Life In Photos #27

We revisited this area again with the hubs, and it’s my new favorite place. It’s so beautiful year round, but especially in the fall.

Since the hubs was with us he actually snapped some pics of me and my little!! A very rare thing. Big open field = we must play chase. My last sundress wear for the season – it was randomly 80 degrees a few days back. Really, fall?!

My two favorite people. She was so excited to find a mouse hole at the base of the tree!

We visited my dad this week and found this amazing bug on his deck. He was moving pretty darn slowly as it was a very chilly day. I just love the beautiful iridescent blue color! I haven’t looked up what type of bug it is yet, so if you know clue me in!

This last picture cracks me up. My little had just woken up from nap (she has been partial to napping on Big Bear lately) and the first thing out of her mouth was, “Take a picture of my feet please, Mommy.” Can do my love, can do.

Clockwise from top left…

1. I turned that lovely bunch of ingredients into my first homemade spaghetti sauce! It turned out really well!
2. I got my new Harry Potter spell Unsponges in from Nature Junkie. I just love her Unsponges!
3. I made apple turnovers with our fresh picked apples. That night I had one for dinner. And one for dessert.
4. Fall crafts took over this week!

Life In Photos #3: Holiday Edition

The last week was filled with family, friends, food, and Christmas joy! Although it’s nice to wind down afterward, I always feel like the holidays are gone too quickly.

(Click to enlarge)

1. Family photo in front of the tree.
2. Opening her first present.
3. The kitties favorite part of Christmas. . .wrapping paper!
4. Having a much needed rest with her cousin at the end of Christmas night.
5. Decorating her first Gingerbread House.
6. Some snake love at my BFF’s house for their annual Christmas Eve party.

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It’s Party Time!

My baby girl turn three today! She’s certainly not a baby anymore. . .not even really a toddler. I can’t believe how much she’s grown this year, both in her knowledge and literally her height. We’ve hit some big learning milestones this year and this was also the first year she has done an ‘extra-curricular’ activity – gymnastics class! It’s been really successful, and I’m amazed to see how much her gross motor skills have improved from day one. In January she is ready to move up to the next level of class too – she’s really excited! It’s been a big year full of so many wonderful things, and her party this past weekend was just another thing on that list.

Cookie favors for the guests.

She requested a ‘pink dinosaur’ theme this year (she loves dinosaurs!) and then amended that to ‘pink and purple dinosaur’ theme, so that’s what she got! I decided to go the route of making all (or as many as possible) of the decorations myself this year and I am SO glad I did!

The full spread. . .before the food was out.

I think the two food signs were my favorite decorations!

I made her invitations, banner, cupcake toppers, dinosaur danglies, and table signs in Photoshop and printed them out. The only things I spent money on were some plastic dinosaurs and the balloons and streamers – all in all it cost me $10.00. I’ll take that!

Every year for her party I put out a photo with her name, age, and her favorite things! It’s nice to be able to look back and see the changes as she grows. This year’s favorite things:

• Pink Blankie (her special blankie she got for Christmas when she was just one week old – it’s been with her ever since!)
• Dinosaurs
• PB&J Sandwiches
• Taking walks
• Coloring and Painting
• Berenstain Bears books
• Making ‘Line-Ups’ (she takes her toys and builds them in lines across the house – see this post for an example!)
• Littlest Pet Shop toys
• Playing with her cousins
• Gymnastics
• Sleeping over Mimi’s house
• Sunday Brunch at Grandma’s house

 
A terrifying T-Rex cousin, and her new tutu (which had to be worn immediately!).

The party was great – lots of family and friends, laughter and food! Just how a party should be. She got an army of new books, half of which are ALL dinosaur books (of which we are thrilled – both my husband and I adore reading and have already passed that on to our miss; she loves books!!) and at least 15 new puzzles!! She’s on a huge puzzle kick lately so she was a happy camper. Also, one of my favorite presents she received:

This pink dinosaur stuffy HANDMADE by my best friend!! It is so fabulous. And handmade?? How can you go wrong?! Yet another toy for her to treasure.

Three already. . .

Being swept up in party hosting, friends, family, laughter and food, I totally forgot to take a picture of her cupcakes I made. Whoops! But you can see one here. . .just picture ones with purple frosting too and there you have it.

CHOMP! True dinosaur style.

After the party that night our best friends stayed overnight (we were snowed in!) so we spent the night playing board games, laughing, and drinking cocoa. Is there a better way to spend a weekend?

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Holiday Traditions

Although my family is very close, we don’t have too many traditions. Back when we were kids we’d always have cinnamon rolls for breakfast Christmas morning with my mom after opening presents. My mom would also leave my brother and I each a stocking next to our bed when we were younger age. It was filled with activities for us on Christmas morning so we had something to do when we woke up super early, and my mom could sleep in! I really like that one, and am definitely going to incorporate that into my daughter’s life.

But my favorite holiday tradition was our countdown advent calendars.

It’s been mine since I was two! Also, please ignore the hideous wall color – it’s my last section of wall to paint white and it’s being done TOMORROW! So excited.

