She's A Pro

Big Weekend! And it actually involves OLE MISS!!!! :-)

Olivia is flower girl for the THIRD time in her short life! And this won't be the last either!! One of Robert's best friends is getting married and Olivia and Robert are both in the wedding. The best part is that the wedding is located at their alma mater!

We haven't been back to Ole Miss in 3.5 years so we are looking forward to taking Olivia and showing her where she was born! It'll just be the 3 of us so it will be so nice!! Not to mention seeing some old friends that we haven't seen in quite some time.

Can't you see it now...Head Cheerleader for the Rebels!

We had to take some pictures for some wedding info and here they are sporting their Ole Miss gear!!

I just hope I make it! It'll be a lot of walking and little down time for me. And I've been having lots of "busyness induced" braxton hicks lately. Especially if I don't get some time in the afternoon to put my feet up! I don't need this baby coming this early!!! The good news is the highs are in the low 80s for the weekend! YAY! Have I mentioned that this has been THE BEST summer to be pregnant!?!

Hope everyone has a great weekend! We're off bright and early in the morning!

Flirting

Aunt Lacey has been trying to teach Lillian to flirt. We're still working on it a bit.

Rolling our eyes around.




Batting our eyelashes.


Aren't I cute!?!

"Look Dad, Watch This"

Those words have the potential to be very scary. You never know what you're going to get when you here that phrase come out of your child's mouth. It could be really good or really bad. But that was the only warning we got before we witnessed this:


*He got right back up after that last crash...he was a-okay :-)


Ya'll, he just took off pedaling! Crazy! He's not even 4 1/2!!

Off and on while playing outside over the past couple of months, he would get on Olivia's 2-wheel barbie bike that she learned to ride on without training wheels. He would walk himself around on it without putting his feet on the pedals. We always offered to help him pedal and run behind him or ride in the grass like we taught Olivia. But he adamantly refused our help every time.

No biggie. We weren't going to push it! Besides, Olivia, Robert and I all learned to ride around 5 years old or so anyway. We had a least a year....so we thought.

I think this is how Landon will learn a lot of things in life. Cautiously and by teaching himself. Kinda like the whole swimming issue. I think one day, he'll dive in and swim across the pool like a pro! It also reminds me of when he caught this fish. He was all by himself casting away, doing it all on his own. And was rewarded greatly!

Yes, there are things in life we will have to make him do. But I think there will be a lot of things he teaches and figures out himself too. And I happen to think that's a pretty good quality to possess, if I do say so myself! :-)


Now...to get him off the barbie bike and onto his red Rock-it bike!!!

Oh, and a helmet is a MUST with him too.....he's slightly more accident prone than Olivia has been.

Thank You Home Depot

For keeping my kids entertained the.entire.weekend.

While bumming around Saturday, we made a stop at Home Depot. Well, outside the store there was an inflatable jumping gym, snow cones, and a little child's area that they could build a little tool box. The best part.....it was FREE!!! :-)

They let us take the tool box kit home to put together. They also gave them these cute aprons and a balloon. Well, right when they woke up from nap, they wanted to construct their tool boxes!!

We nailed and nailed until they were just right - Landon was a PRO! Then, since Robert already had the paint out while making some home repairs, we let them paint their freshly constructed tool boxes!!




It kept us outside in the beautiful weather all afternoon!!



Lillian just bummed around. She actually didn't care that she didn't have a tool box to paint.



While they dried, we broke out the popsicles.


And somewhere in all the fun, Lillian ended up like this. Just the way she likes things. Undressed, barefoot, toy in one hand, dessert in the other! She was happy.


When the toolboxes were completely dry, I let them paint them some MORE!! :-) Well, Olivia and I painted them. Notice the lack of creativeness on the box I painted... oh well, I tried...promise. It's just not in me.



They then proceeded to "repair" every piece of furniture in the house (apron's on!) throughout the rest of the weekend. Landon even sported his Bob the Builder hardhat most of the time.


I guess repair was in the air. We did all those little pesky house chores that you need to do when you own a house. Spray for bugs, clean carpets, patch holes, repair ceilings/roofs, restore toilets to normal functioning manner, etc. We just haven't had a free weekend like this in a few months! It was quite refreshing!

How was your weekend?

Comparison and Dreams

I find myself comparing these 4 different pregnancies often. And it's funny how each one gets more and more laid back. Here are some areas that differ a lot!

Nursery:

Olivia - It was set up by the time I was 6 months pregnant - completely!

Landon - We set things up a couple months in advance.

Lillian - We set up the crib 2 weeks before she was born and then made her sleep in a pack n play in the den.

#4 - Not even going to bother dragging the crib out of the closet!

