Love waking up to her :)

Harlee and I woke up this morning and she tells me Im her best friend in the whole world. I love those moments :) It makes my heart smile!

Muscles on Aisle 4!

Harlee just showed Grandma Pearl her muscles.

Grandma Pearl: "Whered you get those muscles?"

Harlee: "Walmart" ( hella serious tone)

Hilarious!

Best Friends

Harlee was sitting in between Steffany and I on the couch when she reached up and pulled Steff close. She wrapped her little arm around her neck. Then she reached over and grabbed me, pulled me close and wrapped her little arm around my neck. So were sitting there for a second in what looks like Harlee has us both in a semi-chokehold, and she says "BEST FRIENDS!"...It was the sweetest moment.

Makes my Heart Melt

I have had an extremely long day at work. I'm tired, irritated, and frustrated. The only thing in this world that makes nothing that happened today matter is Harlee. About a week ago Harlee was bouncing on the couch, she stopped, grabbed my cheeks, looked me dead in the eye and said "I'm so proud of you, Mom!". It is her and the simple words of love that come from her that make all the stress worth it. I love you Harlee.

Rubber Ducky, Your The One!

This past weekend I was able to throw a Baby Shower for one of the most awesome people I know.

My cousin Candice is having her 2nd son Aatley James. For the shower we did a Rubber Ducky theme. I think it turned out beautifully.

The curtain thingy hides the photobooth :)



The was our table setting. The rubber duckies in the bowl are in Hair gel. The texture of the gel gave a really cool look. We used clear hair gel and put one drop of food coloring in the bottle. We tried putting the one drop in the bowl and mixing it but the blue was wayyyyy to dark.

The white duckies came from and online novelty store. We placed markers on the tables in a can so the ladies could decorate a ducky for the baby. :)

Our lovely centerpieces & next to it is the can of markers. We used spray adhesive to get a scrapbook piece of paper to wrap around a regular can recycled from a dinner side of green beans.

And our old fashioned milk jugs ;)

And the beautiful Mom to Be x 2! It was a really fun and relaxing shower. :)

oh, Baby baby baby!

I am planning my cousin Candice's Baby Shower! I am so very very very excited about it. It just so happens that as it comes closer to the shower actually getting here everything has gotten a little more difficult because of work hours increasing, school load increasing, and still trying to find time for little miss Harlee.

So this week is crunch week. We are six days away and my sister and I have been working on crafts nightly. The theme is Bubbles/Rubber Ducky. The color scheme is blues, yellows, and white.  First, we created the centerpieces, or one of the centerpieces, for the tables. The baby is a boy, and his name is going to be Aatley James. This centerpiece is made up of a mini pot, paint, foam, moss, bamboo skewer, and some cardstock from michaels. I made four of these and the total for all of them was less than $12.

The next thing we decorated were the "vintage milk bottles". These are soooo cute. I got the idea I think from Hostess with the mostess? but im not sure. Anyway, we bought five 4-packs of these-

   



If you take off all the stickers and plastic wrap around it you get a plain looking bottle that is reminiscent of the vintage milk bottles that used to be deliver to your door. So, in photoshop I created some graphics, printed them and cut them in to 2in circles. My sister added ribbon around the bottles and glued the circle to the front of the bottle. we then added our striped paper straws we got from etsy and the end result looked like this...

We did two types of bottles. The first has ribbon at the top and bottom of the bottle and the second has two strips of ribbon around the bottom. I think they look really cute :)

How Quickly/Slowly a year passes!

Depending on the situation, when you look at a Years time- one can perceive it to be very long. Like, when I think I still have a year left of school before I gradute- it seems like an eternity! This is not the case when it comes to a childs first year of existence. I look at Harlee all the time and cant believe she has already surpassed the 2 year mark.

Just this past week my nephew Rayden turned 1! There is no way it has been one year since I visited him in the hospital only hours after entering this world. Its funny how time can trick us in to making one year feel like an eternity or mere seconds.

So this past weekend was spent celebrating the birthday of my nephew. His party was held at Mankas Park- it has your typical playground structure but also a mini water park! The kids really dig it. I know Harlee had a blast even though she wasn't in the the water. But she did love the food and the pinata. She was on a serious sugar high after cake and candy.

Here is the little Birthday Boy!

A little cake never hurt anybody! Thanks Daddy for the cake-face!

Rayden walking with Mommy and Daddy- Look how happy he is!

Mommy and Rayden running through the water!



Harlee just had to get in the picture of Rayden and his Brother Alijah

The cute suit she didn't want to get wet :-/

And a happy sugar high child

A wonderful day spent with family in celebration of the blessing that we all know as Rayden :) Cant wait to celebrate many many many more birthdays with him. oh, wait, yes I can.... :)



Thursday is our Friday!

