having sew much fun!

This is my day late Crafty Thursday post!! I barely sat down at the computer yesterday and honestly didn't even know what day it was!

I tried to put a little but more thought into some of my Christmas gifts this year. I really am enjoying learning to sew and craft, so I thought I would put my "skills" to work and make a few things for my kiddos and my nieces.

The one I was most excited about was this crayon apron for my niece Halle. I followed a tutorial by Samantha from Bobaloo!, found on Prudent Baby, which are both awesome blogs to follow btw! Halle was getting artsy things for Christmas from "Santa" so I thought it would go along with it perfectly. It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought and I really liked the way it turned out!

Isn't it cute?! I had my eye on this fabric for a while and thought it was perfect for this. And I have to say I was happy when she put it on Christmas day and started coloring. (although she could very well never touch it again once it got home!)

I also made a SUPER cute crayon roll for my niece Kerrigan, but, it is the case of the missing Christmas present. It is NOWHERE to be found. I seriously think it may have gotton thrown away. :( So I owe her one in the near future. And unfortunately I didn't even take a picture of it.
I also made some things for my kiddos but need to take some pics of them! So, stay tuned!

Crafty Thursday

"...while visions of sugarplums danced in their heads..."

Well, I have failed in keeping up with my Crafty Thursday posts but I'm back and ready to roll! I will make up for my lack of posts with several things I have been working on. I have been super busy with so many projects but haven't actually completed too many. This week it's down to business, I am running out of days before Christmas.

Today was Noah's Christmas party at his playschool. I was signed up to bring goodie bags and had absolutely no idea what to put in a goodie bag for 2-3 year olds. So thanks to the blogging queen Eva, she sent me this great idea, from eighteen25. Super cute marshmallow sugarplums! I actually very much dislike marshmallows, unless they are melted on something, but I figured, what kid wouldn't like this?? Oh my I think they turned out so cute!!!!!!!

 So here's what I did...

Poke plastic lollie pop sticks into the large marshmallows

 Melt chocolate (I used Wilton white chocolate), and dye your desired color. I first tried to do purple, since apparently sugarplums are purple ( I googled this), but it was a fail... 

  so I tried again and just went with a light blue.

now dip the marshmallows into the chocolate...

 then directly into the sprinkles

 stick them into something sturdy to dry , I used styrofoam cups.

 then bag them up, add a cute ribbon and attach the tag provided by eighteen25! (found here) It says "may visions of sugarplums dance in your head." On the back it says from: and I signed Noah's name.

 cute and simple!

I bagged these into a larger gift bag with a candy cane and a few pieces of chocolate. I was very pleased with the end result. I had a few extra so I wrapped them up with a Christmas card and some candy for his teachers as well. They are just too sweet and Noah adores them.

 Also, this week we decided to whip up some Christmas cookies and let Noah decorate. Fair warning to moms with two year olds, while they will thoroughly enjoy this, it will be ridiculously messy!! We had such a blast doing this with Noah though.

And LASTLY, I made this Christmas shirt for Noah last week, this is the best I could get of him modeling it! Ignore the food on the face and the jacket falling off of his shoulders!

He calls it his "sock" shirt. He insisted on looking down at it the almost the entire time I tried taking a picture of him in it!

fabric!

I am loving these fabrics right now! I have to concentrate majorly when I got to Paula's top pick out material. It's so hard deciding! These are just a few that I can see cute things come from!

baby it's COLD outside!!!

Wow! I can't believe Christmas is only 12 days away! We have been very busy, but this week slows down a bit for us. I have SO many handmade Christmas gifts I am working on. A few for Noah and my nieces that I am so excited to show once I finish! 

