Happy 3 Abby

Almost two weeks ago we traveled to Toledo for my neice, Abby's birthday. We had a ton of fun at the zoo and I thought I'd share a few pictures with you.

Living Room Updates

I have been wanting to do make this great faux rosewood wreath for so long and I've been wanting to so something new in our living room, particularly in the fireplace. So I finally figured out what to do. I bought a green foam wreath and also some old paperback books at the thrift store and a ton of hot glue.

Let me say, that I am happy with the way this project turned out..but oh my goodness...it was TEDIOUS. I spent eight nights cutting and gluing paper out of these books onto this wreath and honestly, I'm still not done, the middle and sides need more! Ugg. I hung it from an old mirror that we had. Please note the mirror isn't really a mirror but some kind of wierd plastic mirror...so it's pretty scratched up and...well...wierd. But I'm cheap and didn't see the need to buy another mirror. We're(and by "we" I mean Conrad) not quite finished with it, the fireplace needs it's post winter coat of paint. But all in all, I'm quite pleased with phase one.

Grace on Easter

This conversation happened on the way home from church yesterday. The last few weeks they have been talking about Easter and the crucifiction and they even showed some kind of video of the crucifiction. We have also been talking about WHAT Easter is really about. Although we color eggs and they'll get baskets, I want them to understand the vital importance to our Core Belief in Salvation. So the following conversation ensued (I wish I had it on video!)

Mommy: Grace, what is Easter about?
Grace: It's when the God Jesus hung up on the wock. There was blud. Lot's of blud. Then he died.

She almost always calls God, "the God" but the conversation went on from there. We talked about how he rose again and why he died, but really, she was pretty fixated on the "blud." It must have been a graphic movie. Oh, how I wish I could keep her in this sweet, innocent, and adorable phase for about three more years!

Bento Thursday

This week one day the girls had leftover homeade chicken nuggets and shell pasta. Along with fruit and a cheesestick and two hersey kisses. not too exciting, but popular!


This day was fun! There are two hot dog octopus and an crab hotdog with cheese eyes colored with food marker. Along with pretzels and a star chocolate chip cookie. In the top bento box is a little clementine lady with a bow pick and nori paper face. And an apple toadstool.

I was making a ton of cookies for a student outreach at church and decided to try some cookie cutters when baking the cookies. They turned out great and I was wondering why I'd never heard of doing this before!?

Nope, no super mom's here

The other day I was talking to my friend Natalie and I was lamenting some of my parenting struggles with her. She's not a parent, but she's always a good voice of reason and a great sounding board. While I was whining and complaining, she said, "I'm surprised, Danielle. By reading your blog, I would think you are super mom." I could have almost laughed out loud. Nope. No super mom's here. Most day's I struggle to balance my "To Do List" with the really important items like spending time with my family and having even the smallest of Devotional Times with the Lord. Not to mention, some days I just fall into bed exhausted and disappointed with myself and my very poor parenting job. If I haven't mentioned it before, we have a strong willed child. Who came by it honestly: she has a strong willed mom. So we spend many a days going head to head. I usually win, but sometimes it's at a great cost, and I'm certain it takes years off of my life!!

I think I have said this before, but I would trade all of my "craftiness" for a couple of ounces more of patience. But we get what we get and coming by the rest seems to take some time! So don't be decieved by my blog. It's not my online "journal." I certainly don't share the nitty gritty here. It's only a "highlights" type of thing. We keep the low lights to ourselves and those closest to us. Besides, one day my kids will be able to go back and read this journey of thier childhood, and I don't neccessarily want them to remember the time she and momomy threw down over her refusal to eat dinner/go to bed/put away her toys/fill in the blank.

But overall, most days I have nothin' to complain about, only things to be thankful for!

Spring Posies

I had a bunch of left over material from making the wreath in Grace's room, so I decided to make some more posies for headbands and a spring wreath for the front door. With an 1/8th of a yard of inexpensive fabric, an old headband, a few pearl stickers, and a hot glue gun...beautiful! The same applies to the wreath. I just wrapped material around a styrophome wreath and made a few posies to glue onto one side. Turned out pretty! But my favorite is definitely the posie headbands!

Bento Thursday

Since my kids are spending a couple of days at my parents and I am on MOMMY VACATION!I only bento'd once this week, but I got a ton of new bento-ing stuff, so I was excited to do this one!

In the bento on the top you have a bunny cheese and turkey quesadilla with candy eyes and heart necklace. You also have pretzels and pink marshmellow flowers. In the bottom bento you have carrots (because what else are bunnies going to eat?) and dip, berries, and a strawberry lady with a hat pick and a Nori paper face. Can you see her winking at you?


I also bought myself a bento! I love it, with it's seperate compartments and it's lock and lock lid. It also comes with plastic chop sticks...which I struggle with. Usually I'm pretty good with chop sticks, but these? Not so good. It even has an insulated, matching lunch bag. Love it!

