This Month is Such a Special One...

It's Birthday Time for You!

well, at least it is for some very special people in our family:)

On the 7th it was kendall's birthday.  i don't have a picture of him, but he is extremely good looking, even at the ripe "old" age of 32.  I like to tease him because he is just about 9 months older than me:)  i just couldn't ask for a better husband or father for our children! happy birthday sweetheart!

this little lady turned 6 (SIX!!!) on the 12th! craziness i tell you! we love our avery girl, she is sweet and sassy.  she is loving kindergarten but is, truthfully, having a hard time with the transition to no naps at all, because of of the timing of school, but we are working through it:)  i remember ethan having a similar experience.  she loves to draw, paint, take pictures, she likes to be read to, she likes to play with her growing zooble collection and she loves her brothers and sister fiercely.  

Today Christian is 2.  Man, 2 years seems to go really fast!  it has been a hard two years but also good.  I remember the time he was in our home as very happy and loving and that is what i am focusing on right now for this milestone.  of course, i also think of what he would be like, what his little personality is like.  who does he look like?  does he like peanut butter and honey like avery and blake or peanut butter and jelly like ethan?  we miss him so much.  we love him with all we've got.

all decorated for his birthday

blake was somewhere pulling out butterflies and pinwheels from vases saying, "look mom, this one is awesome" or something like that:)

when we go to visit Christian the kids like to take off and look at the other graves too.  they are especially interested in ones with flags (most probably meaning they were soldiers) and ones with interesting things in the vases.  ethan reads the names for them i think:)  this picture is from my spot by Christian.

after we had cupcakes; cam looks a little ticked we didn't give her one!  This little mama is 9 months old today! officially on the outside as long as she was inside! awesome but it seems to have gone so fast!  don't worry, we'll give her a cupcake on her birthday:)

and the girl is fast!!!  she was sitting with me next to Christian's memorial marker after cupcakes and singing and she reached over and started grabbing things out of his vase like crazy! she wanted the balloon i think!  crazy girl! camryn is army crawling like a pro and she is actually really fast at it. we are at that stage where we have to make sure we have cleaned up the floor pretty well and keep a weather eye out for scorpions because she just goes!  Cam is a sweetheart, and she has the best giggle! it is so sweet!  we just want to kiss her cute cheeks all day!

on a different note: after camryn was born last november kendall and i were watching a food network show or something that had a little blurb about a sandwich called a "Bobbie" from Capriotti's. it is the most amazing "thanksgiving" sandwich ever! shredded turkey, homemade cranberry sauce and awesome stuffing.  we are kind of hooked on them...they make great lunch the next day too, since they are rather large:)  yum-o!

and hey if you made it this far great job!!!  i am putting things in my etsy shop lately! i have a mini etsy on the sidebar, check it out:)

crafty crafts...

i mentioned before that i made some shirts for Father's Day this year...these are 3 of them...

a la Jim Gaffigan...if you haven't listened to the Hot Pocket bit by Jim Gaffigan, do yourself a favor and listen to it now!!!so funny!

this is an inside family joke....

this was for Kendall's Grandpa, he does indeed own his own golf cart, in case you were wondering

i made some new Fourth of July decorations this year...this topiary was inspired by these

this was a Pick Your Plum deal, as was the "summer" below...lots of fun!

i made the kids shirts for the 4th again this year...i wanted to try out this technique i had seen, where you paint the design on and then dye over it. our shirts started out white, i painted the white and red on, and then dyed them. i like how they turned out, this picture above is before it was washed, the blue lightened up quite a bit, and next time i need to wait some days in between the painting and the dyeing...it was making the paint come off a bit when i had it in the hot hot dye bath but i think it adds to the rustic/worn shirt look. we'll pretend i was going for that, instead of doing it last-ish minute which is my M.O. (modus operandis)

i had a custom order from a friend of my SIL who wanted a few binky leashes, and i thought, "well if i'm going to make some i might as well make lots" so i made 70+! once i started pulling out fabric and cutting it, it got kind of addictive since they don't take much fabric and are a fun way to accessorize a baby:)  Just need to sell them now huh?:) pretty eye candy though.

my SIL's friend also wanted a carseat cover...

some burp cloths...(nice photo bomb by Cam above) (i started making these with a curve to fit your shoulder, i love them!)

and a diaper/wipe clutch....

all of which took me far longer than it normally would have...hmmmm....i wonder why??

oh yeah, i have a baby!

how did she go from this

(on her blessing day, she was 2 weeks old)

to this amazing, funny, hot mess of a girl who will be 8 months old on thursday the 18th and who got her first 2 teeth within the same week last week, and now can army crawl!!!

watch out! she is a fast roller and now with the army crawl thrown in, no small toy/stray thread/whatever-you-left-on-the-floor is safe!

i was taking a shower yesterday and she found a friend in the mirror! i love it when they start discovering mirror friends!!! (and i love it when i get to take a shower! ha!! moms will understand that huh?)

8 is Great!!

The Firstborn. What a hard job that must be! I am last born in my family, so I wouldn't know, but I sure am glad we have this Ethan boy as our firstborn child.  He is pretty awesome!  He sets a great example (most of the time;) and is compassionate and loving.  Our not-so-little man turned 8 on July 2 and we are looking forward to his baptism on the 20th of this month!

