I'm Makin' Waffles!

My house has mostly empty closets and bare walls. Everything left to pack fits into five categories:
1. Not fun to pack (translate: won't easily fit into boxes).
2. Categorized as 'essential' items until their status expires in two days and 80% of the 'essentials' will become fair game 'non-essentials'.
3. Kitchen--pantry, cupboards, small appliances--and laundry room. I can't believe all the random things that collect in the laundry room.
4. Kid's rooms/some toys.
5. Furniture that waiting for strong, willing men on Saturday.

Today I plan to tackle the kids rooms and the pantry. I know, sounds fun, right? So when I woke up to fussing baby at 6:30 am, I brought baby out to kitchen and told him, "Baby, we're starting our day off on a good note--with Belgian waffles!" (For the full effect, imagine that in a voice that sounds like Donkey from Shrek.)

Then my heart sank as I realized that the waffle maker probably fit into the 'non-essential' category and had already been moved to our new house. Not wanting to see the truth, I peeked with squinted eyes into the cupboard....and it was still there! Jeremy must know my heart :)

Baby wanted held the whole time I made them, but no matter. He soon enjoyed the first one in his highchair and even shared a few bites with the begging dog. The blueberries that were on sale this week fit deliciously into each little waffle square on mine, topped off with light whipped cream. Mmmm, it just lifts the spirits.


By the way, I'm not sure where my camera is...hope to resolve that before moving day....The photo is from Flickr by HeatherMG.

A Little about My "To Do List" and My "Wish List"

We are moving Saturday--finally! I'm excited to move on to the next stage of life in a new place, but I'll really miss my good neighbors and friends here. Thank goodness for FB and blogs to help stay in touch!

The past two weeks have been very busy and so I'm feeling a little unprepared for the moving process, but thanks to Jeremy, we got a plan last night (for my sake--I love to write lists.) Now I just need to start crossing things off the "To Do List".

Just a couple notes on the last week, I did a GNO where I taught a few neighbors how to do fondant cakes. It was a lot of fun and their cakes turned out so great! I spent a lot of time last week making six batches of fondant and getting the cakes and all my tools gathered, but I didn't want them to pay me for it. They were so sweet, though, and bought me this wonderful "Thank You" gift that brought tears to my eyes! It's some fun tools for working with fondant with I have had on my "Wish List"--a non-stick rolling pin, rolling pin rings, flower cut-outs, and bake even strips for cakes.
I didn't take pictures from the fondant class, but I have pictures of the cakes I made for a baby shower on Saturday. It was for my good friend from Jr. High/High School/College. She had her baby a couple weeks early, so her shower was postponed a couple of months.

I made two cakes, one for the baby girl and one for her mommy. I haven't done much piping on fondant, so I wanted to try that out, but I found out it's much harder to get the perfect consistency for piping on fondant because it doesn't stick as easily as it does to buttercream frosting. After two batches of frosting and over an hour trying to get it right, I finally got something that would work, but I need to perfect the process for sure!

Wish me a product week-- I have a couple days worth of things I need to get done before I start packing up the house!

Newborn Sleep Gown

I loved dressing my newborn babies in sleep gowns--so much easier for middle-of-the-night diaper changes and so comfy for them to curl their little skinny legs up inside. When I saw this pattern on This Mama Makes Stuff, my sister and I had to try it out for her baby. Hers turned out so cute that I made some for some for my friends who are expecting this year. I love how they are made from T-shirts--well worn T-shirts just up the 'comfy factor'! This one was a man's XL and I actually got two out of it. Too bad I don't know anyone having twin boys!
My cousin and aunt helped me sew these four in about 45 min. per gown! I think I'm a little addicted to making these, though, because I still have two gowns left to gift but already want to get more T-shirts to sew up some more!

Grandma Wilson

On Tuesday my Grandma passed away. She was 93 years old. I'll miss her.

I did a video slideshow for the family and to show at the viewing. It's been tons of hours this week (and I can tell my kids have been watching a little too much tv/movies) but it's so worth it in the end. Here are some of my favorite pictures of her. My mom and her mom (my grandma) This is my grandpa (he passed away in 1999) and grandma holding me and my sisters. Can you tell which one I am? I'm on the left.My grandma and her younger sister and brother-in-law on vacationHer only wedding picture. This was her first husband. He died when she was pregnant with my mom.My cute grandparents in the 1960's--my favorite picture.

$30

That's the amount we're going to save each month by switching from Luvs to Hanes! I'm so proud of my little girl for achieving this huge milestone! We've been working up to it for a few months and doing lots of 'practicing', but this week it just clicked--and she's been diaper free since Monday. I never wanted to push her into it, and I'm so glad because she's doing so well and actually hasn't had ANY accidents (knock on wood). We even went on a couple of errands and to the Aquarium this week without accidents!

