Monday, February 15, 2010

South

We are in Southern Illinois visiting my family.  I only brought our "light" coats and am now regretting this because there is an inch or so of snow on the ground. Boo!

I'm hoping that it warms up so we can go outside. I brought my "big" camera to take some pictures of the kids outside at my Grandpa's farm...not sure if that is going to happen now.

Hope you all had a good weekend!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Homemade Oreo Cookies



Craving something sweet? Maybe want some chocolate? Check out my recipe here.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

What does he know anyway?

Punxsutawney Phil emerged today and saw his shadow. In a show of unity, Wiarton Willie (the Canadian version of Phil), and Nova Scotia's Shubenacadie Samalso saw their shadows. That means six more long weeks of winter.






But really, what does a groundhog know anyway? I'm hoping Mother Nature will put them all in their place and provide an early Spring. A girl can dream, right?



Homemade Valentine Cards

This year Ava has 2 Valentine parties to attend. One is at school, and one is at a pizza place with love, Pizza Papalis, downtown with our Moms' Group.

For her school party I had bought Valentine cards on clearance last year. I had Pooh, Princess, and Hello Kitty. She chose princess.  You would think this would be easy peasy lemon squeezy...but you'd be wrong!  You see, Ava knows how to write her name now, which means that I can no longer write her name on anything. She must do it herself. Do you know how big a 3 year old writes their name?  BIG.

So this means that she would write a letter, I'd check it.  Then she would write another letter, nope too big, erase, start over.  Thankfully she only has 12 others in her class.

For the Moms' Group party, I wasn't going to go through that again, because there will be a lot more kids.  So, I set out to make my own.

I started with some scrapbooking paper that I had in my stash.  I then cut it to 3 inches by 4 inches.


Next I used my Valentine stamps/pads from my teacher days to make this design.


The next step involved name writing.  I'll admit, I didn't know if this was going to be enough room for my girl to write her 3 letter name.  I can't even imagine the size cards I'll have to use when Blake can write his name.  He has 2 extra letters!

She did a great job though, and we had just enough room.  On grocery day I had bought heart stickers at Walmart for $5.00.  We used those for the front of the card.


She loved writing her name and picking out which stickers go on which card. We broke this up into 2 days. She did half the cards on Sunday and half the cards on Monday.

What do you do for Valentine cards? Store bought or homemade?

Monday, February 1, 2010

Sew Crazy



Whew! What a weekend!  Both of my kids were sick with colds, so we stayed in the entire weekend.  That means that I got a lot of sewing time in and Rob got a lot of hide-and-seek time in...

Friday we watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  I thought it was alright.  The beginning was very slow, but the ending was so sweet.  I'm glad I saw it, but probably wouldn't watch it again.

On Saturday I went to my new favorite store, JoAnn Fabric and bought a few patterns (McCalls were 1.99!).  I chose one that said "Easy".  Well, this pattern was anything but easy. The directions were so hard to follow.  But, I read through them and decided to go for it.  I measured myself (scary!) and found my size. I cut, marked, and pressed.  I got the bottom sewed together, tried it on, and it was about 3 sizes too small. This was around 9 at night.  I then searched the internet for about 3 hours and found a few skirts that I could make, but no information on why my skirt turned out too small. Being the OCD person I am, I had to finish the skirt, so I came up with a way to do it with no pattern and finished around 1 am.  Do you sew? Any idea why this didn't turn out? I checked my seams and they are the 5/8 that the pattern calls for...also rechecked my measurements, and still the same.

Sunday, more JoAnn Fabric!  I bought some more fabric, elastic (for my new skirts), and some ribbon.  I put in the zipper on my skirt I started last night (which is still a bit small), started a lazy days skirt for Ava, and washed and pressed fabric for a 20-minute skirt for myself.

I also tried out 3 new recipes for my other blog, Real Moms Cooking.  I posted about the Pasta Puttanesca last night here. Try it, let me know what you think!  I also made Taco Boats and Baguette French Toast.  I'm  posting about those later this week.

We also started our homemade Valentine's for our Mom's group Valentine pizza party.  I'll post about them tomorrow.

Of course thrown in there was cleaning and laundry.  I'm lucky that my husband took care of the kids all weekend so I could get my sanity back.  I know I'm very lucky.

How was your weekend?