Fondue Party

Every Friday night we have Small Group at our House. We love love love hosting our weekly biblestudy and love the families that are a part of it! We look forward to getting together, hanging out, and studying the Bible. We also have a group full of foodies. It's fun to cook and bake for people who enjoy it and to try out all of my new recipes and old favorites on them! This last week we decided to do fondue. I tried a Garlic Cheese Fondue and a Classic Chocolate Fondue made with Ghirdelli chocolate. Another famiy brought all of the fun dippers...like cheesecake, angel food cake, strawberries, grapes, french bread, apples, and marshmellows. I think it was a hit!

Bowling Babies

This weekend we took the girls bowling for the first time ever. We had a good time, although let me just say that bowling is a bit more expensive than I remember it...or maybe I've just never paid for a family of four to bowl...who knows?? The girls had so much fun. They put up the bumpers and they have these rack type of things that small children can use to get enough momentum to get the ball down the lane. I have to say it was probably the highest score I've ever gotten bowling. Gotta love those bumpers!

Goodbye Nursery

So we finally took the crib down and as I mentioned before, we now have two little girl rooms going on upstiars. I am so happy with how this one turned out. We have a cool reading nook and we put up our tent playhouse too. I'm most excited about the frames I have on Grace's wall. It looks crooked in the pictures...but not as much in real life...i don't know why?? I ordered a vinyl from Etsy that said, "Grace Christine" and applied it to the glass of an empty frame. It turned out really cute! I think I am going to have to repaint those frames with a real white, tho. The headboard of the bed is the backboard of her crib. What do you think?

Favorite Things Friday: Chocolate Crossaints

I love this little French bistro in Columbus called La Chatelaine. When I was pregnant with Grace I used to crave thier soup and sandwiches. But, the thing they REALLY excel at? Pastries. Oh my. They have a pistachio crossiant that is to die for! They also have an excellent chocoate crossaint. The pistachio crossiant was a little lofty for me to strive for, so I decided to try the chocolate crossaint. This recipe is easy and....yummy!

You'll need:
A package of puffed pastry
Nutella
Sea Salt
Egg Wash

(sorry about the poor quality pictures, we were having lighting issues!!)
Cut the sheet of puffed pastry into squares.


Put one teaspoon of nutella on it and roll it up, like so.


Put it on the baking sheet, brush on egg wash, and sprinkle with sea salt. Bake at 400 degrees for 18 - 20 minutes.


Enjoy!

Bento Thursday

In the bento on the right is a peanut butter sandwich, with candy eyes, a heart confetti nose, and cheese ears and mouth. In the bento on the left is fruit, veggies, and veggie dip. I also added a frozen christmas cookie wrapped in foil.

Spring Wreath

We have been trying (unsuccessfully) to sell our house. During this process you start to look to greener pastures, and start emotionally disconnecting from your current home. At least, I do! So this has definately put the brakes on home improvement projects. Needless to say, we HAVE NOT sold our home and the last feedback we got from our last showing said our home was "Dirty, outdated, and overpriced." Keep in mind, we are $20k cheaper than I bought the house for 8 years ago, and the cheapest in the neighborhood, minus the forclosures. I have two small children, so maybe I'll give you dirty....

That pretty much did me in. I'm finished with selling for the time being, at least emotionally! So, in my mind, I'm invested and it's time to begin a few changes and improvements. One big one is Grace's room. We recently took down the crib-turned toddler bed, that was sharing space with a full sized bed and just made the jump to full size bed. We reorganized some things and moved some toys into her room. It looks sooo cute. Pictures are a coming.

I also wanted to redo her bedroom wall with her name and decorate with some empty frames. Can you get a vision for this project? Maybe not until you see it. I bought a bunch of butt ugly frames at Goodwill and removed the glass or butt ugly pictures from the inside and pained them heirloom white. I also made a wreath to go in the center of the one of the frames. Since I'm waiting for a few more elements, the current frame/wreath is on our front door. It looks awesome!

If you wanted to do something similiar, I thought I'd do a quick tutorial. You'll need:
half of a yard of satin or polyster satin-ish material.
A package of brads of your choice
A green foam wreath
Ribbon
Old picture frame
Paint of choice
an open flame

I choose a green material, because that's what we are doing in G's room. I then cut out two different sizes of circles using measuring cups on the material. Isabelle even helped me cut with her saftey scissors.

This is the part that takes it to wow...I run the edges of each circle through a candle flame. This seals the edge and makes the edges curl in a flower type fashion.


I then doubled up the circles and put a star brad through the center and stuck the brad straight into the flower foam wreath. Repeat about fifty times for this small wreath.


I used ribbon to suspend it from the empty frame. It looks so cool and will look even better on Grace's bedroom wall!

