An Apology and a fun download I found

First off, I wanted to apologize for being so absent lately. I've been so busy. I feel so guilty for not being here. :( 

Today I am sitting down with my lil Cass. She was up all night sick. Poor thing. Too many sour gummy's at the Basketball game I guess. LOL I am so glad to be able to spend the day with her but sorry for the reason. She is feeling much better now.  Just so exhausted from being up every hour last night. Plus I didn't want to send her to school not knowing if she could keep anything down. :( That would be bad. So we tried a little piece of dried toast this morning and it hurt her tummy. Long story short, she is sitting here with me watching Sponge Bob and playing games on my iPad as I write this post. LOL

My busy life has gotten in the way of my crafting lately. I have been making things but have been lazy on taking pictures. So I will try to catch up. We have been busy with basketball, many school events and meetings. We even signed up all 4 kids for baseball. The two lil girls will be on the same team. Yeah! That will be so fun for them. ChaCha will be on the Minor girls team and CJ is on Major Boys again this year. Next year he bumps up to Juniors. WHOA! My kids are growing so fast.  Hubby has been busy working very long hours, so every precious moment is spent with us watching movies, playing games, shooting hoops, hanging out or bike riding. I don't see him slowing down anytime soon. We are so fortunate and thankful for the work provided and can't complain.

So today...I thought I would share a really cool downloadable goodie I found. You may have seen it. It was featured in Better Homes and Gardens "do it yourself" magazine. 

It's another cool way to do a growth chart. Cathe from Just Something I Made came up with this marvelous idea. She scanned one of her vintage measuring tapes for you to print out. It's life size and awesome!

Visit HERE to download yours. She even has and update at the bottom of the post offering a metric version. Cool! Thanks Cathe for the great download! Be sure to check out all her awesome DIY projects HERE too! She is one, pretty amazing and creative woman! I was lucky to have found her site!

Hope you enjoy my fun lil find!

One more quick thing...I was playing with a new idea. Pinterest is another fabulous site that I often use. I take it on the go with me all the time on my iPhone. LOL I am sure many of you do too! 

So here's my thought...what do you think of having a Pinterest Challenge Party? Putting our Pins in motion. LOL I find so many ideas on there that I want to do and haven't. I though if I did it here, I would accomplish more of them. ;o) I thought of either posting a specific pin of mine that we could all make, then link up. That way we can see all the different versions from that one Pin. Or...each week you can link up your own Pinterest Pin that you loved and made yourself. I think it would be a fun way for us to make our favorite pins rather than just dreaming about making them. Ha!Ha! The idea would be to have you post a "How you made your favorite pin" Directions how you made your pin, including photos of yours and the pic of the original pinned inspiration (include their link). Then link it up here at a party to share with others.

What do you think? Would that be fun?

I can't wait to here what you think! Leave a comment below to let me know. Also, please share this idea with others. Have them come here for a comment too. I would love to see how many would like to be involved in a Pinterest Challenge Party! 

I will be leaving a post on my Facebook page too. So you can comment there as well! I so need to be on there more too! LOL

Thanks All! Have a Perfect Day and a FUN weekend too!

I'm Back

I'm finally back. Seems like its been a while! Like 3 weeks. Right? I know, I know! I was enjoying my vacation. We had a lot of fun!

Our kids got out of school early this year. It was nice because I had one full week to prepare for the holidays without any school events! Well minus Basketball practice for my son! Yep! He made the team this year! YEAH! So proud of him.

So on to our vacation...I spent that week sewing and packing. We planned on surprising the kids with a trip to DISNEYLAND for Christmas. Because of the cost of tickets and food, I was making a lot of the kids gifts this year. The older kids all got some Disney patchwork blankets when they were younger and I wanted to make one for my youngest. I had saved all the material from making the last ones. So it was very easy to make it. Thankfully most of the material was already cut! Woo! Hoo! Got that done! Then I made each of the girls a cute lil owl pillow! They turned out so, so cute! Because my son is 12, I decided not to make him a cute, cuddly pillow and bought him something. ha!ha! I also made a cute puppy blanket and pillow for our employees new baby. I love how it turned out! 