I was looking forward to todays work day being a short day but got held up running errands and picking up checks. I really missed lil Harlee girl! So when I got home I wanted to spend time with her doing fun stuff :) we played with all her little toys and then I happened to find this Play-Doh ice cream maker in my closet. She had gotten it for her birthday and it was stashed in my closet. So we made ice cream sundaes with sprinkles on top. She loved it :)

And then we had real Ice Cream Sundaes with sprinkles on top!

After Ice Cream she realized her Dolly had to go pee- So she escorted her to the potty. She is such a good Mommy.

Memory Lane- I miss my baby

Took a trip down memory lane tonight. Oh, How I miss my baby :( she is getting so big.

The first link was of her crawling and pulling herself to standing. I remember I couldnt get her to crawl over for anything except for her favorite thing- A SPOON! She loved her spoons as soon as she started teething. We got her tons of fancy teethers and her favorite thing was a spoon.

2nd link is of her only a few months old eating Rice Cereal for one of the first times. She loved it and couldnt get enough. Now its hard to get her to eat at all.

3rd link is her Polly Pocket Dance she would do everytime the Polly Pocket song was played. As soon as the music stopped you could tell she was thinking WTF? we repeated this song a bunch of times to say the least.

Crawling and pulling herself up
Eating Rice Cereal for one of the 1st times
Polly Pocket Dance

Child Labor

Today I needed to get started on Baby Shower Project for my cousins baby shower coming up. I have little pots for the centerpieces that need painting. I also have a two year old running around and know she wont let me finish this in peace. So to kill two birds with one stone..

I gave these little pots...

To this little girl :)

No pictures of the paint job but it was a job well done! Mission accomplished!

A trip to the Foothills

Mike and I took Harlee up to visit all of her cousins in Somerset yesterday. We dont get to make the trek up their that often so we always get really excited when the oppurtunity arises. Unfortunately not the whole Famn Damily was there because they were vacationing in New Orleans but we still got to see all the kids, an uncle, and Grandma too.

So we set off early morning around 9 a.m.- thats early for us :) - picked up our Niece an headed on our way, I was nerous to see how the girls would do on the road trip. Harlee tends to have fits about an hour in to any ride. Luckily, the company of her cousin Holly kept her occupied :)

We made it to the hills in good time and then the fun began! Harlee fits right in with the mountain kids. I know when I use that term it sounds like they are plucked right from the "Deliverance" movie but I dont mean it in that way. I just mean they are free spirited, rough and tumble, barefoot babies. There just... awesome. Thats the best way I can put it. They are Kids in true definition. So as soon as we arrived, shoes were off and its go go go for the rest of the day playing, running, swimming, digging, riding, and most of all getting dirty. :) Its what all kids should be doing all the time. No care in the world. A lovely day that I wish could be repeated more often...

 The Pretty Girls :)

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem

Swimmin'

Teeter-Totter

Another great thing about visiting family in the Hills? The food!

A Visit on Base

I have been telling my coworkers about Harlee's love of the airplanes. One of my coworkers who is in the air force told me she could give us a tour of some of the planes. We set up the details and this past Thursday we got to go tour a C5. I was expecting it to be exciting for Harlee but I didn't expect to be so interested myself. I credit that to my coworker Marie and her great tour guide skills. Due to restrictions and confidential top secret reasons I wasn't able to take pictures of us on the C5 but we took some photos at the Plane Museum.

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Birthday!

My favorite time of year has always been Christmas-that is until Harlee came along :) Now my favorite time of year can be narrowed down to one specific day-HER BIRTHDAY! I love planning, organizing, and creating for the big event. This year we went with a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme because Harlee loves her some Mickey. I wanted to share some of the pictures from the day.

Here are some picture frames I decorated. The frames are wooden frames (IKEA for a few $) painted with your basic acryllic paint. I took my happy butt down to Michaels and found Disney, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and Birthday themed stickers and applied them to the frame. I really love the Mickey Mouse Head button stickers.

I started this little tradition last year that I wanted to carry on which is the "Ode to Harlee" shrine I create above the fire place. I love snapfish.com collage posters and I created one with photos of her from the last year and hung it over the fireplace with the decorated frames sitting on the mantle below. Then I used my amazing cricut machine to cut out Mickey Mouse heads. The heads have the letter 'H' and number '2' cut out of the center for her name and age. Above it all hangs the Happy Birthday Banner I made with the cricut also. I cant remember the the name of the cartridge but it was Mickey Mouse themed. The poster reads "Our little Mousekadoer is turning TWO"

One of my favorite things ever about this birthday was that a few months prior I was in PetCo with Harlee checkin out the fish and happened to find one called a Mickey Mouse Platy- I couldnt figure out why the fish had this name....so I stared at it for awhile and then BOOM-I seen it- Can you?