Isn’t it great? 100% handmade by my grandmother for my second Christmas in 1989. The fact that it’s handmade by her makes it extra special to me. Each and every little ornament and decoration for the tree – I just love the details. The second it is hanging in my house it immediately feels like Christmas to me.

Although some pieces are getting a bit scraggly (it is 25 years old after all, and has been used EVERY year since it was made!) I will never retire it. Now it’s a tradition that I carry on with my daughter! She gets so excited to add a new decoration every day, leading up to Santa.

As of right now, it’s the only tradition we really have. So I’ll need to come up with a few for her to grow up with! Do you have any holiday traditions you do with your family? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear them!

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Boston Children’s Museum

Early in the month the hubs, little miss, and myself trekked it down to Boston to visit my brother and his girlfriend, and adventure to the Boston Children’s Museum together. We’ve never been, but both my brother and his girlfriend assured us that it is fabulous.

So much fun in the construction area. Despite pink being her favorite color, she loves trucks – and dinosaurs!

They were not wrong! Our little girl loved every minute of it. She had so much fun in each room.

   

Bubbles, golf ball race tracks, blocks, and fish watching with her uncle. One happy kiddo!

I think our little one is at a great age for this place (she’ll be three in December). There were some things that were a bit over her head, but there is SO much there that she still had more than she knew what to do with! In fact, by the time we got to the Music Room she had hit over stimulation mode, leading into over tired/past nap time mode! Luckily, that was the last room we had to see, so while she didn’t fully take advantage of that particular room, it was still a fabulous trip.

Looking out at the bay after a long day at the museum.

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Family Photo Shoot

Saturday morning we had our yearly family photos done. Fall is my absolute favorite time for taking outdoor photos. The colors, the atmosphere; it’s just perfection.

We always go to Ambient Light Photography by Mary Baxter. I have known her for fifteen years now, and besides being an absolutely wonderful woman, she is so talented. If you’re local in NH, definitely book with her! I just love her portraits.

     

I know I’m her mother so I’m extremely biased, but my daughter is such a beauty. I just every inch of her little face! I can’t believe how big she is this year. Which is so cliche, and also entirely true. She’s gotten so tall, her hair so long; she’s just growing right up!

    

Now that our family photos are taken, I can dive into massive Shutterfly projects – another yearly task I do. Putting together a family ‘yearbook’, designing our Christmas card, among other gifts and new prints for the home. It’s quite a task, but I love it. I just love photographs.

 

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Photo Dump of the Week

My blogging schedule got a little off because last week, I ended up having my bottom wisdom teeth taken out. It progressed from a little paint to needing them out in just a few days, so it ended up throwing my week off! So today’s post is just some photos of things we’ve done recently that I wanted to share, but didn’t need to dedicate a whole post to. The above image is my fall centerpiece for our kitchen table. I don’t usually do centerpieces, but I felt like making one this year!

 
New Hampshire is gorgeous in the fall. I love living here!

My little girl has been really into shape lunches.

Grampa teaching my little miss to rake.

We found some really happy bread waiting for us in the bread bag!

Until next time,

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Our Annual Family Reunion

I feel like for some people, a family reunion can induce a lot of stress and eye rolling. The complete opposite is true for me – I look forward to our annual family reunion every single year. I have been going for 25 years (I was three months old for my first one and have never missed one yet!). I even wrote my college essay on this particular event and what it means to me.

Family has always been extremely prominent and important in my life, and I love that our whole family feels that way too. We have a HUGE, widespread family, but every year for the third weekend in July we all come together to celebrate how lucky we are to have one another to call family. An average size year means about 130 people show up. We camp in a giant field (all forms of camping – RV’s, pop-up campers, and good old fashioned tents) and spend the weekend making music, playing games, and in general enjoying each others company. How fabulous is that?

Loving the tent.

Bubbles in the field.

My hubs relaxing after setting up the site with my brother.

Having such a large gathering takes a lot of work and coordination. We have officers in our family (President, VP, Secretary, and Treasurer) who each have designated jobs that keep the reunion running smoothly. We have games for the kids with prizes, and we also run a raffle and 50/50 raffle to raise money for further family reunions. I’ve been the family secretary for the past two years, which means I’m in charge of keeping everyone’s addresses up to date, and helping out the President in sending out updates, etc. I love it, and hope to ‘stay in office’ for years to come!

              A very happy camper!    My brother – such a handsome fellow.

This year one of my cousins organized a special raffle. She had been in Peru volunteering at a girls orphanage and wanted to raise money to send back to them. She was raffling some of her gorgeous photographs and two beautiful handmade cups that the girls in the orphanage had made! I very much wanted one of the cups, and I got it. I literally jumped out of my chair when they called my ticket number! All in all, our family raised $270 to send to the orphanage – not too shabby if you ask me.

The beautiful photos and handmade mugs in the Peru raffle. I won the mug on the left which is the one I wanted, yay!!

My family is also incredibly musically talented. Saturday night is the designated evening for entertainment and it never disappoints. A full band gets up and plays under the tarp, and then later we all move around the big campfire and sing/play guitar acoustic style until the wee hours of the morning. My little miss fell asleep in her camp chair cozied up by the fire listening to the sounds of her cousins singing. Those are the memories I want her to have growing up.