He still asks me to take pictures of him

He loves his dad A LOT and is a snuggler

He is a FISH and has always loved the pool. He swims very well independently now.  

He is a GREAT big brother.

Birthday morning

Cupcakes at Nana's on the 4th of july

He just looks old in this picture...how does this happen?

He loves Goldfish:)

Sibling Love

Ethan is so sweet with Cam.  The other day she reached out to grab his shirt and started chewing on it and i said, "don't let her chew your shirt!" and he said, " i don't want to make her sad mom!" then she grabbed his shorts:)

He is a fast reader, he has a quick mind, and his memory is crazy good!!!  We just love him tons and are so blessed to have him in our family!!!

Bags

bags might be one of my favorite things to sew. they are useful which is a big plus for me. i try to always make useful things! and you can make them relatively quickly, and there are so many fun options!

these are Martha Stewart dish towels from a few years ago, that i have been holding onto...and i finally decided to use them for this project! these two were for mother's day recipients.

i love this fox. i am really loving foxes right now.  i saw the image here and was able to make my own little guy:)  so cute! i made three of these bags

and i made three of these bags too, one for mother's day and 2 for teacher appreciation. (obviously i didn't get pictures of the other two before i needed to give them, one was a purple R and i had another S in a medium blue color). inspiration here

the fox bags and stenciled initial bags were made out of drop cloth fabric that i had left over from my curtains and my first ottoman attempt.  the back of the dishtowel bags are also drop cloth material.  it didn't take long to make these bags, i just did them in snatches of time....cutting them out one day, sewing straps another time i had a minute...sewing them together in another 15 minute snatch of time i had...that's how projects go lately.   whenever i have a little bit of time i work on a project for a few minutes and then baby needs me or kids need food, or to be read to, so then i leave it for a while...and come back to it later:)  right now i have binky leashes and reusable snack bags cut out...waiting for their snatches of time to get worked on:)  it's important for me to figure out when i can work on things, even for just a few minutes :)  keeps me sane.

i have one or two more pillows for my couch that i want to finish...i'll keep snatching those minutes:)

Camryn is 6 months old!

holy cow!! 6 months flies by huh?

happy girl

this is a girl who definitely has brothers...culprit this time was blake

cute girl, she loves to have her fingers in her mouth

on may 9th Camryn started eating some rice cereal

she loves it!

maybe a little too much! we had to cut back on the rice cereal because she's having some nursing issues now...or maybe that's because of her reflux, MAN i wish she could just TELL me what is going on you know?

Avery graduated from preschool! she had such a fun year with Mrs. Newitt.  she is SOOOO excited to go to kindergarten! very excited!

we were at Nana Kay and Papa Jerry's house in Surprise, and the kids had been swimming...we decided to forgo formal naps that day but Blake persevered and slept on this chair:)

she loves to chew on her blanket, like really loves it!

Kendall has taken to calling Cam "ginger" because her hair is staying reddish...then Ethan suggested calling her "ginger newt" funny boys!

this was on her 6 month birthday:)  she has sweet little chunky legs, i love this girl so much! she is giving us a little run for our money right now, but she is such a blessing and a love! her smile is amazing and brightens up our lives so much! she is amazing!!!

Third Time's a Charm!

alright friends, total disclosure right?  Remember when i made my ottoman for my really pregnant self so i could put my feet up?  well in case you don't or don't want to click, i stenciled a drop cloth and wasn't super exact when i was cutting it to be stapled because i thought, no one is going to see those edges right?

well i didn't finish the edges and the above picture is what the end result of my haste and not finishing the edges was...hanging threads, really really ugly!

then Blake took a sharpie to it in multiple places.  and i hadn't glued the foam down to the table so it was shifty too...bad karma!  so i took off that cover, got some strong spray adhesive and glued that foam down...worked like a charm!

Then i recovered it in a tiny orange stripe that i got from Home Fabrics for $3 a yd. Score!!!  i cut precisely this time and finished the edges and i was super pleased with it.  

but of course, Camryn spit up on it on like day 3 of life, (i had recovered it about a week before she was born:)) cause i laid her on it to change a diaper. then we spilled gripe water on it a few times...it wasn't looking too good...

i knew when i was first deciding to make one that something impervious to liquid would be best, but i didn't want to do a fabric then cover it with vinyl, too much thickness and i didn't want to mess with the two layers, and a faux leather i found at Home Fabrics was pretty but expensive and too dark for the room, with such a dark couch.

so i decided to get this laminated cotton from Joann's (when i THOUGHT i had 50% off coupon, turns out it was $1 off on sale so i couldn't use my coupon, grrrr...i had made a special trip to get it too and didn't find out about the $1 off until after it was already cut, lame! i digress...)

and i LOVE it!!! didn't take long to change out, totally is holding up well and any spills just get wiped right off...

bonus is it is bright and light and lovely.  and it feels fine when i put my feet up on it, i was afraid it would have a sticking effect when your legs rested on it for a while, but it doesn't, it's great.

so now i am recovering all our pillows to be brighter/lighter in response to the ottoman change.  mother's day/teacher appreciation projects interrupted my pillow sewing but i will post both of those groups of projects soon:)  

yeah for learning something every time i do, and redo, a project:):)