Happy Birthday Emma Boo

Dear Emma,

I love you and cannot believe you are 2 years old.  You are such a smart, funny, lovable girl and the world is truly a better place with you in it.  Thank you for your strong spirit and your kind heart.  I love you as much as all the stars in the sky my little muffin!

 Love,

Mama

Eric Carle goodie bags

It is extremely possible that I have gone entirely overboard with Emma's party.  I think I'm using it as a mode of distraction from doing all the things I really should be doing.  That said, Ada and I have been doing most of the work together and it's been fun- especially making some Eric Carle inspired prints to use as Emma's birthday banner.

The first real completed thing is the goodie bags.  There will be a few of Emma's friends from school coming so we wanted to make a collection of treats for them to bring home.  The theme isn't any specific book, but a few of the books we like all jammed into one party.

I got TONS of ideas on Pinterest and made a whole Eric Carle Birthday board.  The bag is a simple white lunch bag with a note and image from the last page of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? with an image of Emma mixed in.  I wrote each child's name on with crayon.

This little girl just turned 1 and is the namesake of Emma's baby doll- "baby Julia" although she pronounces it Gulia.

The treats inside were ideas gathered from Pinterest and Google Searches.  Here's what each kid gets:

Make your own necklace kit.  Very Hungry Caterpillar inspired craft for kids to do at home.  Made the labels and stapled them onto some little jewelry bags. Got this idea from Living Montessori Now.

 Brown Bears and Gold Fish.  This was an easy thing to throw together with chocolate teddy grahams and gold fish crackers.  Idea to use these items came from Koehler Family Blog.  The packaging inspiration came from delicateCONSTRUCTION.

 

I wanted to put in a lollipop mostly because Emma loves them, and I just made a hasty label with a graphic from The Hungry Caterpillar.  We put in a couple coloring pages from Eric Carle's website and some crayons.

 The most time consuming was the lacing cards.  I photocopied some letter cards (one for each child- the first letter of their name) and mod podged them onto some cardstock, added a few more layers of mod podge, punched holes and added the cord.  I like how they came out, hope the kids like them!  I made them double sided, but I got the idea from ourfeminist{play}school.

Ada and I worked well together as a team getting them all loaded up.  She helped roll the coloring pages and tie knots.  We talked a bit about assembly lines and how we could work the best - Ada decided I should hold open the bags and she would put things in one item at a time.  Worked beautifully!

Curtain for the closet

The closet in Ada's & Emma's bedroom was a sliding door closet and the previous owners had taken it off and stored it.  Good thing because I detest those type of doors- you can never see anything inside.  The problem is it always looks like a clutter filled eyesore and since their room might be my favorite in the house I had wanted to do something to cover it up.

I decided a curtain would do the trick but thought it might be more fun if they painted it themselves.  I was lucky enough to get some nice thick cotton that was 54" wide (exactly what I needed so I didn't have to hem the edges) on sale in a color that I liked.  I chose 3 colors of fabric paint that I thought would work in their room and that was about if for my input.  

I washed the fabric and hemmed the top and bottom and taped it to the kitchen floor.

Then we painted!

 I had the girls take off their clothes since it is fabric paint.  They just got right in the shower after painting.

 I let it dry here for about 3 hours.  Timed with naps and we just played downstairs after naps.

 Ada signed her work of art :)

 Detail of Ada's "building".

 Emma's work.

And here's what it looked like/ looks like in place.

And this is the rest of their room.  It just feels peaceful in there to me.

And the girls like it too!

There is a time and a place for plastic

Near the beginning of the school year we had been dealing with some pretty major temper tantrums.  I had seen the "calm down jar" idea on Pinterest but when Tony and I saw one at the girl's school I went right home and made one.  MISTAKE!

I have no pictures of this because in the heat of a major blow out our sweet little 3 and a half year old chucked it so hard on the floor that it shattered.  You need to understand that that doesn't mean that glass went everywhere.  It means that glass, and water, and glitter, and glue went everywhere.  In their bedroom.  It was kind of a disaster.  The good that came of it is that she got what it was for us to be super mad and we didn't even give her a consequence for an hour or two (mainly because we needed to think of something that would be serious to her but not be too painful for us to enforce).  We decided on no bike, no tv/movies, and early bedtime (7:00, with Emma) for a week.  That made an impression.  