Bradley has also has been so fun to watch these past couple of weeks. He's walking so well and hardly ever crawls anymore. I love watching him gain confidence in himself. I also love his new little walk--shoulders back, arms up, elbows out, tiny steps. So cute.

He's also pointing at a lot of things that he wants, and that's been a fun insight into his personality. For lunch yesterday, I was feeding him peas and macaroni and cheese for lunch and started with the peas first. He took a bite and then dramatically started pointing at the bowl with the Mac N Cheese. I complied, and he was a good boy and ate his peas afterwards--he just wanted the good stuff first!

Fun with Fondant

Here are some more pictures of Brad's birthday cake. Fondant is so much fun and I just had to post more pictures of the decorating of the cakes!
These are the cakes before fondant. I made the large cake a chocolate with Oreo filling. The small was vanilla with cream cheese filling. I still haven't perfected my filling/filling process, though, as you can see when the stripes are added to the cake. Any tips out there? I love seeing the cakes after the fondant is on, but just hanging off it. It reminds me of the scene in Sleeping Beauty where the fairies make Rose her 16th birthday cake. I always breathe a sigh of relief after that first layer is done successfully--no tears, rips, bubbles. Then comes the final touches!

If you want to learn how to do fondant, my neighbor is graciously hosting a get-together at her house (since we're in the middle of a pre-move mess right now). It will probably be some time next week. It'll be free of course and I'll share my yummy fondant recipe with you, show you how to make it, as well as the limited information I know about how to decorate with it :) If you want more details, e-mail or leave a comment and I'll get you the invite information!

One Year Ago

One year ago we were finally able to bring Brad home from the hospital. Those were two very long, extremely difficult weeks after his birth while he was in the NICU. It surprises me how much emotion I still feel about that time and what a trial it really was. However, I did learn and grow a lot from the experience, and we are so blessed to have a happy, healthy boy now.

We love you, Brad!

Brad's First

As I said, I'm behind on blog posts, but here are some pictures from Brad's Birthday.

This is a good morning for a one year old! We had his party that weekend, and I wanted to make it special by doing a fun cake but not necessarily getting too much into a theme, as I feel there will be plenty of time for pirate and dump truck themed birthdays in the years to come. I've been wanting to try this star idea with fondant for a while, and I think it turned out fun. Here is Brad's "smash cake". Fondant isn't very easy to dig into, so it's made with cream cheese frosting--Yum! He seems to like it, too! Check out his cute bib. My sister, Holli, made three of those for him. They are the cutest fabrics and she covered them in vinyl, too! We had some yummy food: shredded beef sandwiches (Merilynn baked the buns from scratch), deviled eggs, pineapple, fries and sweet potato fries (a hit with the kids and adults), and a spinach salad. This is the only thing I got a picture of, though. I made chocolate covered cinnamon bears for the party favors.

Thanks everyone involved for the fun gifts, helping with the delicious dinner, and making a first birthday celebration so special!

House Update--some "After" Pictures!

I'm behind on my blog posts, but here's one on the house. It's SO fun to see it all coming together and being close to finished! Jeremy's dad has been working on it a ton and we're so grateful because he does such good work and has given so much time to helping us finish it. I need to think of a nice 'thank you' for him...

The upstairs rooms have all their new moldings done and mostly caulked/sanded and they got ~PaInTeD~ last week!! Yay! Here are some pictures:

Master Bedroom Before
Master Bedroom "During": Our bedroom/bath still has the most work left to do, but it will probably be painted by the end of this week!

Family Room Before
Family Room After: All done! This just needed paint after the wallpaper was removed.

Brad's Room Before
Brad's Room After (It still needs flooring, though)

Miranda's Room Before
Miranda's Room After: All done! Just need to put the window coverings and closet doors back on! Wow!

Homemade Christmas 09: Last One!

To wrap up my posts on Christmas gifts, here's one for the boys! I made these blocks for Bradley, mostly, but also gave some as gifts. This was Brad's only Christmas present from Mom & Dad, so I wanted to give him lots and lots to stack!

I think I did too many, though. It took me hours and hours to make these, plus hours and hours of help from my sweet aunt and cousin. My sister, mom, and dad also donated some time and skills for this gift. Don't get me wrong--I LOVE how they turned out. It's just that now it seems like I spend forever picking them up all over the house every day. No really, that's a good thing. Both Miranda and Brad love to play with them. Brad's favorite thing to do is knock 'em down and Miranda favorite is to look at all the pictures and letters. Here is a picture of her making a "train" as she calls it. I hope these will be a favorite toy for a lot of years.


Here's some details if you want to make some:

You can buy blocks already cut and sanded, but they are expensive. (A local wood place I checked into would have cost $1/block, and craft stores didn't really even carry very many or any at all.)

