Baby Eviction Notice

I saw this and laughed hysterically.  Give me another two weeks… and I will definitely be issuing this notice.  37 weeks this weekend :)

BABY EVICTION NOTICE
I, the Landlord (Mommy), am issuing a notice for EVICTION. Tenant (Baby) will have to comply and promptly vacate the premises, or wait until authorization for removal by physician. After which, she will be removed from the property by induction.
The Tenant (Baby) is being evicted due to breach of contract and destruction of property. Expansions only to the FRONT of the house, within reasonable limits, were discussed. Not only have these limits been exceeded, but additions to the back and sides of the house were also made without approval from the Landlord (Mommy).
Remodeling and gutting of the home was never approved, nor was changing the initial layout and base structure. Due to the damage by the Tenant (Baby), the foundation has been compromised, and the structural integrity of the house is questionable. The Landlord (Mommy) has also received numerous complaints about frequent nightly disturbances.
If the Tenant (Baby) doesn’t comply with the notice it will result in an immediate and forceful removal at the discretion of a physician and the Landlord (Mommy)

Baby cloths organization

So here I am 35 weeks pregnant.

I have been busy getting everything ready for this little one… and feeling like time is running out… probably because it is. One of the things I feel like has been my major accomplishment lately has been washing and organizing the bazillions of baby cloths we have been given. What can I say, everyone loves buying baby girl cloths, because they are just so darn cute! Which means we had a lot to wash and organize.

I hung all of the outfits and coats in the closet, separated the same way they do in stores with the size dividers. Then all of the onesies and pants either went into her dresser if they were newborn or 0-3 months, or went into labeled tubs if they were older. I decided I wanted to buy tubs because they would be easy to get to and look through without hassle. When I also randomly accumulated more cloths, I could easily add them to the appropriate tub. I know that I will need everything to be easy and fast after this little one arrives… so that was my goal.

I have another shower in a few days (which means more cloths), so we will probably see soon how my theory is in practice.

Valentines Breakfast

I decided to make a Valentine’s breakfast.. and since I am a nerd, I made a bunch of heart shaped things.  First I took a cookie cutter and cut out a heart form the middle of the bread.  I put it on the skillet and cracked an egg into it.  I turned the cut out center of the bread into French toast.  I also made a fruit salad and cut the bananas into hearts. 

It was tasty… and cute too :)  I probably should have planned better because I only left myself 5 minutes to gobble breakfast down with my honey, and then 5 minutes to get dressed for work.  If I had left myself enough time, I would have taken pictures of how I cut the bananas… but oh well. 

Butterfly Canvas

I saw on a butterfly canvas on a blog (of course I don’t remember what one) and decided a while ago that I wanted to make one to go in Em’s room.

I measured my canvas (20x16) and decided that I would do 10 rows of 8.  That meant 80 little butterflies to punch out.  My mom bought me a butterfly punch, which really made it go quick.  I used a ruler and a pencil to put little marks on the canvas where each butterfly would go.  I decided to leave one inch of space around the border and put the butterflies two inches apart both left and right and top and bottom.

  Then I laid them all out so I could make sure the colors were distributed evenly.  I went with very colorful because the idea of a one color pallet room just doesn’t fit my personality.  I knew I wanted to make a few art pieces that would make it so I could bring in something of any color and it would still “go” in the room.  Of course if you could do all pink or purple if that’s your style for a girls room.

    

After that, I folded the wings of each butterfly up so that the end product would be 3D.  Then the only thing left was gluing.  I used my new oh so cute glue gun that I got for Christmas and put a strip of hot glue down the middle of the butterfly and put it right on its little dot.  One thing that I found was that too much glue, and it would squish out… too little glue, and they would later pop off.

I held it up against the wall, and man I like how it turned out. Now I just need to convince Lan to hang it :)

Emmalynn’s Tree

Today my mom and dad came over to help Lan paint Em’s room. I busied myself putting away Christmas decorations since I knew I should be around all of the fumes. I suppose having other people paint your house and not having to help is a perk to being pregnant :) It is amazing how much a simple coat of paint can do for a room. It looked so much brighter and happier with it’s light blue walls.

I have played around with a lot of different ideas for how to decorate her room, and one reoccurring theme was kind of nature themed, but girly. So I decided that I wanted to paint a white tree where her crib was going to go. I knew that I didn’t want to hang anything over her crib (living in earth quake country taught me that), but I wanted something cute. I found an idea on pinterest, and Lan helped me execute my plan.

A normal person could use a regular overhead and a transparency… but not us. Lan had conveniently hacked a overhead projector and a computer recently to make an digital projector. What is on top of the overhead is actually the screen from a computer. We hooked his laptop up to the whole contraption so that it could project whatever we wanted.

After we got the size and spot that we wanted, I began to trace the outline of the tree with a pencil. I traced just inside the tree so that when I painted, I would cover the pencil marks.

Then I got painting. I started at the top and worked my way down so that I wouldn’t smear.

It only took about one cup of paint and about two hours to paint the whole tree. I love how it turned out. I can’t wait for the trim to get painted (our last painting step) so we can move everything in and get it all set up.

Christmas Gifts in Mass

While thinking of the gifts I wanted my kids to make for their parents, I started searching for ideas online.  I wanted something cheap, easy, and I needed it fast.  I have been a tad last minute lately.  Didn’t want to waste my time on something that was cheesy, but something that they would pull out every year.  I decided to have the kids make their parents Christmas coasters.

I have 17 kids and I decided to have each kid make 3.  It was affordable and they turned out super cute. 

Materials:

tiles (I picked mine up at Home Depot)

modge podge or Elmer's all purpose if you are cheap like me

acrylic spray

paper (either photos, pretty paper, or paper to draw on)

I first cut out paper, slightly smaller than my tile and had the kids draw pictures on them.  If you are doing this from one adult to another, you would just cut out your pictures or pretty paper to the correct size.  Then you paint your glue on the blank tile.

Place the picture in the center of your tile, and coat again with glue.  Do a fairly thick layer and be sure that you get the edges really well.  You can see from the picture below how white it will look.  It dries clear, so don’t worry.

Just let them dry, then spray with clear acrylic spray to seal them and make them waterproof.

They really looked impressive, and if I hadn’t already started making other presents for friends, I would have made adult versions of these for them. 

Bam!  Impressive keepsakes. 

Some Christmas Cheer

It is hard to believe that we have owned our home for a year now.  We got our keys last December 10.  Of course, I still decorated for Christmas last year… but this year feels like the first real Christmas in our house.  Unfortunately…. I still don’t have the energy to do a ton… but this time for a completely different reason.  One thing I did do, was string some ribbon across the shutters that divide our living room and den, and then hang ornaments from it.  It really helped festive up our house. 

We had wanted to put lights up on the outside of our house this year, but time got away from us, so we went the cheater way and scotch taped some lights to our front window :)

The tree is finally decorated, the nativity set is on the table, random decorations are littered though the house, and it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas… which is good considering it is only a week away.

 

I’m currently listening to music in front of the fire, looking at my tree, and happily digesting the cold pizza I just ate.  Ok, that last thing has nothing to do with Christmas, and everything to do with being pregnant :)  I can ‘t believe this is my last Christmas without kids!  Crazy!