By the way, I will be sharing pictures below. Don't worry!

We made our family members ornaments this year for Christmas. They were snowmen made from white tennis balls. Very cool! We made a few more things for them too. For Daddy this year, the kids made a really cool shirt. We saw it on Pinterest. I will try and find the link to it sorry. But they drew on the back of a shirt. Roads, buildings and personal touches. On the front it said, "My Favorite Shirt". They also each picked out 1 car to go with it. They love drawing on daddy's back with body crayons and thought this would be fun too! My hubby and kiddos are so sweet too! They went to our jewelry store and picked out charms for a Pandora Bracelet for me! I love it! They picked out an elephant, chick, good luck (my oldest daughter picked this out. She is always so lucky. Finding four leaf clovers and money all the time) an airplane, orange jeweled flowers, one with two hearts from hubby and while we were in Disneyland, a Mickey Mouse charm. I was very happy.

So here is how we surprised the kids... Hubby is always on Craig's List! We told the kids that we had to head south to look at truck dad found on Craig's List. They wanted to know why we were taking our Christmas stuff. We just said that we were going to celebrate with family down there and needed to bring stuff. They bought it! YEAH! So we left and drove as far as we could. It's about 9-10 hours depending on stops. We made it more than half way before we stopped at a hotel. The next morning, we went to the complimentary breakfast. The kids were still clueless. We then told them, that we were going to let them open one gift before we left. They were excited. I had wrapped up their Disney blankets and Disney ID's. We knew that when we left the hotel, we were going straight to Disneyland. The kids couldn't wait to look at the truck and leave. Ha! Ha! So we went back to the room, and videoed them opening their gifts. They were very quiet! Then when they realized it was all Disney, they screamed a little. ;0) We told them we were going right now to Disneyland! My youngest, so cute, asked "After we look at the truck?" LOL "No sweetie, we tricked you! Did it work?" we said. They all said "YEAH!" We succeeded in keeping the secret. We wanted to drive further, but we knew the older kids would know where we were going by landmarks, since we have been to Disneyland before. 

Disneyland was awesome! We spent 5 days there. Including Christmas Day! It was so busy, but worth it! I can't say we will go back on Christmas day again, but like someone said, we were able to mark that off our bucket list. Check! I will share a few photos below of our trip. But I have to say, one of their favorite parts was going to the Animation Academy over in California Adventure. We went there 5 times and it was the first thing they wanted to share when they got to school. They all love drawing and I was quite proud of our artistic family!

The rest of our family vacation was spent relaxing and resting from the long trip. Kids are all back in school and the routine is back on. Kind of nice. I missed the routine!

Here are a few pics

Our Snowman Ornaments...white tennis ball, baby sock, and permanent markers.

Disney Blanket...this is the disney blanket I made for my youngest! Sorry it's not the best pic!

Back of the blanket

each of the kids had mostly the same fabric, but all different designs.

Front of the blanket

I embroidered her name and added the cute lace border.

Daddy's Favorite shirt

It was late when we finished and I snapped this with my cell.

One of the owls before it was finished. There is another pic below of them holding them.

We printed out and framed these for family.

Here is a pic of a lighted Christmas Tree we made. If you are interested in how I made this, just send me a quick email. I'd be happy to share. I do have better pictures and I added a bit more to this too!

The puppy pillow and blanket I made for our employees baby.

...Christmas Morning...

Very bad quality photo. Sorry. But it shows their smiling faces. That's all that matters. Right? LOL

When we surprised them with Disneyland

With their blankets and Disney ID's.

A few pics from Disneyland

Happy New Year Everyone! I can't wait to see what this year brings.

Thanks to everyone who sent us Holiday wishes via the blog, text and email! Hope your vacations were as fun as ours. What did you do?