Home Depot has a 2"x2"x8' furring strip for $2.32. I bought three of these, so yea--I made about 150 blocks! I should have bought a higher quality wood, though. (Jeremy suggest poplar wood, and I think it wouldn't have cost much more, either.) My dad cut these into blocks using his miter saw. Some of the blocks splintered a bit and some even ended up not square shaped, so I couldn't use a few of them--so definitely look into a harder wood like poplar.

Next, I sanded them using my mom's belt sander. There is no way I would have sanded that many blocks without a power tool, but if you just buy one piece of wood, maybe 50 blocks wouldn't be too bad to sand by hand...

After that, they were ready to finish! At this point, I still hadn't made up my mind completely about how I wanted them to look, and I played around with some paint, but decided I loved the look of Mod Podged pictures the most. I wanted to combine the beautiful look of this from Martha and still have letters on them like these from Homemade by Jill. So what I came up with is to cut out pictures from magazines for four of the sides and then letters/numbers on two opposing sides. I found a variety pack of alphabet stickers at Walmart for under $5 that made the letters/numbers easy and much neater than hand painting them.

So next I cut out billions of 2x2 squares. Okay, technically, I cut out 592 little squares. And they weren't exactly 2x2. Not to bore with details, just make sure, like my Dad did, when you cut them, that they will be sqare. (You have to account for the blade cutting away some of the wood). So what I did is traced a square onto cardstock that I used as my pattern for cutting out pictures, so that I knew it would exactly fit the blocks.

Next I Mod Podged all those little squares onto the blocks. Then I put the stickers on. Finally, I layed them all out in my basement (with windows open) and sprayed a sealer on them, turning them a few times to make sure all sides got a good coat of sealant. And finally, done! And well worth all the effort, I'd say.

Homemade Christmas 09: Part Eight

Another thing Jeremy and I did for Christmas gifts this year was cook some meals for people in our family. I bought a bunch of containers that each hold 3 cups, perfect for a quick lunch or dinner for one. All the containers were the same size and shape, so they stacked really well and we just gave them to everyone frozen already so they could pull them out when they were ready. I also made labels for each lid with the food on it and their first name, in case they took it to work.

We wanted a variety of foods, so we made Corn Chowder, Chili Verde Burritos, and Pasta with Marinara Sauce. Each person got about 8 containers, so only about a week or two of meals, but I think each was appreciative. A couple of them really loved it, so we might do this again next year. It's nice to get something homemade, but still really usable.

We made a gingerbread house in January because

we didn't have time to fit it in during December

but still I wanted the Halloween candy purged from the cupboards

and I needed something fun to look at after the Christmas tree came down. (Which we just took down last weekend..)

Homemade Christmas 09: Part Six

Note: The following posts numbered six through three are all actually just part of the felt play food I made for Miranda and some of her cousins/friends. I was just too overwhelmed to put it all into one long post, so I broke it down.

This is what started it all for me--the making of felt food. I never had a desire to do it--it seems so tedious, and actually kind of stupid I'll admit. BUT I saw this free pattern for a felt sandwich and chips on SnazzleCraft. How I ever came across her post/tutorial will remain a blogging mystery. Never the less, thank you for your inspiration, SnazzleCraft!!!

I loved the sandwich idea--something for the kid to DO, rather than just take itchy bites of felt (you know at least Miranda really bites this stuff, despite my trying to her to pretend.)

Let's get started with a basic for the tots--PB&J! Start by spreading the peanut butter...
then the grape jelly...
and press the bread on tight! Yum! I can taste it now... But if you're in the mood for something, say more healthy, how about a turkey sandwich with everything on it--swiss and cheddar cheese, tomato, lettuce--and when I said 'everything', Miranda always likes to include the peanut butter and jelly too!
P.S. The chips turned out so cute, too--definitely a favorite with the kids. I added an inner lining of plastic (from an empty bag of wipes) so the bag really makes crinkling noises as they pull their chips out. But I don't have good pictures of it. Check out SnazzleCraft's posts if you want to see how adorable they are.

P.S.S. You may notice, if you happen to read all the felt food posts, that there aren't a lot of healthy food choices. I want to say that I did try to make some fruit--I even bought a pattern from an Etsy Seller--(whom I won't name,) but hated how they turned out. I did an apple and a banana and they both looked ridiculous, so I called it quits on doing healthy food. It is just for play, after all, right?

Homemade Christmas 09: Part Five

Who wants cake? That's actually what Miranda told Santa she wanted for Christmas when we visited him--and no prompting from me on that! I was excited for her to see them. This is a pattern I purchased from Etsy, by Little Crickets. (I want to make some of her pancakes/breakfast food next!) Loved the cherry pie. And the chocolate cake. And the birthday cake--okay, all of them!

I did deviate away from the pattern on the birthday cake a little--adding beads for sprinkles instead of stitching. And on the chocolate cake I changed the colors because I liked the dark chocolate look better, and changed the top from a raspberry to a chocolate shaving.