little lovelies handmade

Still not sure why I do this to myself.

Here is a week's  worth of posts in one.

Monday we had birthday breakfast with my sister Noelle - She turned 9 and yes we have the same parents and no she wasn't really a surprise. After breakfast we had a marathon trip to Target to try to get the kids Enchanted, but I scoffed when I saw it was $19.99. Puhleeze. But instead I spent $40 on various crap no one really needs. Shoulda just gotten the movie.

We went to my grandma's house where we had lunch and watched the copy of Enchanted that my mom bought for my sister. We then met up with the family at 6 for birthday dinner with my brother who turned 22. Went to bed at 8:30 because I wasn't feeling well.

Tuesday we babysat for a friend in the morning, went to Fairytaletown at 11, had a picnic and played with the cousins who were visiting from Southern California. We were home by 3 pm and had to call off dinner with some friends because my allergies were so bad. I crashed at 7:30.

Wednesday I had a doctors appointment for the allergies and finally got some medicine (which I actually haven't had to take because naturally as soon as I went to the doc, I started to feel a little better). My mom and sister in law came over with my sister and three nieces and nephews making the grand total of children in my 1000 square foot home 6. They proceeded to tear up my already torn up home even further (who knew it was possible) in the hour I was gone. All this occurred while our tile guy was putting tile in our kitchen. The man is a saint.

We then went to Granny's house for lunch and to play, but I could only handle the noise for about two hours before I made my kids pack up and go. The fuss at having to leave their cousins, was such that the neighbors must have thought they had severed a limb. We went home and took naps until 5 when we picked up Aaron from work and went to a potluck at a friends house at 6. We were home by 8 and I was asleep by 9.

Thursday we got up and went to get coffee (me) and scones (them) and met our cousins at the zoo. The wind was so cold it cut through our jackets so we decided we should leave the zoo and go to an early lunch instead. We get to our lunch spot and find out they are not serving lunch for another 30 minutes and no they would not let us look at the lunch menu until then. So we wrangle 5 kids into their seats, try to keep them occupied and not screaming/burping/farting/hitting or otherwise misbehaving until the waitress gives us the menus early because i am sure that she figured the sooner we order the sooner we'll leave. We eat and have an hour and a half to kill before I have to take my kids to pick up Aaron so I can go to a dental appointment.

We decide to take them to a local park to burn off energy, which they do while we freeze our butts off watching them play. We wrangle the kids back into the cars, say tearful goodbyes to the cousins who are heading home tomorrow and go to the next thing. When we reach the Capitol to pick up Aaron he says, oh by the way I have a doctors appointment at 4 to check out my knee. Cool. We can hang with that. After my appointment and a trip to the bank to get money to pay our tile guy we hop back into the car, drop off the moola and go back to the doctor. While Aaron is at the doctor the kids in I go to the grocery store to get some stickers for a calendar project we are doing.

The first store does not have stickers in the size we need. Nor the second, nor the third. In actuality the last store didn't either, but they did have a paper punch in a decent size so we just went with it. We picked up Aaron from the doctor and he wanted to stop at Home Depot. He ran in while we waited in the car because as Monkey says "Home Depot is boring."

After that I told Aaron I really didn't feel great, could he cook? Sure he said and turned into the Dos Coyotes parking lot where we had dinner. Now we are home, my kids were wound up tighter than tops due to a two hour nap in the car while we did various errands, and are sleeping aka jumping on their beds. I'm too tired to care and am going to call it a night.

It's 7:15 pm.

Where I am today

I was just going to start writing a post about how weird it is that it feels like Friday, but it's actually Thursday when I glanced at the calendar and saw that it really is Friday. I gained and lost a day in the same 30 seconds. Drat.

Today we have a handyman here finishing work on our kitchen. We finally admitted to ourselves that we are never gonna finish this place on our own and we need outside help. It was easy to make this descision when we got our tax return which was huge  due in part because we were paying the man too much in Aaron's paycheck deductions. On one hand it was annoying to find he'd been paying too much, but we quickly got over it when we realised we could hire someone to finish the house and can actually afford to send our kids to preschool next year.

