Easter Projects begin...

Meet Kierra. This is Emily's FAVORITE baby doll. Somehow Kierra has lost her clothes and has needed more for some time now. For Easter this year I'm making homemade gifts for each of the kids baskets. Kierra's clothes will be in Emily's baskett. I think both outfits turned out so cute. Last time we were in Utah my grandma gave me several piles of fabric. Kierra's new clothes came from just some of the fabric I was given. The best part about this paticular future gift is that it didn't cost me anything. Yeah!!!! One gift baskett done 3 more to go.

I've always wanted to make a special outfit for when my babies turn a year old. But I never have. So with baby #4 I'm trying to be a little more prepared. I'm not very creative, meaning I vary rarely come up with an original idea. However if I see something I can usually copy it. I get a lot of my inspiration from Etsy. I came across several different ideas for a 1st birthday shirt that I reaaly liked so I combined what I liked. This is the result, The best part is I didn't have to pay $22 plus shipping! I wanted to make my nephew Jamie a shirt also. So I did his first. I love it. Realizing that Easter is next weekend I'm putting Brayden's shirt on hold until I get the Easter gifts done. Luckily I still have a few weeks before we celebrate that 1st Birthday.

I hope you like it Sheri. I'll get it to you soon.

Brayden's newest milestone...

Look what I can do now... My mommy is just loving this new toy I've found.

This is so much fun. My mommy likes to pick up everything I knock down.

I know I can, I know I can, I know I can.....

Got it!

Bathroom Projects...

This is what the corner of our bathroom has looked like for almost 3 years now. I love making bows. And my girls love wearing bows. Placing a bow on whatever hair do done for the day seems to finish the look. 3 years ago I took some yarn, braided it together and hung in on a nail to hold the bows. Now that the girls are older I am constanly asking them to go hang their bows up. As you can see my holders are almost empty. The bows get thrown on the counter or on a dresser and a lot of times in their dresser drawers. Apparently at bed time standing in front of their dresser changing they take the bow out and toss it in whatever drawer is open. The hair do's that we enjoy doing call for 2 matching bows but over the past few years we have seemed to misplace a lot of our bows. Not wanting this anymore I wanted to make a bow board so I went to Goodwill and bought this for $2.99

Bought 1/2 yard of fabric from Hobby Lobby on their clearance table. And came up with this... )Oooops! Looks like the finished project jumped to the bottom picture.)

This is our bathroom wall. It has a small towel rack in the middle of the wall. The rack is far from the bathtub. While standing in the tub as an adult I have to brace myself in order to reach the towels. My kids knowing they can't reach the towel rack throws their towel on the bathroom floor while bathing which usually produces a pile of WET towels before bath time is finished. Once dried off and dressed if they remember, they then try throwing their towels over the shower curtain which they usually miss so the towel then lands into a bathtub that is still draining water or the toilet. Which once again producing MORE wet towels. If the towels don't wind up in a pile on the bathroom floor they wind up in a bedroom on the floor.

For some reason at our house MOM is the ONLY one who seems to notice the piles of towels on the floor. Several weeks ago doing the weekly bathroom cleaning I got fed up. This is what we now have...

I had Kory cut me out some wood squares, they got painted, screwed to the wall because I AM NOT going to deal with towels hooks that fall off the wall. I purposely hung them so that the screw was attatched to a stud and not just sheetrock (hence the far apart look). I then covered the screw holes by gluing a cute painted wooded fish over the hole. Now that we've had our new towel holders for a few weeks I need to make one more adjustment. We have 2 hooded towels that the kids have NO trouble hanging up and they stay hung up. Regular towels are a different story. The kids aren't able to hang them so that they will stay well. Any tug on the towel bring the towel down. So the next project will be making hooded towels!

And now for our bow board. I cut 2 small holes and then hot glued in 2 dowels. This keeps most of our hair accessories together. I love the dowels. I used dowels I had on hand and they are only an 1 1/4'' long. When these need replaced I'd like to get a little longer ones. The headbands can slip off the towel a little to easily. Our bathroom is looking better and better. It's staying cleaner longer and I don't hesitate when unexpected company asks to use the bathroom.

Dr. Seuss Birthday

Today is Dr. Seuss's Birthday. When Hunter was a baby someone gave me the book, "The Foot Book". I fell in love. I really really love his books. We have collected several over the past few years. I love the rhyming, the imagination, the silliness and the easy/quick read. These make great bedtime story books. In celebration I brought all our books out and have left them out to be looked at and read all day. I loved hearing Maddie take a book to Hunter and asking him to read it to her. I had fondant up to my elbows or I would have taken a picture of that scene. It was priceless! OOPS! I downloaded the picts backwards so I guess we'll start at the end. I had lots of help making our fun dessert. Can you tell which books they represent? Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat In The Hat (twice) and The Sneetches. The kids favorite was making the cats.

Before dinner I read the fish book. Not having any fish sticks, homemade chicken strips did the trick. Unfortunately I got pre-occupied cleaning up our cupcake mess and forgot the french fries were still in the oven. Oops! So we had left over potato salad instead. The kids will be hungry in a few hours so it's a good thing we've got plenty of cup cakes.

While the older kids were at school Emily and I did a project. Last week I got to thinking of how many projects I used to do with my kids. We did a project everday! Even when they were in preschool we still did projects together at least once a week. Since Hunter and Maddie have gone to school for some reason I've stopped. Last week I vowed to sit down and do a project with Emily a few times a week. She's definetly old enough and it's time to start working with her on the basics. In celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday we made The Cat In The Hat's Hat. She is so proud of her project.

During the 10 minutes it took to do this easy project she kept saying "This is the best day ever", This is so much fun", "You know Hunter and Maddie are going to want to do one when they get home!". I drew the hat, using a paint brush Emily smeared liquid Elmer's Glue and then using a spoon she sprinkled on died red rice. She had a blast.

Wanting to start the day off in celebration we had our version of Green Eggs and Ham. The picture looks disgusting but it was edible. With everyone having seconds and thirds it must have been pretty good.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!