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!

Happy New Year!!

I pray that your Christmas celebration is filled with Jesus! I pray that you are aware of the blessings around you. I pray that you take time to capture the moments and memories that make up your family and loved ones. I pray that you experience Christmas through the eyes of a child with all the wonder and excitiment that it brings. I pray that you cherish every moment you have with your loved ones. I pray that you are blessed in new and exciting ways.

I had asked my Aunt if she would help us take some photos of our family after our Thanksgiving feast so we would have a current photo for our Christmas card. I also wanted to make sure to be in some photos with my kids. It was a joint effort between my aunt, Greg and myself and I think we did pretty good. Yeah, I don't really enjoy being photographed and I'd like to lose some weight before I'm photographed but my kids won't be saying that when they look back as these photos ("man, I wish mom would have lost 10 pounds before we took those pictures"). They will be saying things like, "remember when we ran around in the backyard and remember how Micah didn't want his picture taken. And remember how dad threw us in the air. Yeah, those were good times." So, here's to capturing good memories, picture perfect or not. And if you have to photoshop a blemish or two I give you permission!! We can put our best face forward right ;)

    

  

Here's a "real life" shot for you!

I'll see you back here in 2012! If you'd care to follow our Christmas adventures and just life in general join me on my family/photography blog!! Can't wait to see you there, and let me know you stopped by! And don't forget my shop is open if you need any last minute gifts!!!

Gifts for yourself

We all know that Christmas is a time of giving. A time when we remember the greatest gift ever given, the gift of Jesus in flesh. The gift of salvation brought to life. We give gifts because we've already received the greatest gift ever to be given. We give gifts to everyone in our lives, kids, parents, teachers, postal workers, but is it wrong to give a gift to yourself? I don't think so. So often we as mothers give give and give some more that sometimes it's nice and actually IMPORTANT to give a little to ourselves.

Maybe your gift to yourself this year will be laying off the mommy guilt. Maybe you'll give yourself permission to fail, to not be the "perfect" wife, mom, etc because we all know that person doesn't exist. Maybe you'll give yourself 10 extra minutes of peace and quiet by setting the alarm. Maybe you're going to give yourself energy by exercising a little more regularly. Maybe you're going to give yourself time by setting a timer for "extra" things like tv shows or computer time so you don't get sucked ALL the way in, but then you'll have the time to do the things you want and need to do.  Maybe you'll give yourself time to craft things for YOU! I plan on doing ALL of these things.

Maybe your gift to yourself will be more a material object. Those are nice too. My husband and I do the St. Nicholas thing with our kids (but not Santa) since he was a real man who gave to the poor and needy. But who fills my stocking...me! So, this  year I didn't give myself anything. But that's becuse I didn't have any small gift that I really wanted...and I am still working on gifts for others so I haven't gotten around to my own crafting yet...but I will. I will make myself some pajama pants and I will make myself a clothespin people wall hanging.


What are you going to give to yourself?

If you're still looking for the perfect gift some someone on your list come on over to my etsy store and see what I've got that might help you check off another name!

Family Photos

We haven't had a personal post in a while and today I wanted to share with you some photos. My friend Jen took our family photos this year and I am so excited to share them. They are beautiful! I had a lot of fun making up our Christmas cards with these photos too!

Here are just a few of our favorites!

Love Love Love These! Thanks Jen!!!


If you are in my area (NorCal) and want your photos taken by Jen, let me know. Email me at trendytreehouse@me.com I know she would love to help you!


We can't wait to take more pics with Jen in the spring. Already planning on each of us wearing different bright colors. They are going to be cute! And this Friday we are taking more pics. Jen is taking our whole families photos. My family, my parents and my brothers. I can't wait to see how those turn out!


Love the Couch and Frames? Found the couch at an estate sale! The frames were found at thrift shops and spray painted for use in my craft room. They all made great props for our photos!


Please share your thoughts on my family photos in comments! Would love to hear what you think! ;o)