Oh man I can't tell you how excited I am to send my kids to preschool. They have just discovered the joys of sibling rivalry. And they are good at it. They argue over the dumbest stuff and gosh darn it if one of them has something the other one better get one as well. It is driving me insane. I yelled at them to knock it off all day on Wednesday and realized they seemed fueled by my irritation (I never learned this lesson when my own brothers were pissing me off, guess I have to now). Yesterday I took the policy of just ignoring it and telling them to work it out. A four and two year old "working it out" is pretty funny, though.

Speaking of brothers, mine is coming back from Iraq soon! Woohoo! The whole family is going down to Camp Pendleton to meet him and welcome him home. Monkey is so excited to see "Uncky" Dallas again and we even bought some special shirts for the homecoming that we know Dallas will love. His two boys and my monkey will be sporting these duds for the welcome home. Monkey calls them his pirate shirt. They had grown up sizes, but Aaron wasn't feeling me on that.

Now I am going to spend the rest of the morning preparing for Easter. We have a huge easter egg hunt for adults and kids alike, and there are eggs that need stuffing!

Fun Easter treats

Fun Easter treats
Originally uploaded by littlelovelies

A Different Kind of Green

It may be St. Patrick's Day, but the only green we got is the nauseating variety. Poor Peanut has a stomach virus. She had three baths and three jammies changes between 6:30 and 8:30 am. Aaron has been on puke patrol all day because I am a complete and utter wuss (and this really is an understatement folks) when it comes to that. I had the honor of most of the diapers, because as our pediatrician pointed out this morning, this tummy virus will attack on both ends. Oh the joy!

So we are holding our breath that things go back to normal tomorrow and no else gets sick, every day we have a pukey kid is a day Aaron misses from work to help me. Yes I won the husband lottery. He does take care of all things pukey a gross while I give baths. I realize it is a completely uneven trade off, which is why he is drinking a beer and playing X-box instead of drinking a beer and watching our tivo'd episode of The Soup. It is a fair trade off.

On a different, much cuter note, we got to see baby Sydney yesterday (which also means we exposed her to our germs. Damn.) and Monkey got to give her a bottle. Aunt Kate brought it especially for him to feed her, knowing that giving babies their bottles is one of his very favorite things to do. Underneath her is the little blankie that I crocheted for her (and naturally forgot to photograph). Monkey was the only kid at the birthday party who go to hold the baby, which he loved.

Poor peanut was so disappointed not to get to hold her or touch her, but in retrospect was providential that she didn't. Of course that didn't stop her from breathing on her or occasionally touching her head when she thought no one was looking.

Look at him, he just cannot wait to have a baby in the house again!

Dream on, Part 3

Master Bedroom and Bath

Dream On, Part 2

Kids Rooms and Bathroom Edition. For those of you just tuning in, I am decorating our future house. The one with all the space we ever wanted and at this time cannot afford.

Kids Rooms:

My hope is to use the same colors and style of textiles so that they can be easily interchanged once the baby moves into the room with whichever big kid he/she will be sharing with. The idea is to just just move the bed and bedding over and have the rooms still go together. Plus, this is just the color scheme I want to go with for the house on general, so it would be cool to have everything just flow throughout...(hence the repeat of the rug and toy bins).

Kids Bathroom

Tomorrow: Master Bedroom and Bathroom

Dream on, Part One

Those of you who have been to our house know that it is tiny tiny and crammed full of stuff. For the last year or so Aaron and I have discussed trying to rent out this little house and buy ourselves a bigger one in another neighborhood nearby. One with two bathrooms, a living room and a family room, and three (or more) generous bedrooms that is over 50 years old (we are convinced older houses are both built sturdier and have more interesting quirks. We like quirks).

Since the market has taken its little nosedive it has been a double edged sword for us on one hand great houses in great neighborhoods are cheep cheep, but our house has no equity in it. (I hope you don't mind me saying that, honey...I figure we aren't the only ones in that boat though.)Anyway. Last night we were perusing house listings and dreaming of possibilities.

So today, since we have decided to tighten the belts a little tighter (we may actually be getting rid of the satellite and tivo, *gasp*!) and eat Hamburger helper for the foreseeable future I went pretend shopping for our pretend house today. The house that will have a living room, family room, two bathrooms, a huge master bedroom (to us anyway), a nursery and kids room, and lovely retro kitchen.

So this week I'll be walking you through our new house. Today will be the living room and family room.

This is our pretend living room. I don't love the cover of the chair, but the shape is fabulous.