Doctor's Visits:

Olivia - Had written questions for my doctor almost ever visit. Even went to the ER when I had round ligament pains. Can we say PARANOID!? And the visits couldn't come soon enough. Arrived early and didn't want to leave.

Landon - Looked forward to the visits. Probably still had some questions. Had a few complications (kidney stones) with pregnancy and therefore was in touch with the Dr/Nurses a lot.

Lillian - Didn't go to the DR until 2nd trimester. Tried to skip an appointment but got called out by the Dr.!! :-) Dreaded going to the Doc because I usually had a 2 or 4 year old with me.

#4 - Can I please just skip all the appointments and just start coming about 3 weeks before my due date???!?? Pretty please? I asked him to push my last appointment back a week and he obliged! Let's see if I can get him to do it again next time!! :-) Sometimes I just call back and move it myself - I know...bad pregnant lady...how dare I do that!! It is just such a PAIN and HASSLE to go to the Doctor with all that we have going on. Not to mention finding someone to watch up to THREE kids! Not easy!!

General

Olivia - Talked about her ALL the time! Daydreamed, planned, anticipated her EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. The pregnancy lasted FOREVER!

Landon - Was very excited, couldn't wait, seemed to last forever!

Lillian - Went pretty fast until the end. The last 2 weeks were killer.

#4 - The weeks fly by, though my guess is that the last few weeks, when the kids are in school, will go pretty slow. So we'll see.

Food/Exercise

Olivia - Ate everything in sight. Have never been on a treadmill at his point. I was a very, very "fluffy" pregnant woman. Didn't care to lose it either afterwards.

Landon - Ate everything in sight. Did NOT exercise. Though began walking after he was born and joined a gym for the first time when he turned 1.

Lillian - Was more conscious about the calories I consumed. Exercise regularly. And it came off quickly after delivery! Imagine that! lol I learned my lesson twice before.

#4 - Still trying eat well. :-) Not buying (and downing) a slice of Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake every Friday and Saturday night (like with Lillian - which is kind to the wallet). But not excluding ANYTHING from my diet! :-) Exercising often. But sometimes I pass off taking the (3) kids grocery shopping as exercise. Surely pushing that cart around is burning lots of calories!!! Not to mention carrying all the groceries upstairs from the garage!!! :-)

Cravings

Olivia - homemade ice cream (that I churned up in my kitchen) with peanut butter morsels. Ate this breakfast/lunch/dinner!

Landon - Steak (rib eye to be exact) and potatoes!

Lillian - grapefruits and Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake - at least twice a week.

#4 - can't quite pin down anything specific. Went through a mushroom/artichoke phase. And spinach salad phase. And a roasted butternut squash phase. But nothing that I'm eating every.single.day. I would definitely say salty foods. I recently decided to completely stopped salting my food because I believe it was making me feel bad!! :-( Though I want to SOOO bad!



This is just a few of the differences that come to mind. Maybe I can look back at these one day and laugh!


And speaking of baby #4, everyone keeps asking me what I feel that it is. I go back and forth. I thought Lillian was a girl until around 6 months and then thought boy. Then when she came out a girl, I felt really bad for thinking she was a boy!! So I'm trying not to get anything in my head. In fact, I alternate days thinking about how a girl or boy would fit into our family!!!

I have had 2 very vivid dreams about this baby. The first one I had the baby at the hospital, no drugs, with my cousin Abby helping me. The baby came pretty quickly and it was a girl!

The second dream was not too long ago and the baby came so quickly I had it at home. It was a little girl with a head FULL of black hair and she had very pale skin. I'm guessing that was in there because our kids either come out with Robert's complexion or my complexion. The being born at home part had to be thanks to my friend Annie who almost had her baby at home. Baby Rhiannon decided to come in the car instead!! Each of my kids come quicker and quicker I guess I'm a little anxious about how this one will debut!!!

In the next few weeks I think I'll put a poll up to see what all you bloggy folk think the baby is!! This baby could be here in the next 6-9 weeks! Still seems forever though... :-(


Do any of you have varying thoughts with each pregnancY???

And The Award Goes To...

ROBERT!!!!

What award, you may ask? The Husband of the Year Award!!!

So yesterday was my birthday. No biggie. But my husband was SUPER thoughtful on how to make this day easy, relaxing, and stress-free! Exactly what I need right now. Even though only about 50% of it went as planned, it seriously was ALL the thought he put into it that made it so wonderful! Thanks babe!

It started with breakfast in bed! :-) Nothing better than a birthday biscuit to blow out to start the day! :-) And three sweet munchkins singing their little hearts out to me with their hands full of cards they decorated. I would have loved to have gotten a picture, but TRUST ME when I tell you it was a GOOD thing that I spared all of your eyesight!! Who knows what direction my hair and glasses were pointing at that time of the morning.

