January Phone Favorites

Oh January! Usually I feel like you just draaaaaaagggg on but this year it flew by. Life was super busy and it was fantastic! Here is a round up of our Phone Favs!

We love living so close to an IKEA. Some days we go just to run through the store and get some ice cream. On this particular trip I was after a few things but after a lot of walking Manny decided his legs were a bit tired. 

Totally worth the walk ;)

We tried a new braid in E's hair. It took both Mama and Daddy to get it done but it turned out pretty cute!

I've been going to the gym in the morning and walking about a mile and a half. Hoping it will help my pelvic pain. 

WE are planning on painting our living room from brown to grey. It feels so surreal picking out paint colors! So grown up! And SOOO much pressure!

Second Trimester bump at 28 weeks! 

Manfred with little plastic stickers on his face. He was pretty proud! Well that wraps up January and our February is looking a bit crazy too!!!! Let the good times ROLL!

Park Day

 The weather in KC finally broke above 40F so we decided to head out to the park for some fresh air! Even thought it was warmer the wind was still pretty nippy. 

 WE have discovered a new to us park that we love! It comes with a track to walk around, merry go round, seesaw, sand pit and some other fun playground equipment. The kids get pretty excited when we come here because it is a bit of a drive. 

We had a fun afternoon out. Looking forward to a few warmer days.

Baby Projects

This month was labeled as my finish up projects month. I have a bin full of half way finished projects, and I really wanted to tie up the loose ends. The best part about this was that meant I got to make a few gifts! 

My SIL Rachel is expecting their first baby, which is a girl! So over the moon excited for them. So I whipped up a diaper clutch. It was already cut out and I just had to stitch it together! AWESOME! 

I use my clutch all the time, so for me this was a must have gift. 

A few months ago I made my friend Hattie a baby blanket for her new little boy. I had quite a bit of scrap fabric left over and decided the make some some quilts with what I had. I LOVE being able to reuse fabric. I had enough fabric to make three blankets (SCORE!). I love how these two turned out! 

Then I decided to put all of my flannel to use. I have SO MUCH OF IT! Honestly it is ridiculous. I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking as I was purchasing the fabric but it had to be used. So I made a few car seat blankets. I saw this idea on Pinterest and thought what a BRILLIANT idea! So 10 car seat blankets later and then another 6 receiving blankets, I used up approximately 3/4 of my stash. It felt so nice to get projects wrapped up but I don't think I'll be making another quilt for quite a while. 

It was great to wrap up a few loose ends, too bad this is only the tip of the iceberg.  So much to do, so little time!

My Little Chef's

 Making cookies with children is one of those romantic ideas you get in your head in your head. You have high expectations and then once you are 1/4 of the way through you are wondering why you ever thought that this would be a good idea in the first place. 

I was feeling extremely patient one Friday morning when the kiddos didn't have school and we didn't have any play dates set up so we decided to embark on a cookie making adventure! Duke was really into it, counting the scoops and trying his hardest not to stick his fingers in the dough.

 E is such a wonderful helper. I am really enjoying this age where she can follow instructions. She measured out all of the flour, leveling the measuring cup off with a knife and counted out the correct number of scoops. 

 I swear we must have washed our hands 200 times!

 Another reason why I love having two step stools!!

It was actually super fun! The kids were great helpers and excellent listeners! I sure do love these mini chef's. What a lucky Mama I am!

Duke's Tea Party

 Duke has always been this strong silent type of kid who loves to play with you but just isn't exactly sure how to do it. He loves to do what you are doing but initiating play is where he struggles. Because of his apraxia and speech delay a lot of the "pretend play" got delayed a bit. He is working on playing and cause and effect things at school and when he ivited me to have "unch" (lunch) with him I was so excited! 

 He started by using the oven mitt to get the pizza out. 

Then he set up the tea set, matching the plates and naming the purple and yellow after Mama's example but did "pink" all on his own. 

He then sat down and poured the tea and shared the pizza! Then he put the pizza back and got out some other foods and we worked on saying those names. He was very interested and had no problem repeating after me with approximations after my example.

Then when he was done he decided to clean up and wash the dishes. And while I know that most of you are reading this and saying, really lady? My kid has been doing that since they were one. I know. But this was huge for Duke and it was such a wonderful reminder to me that I  really need to have more one on one time with my little man!! I am so proud of him and how far he has come in such a short period of time!

