April Showers Bring May Flowers

Is it really only the 16th of May?

Longest month ever!

Or maybe just the busiest?

First let's talk Marlee. She finally has a tooth! And took three steps! Three! Nick and I were both there to witness it and I was so in awe over the monumental milestone. She also is starting to say a couple words. She hasn't really learned how to use them but 'thank you', 'uh oh', and 'duck' have all been heard from her mouth. She even said 'no' at the grocery store but she sang it beautifully. Instead of a terrible 'no', she turned it into a 'no, no, no, no, no, nooo'. Pretty sure she can make anything sound cute. 

Mother's Day was last Sunday and it was amazing! My first time as a mother and it just felt right. I was exhausted and possibly a little grouchy from lack of sleep BUT it was great. I loved all the family time and being able to celebrate with all the wonderful mothers in my life. 

I did a little crafting for the grandmothers too which looked like this:

Last post I talked a little about food planning and trying to make a budget. The budget went wonderfully and knowing exactly what I was going to make each day was a lifesaver. My husband didn't have to ask 14,000 times 'What's for dinner?' which helped with my sanity also. 

The actual cooking part didn't exactly go as planned...

Let me just say that I love to cook. Even though I love to cook, does not mean that I am necessarily good at it. Pizza - check. Pasta and meatballs - check. Chocolate chip cookies - check. Anything outside of that, I like my recipes. I also love my crockpot. Top ten invention ever. Ever!

With that being said, here are a couple examples from my dinner list that did not go quite as planned. 

Day two was chicken tetrazzini and while the recipe was a bit more involved then what I like (Have you ever tried to whisk flour and milk continuously while your 9 month old rips through the kitchen? Accident waiting to happen.), it was delicious and my family ate it up. So of course I took pictures to show everyone.

Mmmm cheesy goodness.

What this pictures doesn't show you is that I still had the top burner on. 

So while I situated Marlee in her highchair and set the table and of course took some pictures, my dinner was burning. The whole left side of the casserole was black. 

Black. Black. Black. 

Fml. 

On Friday, we had steak carnitas. It was fantastic. Absolutely recommend and will be trying them again. Unfortunately, my crockpot is apparently super-duper and while I thought they would be ready to go after the baseball game, my meat was a little over cooked. Ok a lot overcooked. Isaac wanted to know why we were having beef jerky for dinner. 

He literally said this people. 

Still ate it. 

And my final fail for the week can only be explained via picture.

That would be my crockpot. After the overcooked steak carnitas incident, I need to do a little extra soaking. Well the next day, I did some scrubbing and it slipped out of my hands. 

Dead. 

RIP Crockpot. 

Ok so I know I am not winning MasterChef anytime soon but my family is fed. Grilled cheese will always be a staple of a our family meals. 

Besides the Mother's Day crafting, I also made a shirt for Marlee to wear. Have you ever done iron on letters? That shit is hard. We had to re-iron half way through the day!

I was going to see if anyone actually reads the shirt but this proved to be ineffective - by both of my families. Lead to some pretty funny responses though :)

Yes, Marlee will be a big sister in January. 

Marlee and Me will soon become Marlee and Us. 

Tomorrow is October!

I love fall. 

And October.

And Halloween.

Love. Love. Love.

After having a Pumpkin Pie Latte with Anna Banana, Marlee and I headed to the store for some crafting supplies. I try to do a craft every year with Isaac and he loves to look back at all the old crafts from previous years. I already knew what I wanted to do but figured I would look around and see if I needed any other fall inspired decorations. 

Latte? Yes please!

I started with paper mache pumpkins because I wanted to do a trial run. I haven't done paper mache... well ever. And with Isaac coming over this weekend, I knew I should probably figure it out or he would loose interest really quick. My 'pumpkin' is still drying and I completed it five hours ago... 

 

We will see how that turns out...

I also did a festive little arrangement for the table.

Fancy!

 Marlee finally woke up from her nap and with the help of Nick, I figured I would do a craft involving her cute little hands and feet. In my mind, this was going to be cute and easy and quick. Well I will let the pictures tell how things really were...

Started with her feet...

Wait a second.. how did that get there?!?

 And now the hands... after we became more laundry friendly.

 And I don't even know how we ended up here...

This craft lead right to the bathtub!

I was really happy how it turned out though! I need ribbon to tie them together and hang it but the hard part is definitely behind us.

 

Now on to the fall baking and pumpkin picking and fall beer drinking!

Craft Time

The combination of my obsession with Pinterest and the upcoming arrival of Marlee has brought out the crafty size of me, which to be honest, I did not know even existed before a couple years ago. I am the least artsy person I know but Pinterest makes everything look easy. My latest project has literally taken me 4 months. I originally bought 2 yards of fabric and only completed two rows of flowers. So then I procrastinated for a couple months, finally bought more fabric, and was short AGAIN. I procrastinated some more and realized Marlee was going to arrive before her lamp was complete. I went to Joann's for one last fabric purchase and can finally say it is finished! And I am quite happy with the way it turned out.

Fabric Flower Lamp Shade

The original Pin of this from the wonderful blog of Simply Ciani. Her lamp shade is definitely Shabby Chic, as she states, while mine is more on the shabby side BUT I was very proud of my lamp and received a ton of complements on it back when it looked like this:

This lamp shade was really easy to do, once you got the hang of wrapping the fabric. If you are a perfectionist, this is not the craft for you. My 'flowers' are all different in shape and size and style - not on purpose - but because they just turned out that way. If you are in a hurry, this is not the craft for you either. Even without all the delays in the fabric, this took many hours of my time. It does look great in Marlee's room though and I always feel proud when I finish a project.

I started with a plain lamp shade and base which I bought at Lowe's for 15$ - on sale of course.

The fabric I went with was a costume chiffon shear because I liked the color and it was easy to wrap around my finger. I was also able to pull it apart easy and it made kind of a rough edge which I liked. I purchased a total of 8 yards of fabric (4 light pink and 4 platinum grey).

I cut the fabric into 1 inch - 1 1/2 inch pieces and then tore them into strips.

Pile of strips of fabric

I wrapped each strip of fabric around my finger till a 'flower' was formed.

Tada!

 I used my handy dandy hot glue gun to glue the end of the fabric together and then placed a nice size glob of glue on the lamp shade.

Then pressed the flower in place and held for a second until the glue was dry.

One flower at a time and it was finally coming together!

You can tell that my flowers continued to get bigger by the bottom of my lamp shade. I was tired of wrapping and gluing so bigger flowers = more coverage!

Wrap. Wrap. Wrap. Glue. Glue. Glue.

(All those little strings are from the fabric. I just cut them all off at the end.)

And finally, I was finished!

 Proudly on display on her dresser.

I have a feeling this will probably be the last craft I will be completing before Marlee Jo arrives so at least I finished with a bang. Two more weeks till maternity leave!