And the Family Room:

Someday! At least with the family room we are 90% there. We have two of those loveseats, the bookshelf, desk, chair, toy bins and train table. I just need to get that picture on Etsy and the rug. Not right now, because I do realize that would defeat our whole "save so we can move" plan. But a girl can dream!

Tomorrow: Kids rooms and kids bathroom.

Interesting tidbits...

--Craft Con will be in San Francisco April 4-6 and looks like it will be a fabulous time. Wanna come? Apply here.

--Small Object has an informative post about craft shows and how to find some near you.

--Have a few hours to waste? Waste them here and here and here. They are just too fun.

--After all that you'll be hungry, so try this recipe. If you are lazy like me you'll skip making the meatballs by hand and just chop up the sausage and throw it into the pot. It's pretty darn good.

My Friend Becky

When I was a kid I had this doll. She had a pretty teal green dress and white hat, gorgeous red hair and peaches and cream skin. I remember going to the Toys R Us in our neighborhood and seeing her in her box on the shelf and thinking she was just the most beautiful doll ever. I was probably four at the time and I don't remember if I got to have her that day or if I had to wait until my birthday. If my dad was with me I probably got to take her home that day. He was a sucker for little girls who asked nicely, and I'm sure I had all my charms out that day. Or my Granny bought her for me she lived in California and we lived in Missouri, so buying far away grandkids presents was a favorite pastime of hers.

Anyway. I had this doll that I thought was so spectacular. My parents bought me a highchair and bunk beds for the doll and I remember toting that doll with me everywhere. Over time I lost the hat and shoes and then the dress. But I didn't care. She was still the prettiest doll any little girl ever had.

When I was 6 (or maybe 7?) we moved from St. Louis, MO to Honolulu, Hawaii. After moving to Hawaii I have no memories of playing with that doll. I don't know if I lost her. we left her in storage in the mainland or if the sunshine of Hawaii overshadowed any dolls I might have had (the toy I remember most from Hawaii was my blue bike with a white banana seat that had a huge daisy across it). At any rate after St Louis the doll seemed to be gone.

In all honesty it's not like I missed it all that much, I had three brothers to play with and beaches to go to. By the time we left Hawaii I was getting too old for dolls,but I have always thought that was the sweetest doll I ever had.

Lately I have noticed other bloggers around my age mentioning dolls they had when they were kids and that their moms saved them for years to unveil them when their own daughters were old enough to play with them. These other dolls reminded me strangely of my doll, though they were blonde or brunette and mine was a redhead. Imagine my surprise when I googled "My Friend Dolls" and laid my eyes on this:

That is my doll! Apparently she is a My Friend Becky doll made by Fisher Price in the early 80s. Yesterday I was looking on Ebay for them and Peanut was sitting next to me, exclaiming over how beautiful she was, which made me determined that I have to get her one for her next birthday. Since Peanut turns three in October I figure it gives me plenty of time to find one with all her parts and maybe even make some clothes for her (or beg the grandmas and great-grandma's to...). The Becky dolls were a tad rich for my blood at this time, but I did find a my friends pattern book to make some outfits from. If I remember correctly these dolls were smaller than the American Girl Dolls, so patterns for those dolls won't work for these.

And now I am shocked (and a tiny bit embarrassed) that I managed to devote a whole post to a toy I had as a kid.  So I am going to go now.

I'm an auntie again!Little Sydney Capri made her debut yesterday afternoon and I was honored to be at her birth. My brother and his wife wanted me there to take pictures (tasteful ones, not scary ones) of the momentous occasion. I've done it twice, but watching someone else give birth made me reali e what hard work it is. Crazy hard. But Kate was great and my brother did his part well. He said he only dropped her foot once when he was particularly excited. I pointed out that he had one job. One. Keep your wife comfortable during the most uncomfortable moment in her life. Sheesh.

We are firm believers in b&w pics for those first few moments. I think the b&w shows the sweet baby skin better and if it were in color you'd see more um...yuck...if you know what I mean. So b&w is how we roll.

I gotta say that I was a little freaked out to be the one chosen to take pictures because I am an ok shot, but by no means a good photographer. And no one else, not even the mothers, were allowed in the room, so there couldn't be any back up shots if I messed it up. I think I did ok. I am going back tonight to show them the pics from last night and take some more of mommy and baby all cleaned up and (somewhat) rested.

I'm sure the new parent glow will cause them to love all the shots - good, bad and ugly.