Kinda Crafty, This Girl Is

So, a while back my sister came out to visit and we took her to this little Hippie town at the base of the mountains out here called Manitou Springs. We wandered around the town, looked at the creek that goes through town, shopped, hula-hooped on the sidewalk outside of a store, shopped, played on the old arcade rides, and shopped some more. It was a really good time, and that day the weather was great for Colorado in October. Well, we found this really great shop called Safron right at the edge of the shopping area that had a ton of purses that Molly just loved and some really super adorable dresses and aprons for little girls. They were pricey for kids cloths but so cute and Molly really wanted to buy one for Haley, I relented knowing that one pricey dress could equal many more if I had something to model it after. The super cool thing about the dress (aside from the awesome retro prints) was that it was reversible. Fast forward a few months to wearing this to like the third birthday party and my ever so careful three year old spills cake on her dress. No worries, we just flipped it and she had a clean outfit in pictures again. PERFECT!

The original "birdie" dress. The flip side of it has the trees on the pocket for the main print and the birds and eggs for the pocket. Stinkin' cute!

So Jeff is TDY for some training and I've been just kind of hanging around the house with a couple of kids. When a coupon for 50% off at JoAnns came through the Sunday ads, I knew this was the perfect time to start on my projects. For just more than $30 I was able to get all the supplies I would need to make three dresses, and have a bit of fabric left over for other projects. I started in the afternoon making and cutting patterns, transferring them onto fabric and cutting them out. About 6 hours later I still couldn't figure out this crazy dress. Our neighbor came over to help, and I probably ended up ripping out the seams on every edge at least twice (some places lots more). I finally gave up for a bit and put the kids to bed. A bit of Googling past bedtime and I found the answer here. Stupid easy, just like I suspected, and only took about 45 minutes of sewing. This is the first dress:

Just like the name it's kitties and flowers. I made a couple of modifications from the tutorial dress... I added the pocket just like her birdies dress, and instead of having the bows tie the shoulders together (which would drive my daughter nutso, resulting in her untying the bows causing her dress to fall down around her ankles), I put them in the back, you can see how in the pictures.

Dress number two is a pattern of adorable owls and a coordinating striped print. Very "her". In fact, after I took the pictures she didn't want to take the dress off so she's still wearing it (with pizza stains already, guess it's time to flip it).

Dress number three you'll have to wait a bit for. I picked up a couple of green damask prints (one dominantly green the other dominantly white) and will use them to make Haley's dress for an important bridal shower and rehearsal dinner coming up this summer.

So that's what I've been up to keeping myself busy... among a few other things, but we'll get there next.

Hippity Hoppity Easter's on its Way!

Yup, Easter is around the corner and the kids (me) are really having fun prepping for the holiday. To date there are 2 batches of sugar cookies mixed, rolled and frosted and put onto plates ready for brunch. For the record, frosting butterflies is pretty dumb. Jeff will tell you the best part about these two batches of cookies is that he didn't have to do one little thing... not even the dishes... he owes me. I baked the cookies while the kids were napping and when they woke up, they were more than excited to see them laid out on the table. Kale was given a butterfly with no frosting and gobbled it down, I guess he liked it so much he decided to try a bite out of a bunny, tulip and egg. But just a bite mind you.

He's the new cookie monster in town.

She didn't want to miss out on an opportunity to lay on the table and take a picture.

The kids have really been pushing me lately with their sibling rivalry and Haley has been especially fantastic with the behavior. You might notice in a few of the upcoming pictures of Kale he has a great big scratch across his left cheek. That would be his sister's revenge for him not sharing a block. After she did this I made a phone call to the Easter Bunny (who works surprisingly like Santa). It went something like this: "Hello Easter Bunny? This is Mommy. How are you? Are you getting ready for your big night? Oh great! Well I just wanted to let you know that you don't need to bring Haley her pretty dress, any candy or presents. Yeah, she hasn't been nice to her brother lately so you can just bring Kale's stuff and that would be fine. Thanks. Yup, you have a good Easter too. Bye!" She freaked, but has been a little nicer to her brother. She'll still get her basket, but desperate times call for desperate measures and when you have a three year old and an almost two year old, it's survival mode.

