Happy Holidays!

Well, here it is two days before Christmas and I never got around to posting about Thanksgiving. Oh well, moving on. We have been so crazy busy around here. Decorating for the holidays, holiday activities, doctor appointments (routine), me photographing a wedding, Curt's final exams, preparing to begin a construction project the day we get back from our holiday travels and, of course, preparing for the arrival of our new little one. I can't believe we have less than six weeks until she makes her grand entrance!

Curt is now off of work until after the holidays so yesterday we finally finished our Christmas shopping and took the kids to see Santa. They had a great time! Santa was so nice and had the best smile. The picture that we had to buy didn't turn out very good, so here is a snapshot that I grabbed while they were posing.

After visiting with Santa, the kids HAD to ride the little Christmas train. I think this year Chloe might have been more excited than Colby. The second she saw the train she began yelling, "Toot, toot!"

We are leaving for Indiana tomorrow morning for a quick holiday trip. We will be back Sunday night. This is probably the shortest Christmas trip we have ever done. This year it is just necessary to keep it short. My pregnant body does not handle the car trips very well any more and Curt will be building a bedroom for Colby the week between Christmas and New Years. Busy busy busy!!!

I hope that you all have a wonderful holiday season!

Merry Christmas
and
Happy New Year!

PIONEER WOMAN!!!

Thursday was such an exciting day! About one o'clock that afternoon 3 friends and I met up, loaded into a Jeep and headed up to Chicago. Jonna, Jennifer, Esmeralda and I are big Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond) fans and we were on a mission to spend a great girls day together topped off with the PW cookbook signing.

The idea was to leave right after lunch so that we would get up there in time to do a little shopping before dinner and then head over to the book signing. Well, wouldn't you know, we ran into rush hour traffic and had to cut out all of our shopping time. Instead we headed straight to dinner...at PF Chang's! It has been so long since I have eaten there, and it was just as amazing as I remembered! I didn't get any pictures of the lettuce wraps (the love of my life) or dinner, but I did get a shot of our Great Wall of Chocolate.

Before:

After:

We all were a little loopy on great food and excitement about the book signing. So when Esmeralda pulled out a gift card, we got a little carried away. :)

After dinner we rushed over to Barnes and Noble for the book signing. When we arrived we were handed a number (263) and told that it would probably be about an hour and a half wait. They were calling numbers in small groups so that everyone else could shop or relax instead of waiting in a line all night. It was such a great system. While we were waiting and shopping in the Children's section I caught of a couple of action shots of PW's boys. They were too funny. At one point they were throwing books at each other. We saw them get in trouble horsing around on the escalators and saw a fight outside on the sidewalk. Here they are wrestling on the floor, notice the Sharpie marker in one hand. :)

Here is Marlboro Man (PW's husband) giving the boys a good talking to.

After that we ended up in the Starbucks cafe drinking yummy drinks, reading magazines, talking and laughing. The nice guy that gave us our numbers when we arrived was pretty far off when he estimated the wait time. Instead of an hour and a half, we waited almost 4 hours! We ended up being the second to last people of the night. Here is a picture of Jonna and Esmeralda as we are in line and getting close!

We all kind of felt bad being there so late. I know that PW had to be exhausted. But despite that, Ree was SO friendly and patient and made us feel like she was just as glad to see us and she was the first people of the night. The pictures I have of us during the actual signing are not that great. I handed my camera off to a really nice camera guy who unfortunately took a bunch of blurry pics.

Jennifer:

Esmeralda:

PW taking a pic of Jonna with her camera!

Me looking like a house:

And the group!

After Ree signed our books, Marlboro Man signed them as well. I have to say he was the nicest guy! He was so down to earth and joked around and talked to us like we were friends.

And to top it all off, they were giving out free t-shirts from wildolivetees.com! They are so cute!

It was such an amazing day/night! We ended up walking out the door at midnight. Only to get in the Jeep for another three hour drive. It was such a great bonding experience for the four of us. It's not often that you get to spend 14 hours uninterrupted with the girls! A big "Thank You!!!!" goes out to Sean and Curt for keeping the kids so us mommies could enjoy the evening.

Here is my booksigning booty:

Thanks to Jonna, Jennifer and Esmeralda for the great company and wonderful memories. And thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Drummond for being so gracious to us even though I know you had to be exhausted!

Crafting Catch-Up

I guess it's time for another crafting round-up post. It seems like I haven't done a lot lately, but I have a few things to show you since my last crafting post.

First up is a little sundress and bloomers that I made for Chloe. I used the free pattern from Made by Petchy. It is super easy to make and I thought the outcome was pretty cute. I also made another one in some super cute fruit fabric, but I can't seem to find a picture of it.