The Great Ice Strom of 2017

Here in KC we get ice storms. Our family hasn't experienced one here before but we had gone through one in Nashville and it shut the entire city down for three days. The news said we should expect 3 cm of ice or more and that we should be prepared to have the power go out. Jakob having gone through a power outage with the kids two years ago decided we should be prepared with flash lights and food. So we stalked up and waited. 

Church we preemptively cancelled, so we just hunkered down for the day. At about noon we decided to head outside to see the damage. 

 We were seriously disappointed. And while we were grateful to keep the power on, this really wasn't a big deal! The back deck was the slickest place and our drive way was completely melted.

 E was hoping to have big icicles to play with. 

 They were pretty lame. And while we would advise driving out on the roads, we most likely could have still gone to church. 

And so there you have the great ice storm of 2017! Nice try KC, but Nashville's kick your butt!

In this Kitchen

 Once again I had a wall in my kitchen that needed something! It was a striped wall and I really didn't want anything too busy, but leaving it without anything looked funny too. So I headed over to Pinterest and found this sign, for the tune of $120. I loved the saying, but I was not paying more than $15 for anything!

I headed over to Hobby Lobby and got my canvas with a coupon for $12. After 2 hours of hand-writing, erasing, hand-writing and erasing I figured it was good enough and I hand painted it on. It is not perfect but shabby chic is a thing right? It fills up the space perfectly and the more I look at the more I like it.

DIY Mirror Frame

While I was in Houston I was talking with my SIL and I was trying to decide what to put in my living room over my couch. The room is already pretty busy with a boot cubby, built in book shelves and a photo collage wall, so I wanted something big but simple. She suggested a mirror and I was sold.  I started looking online to find something I liked and everything ranged from $100 - $300. Seriously?! I knew I could do it for cheaper. 

This was one of those projects that was super simple... but everything went wrong. I found the mirror online for $20. It was a bit more than I wanted to spend but it was a good size at 30"x 40". I then went to Home Depot to figure out exactly how I wanted to frame it. I was pretty decided on trim until I realized that it would be about $50 to get enough trim to frame the mirror and by that time I may as well have bought the mirror at IKEA for $100. So I bought two 1x4's for $5, grabbed some mirror hooks and came home. I wanted it to look farm house-ish so I opted for straight edges instead of framing the corners at 45 degree angles. 

 I originally had my heart set on distressing the wood so I started with a layer of stain. 

 Then I lightly painted on a layer of white very unevenly.

 Once that was dry, I went to town with the sander. 

Using the Kreg Drill I drilled some pocket holes and this is where things started going crazy. I tested out a 2 1/2" screw in a test board and it went in beautifully. Went to screw my frame together, first screw poked right through the front! Thankfully it wasn't too bad and I could fix it with a clamp and some wood glue. I then used 1 1/4" screws to attach the frame together which worked wonderfully! 

 

 I placed the mirror face down onto the frame and ran into my second problem. The screws were too long and would poke out the front. I could have used a hack saw to shorten them but instead we just bought shorter screws. 

 I then realized that my mirror was TOO THICK for my mirror hooks. SERIOUSLY?! I just couldn't catch a break. So back to Home Depot Jakob went this time so I didn't look like a baboon. 

 I drilled pilot holes into the frame and screwed the new mirror hooks with the short screws to the frame attaching the mirror. 

 That evening Jakob and I went to hang up the finished product. We realized that this mirror was ridiculously  heavy and unless we found a stud (or 6) to hang it into it would fall. Plus if anyone one have bumped it we may also run the risk of it falling down. SO we took the mirror off the frame and attached it directly to the wall. Then we hung the frame over the mirror. It was time consuming but it is much sturdier!

 I took a step back to admire my work.... and I hated it. It just looked home made and that bothered me like no other. The white looked more grey and it just wasn't what I was looking for. So I took the frame off the wall, since the mirror and the frame were conveniently separate. I sanded off all of the white paint. Added a bit more stain. Sanded it again and......

 So much better!!

 I love the distressed look. Dark Walnut is my favorite stain ever! 

It really finishes off the space and while it isn't perfect... I love it. Thank you so much for the suggestion Janet! I'm glad to have this project checked off of my list!