Family band time!

My miss was just loving the music – she danced the night away, and even had to bring my brother’s girlfriend up to dance with her!

My childhood memories are bursting with different recollections of the reunion, and I can’t wait for my baby girl to be ecstatic about going too. I just love my family!

See you next time!
Kayly

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Has Anyone Seen My Head?

Because I’m pretty sure it fell off somewhere with all the running around I’m doing this week. We are going on a big family camping trip (our annual family reunion) and between prepping for that, regular errands, a new commitment I’ve made with my best bud, and taking my little girl to the beach often, this week is just nuts!!!

Very happy with her bright yellow mushroom she found at Grammy’s house!

Luckily, I’m feeling a little more organized on the home front because A: I’ve managed to keep the house in relative order this week, which is good since my brother and his girlfriend are staying with us overnight before we leave for camping. I actually don’t have much to clean up before their arrival! And B: I’ve got my lists made. I can not function without lists. I write them for everything – groceries, chores I need to do, projects I have, and especially for packing. I think it’s combination of my inability to remember things (besides loads of useless trivia) and that visually seeing things laid out in an organized fashion calms my brain. I’m definitely not a neat freak, but I do like organization (hence all our Blu-Rays in perfect alphabetical order).

My lists for our upcoming camping trip. . .I go a little overboard.

We’ve spent tons of time at the beach this week too – it’s been so hot up here in NH (90+ every day!), and I can’t think of a better place than the beach with it’s cool-but-not-TOO-cold water and lake breezes. . .ahhhhhh.

            Outta my way, things to do!   Quite happy with her shovel of sand.

This past Sunday we went down to see our favorite cousins and their gorgeous new house they just bought! So glad they moved up to NH so we can see each other more often. They were kind enough to offer up their pool for use, and we had a blast!

Loving the pool!

So the blog will be silent for at least a few days while we go camping, recover from camping, and get the house all back in order and back to everyday life. I’ve got some posts brewing – both about shopping. One on indie shopping and all the AMAZING things I’ve gotten so far from indie stores, and one on yard sales and the crazy cool things you can find for next to nothing! And of course, a post or two about our camping trip will be in the works. Enjoy your week, and stay cool!

Doodlebook

My latest crafting project is one for my daughter. I saw this on Pinterest one day, and thought it was a great idea!

(Here’s the link to original blog post on ‘All For the Boys’. http://www.allfortheboys.com/home/2013/2/18/surviving-sick-days-diy-dry-erase-book.html)

Here’s mine for my little girl!

At family gatherings I asked everybody for a photo of them to use in a special project for Ellie. They happily obliged, and I went work. I booted up Photoshop and first made all my photos black and white. Then I reduced the opacity on them to about 60%, so the black marker would really pop. Just print them out and slip them in a clear plastic sleeve. I used super low print quality to save on ink (hence the white lines across the photos) and printed on plain printer paper too. I’m thinking next time I update the photos I’ll add everyone’s name to the pages too (Mommy, Daddy, Mimi, etc.) She knows who they are, but she’s really starting to learn her letters, and that would be a great visual aid!

Eraser cloth and marker storage.

When it came time to cover the binder, I debated sewing an actual sleeve for it. . .for about 45 seconds. I really went the lazy route with this craft and decided gluing would be much less effort. So, armed with my hot glue gun, I got to work. The material is a vintage sheet I got at a yard sale for $1.00. (I have a habit of snagging vintage sheets at yard sales since I love the patterns. . .my closet is rapidly filling up). I hastily cut out a (very uneven) rectangle to cover the binder and glued it down. Then, I cut out a nice even piece to fit over the inside so it looks (halfway) pretty! Note I did not hem any edges at all – I stuck with purely hot glue for this project, and I didn’t cut the squares big enough to fake a hem using folds with glue, whoops. The pen and eraser cloth pockets were made by the same method – cut out a piece of fabric and hot glue all the edges down! Works quite efficiently!

For the cover, I ‘hemmed’ the title piece with hot glue – folding over the edges and hot gluing them down so you have a (roughly) even rectangle to write on. I found a font I liked (it’s called Pea Ellie Bellie – check out my Pinterest board here for a link to download it!) and free-handed the lettering onto the fabric with a pencil – believe it or not you can actually erase pencil from fabric. Then I traced over it with a Sharpie, and glued it to the cover! Done!

I made it for my daughter to play with, I swear. . .but my hubby always said he wanted to be a pirate!

Total cost of this project for me was $3.00 – I had to purchase the clear sleeves for the paper. My mum had a three ring binder for me to use, and I had everything else. I suppose the cost of printer ink is in there too somewhere. But it’s easy and cheap, and I like that as she get’s older we can update the photos, or even add new things in there for her to draw on! It’ll be great for car rides in another year or so – I guess whenever I trust her with a dry erase marker unsupervised!

If you make one for your kiddo feel free to send me a pic or link to it – I’d love to see it! What other crafty things have you made for your kids?