Today I decided it's way too cold to go anywhere, and I don't feel like cleaning my house at all. So we were staying in our PJ's and doing fun things indoors. We started off the morning playing cars, Noah's absolute favorite thing to do. He is obsessed with matchbox cars, trucks, airplanes and any "vehicle" basically! You should ask him sometime to say bulldozer, it it the cutest word he says! I then decided I wanted to do a craft of some sort with him, but didn't have any great supplies to do anything extravagant. I really want to make this snowman with him this week that my friend Jennifer did with her son, but amazingly, I have no beads or buttons to decorate him with. So it's on the list to get tmrw! So instead I decided to do a make-shift, last minute thing with him.

I drew a Christmas tree for him on green paper, (btw I just realized I am a horrible drawer!).

 I let him color on it for a minutes. Then I just cut out a few circles on my Cricut for ornaments, and a star for the tree, and let him glue them on wherever he wanted.

He decided the star did not need to go on top of the tree, but an ornament did! I also let him smear on some sparkle paint hoping it would look like snow, but you can't really see it too well. We had fun doing this together! He loved that I let him do everything himself, he kept saying, "I did it!".

This is his cheesy, silly smile. That's what I get when I ask him to smile for the camera.

He is now curled up on the couch, winding down watching Santa Paws, (cute Christmas movie btw) and hopefully will take a nice long nap so I can actually clean up my house!

And here is the little lady, being a perfect angel!

Do you have any fun Christmas projects you are working on with your kiddos??

CRAZY!

Can't believe I forgot to share this story in my previous Disney post! Our first morning in Disney, we were almost ready to walk out of our hotel, when I heard Noah coughing. He was congested, but I went over to him to make sure he was ok and his face was super red and he was gasping for air. I screamed to Adam that he was choking, and he quickly picked him up and started beating on his back and checking his mouth. He started crying very quickly, then threw up, which was a good sign because I knew he could at least breath. I asked him if he put something in his mouth and he responded with "I eat penny". And sure enough his little hand had several coins in it. So after calling the pediatrician, and them assuring me he was ok and that the penny would more than likely pass on it's own in 48 hours, I calmed down enough to enjoy the day! Two days later, we had a penny! I could not believe it had happened, and am so thankful for his protection, that he actually swallowed it and it didn't get lodged in his throat. I thought we were well passed the stage of putting things in the mouth, but now I am being super careful with small things around the house again. We made an effort to tell him that he could not eat pennies that they would give him a very bad boo-boo. I think it scared it pretty badly so hopefully he has learned and we will never have a repeat of this!
Here are some humorous pictures of Noah in Disney. So thankful for this boy. He is hilarious to me, and I love his silly personality.

I asked him to smile for me, this is his fake smile.

 then he gave me this face....



 then this! Funny thing is, as soon as I would put the camera down he would start smiling. He thought it was hilarious that he was making faces for the camera.

busy, busy bees

We have had a busy, busy past few weeks. The days leading up to Thanksgiving were crazy, we had so much going on. We had a great Thanksgiving with family, and had the suprise birth of Norah Katherine, the newest Peterson! She is so precious! We spent Thanksgiving day, half at Adam's parents house, half with my family, then the day after with the other side of my family! It was a fun 2 days. I'm very big on, the day after thanksgiving going to get our tree immediately! We did a little bit of shopping that day and took Noah to Target to pick out his annual ornament. We started this tradition when Adam and I got married and then passed the job onto Noah when he was born. (I picked out the first year though!) This year it was no suprise at all that he picked out a truck. He is obsessed with playing with cars and trucks. We also let him pick out one for Naomi, and he picked a sort of random pine cone looking one. It's sparkly and does match the tree though.

 my handsome boy on thanksgiving

 no hands!

 checking out the ornaments in Target

 "I lika dis one"

 getting our tree

putting his ornament on the tree

This past week we headed to Disney for our vacation! We asked for season passes for Christmas, and got them a little early so we could see Disney decorated for Christmas. We ahd so much fun! It was a little chaotic with 2 children, but both kiddos were good and I think Noah had a great time getting to meet all his favorite characters.

 this little girl was an angel the whole trip!

brrr...it was so cold!!