Moving on. His plan was for me to be child-free most of the day and get out to get my toes done, hair done and a little shopping done! But little did he know I already had a hair appointment scheduled for Thursday and painted my toes this past Monday.

But the BEST gift he gave me was to have my whole house cleaned! I mean, who would have thought that that gift would be the PERFECT gift! The sweet lady that helps my mom out every once in a while came to MY house to help me! Things on the floor are getting harder and harder to reach these days. Mopping has me acting like a cripple old lady after I'm finished, and bending over the tub to scrub it...forget it. I still try and suck it up as best as I can, but let's face it, I'm falling behind a bit. And with 30 sweaty, grimy fingers all over the house these summer days, things get dirty FAST! So taking a day (or so) off from cleaning was a true gift right now!!!

I did get to get out with only one child - which I consider pretty child free these days. Lillian and I did a little shopping and then met Robert for lunch!

I picked up Olivia and Landon at 1:00, came home to a CLEAN HOUSE, and we all went down for nap/rest time.

Then I got to go out for a nice dinner with my mom and sister! Friday night my sis is babysitting (part of her gift) and Robert and I are going out!!! I think this is the longest my birthday has ever lasted!!! But definitely one of the the MOST thoughtful birthdays!


Oh, and I have to thank my sweet friends on Facebook who remembered what yesterday was and wrote on my wall. I'll admit, a couple of weeks ago I took my birthday off my page to try and prevent a wall post explosion. (For non facebook users - facebook tells you when one of your "friends" has a birthday. Which usually results in TONS of people writing on your wall - even people you haven't talked to in 10 years.) But somehow there were a few that knew or figured it out! So THANK YOU for the sweet shoutouts!



A few of my "birthday happys" that I'm excited about are:

A new dress for these weddings we have coming up before the baby!! And there is nothing worse than being 8 months pregnant and feeling frumpy. No, it's not materniy, but maternity dresses seem to swallow me and I can't find any that I really like. And plus, with it being non-maternity, I can wear it not pregnant - duh! It fits very cute and doesn't get short in the front at all!! Best part of all - it was 65% off - much cheaper than any maternity dress I would have found!!




Some new shoes! I seem to go through (and completely wear out) MANY pairs of gold sandals! They are my go-to shoes 9 months out of the year. And, again, the best part of all - they were 50% off!!!! SA-WEEET!And also, my new cuisinart! I've been dying for one of these for a while. ALL the food network people seem to have this as one of their staple kitchen appliances. And last year my nice (kitchen aid) blender broke! I personally don't think it worked that well and had no desire to replace it with the same one. So, hopefully this will replace that and add many more functions to all my fancy cookin'! haha



And I still get to look forward to a pedicure from my sis (maybe I can talk her into going with me) and a nice, long, sit down dinner with my INCREDIBLY THOUGHTFUL and WONDERFUL husband!

Thanks so much babe for making this day and week AWESOME!!

Jazz 'Em Up

This sewing spree has gotten me all "crafty". Well, crafty for me - since I do NOT consider myself that crafty. And I pretty much "borrow" other people's ideas....

I saw these CUTE little girls flip flops at a farmer's market here in town and was very tempted to buy some. But I held off and decided to make some for Olivia.

Olivia has these yucky, rubber $2 flip flops that she wears all the time. I would much rather her wear her nice white sandals, but she insists on going for these every day.

So we had to jazz up her plain, rubber flip flops.

I started out just making two bows from this blog post I did HERE. But I stopped after sewing through the middle of the bow. Then I took some craft/bead wire and wrapped it around the bow a couple times first, then pretty much just tied them onto the flip flops the best I could.

To cover the wire, I hot glue gunned a strip of smaller ribbon over the wire. And just wrapped it around under the flip flops. It's not perfect, but it works!! :-)



These are MUCH better now. And within the first hour of her wearing them out, she got a compliment on them!!! Oh yeah!! ;-)

So jazz up your little girls flips flops ladies!! This was a CHEAP shoe too! Probably cost me about $4 or less for the entire project! I wish Lillian's foot was a little bigger...I'd make her some matching ones!!!

Sewing: French Seam

A French Seam is just a nice neat way to enclose the seams of your projects, especially if you don't have a serger. It's also a really strong seam - I use it for my slings...since they are carrying precious cargo!


Step 1:

Line up seams WRONG SIDES TOGETHER!! Very important and opposite of what you usually do in sewing!




Step 2:

Fold the seam back onto itself with the RIGHT SIDES TOGETHER!!! Which will enclose the raw edges that you just sewed.