On the tail of the fish is a black mark- I know its probably difficult to see, but its in the shape of a silhouetted Mickey Mouse Head! So friggin cool! I vowed to get Harlee these for her Birthday. They made a lovely display on the dessert table. I got her two fish and she has named them Mickey and Minnie and she loves them dearly :)

So about that dessert table! If your anything like me you have researched party planning and seen the amazing displays and parties being done out there. I know I do not come close to competing with those but believe me my little dessert table was a huge HIT!

I designed the Hershey mini wrappers in photoshop and printed them out on the sticker sheets I bought through OnlineLabel.com. They are really cheap :) The pinwheels were also DIY- I found a simple tutorial online. I cut out mini Mickey Mouse heads and placed them in the middle. I had planned on letting the kids have these to play with but pins were used to hold the pinwheel together and I just didnt know how well the hot glue would hold up so I decided against it. My cookies were bomb! I got the cookie cutters offline from disney and they came out really cute.

Do you know how to make the clubhouse appear??? well with the magic words of course! MEESKA, MOOSKA, MICKEY MOUSE!!

This is from the theme song in the opening of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse :)

Well, that was everything I photographed of the decor. I forgot some stuff, including the cute table cards I made with the individual characters. Each dish I made was themed after a character and a card was placed in front of the dish with the name. I did Minnie's BOW-tie pasta salad, Goofy's Garden Roasted Vegetables, Daisy's Flower Fruit Salad...etc.  It was all and all a really great day and I was proud of how it turned out :)  already thinking of the theme for next year....hmmm? carnival?

Did you know??

Just thought you should know :)


I love finding little bits of inspiration, lovely quotes, pick-me-ups, and tid bits that make me happy. This was one of them. I remember finding it and tilting the screen back and it made me smile. Hopefully you smiled too!

Kids Say the Darndest Things!

I really want to start documenting all the crazy, funny, smart, off the wall things my baby says. Sometimes I cant figure out where she learned some of it but either way, its hilarious.

Last night she was in the tub and had two rubber ducks she had sitting on the tub side. Both the ducks fell into the water and she picked one up, she noticed under the duck the water was drippng off and she said

Awww, your peeing! Im so proud of you!

and then she gave the ducky a big kiss. She said it with such emotion too as if she was really happy the duck was finally able to go like a big duckie!

It was so cute. Ever since she has begun to potty train, all of her animals and dolls are also in training. She is very suportive and encouraging to them too :) Love these little moments <3

She says she wants to be a Pilot

Lately, the hectic schedule of increased work hours, increased school load, and still trying to juggle everything at home has meant little free time. To get out of the house and do something fun, my daughter, Daddy & I go to the local air base. We live minutes away and there is a back road that runs along the air strip where the planes practice their Touch & Go's. We take a ride on over and watch the planes land and take off, they fly right over us. Harlee thinks it is the greatest thing. The road is very empty and no traffic so she occupies herself playing with Dad until the next plane comes in or takes off.

Here she is flying like an airplane

Silliness with Daddy

Tonight they flew the C5's that are absolutely huge!

The next Picasso? It's probable

More often than not life gets hectic and planning an outing is somewhat impossible. For this reason I try to find fun, artistic, and/or educational activities for home. One thing that I love is coloring or painting! I am a crafter by nature so this stuff is so fun to do with twaddler. I went to IKEA and found an easel for $14.99, a package of two smocks for $4.99, the massive roll of paper $4.99 (I think) and last the paint which I believe was $4.99 as well. We had the paint brushes at home but you can purchase them there too for cheap. This has been a huge hit at our house. It is a simple activity. The easel stays set up in the garage and whenever Harlee wants to paint, we throw on a smock and I squirt a few different colors on a plate then let her go to town. She is very serious about her painting. I love watching her at work. You can see in her eyes she is doing the painting with much thought.

The great thing about the IKEA paint and other paints I have in the garage is they come off the skin with just warm water. After her canvas was full, the next best thing was Mommy.

As you can probably see from the painting- I like to get in there and do some silly drawings too. Harlee often puts suggestions out there that she likes me to paint. Her favorite to ask for is the good ol' fashioned :0) smiley face.

This easel has a cool benefit too. There is a dry erase board on one side of the easel and a chalkboard on the other. Another thing I do when I have my nephew over-I let both the kids paint. They are not to good at sharing the canvas so to remedy this problem I just pull the paper all the way up and over to cover the other side of the easel. I use clothes pins to clip the paper tight on the other side. So you can have two kids painting at once.

So all in all, this is a fun, easy, messy but easy to clean up activity. I think its a good bonding experience for me and the little one too.