Sisters

I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones. ~Author unknown, attributed to a 4-year-old named Lauren

It was nice growing up with someone like you - someone to lean on, someone to count on... someone to tell on! ~Author Unknown

Bento Thursday

In the box on your left you have a chick ham sandwich, covered in cheese, with sprinkle eyes and heart confetti on top. You also have ants on a log and fishy on a log! In the box on the right is strawberries and grape kabobs and an oreo cookie


In the bento on the top you have a fishy sandwich with fruit leather stripes and fishies, in the bottom bento is a yogurt tube, berries, and the rest of half a fruit leather.

Priorities

I'm a list maker and an organizer by nature. I love to accomplish tangible tasks. People like me don't always make the best parents (In case you didn't know!) I read this on a friends blog and decided I needed to put this on our fridge:

Cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tommorrow
For babies grow up we learn to our sorrow
So quiet down cob webs and dust go to sleep
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep!

40 bags in 40 days

All over the internet I have been seeing bloggers take the "40 bags in 40 days challenge." Meaning, simplify your life and get rid of 40 bags of stuff in your house in 40 days. I didn't think I could do it, because well, I just don't have the time to do it! But a couple of days ago, our fridge broke! Ugggg. So I thought as long as I had to empty the fridge for the repair guy, I might as well clean it out. I scrubbed that puppy and decided to move on to the pantry, as long as I was in the mode. Between the two I threw away three bags of food stuffs! That's a respectable amount of stuff....and I haven't been able to fit groceries into the beast like this in quite a while. Happy times here in the Michael house.

Also, I've lost a bit of weight since the new year. Enough that I can't wear a significant amount of my clothes. I have been dreading cleaning out my closet, even though our closet is STUFFED to the max. While looking for something..anything to wear to work tommorrow, I decided to take a deep breath, figure out what fit and what didn't and purge! It felt SO GOOD to get rid of a bunch of clothes...probably about three bags full. I have a bunch folded and prepped to consign, and the rest off to Goodwill!

Now we only have to clean out...the attic, the garage, the garage attic, the kids closets, Conrad's closet, and the cupboard! Not all that much...But I think I can get rid of 34 more bags!

Michael-isms

Grace is starting to potty train. She strips off her diaper all of the time and wants a dry diaper on. The last package of diapers we bought were Huggies brand and they have Mickey Mouse on them. So now, she when she wants a diape she yells, "Mommy, I want my Mickey. Can I have a dry Mickey? " I'm not sure how I feel about that!?

Conrad and I went for a massage a couple of days ago. Conrad was telling Isabelle he was going for a massage. Isabelle, after her first spa treatmet a couple of weeks ago, asked her Daddy, "Are they going to paint yoru toes too?"

Bento Thursday

This week I have been pretty lackluster in the lunch packing department, luckily I had a creative but busy bento week last week...so I give you: Last Week's Bento Box's!

In the top bento are pepperoni pizza butterflies, in between two pieces of wheat tortillas. In the bottom box is a scary looking strawberry mouse, apples, grapes, and two strawberry fig newtons.


In the box on the left is Indian Chicken Biryani, molded into heart and star rice balls along with a container of veggie dip. In the box on the right is apple slices, housing a raspberry caterpiller, blueberries, carrots and half a cheese stick.

The Human Canvas

Can you see what my sweet little baby did to her belly? Oh yes she did. She pulled the human canvas. And we just broke her of coloring on walls...

Sweet and Sassy

This last weekend my sister Jona came to visit. She brought my neice Abby (and my soon to be born nephew too!). We haven't gotten together since Christmas, and apparently Abby was crying the other day for "My cousin Isabelle!" so Jona thought it might be time to get the girls together! We concurred.

On Saturday night we decided to do something really special with the girls. Conrad had a meeting at church, so Jona and I, and three toddler girls headed out to the (overly packed) mall. We didn't tell the girls what we were taking them to do, just that it was a special treat. After dinner at California Pizza Kitchen we took them to Sweet and Sassy, a Salon and Spa for little girls for pedicures! They were overjoyed to put thier feet in bubbly tubs, choose thier nail polish color, and get little sparkly flowers put on thier nails. Although it was seriously overpriced, it WAS a fun once-in-a-while treat!

These people know what they are doing. The pedicure was great and thier toes were pretty, but they were great with the "value added" stuff. They put glitter in thier hair, and hair spray to make thier hair smell like cotton candy. They also put glittery stars on thier cheeks. It really doesn't take much to make little girls happy.

Sweet and Sassy really specializes in birthday parties and all our girls were enraptured by a pre teen birthday party happening at the same time. The girls were in thier PJ's, getting mud masks and pedicures and manicures and dancing thier hearts out on a run way to "Oh Baby Baby." You could just see the wheels turning in Isabelle's head with how totally cool these 10 year olds were.