Step 4:

Now, at this point, you do not HAVE to do anymore to the seam for the dresses I just made. You have a nice neat seam inside and out. BUT, if you want the little inner piece to lay flat you would open up the seam, press and flatten the inside flap, and zig zag stitch all the way down. This will also result in a zig zag stitch down the outside that is visible. But in this case, I think it adds a nice, unexpected detail to the outside of the dress!

Zig Zagging down the inside flap.

This is the hem and seams of the dress I just made. Nice and neat with a fun zig zag detail.

Hope this helps! If you have any questions, feel free to email me - because I can't reply to comments on my blog very easily.

Summertime Sewing: T-Shirt Dress

I've seen these dresses all over the boutiques. But until I saw Stephanie put one together on her blog, I never thought about making them myself! Thanks Stephanie for the great idea! You are turning out some really cute stuff these days!!! (Side Note: Stephanie is the step mom to my niece an nephew!! So that's how we know each other)


I had to wing it and just figure it out (because I didn't have directions to follow), but I think it turned out just right for my girls. This dress is the perfect amount of "work" for me to start and finish them quickly. I just don't have time/desire/energy to read/cutout/assemble patterned outfits these days. These don't need lining and trim/embellishments either which takes out about 50% of the time and effort!



Supplies:

T-shirt in appropriate color and size
Fabric

I ended up buy 1 ½ yards of fabric not knowing how much I was going to need for TWO dresses. I found out I probably could have gotten away with 1 ⅛ yards for both dresses (and probably a yard).

But you figure the amount of fabric by the width of the shirt. I did 1 ½ times the width of the shirt!

Step 1:

Wash and dry the shirts and fabrics!!!!!



Step 2:

Cut t-shirts about 1½ - 2 inches below armpit hole. (I did 2" for Olivia's dress and 1 ½" for Lillian's dress)



Step 3:

Measure 1 ½ times the t-shirt on the fabric and cut that amount for the bottom part of the dress. You can also measure the length of the dress. Obviously, I took a few inches off the end of Lillian's dress.



Step 4:

Sew up sides with a french seam and hem bottom of dress.

FRENCH SEAM TUTORIAL COMING NEXT!

Step 5:

Set machine to the loosest stitch and sew (without back stitching) around the top of the dress - where it's to meet the t-shirt.

Setting 5 for my machine.

Step 6:

Gently pull the loose ends of the thread that you just sewed to gather the dress until the circumference matches that of the t-shirt. Then pin to together.

TIP: Pin the side seams of the dress and t-shirt together FIRST then evenly pin between the seams.

Gently work the gather part evenly around the dress.

Step 7:

Using the french seam technique, sew the bottom part of the dress to the t-shirt! This will mean that you push the t-shirt down into the dress so that the WRONG SIDES are together. After you stitch around that edge, you pull the dress right side out. Then fold it so that the RIGHT SIDES are together, press, and sew around again - enclosing the raw edges that you just sewed. (I sure hope this is making sense! It's really easy once you get it!)

Here is where I folded the shirt down into the dress - wrong sides together and pinned it.

Here is what it looks like but pulled right side out - same as above just different view.

Sewing the WRONG sides together.

TIP: In between these 2 steps, it's good to trip the excess raw edges. Trim pretty close to the seam you just made so it's easy to enclose in the next step! And not so bulky.

Folding the dress so that the RIGHT sides are together but now going to enclose raw hem.

Sewing around the same part of the dress RIGHT SIDES together enclosing the raw edges. No need to zig zag the flap down this time.

And VOILA!! You should be able to pull the dress right side and have nice neat edges and seams! No raw edges that will fray when you wash it!



At this point, you can do SOOOO many things with this dress! Monogram it, add fringe or pom poms to the hem. You could even make a ruffle with complementing fabric and attach to the hem. Hey, maybe add some pockets!

Also, this is a great "pattern" for winter dresses too. Use long sleeve shirt or turtle necks and then a heavier fabric at the bottom!! I'm getting SO many ideas from just typing all this.

I think this may be my new favorite sewing project for my girls! And after completing a couple dresses, I figured out I could start and FINISH one in about 30 minutes! Thanks quick and easy sewing people! And cost was about $6 per dress!!!!! Ummm...I'll take 20, please.

Here's a sneak peak of the next 4 dresses!!! ;-)

Ok, so by the time I posted this, I had already sewn the next 2 dresses....2 more to go! :-)

Maybe I'll even throw in some fun embellishments this time!!


Happy Sewing!!

Thanks again Stephanie for jump starting my sewing again!!! :-)

There Once Was A Boy

Who wouldn't go in the water.


Until he realized how much fun he was missing out on!!

So he grabbed a tube, and jumped in after his sister!


And {shocking}, he LOVED it!!


They had races




And made a wave pool!


Then even let Daddy throw him!!


It was a really fun night of swimming!!!

The Cup Lady