Tot school for Natalie.

Most of you that know me will know that I am a starter and not a finisher. My husband makes fun of me all the time because I will start a project, get bored or hit a snag and I am over it. It isn't the best quality to have, especially on a tight budget and very limited space. Nevertheless, he supports any and all things that I have taken on. :)

My new adventure WILL be different!! I plan to follow this one all the way thru to the end!

My beautiful one year old (yes ONE) and I started "Tot school" today! There are many many places to get ideas for tot school. One of my new favorites is 1+1+1=1. She has ALL kinds of tot trays.
Since N is quite a bit younger than her tots, I have to search around for things I believe she can handle.

I also decided that we will only do tot school three days a week for now. After I saw how long short N's attention span was, three days will be enough! I was thinking it would be a 30 minute venture, but it only took us about 15? Maybe. I am not complaining. When she was involved she seemed to be having a GREAT time! That is all that matters right now!

Today marks the first day::

Of course N can't understand what my board says, but I like it. :) For the flower painting, I just taped a sheet of paper down (Dollar Tree paper pad) drew a flower on it and let her go.

She seemed to catch on pretty quickly, and actually was putting sponge to paper. (The sponge is a Dollar Tree handled sponge- which means no pieces in the mouth, and a neat handle for little hands to grasp)

LOOK how grown up she looks!? SO BIG!!!

Then we had to explore the sponge. I don't think she understood how the paint went from that to the paper. :)

She also had to explore the plate that the paint was on, she would stick her fingers in and then try to get the paint off. I am surprised none of the paint went into her mouth!!!

Here is the final project. I have decided I am a very bad flower draw-er. :/ Oh well. It's still cute.



For the pom pom transfer I just took some pom poms and put them in a plastic bowl, along side another bowl. The idea was that she would transfer the poms from one bowl to the other and back again.

She started doing what I had planned.

Seemed to quite enjoy the idea...

Then thought it would be fun to pour them all over the floor. :)
She figured out that the tray made noises and was kind of done with the poms.
So after taking the tray away and dealing with a little fit- she went back at it.

She didn't think it was very fun to help me clean up though, and after I would put a few in the bowl she took the bowl and poured them out. We had a great time though, I can't wait until tomorrow! :)

Busy busy bees

Boy oh boy have we been busy!! I know I left off with us planning on having another baby- well, I decided after a long month of thinking- that I just wasn't ready for number two just yet. Not saying that if it does happen I would be terribly upset, but I just don't want to "try" right now.

THEN we decided out of the blue that we wanted to sell our house and move! So we have been busy busy trying to figure out what we need to do to get that done. We looked at a few houses and found one that we both completely fell in love with! So that being said:: we were ready to get it done! We went in with guns blazing! This past week I have been cleaning my bottom off, getting each and every room clutter free and have gotten rid of things we do not need anymore. Then we sat down with our realtor to only find out that we have A LOT of work ahead of us- and that we will lose at LEAST $2400 to just sell our house! Well, we were okay with it- at first. Headed to Home Depot and got a ton of supplies to start updating our house. After going full force with that, I got to thinking... We can't afford this. Truly truly, we can't. We were going to make it work. But there is no need to diminish our savings to just get out of here. Also, who would watch Natalie grow up!?

Already from the de-cluttering and cleaning I've done the last week, I felt like I was ignoring Nat, and this is just not acceptable! So, we aren't moving. At least not for the next year. We will take our time and do some updates to the house, then this time next year, we will visit the idea again. Unless something happens, of course.

To start our updating, we have already done quite a bit! We have purchased the door frame that needs to be replaced, our old dog chewed it to pieces. I have started painting some of our light fixtures that were brass, to a satin nickel to tie thru the house. We have gotten 2 inch blinds on the other front windows of the house (Natalie's room was the only one with them) We have gotten the new light fixtures for our bathroom, ours weren't bad, but it was one of the things our realtor suggested we change. Although, we still kept our "ball" lights. :P We have also gotten this window film put on our back door. I LOVE the natural light that our house has, but the blinds on the door, made it difficult to maneuver. We picked up a cracked glass looking film and put on the window, so now we don't need the blinds. We have also... I know I know, we have done a lot in just a weekend, I told you we went in with guns blazing! We've painted the hallway, and gotten the baseboards primed and ready to be fixed. That is for another day! :)

Anyway, we have have had a busy busy last month, and I am ready to sit down and relax... but someone is turning ONE soon and I have to get busy for that!! :)

At 11 months old Natalie is amazing! Even more personality then we ever thought she could have at this age! She can point to a nose, not on herself yet, but anyone else and her bear. She can clap now, she can high five, and say thank you when handed something! She has been sleeping in her own room the last few weeks, and it's been amazing! We are also trying to get her off bottles, and she has only had one bottle in the last week! I've been mixing some of her formula with whole milk to get ready for the switch, and I cannot wait until that happens!!

I better go get her down for a nap, until next time.

Scrapbook no more.

This last week has been a whirl wind of things just happening! Not all have been necessarily bad, but most have.