Then there's the main event of Easter (besides church on Sunday I guess). Dying eggs. This is Haley's 2nd year and Kale's first year. You can tell that the extra year of experience has really paid off for Haley.

I feel like I need to preface this whole situation by taking you back about 15 years to the first year I ever dyed eggs with Jeff's family. Jeff's mom was so wonderful to make me my own dozen of eggs and I really love my eggs to be beautiful and bright and just colors. Don't draw on my eggs, don't try to get all creative, they should just look like perfect one color Easter eggs. So I have my own eggs and I make a quick run to the ladies room, while I was in there Jeff took out one of my eggs and colored on it - I don't even remember what he wrote, but he ruined my entire dozen eggs with that one little coloring and I cried. I will never, ever, ever live this down.

So I told you that, to tell you this: I'm kind of particular when it comes to dying eggs in my own home and in trying to be a good mom, I'm trying not to pass this neurosis down to my kids. I really had to let go and let them be messy and put one egg into many different colors and just let them turn out as strange as they want them to be. This was no easy task for me, but I think it turned out fine and the kids had a great time.

The before picture with the white eggs that Kale is happily grabbing from any carton and throwing primarily into orange and yellow. We decided to do this on the kitchen floor and just threw an old sheet down (I couldn't find any newspaper and honestly, the thought of sitting on the newspaper was yucky to me).

See? Orange and Yellow. You can't see them all but there are three eggs in orange and five, yes FIVE eggs in the yellow. Three quarters of his eggs in those two colors (just let it go Mommy, let it go).

Haley didn't mind reaching in with her hands to pull the eggs out. This proved easier with the hands than with spoons, the spoons made the mugs too tippy.

Kale showing me his hand, not quite as yucky, but getting there.

Pulling one of three out of the orange, and still marinating the yellow.

This is the aftermath. Messy, and will probably be stained forever but it's pretty much just used for a dog sheet on our bed, or a picnic blanket in the backyard. Also, at one point when Kale was rough handling the eggs he picked one up and threw it at Haley, the sound of it cracking as it bounced off her head was a sound we couldn't help but laugh at (as we told Kale not to throw eggs at his sister).

More aftermath, and a painted leg.

Haley showing off her eggs. Now, after that whole story above, Haley's eggs are gorgeous. For the work of a three year old, I'll definitely take it. I can't help but look forward to years ahead when she wants to get creative to make beautiful eggs with rubber bands and marble paint, and glitter and who knows what else "they" and she will come up with.

Kale showing off his eggs. He's pretty proud. I don't think any of them came out with less than a few cracks, some were completely trashed and chunked up.

The finished products side by side. I don't feel like it's necessary to tell you who's dozen is who's.

Kale's name egg.

Not that you can tell, but Haley's name egg.

So I guess that's Easter for now around here. There will definitely be pictures to follow of them in their Easter outfits and likely of our brunch at friend's house Sunday morning.

Coldstone's got nothin' on us!

So, at precisely 8:00 last night it started to snow, like first it wasn't there, then there were three inches out there. That kind of snow. Which out here in Colorado Springs goes by the name of "Spring Snow". It's still cold, it still fills up our driveway, and it still blows into huge drifts in the back yard, the only difference, as far as I can tell, is that it comes after the 21st of March and in far larger quantities than plain old winter snow (WTF?!).

Being that it is in fact spring, I decided to use this snow day as a spring cleaning day, after all, it is a "Spring Snow" Day. I rearranged the play room (also known as the front living room to those of you that don't have kids that necessitate an entire room full of toys) and did a good clean on it. Read: down on hands and knees scrubbing the scum off the base boards, and removing a build-up of crayon that seems to have spread beyond the dining room (A.K.A. the art room... My house is like one big homey classroom). The great thing about having a three year old daughter? You can convince her that the Magic Eraser really is magic and if she scrubs at stuff it's like being Cinderella (bonus points for having the costume on hand so she can truly dress the part). Maybe life with two really is getting easier.

