jr. was asleep (Nichole's I was able to do in my bedroom during the day as it didn't require any sewing). Unfortunately these days I get tired and sleepy a lot earlier since my nighttime sleeping is so broken up with taking care of the baby, so I just could not concentrate and figure out how to do the tool belt like Jeremy was suggesting. It was a great idea, though. Some day I will have the skills. I ended up simplifying it to the point of just having two pockets. And Jeremy gave me a spot in his office for setting up the sewing machine and ironing board so I was able to do it during the day while Jr. was awake and I could concentrate better.

So here is the finished product.

It will fit his tools just putting them in the pockets. Or he can put anything else he wants in there. This tool belt has room for him to grow, which is good because he's not really interested in it right now. That's okay. I finally convinced him to wear it long enough to get a picture.

Catch of the Day

And... We Danced!

The kids and I were having kind of a rough time while Daddy was out doing some shopping. (I think it's the Winter). At least they were willing to eat dinner- plain spaghetti noodles with ham, carrots, and jello salad (they were much worse with last night's enchilada pie). I decided as they were finishing up and I was washing some dishes to turn the radio on. It might be nice to listen to some music to help our mood.

Nichole got up and started dancing when she was done eating so I joined in.

When Jr. finished eating, he joined in, and our little Jr. Jr. even kicked a bit in his bouncer seat.

It felt really good to just let go and be silly with the kids. We all needed it.

Me Time

I have a hard time taking time for myself- that time when I can go away and do whatever I want for a while, even if it's just in another room for a few hours. I have a hard time for many reasons- I feel guilty about leaving my husband to take care of the kids by himself (although he's perfectly capable), I feel that I shouldn't have time for myself because I haven't earned it (there are still dirty dishes in the kitchen), I feel like I'm abandoning my family (but they will be fine without me for a few hours), any time I take for myself is time my husband isn't able to take for himself (though he says he gets a lot more time for himself than I do), I think I already took me time when I sat at the computer and blogged and was on facebook (even though I had to keep stopping to help the kids, etc. etc.- not actual me time). There are a number of reasons I don't take time for myself.

Often what happens when I don't take that time, though, is that eventually I get burned out. A lot of you know what I'm talking about. My wonderful husband wants to support me in getting time for myself. He'll hold down the fort while I go out or go in the other room. If the baby really needs me, he can get ahold of me. But I often don't take the time, even though he encourages me.

So, the other day I said, I'm going to take Me Time. I told my husband when I wanted to do it and we knew that there shouldn't be any conflicts. We didn't have anything scheduled for this evening so I was going to do it. After dinner I would go in our bedroom or the office and do whatever I wanted to do for a few hours. And guess what? I did.

I only had to stop a couple of times to feed the baby and for family prayer but I got my time.

I decided what I wanted to do with my time was mending. We have a box full of items to fix and some that I want to turn into other things (like t-shirts into bags, or pants into shorts).

So I popped a girly movie (heh heh) into the computer in the office and set to work mending.

The sewing machine was already in there from a Christmas project I did before, so I did some mending with the machine and some mending by hand and ended up with a nice group of finished projects that can now leave the mending box.

There are still a number of projects to do but I feel good that I was able to get that time for myself to do what I wanted and be productive at the same time.

Yay Me Time!

Baby Blessing

Our little Jr. Jr. had his baby blessing. The place where we found his blessing outfit- this was the smallest size they had (2XS). They said it was the premie size. Well, considering this little guy is over 11 pounds now at 2 months old, I wonder what a premie would look like in this outfit, especially before 2 months.


We also had him wear these sweet little booties and white socks Jeremy's aunt sent us. Thanks, Aunt Donna.

And thanks to those who were able to make it to the baby blessing. We really appreciate you coming.

Have a Groovy New Year