Today we finally got around to making a new one.  Mostly because I finally had an empty peanut butter jar that was made of plastic and I would feel comfortable letting them have.  The fact is I gave these little girls a healthy dose of my Sicilian blood and sometimes it comes out in their temper.  

Fact is I believe in the principle of letting children have real breakable materials.  They use real plates and glasses to eat and drink but I think giving a small child a glass jar for the purpose of shaking it up and watching the glitter swirl and settle so they can settle down when they're upset is a recipe for glitter glue all over your universe.  But other kids might be different.  And at school it apparently isn't an issue.  

We made 3 jars but my favorite is the lighter colored one.  I think I added too much color to the others but they're all fun to play with.  I had looked at a few tutorials but in the end I just put some clear glue in the jar added a tube of glitter glue, some food coloring, a few jewels, and warm water- all by eye, no measuring.  Hot glue gun on the rim before adding the cover then purple duct tape over the whole thing.

Calm down jar dance party shakedown.

 Stacking the jars.

 This is the best one of the actual jar and Em is pretty cute too!

A little project

I have been looking at an ugly spot in our living room since we moved in.  The previous owners had moved the outlet up on the wall to accomodate a tv.  Nice idea except we didn't need it and it's difficult to hide and also use the outlet.

We had an awesome floor lamp that had a tall pretty paper shade but the switch broke so we threw it out before the last move.  I couldn't just chuck the paper thinking I could use it for something and here it is.  This is a deep wooden frame I found at savers for $2.  Then I just cut and hot glued the paper over it.

I was planning on using little brass hinges so it could swing out for access to the outlet then remembered those little 3M velcro things and stuck those on.  I still don't love it, but it's better for sure.

Cooking with Poppa

I am the first to admit that I tend to over think things, but one of the things I like most about our family is we don't necessarily have "traditional" gender role duties around the house- we both do laundry, clean, cook, use power tools, mow the lawn, etc.  For sure with Tony's hours these days I do most of the house chores, but we really try to help each other out and show the girls that our family works best when we all pitch in, help each other, and work as a team.

One of the "non-traditional" things that Tony likes to do is cook.  In fact, he impressed me on more than one occasion with his cooking skills while we were dating.  

The girls love to cook and bake with us.  This is Ada helping with prepping and tasting the beef for some chili.

When Emma woke up he worked with both of the girls to make some cornbread to go with it.  YUM!

In case you were wondering... it was super yummy!

Vote for what you believe in

I look at this blog as a virtual diary for our lives.  Obviously mostly it's about the girls since they are the driving force in my life these days but there is some more personal stuff in here too.  While I don't want to be too political I feel like I need to write a post about the election as it's a major part of what I've been thinking about lately.  But I'll keep it short.  And I'll throw in a couple pictures of the girls.

I have never been a very political person until this year.  There is a proposal to change the Minnesota State constitution on the ballot this year and I am thrilled that I get to cast my vote on it.  I am decidedly in the "Vote No" camp and even put up a lawn sign and bumper sticker on my car- something I've never done before.  The amendent proposes to change the constitution to read that marriage is between "one man and one woman".   While I have tried to understand the "yes" side to this argument I keep coming back to the fact that my marriage means love, I was able to marry the person I love and if anyone had tried to tell me that I couldn't I would have been devastated on many levels.  

I think it's important to know that even if this amendment does not pass, gay marriage will still not be legal in MN.  This is simply a constitutional amendment that defines marriage.  Personally I would be proud to be a part of defeating this amendment and hopefully move forward to making marriage in MN legal for all.

Furthermore I have a difficult time stomaching the fact that between both sides of this argument over $15 million have been raised.  Imagine if we could have donated that to the Hurricane relief instead of fighting about words that are designed to hurt people.   

When I taught high school I would always ask the students having their 18th birthday if they were registering to vote.  I would even print off the forms for them if they needed them because ultimately I believe in this country, in democracy, and I believe we are all entitled to our opinion and obligated to vote.