Looking forward to this busy December month! Working on some fun handmade Christmas gifts this week for Noah and my nieces, a surprise for my MIL, and hopefully making one more batch of pumpkin bread to eat all by myself.

thankful...

Lately I have been really thinking of all the wonderful things in my life. Although, spending just as much time complaining. About finances, the stress of two children, keeping a clean house, etc. Normal "mom" things. God has really been reminding me of how much I have, and how my stresses are nothing in comparison to so many. I have been reminded of how so many people are truly suffering right now. I can specifically think of a widow who will be "celebrating", as best she can, this Thanksgiving and Christmas, without her husband and the father of her children. Thinking of those precious boys that will be experiencing the void of their father. I can't imagine the heartache, and I honestly don't even want to think about it. It makes me sick to my stomach. Yet, it is so real for them and real for so many others.

I am extremely grateful that I have those stressful days of raising two children, of cleaning up after a messy husband. I'm sure many would give anything for that.

My challenge for myself is to live with a grateful heart. Praise God for what he has given me, and know that my husband and my children don't belong to me. I will cherish every day I get with them and prayerfully raise my children to bring glory to Him.

I am thankful for my family of four, my husband and my sweet babies.

I am thankful for the rest of my wonderful family. ALL of them! (there are SO many!) Thankful for new life in the Peterson family, in the birth of beautiful Norah!

I am thankful for awesome friends! New and old. I am thankful I can raise my children alongside of some great moms. Thankful for this new generation of children that my own get to grow up with. 

I am thankful for a church who loves God.  Thankful I get to watch this youth group grow spiritually and numerically.

I am thankful that I serve a God who loves me and chose me. I am thankful that He works all things together for my good. Thankful that He loves my children, even more than I do.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving day with your families and friends. 

 

Crafty Thursday

I have decided to start a new series called "Crafty Thursday". Every thursday I will show a new craft, sewing project, house project or even a new recipe. This will keep me on my toes to keep trying new projects I have saved to do. Sometimes I don't want to try something new because I know it's going to be hard and I probably will make lots of mistakes! But I'll give it a shot. I think it will be fun!

I bought my sewing/embroidery machine when Noah was a few months old. It was my Christmas/birthday/anniversary/Easter/Kwanzaa...you get the idea-all in one gift! My husband bought it for me thinking it would save him money on me paying for things and in the hopes that I would be good at it and sell things on Etsy to make money to pay for the machine. Unfortunately, it didn't pan out so well. I was not good at anything to do with the machine and gave up before I threw the machine across the room.

But lately I have been determined to learn how to sew, embroider and applique. Thanks to my friends who have been learning as well, I have learned a lot and am finally feeling successful at some things. So if you ever see anything you like on my posts, please feel free to place an order. :o) My husband will thank you if I ever pay off the machine. I will also share the instructions the best I can, so you can try it yourself if you like!

So my first post is a pumpkin applique shirt I made for Naomi. I am NOT good at applique-ing (I have no idea how else to spell that!). So bad that I have given up for about a year and am just now and attempting it again. (Also, I am terrible at hairbow making, but we'll get to that in another post!)


Naomi's shirt was pure success! I loved it! It was so great I decided to make a matching one for Noah, only to fail miserably! I destroyed the shirt. So no matching pics of them!

Unfortunately I don't have pictures of my steps, I was concentrating too hard! But here is my gorgeous little lady in her shirt.

How cute are the matching ribbon socks?? SO easy to make!

I followed this tutorial and only messed up one pair of socks in the process!

The smaller ribbon was not the best size to work with. The ribbon does not stay laying down too well on the socks. The best size ribbon IMO is 1 1/2, or around that.

(I think the match to this one is in the dryer, I hope!)

Lastly, here is a baby shower gift I just recently made for a friend.

 set of 3 burpcloths

I am working today on another order for a similar gift!

Next week, I hope to be finished with some cute outfits for Naomi (with help from my grandma), and matching Mickey and Minnie shirts for my kiddos. Stay tuned

 (Eva-I still owe poor Hosea a Mickey shirt!)