I started working on my scrapbook page for last week, well my card, I was making a card for Lee. :) The challenge that I have been following is a Cricut challenge, so we are challenged to use our Cricut for at least one cut. Well, as mentioned last week- we were having problems with my cord. This week nothing will work. I am going to have to call the company later to see what we can have done. In other words, I am not going to be getting my challenge completed this week. :/ Or a few weeks, depending on what can be done.

A new Cricut is coming out and will be available on HSN this Wednesday. Lee and I had talked about ordering it, but now since other recent events have happened, we will not be able to afford it right now.

Which leads me to the next thing that has happened::: I lost on of my littles, one that I've been watching for about 8 months. I was there for her first steps, and words, and helped her eat with a spoon and fork. Out of the blue, some things happened and now I am no longer able to watch her. (Nothing I did, just things happened, ok?) So that is pretty upsetting. I had Valentine plans with my little ones!

This then leads me to our next good thing that has come out of this:: Which I am not at liberty to talk about, BUT... it will be good! Our family has decided something that will probably help us all around. We would be happier and quite possibly save some money! Will announce as things are happening, trying to keep it on the DL. :)

AND to keep the flow going- I started making a quilt! My very first one! It is going to be so pretty! I have decided though, that the sewing together of the layers, is the most time consuming thing ever! I spent an hour just sewing my lines last night, and only finished two rows! I am sure there is some more quilting "lingo" that I should know for all of this, but I don't really care! I should be finished with the quilt in the next day or so, and will be sure to post pictures!

LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST::: Natalie LET go! My beautiful 10 month old, who is currently fighting off a cold and double ear infections, let go of one of her toys this past Saturday and moved to another. She stood on her own, no leaning on anything, or holding on to anything, and stood there for a few seconds! I am SO proud of our daughter- I look at her everyday and ask how we became so lucky!!


Until next time.

Scrapbook #4

This challenge almost didn't get completed because my Cricut machine decided it was going to be really mean to me and not connect to my computer. Thankfully I have a very good friend that has a cricut and let me borrow her USB cord to see if this was the problem. And alas, it was! I was so excited that I was able to borrow it and finish my challenge this week!

The challenge was to use three different patterns of paper. I used 5. :P I'm an over achiever - yeah I know. This is by far one of my most favorite pictures of Lee and Natalie. She is really his whole world and she knows it. 

I used the Cricut Craft Room Basics cartridge to make the hearts that I layered behind the picture. Then I used Lyrical Letters to cut "his whole world." 

I had the embellishments in my stash and I think it really brings out all of the colors. 

I am uploading this challenge into the FCCB challenge this week. :) enjoy! 

10 months old!

Natalie- my beautiful baby girl is 10 months old today!

All the fun things my girl can do at 10 months old::

Words she can say:

• Hey
• Bye
• Momma
• Dada
• DeeDee
• Nana
• Papo
• uhhuh
• Love you
• Bella
• mmmm (When she eats) 

She can also:

• Climb onto things
• Climb off of things
• hold her own bottle
• hold her sippy cup
• "Share" things. ( Will hand things to us when we put our hands out for her to share.)
• Turn the cable off on the tv
• Turn the volume up on the tv
• "Throw" things away
• Crawl 
• Walk along the sides of furniture
• Walk when holding on to her walker toy
• Feed herself (when given food on her spoon)
•  Stand up for a few seconds by herself

I am a very proud momma. I couldn't imagine life without this beautiful creature God made for me.

Right now my baby girl is sitting in her Aunt DeeDee's lap, feeling awful. :/ Waiting to hear from the doctor if I'll be able to get her in today.

Until next time.

Tuna Cakes

    While watching The Food Network I saw a tuna spread that looked really good. It's lunch time here so I decided to make me and the littles something with tuna. I looked up a few recipes for tuna cakes and couldn't find one that I had all of the ingredients for, so I decided to make my own! Do they not look delicious?!

    I was actually pleasantly surprised as how good they turned out! I am one to always follow recipes and only tweak just a little bit, I have never ventured away and made my own recipe!

Ingredients:

• One 5oz can of tuna. (I used what I had- packed in water)
• One egg
• One slice of bread, roughly chopped
• Pinch of garlic salt
• Pinch of dried cilantro
• Pinch of onion powder
• Few squirts lemon juice
• Forkful of Sun dried tomatoes (mine were packed in oil) roughly chopped
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
    Mix all together in a bowl. Warm up a tsp oil in a pan. Pack into two nice sized patties, and brown on each side. I did about 5 minutes on each side.

   I split one between the babies and ate one myself, I could have eaten both they were so good! I just happened to have the sun dried tomatoes in my fridge, and I had big chunks in my patty and it was amazing. I am sure you could leave them out if needed.
    The cakes stayed together amazingly, and were delicious!  Both babies ate all of theirs, so I am guessing I get thumbs up from them too! Try them out and let me know what you all think!!!

*Please give credit where credit is due, if shared.*

My first wall art.

    Today we were stuck in the house because of the Winter Storm. I decided to make some wall art. Here is what we did! My first Cricut wall art that I made! :))) I think it turned out great! Granted I had some problems with my machine at first, in the end it all worked out!
    I also know that my husband isn't a certified cricut machine worker- but he took my machine apart and fixed my machine!! I love him so much! Although if he had broken it more than it already was, I would have been able to get a new machine! ;)


    Does everyone just LOVE my wall art?!?!