Once I got bored with cleaning (and that didn't take long) we decided to use the "Spring Snow" to make Ice Cream ala Paula Deen. I remember doing this as a kid while babysitting in South Dakota and it being yummy and figured that if I could make it back then, now should be no issue... thankfully, I was right.

Now, I mentioned before that it was cold out there and I really didn't want to get all bundled up for the 15 foot trudge across the back yard for the snow that hasn't already been yellowed. So I sent my kid. She likes any excuse to put her boots on, also, please note her cooking apron since again, in the spirit of dressing the part and this was a kitchen activity, said apron must be worn.

She got two of the required eight cups of snow before I was bundled up to trudge the 15 feet. Dang It!

Add to the eight cups of snow, one can of Sweetened Condensed Milk and a teaspoon of vanilla...

...Stir, and serve.

Haley was all kinds of interested in stirring it, but when it came time to taste, she just couldn't get over the idea that it was made of snow, and I couldn't have paid her to try some. The Dude on the other hand LOVED it.

He loved it A LOT!

Ate it like I've never seen him eat ice cream (or maybe he just wanted to participate, his sister might not hold out on this forever). In the spirit of a snow day full of spring cleaning, we ate it straight from the bowl sitting on the floor. What was left we packaged into little Ziploc containers and we'll see how well it freezes and stores. Haley jumped back into things to help me take the containers and put them in the fridge.

Then it was time for the clean-up crew to go to work. Mission accomplished. It was super yummy and well worth keeping a can of sweetened condensed milk on hand in the future.

Kale's first major art project...

So I have to get a confessional out of the way right now... I owe you all a post about the great trip we made up into the mountains, but that's going to be a lot of picture uploading and I'm lazy. I'll get there I promise, the pictures from that trip are so cute, you're going to D-I-E.

Anyway, onto the topic of this post. Haley has always been my artsy fartsy kid, she loves to color, paint, sculpt, you name it. Kale likes to eat art supplies and just hasn't shown much interest, beyond what it tastes like and what it would look like if he threw his medium across the room (he likes to throw things). Chalk it up to being a boy, or just not that in to art, whatever - your reasoning is as good as mine.

Well, all that stood true till this afternoon. I thought he was peacefully out in the playroom while Haley and I were in the family room working on her letters. I was wrong. He was in his favorite forbidden place... the office. He found a yellow marker and went to town! He made up for 19 months of disinterest in art in about 20 minutes... yeah I would have thought it would have taken longer than that either (goes to show how much I learn everyday in this mom job). Being his first major art project, and that I couldn't keep it forever and ever, I took a picture... actually I took three because that's how many I needed to capture the whole thing. Here it is for you to enjoy too:

Maybe paper just wasn't the material he wanted to work with... maybe he wants to be a muralist. Maybe I should paint the office in that chalkboard paint. I give up.

Arts & Crafts Time with the Roberson's

So we decided to do a little Arts & Crafts with the kids. We had some finger paints, and an end roll of newspaper (If this is something you're interested in, most local newspapers keep the little bits at the end of the newsprint roll and sell it for charity, you just have to go into the paper and ask). We started by tracing Haley on the paper, then we used a stamp pad to give her fingers and feet, and finally we stripped her down and let her go at it with the finger paints.



Then we thought we couldn't just leave it at Haley, so we traced Kale out also, but he really wouldn't be able to grasp the whole finger painting idea and Haley had such a good time with it, we thought we would just let her paint her brother - she LOVED it and he thought it was hilarious! Then we just let him roll around on the traced image of himself. Too cute.

The final steps of the project will be to cut the outline out, and add a computer printed version of their faces to the head. A fun way to create a keepsake of how the kids are at this moment in time.

Kale's Valentine's Day outfit and ready to give a big Valentine's Day hug!

Haley's Valentine's Day outfit