We were having trouble with the kids wanting to color during church. Markers were out of the question and crayons were still getting all over their clothes, not to mention breaking in their bag. I decided that colored pencils would probably be the cleanest, least messy option. I came upon this great free tutorial from Skip to My Lou for some paper/pencil holder projects. I made one for each kid. I was pleased with how easy they were and with the end results. They are so practical and cute. This was my first attempt at machine applique. It went pretty well, but I am still definitely a beginner in that area.

As you can see, they both love these!

For Mother's Day I made our moms matching tissue holders, eye glass cases and coffee cozies. (I don't have a picture of the glasses cases.) I made them all using free online tutorials. The tissue holders were from Bella Dia. The eye glass cases were from Amazing Mae. And the coffee cozies were from House on Hill Road. All three were very easy to make and so much fun. I loved doing little projects that I could finish in one short sitting.

I ended up enjoying making them so much that I went a little crazy and made them for several friends and myself. :)

For my cousin's daughter's first birthday I made a little outfit with a matching hairbow. The skirt was made from the Oliver + S free pattern. I bought the t shirt and appliqued on a butterfly that I cut out from the skirt fabric. The hairbow was a little tricky, but looked really cute in her hair.

My father-in-law made these great doll cradles for all of the granddaughters for Christmas last year. So for our niece's first birthday I made a little bedding set for her cradle that included a mattress, a quilt and a matching pillow. I was really pleased with the results, but I have yet to get around to making a set for Chloe. It will get done one day!

In addition to the cradle set, I also made her several hair clippies. Grace is teeny tiny for her age, so I made simple ribbon clippies instead of big bows so that they wouldn't over power her.

My most recent project was for a dear friend who was getting ready to have her third baby just a week after her little girl's second birthday. I made a pair of sister Molly Monkeys from mmmcrafts free pattern. I was able to find a couple of sets of fat quarter fabrics that were cute patterns and in two different color ways. I wanted to make them coordinate, but they still needed to be able to tell them apart.

And of course, I can't end a post without a couple of pics of my babies.

After the holidays, I will probably have a lot more projects to report on. Right now I am working a quilt to go on Chloe's bed (for when she moves out of the crib). Hopefully I can quit procrastinating and get it finished soon!

Halloween, Birthday, Halloween

This time I am not going to start out this post with an apology and a promise to do better. I can't believe that it has been close to two months since my last post, but our lives are kind of crazy right now. It seems like things have been kind of non stop and I know that the next couple of months will only be even more hectic. Hopefully I can squeeze in several posts, but I just can't make promises. :)

So, today is about Halloween and my birthday. The Halloween holiday started out with an event called "Hall-zoo-ween." It is an event held at our local zoo and this was our first time going. There was a long treat or treating path through the zoo, face painting, a costume contest, a magic show and plenty of food tents. Unfortunately, all of the animals were put away for the night, so we only got to see the giraffes and some monkeys.

We didn't enter the kids into the costume contest since they just had store bought costumes. Chloe was a ladybug and Colby was Dash from The Incredibles. Cute, but nothing too original. :) We went to the magic show. However it was so boring that the only good thing that came out of it was an excuse to sit down and get into the candy!

The following weekend we went to Huntington to celebrate my birthday with my family. We arrived Friday afternoon and dropped the kids off at my parents' house. Curt and I then went out to a movie and dinner and then stayed overnight in a hotel. It was the best thing I could have asked for! A whole night with my husband, we don't go on dates nearly enough!

Saturday we went back to my parents' house where we had a small birthday party with my grandma, aunt, uncle and cousin and her family. It is kind of a tradition and always a lot of fun! The kids' favorite place to play:

Colby and Izabella actually posing for a picture!

Of course I had a lot of little helpers opening my presents. :)

One of the few pictures of me with one of my babies. (Please ignore the pregnancy double-chin. Gag.)

Every year my mom makes a red velvet cake from scratch. It is the most delicious cake in the world. Colby thought so too.

After the party and dinner, the little kids put on a Halloween costume fashion show for us all. It was too cute! Unfortunately, by that time in the evening they were getting tired and wound up so it was really hard to get good pictures.

The weekend after that was actually Halloween. Curt's parents were able to come spend the weekend with us. We had a blast! Saturday started out with pumpkin carving.

I drew the designs and Curt did a lot of the actual carving. I had drawn a ladybug for Chloe's pumpkin. It had several small holes, and my smart engineering husband thought of using a drill. It worked perfectly!

Then in the evening it was time for Trick-or-Treating. Chloe loved it, but Colby's shoes were hurting his feet so we ended up only going through about half of our neighborhood. We still had a good time though. Here they are with their pumpkins right before the candy gathering started.

October was a really fun month, and November is shaping up to be a good month too. Hopefully it won't take another month to get a post up, but remember I'm not promising. :)