Video from Santa

A friend shared this REALLY cute idea with us. You can send your kids a
PERSONALIZED EMAIL VIDEO MESSAGE FROM SANTA!!
Here is a link for Kyra's, so you can take a look. Kyra just about died when she saw it! She was soooo excited. And its FREE!!!

Just like Mommy!

Kyra recently really started getting into baby dolls, doing everything a mommy does, which is perfect timing. So her big present from us this year is a baby doll set with a highchair, swing etc. I wanted to make her a little diaper bag to go along with it. I went ahead and tried making a "placemat tote" bag or a scripture tote. Obviously it is made out of a single placemat. I found this one at Walmart, for $2. There are tutorials all over online for scripture tote bag. I just added a pocket, and the flower to mine. **Please don't look to closely at my carpet..I'm hoping my vacumn is repaired this week!

Then this is what is inside...

Kyra loves using the size 2 diapers that we have left over from Kyle, for her baby dolls, but obviously they are huge, and it gets expensive pretty quickly. The toy store sells baby doll size disposable diapers, but again..expensive. So I gave these cloth baby diapers a whirl. Here is the tutorial for them. They were so easy, and can be used over and over since they have velcro on the inside.

I'm glad I saved this container, because it fits the diapers perfectly, and then fits in the bag. I then recovered one of those green wipes containers that come in the box of diapers from Costco, and made some reusable wipies. Last of all I made a changing pad. I bought some of the .99 cent/yd thin vinyl from Walmart. Considering you only need like a foot or so, its a decent price...but it was a pain in the kaboose to work with. I still don't love it, but I'm not willing to pick out any more seams!
I think/hope she will love it!

Is this where that phase came from?

Deer caught in the headlights???

Family Pictures!!

We just recently had some family pictures taken. I love how they turned out!! (although they make my babies look so much older!)

Sweet boy...

When we first told the kiddos that they were going to have a new baby brother or sister, this was Kyles reaction...in every picture. For the longest time he denied any knowledge of the subject and when forced to discuss the situation he would only go far as to claim there was an ant eater or a simlar animal in mommy's belly.

We have come a long way...

The other day we were painting the baby's room and Kyle walked in with his 3 or 4 FAVORITE cars of all time, and said "Here are cars for baby brothers room, so he be happy." Left them on the floor and walked out. We love our sweet boy.

When I was sick with morning sickness or the flu and was throwing up, Kyle would sit right next to me and rub my back (while I was throwing up!) and say "It's okay Mommy. Feel better soon. It's okay mommy."
We really love our sweet boy.

On black friday we went to a store, and I had to run to the restroom. So my dad stayed with Kyle, while I ran to the bathroom. I could hear him clear across the entire store yelling "I love you Mommy". We really really love our sweet boy.

Then this evening, he tackled Kyra (don't focus on this part of the story) and sat on top of her. Then he said "Kia I love you. When you're miles and miles from your nice warm bed, you got a friend in me." Got up and walked away.
We really, really, really love our sweet boy.

Despite the fact that he has recently discovered that we instantly take him out of sacrament meeting if he yells the word "BOOB" loud enough (that was a fun stake conference), we REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY love our sweet boy.

Tool apron - quick and inexpensive Christmas present.

Last night I whipped up a little christmas present for Kyle...a tool apron! It was really a quick and inexpensive project. I braved JoAnns on Black Friday and scored some fabric, pretty cheap. I bought a 1/4 of a yard of the pocket fabric and only a 1/3 of the orange, so it probably only cost about a $1.00 to make. Also, time wise it was great. From start to finish I would say you could make it in an hour or so. It took me quite a bit more than that because I wasn't really paying attention and sewed the pocket to the wrong spot twice. So here is the finished product.
Here is Kyra modeling it for me. Here is a fantastic tutorial for One Hip Mama, that I used for this project.

One more project!

I made a quick little skirt for Kyra, for $3! Its very similar to a "bandana skirt", except a bandana skirt is more for a 18 month old or so (since its made out of just one bandana), so I used fabric fat quarters instead, so that I could make it a little longer. Fabric fat quarters were on sale for $1 at Joanns this week. I basically got two fat quarters of the same pattern, and one for the contrasting bottom. You basically sew strips of the contrasting fabric to your skirt fabric, then sew your two skirt fabric fat quarters into a tube. Then add elastic at the top, and hem the bottom. It really only an hour or less. I also appliqued some flowers on the bottom.

I had a couple people ask how to applique (the flowers on the bottom of the skirt and also the baby onesies in the previous post). There is this magic paper that they sell at Joanns called Wonder Under or Steam to Seam II. The cool thing about this stuff is that the fusible webbing (the stuff that makes it stick) is inbetween two pieces of paper. So you start by taking the paper off one side of the fusible webbing and sticking it to you fabric, and iron over the top for about 10 seconds. Then your cut out your pattern from the fabric. At this point I just use by cricut machine, and it does all the work for me. Here is a pretty good tutorial on how to cut out your pattern without using a cricut machine. After you cut out your pattern you stick it to your onesie or skirt or whatever, and iron over the top for 10 seconds and it is there permenately! It really super easy and quick!

The sewing bug!

The crafty/sewing bug bit me!!! I think I'm over its effect for a while, but this is what came out of it! My sister just had her third baby. So I made all three of the kiddos matching shirts. Once I figured out what I was doing, they were pretty easy. I'm now addicted to this craft project! I got the original idea from here (chasingcheerios.blogspot.com). I think I might try and make Kyle and the new baby some matching train shirts.

Here is a close up of Calivn's shirt.


I also whipped up some cloth diaper burp cloths. I love these because they are really quick to personalize, and they are the most absorbant burp cloths ever.

In case you were thinking of making some, don't try to line up the fabric with the already made seams on the cloth diapers. The cloth diapers don't have straight seams!

I also made a car cozy for my nephew and for Kyle. The idea is similar to a crayon roll. Instuctions to make this, or to buy it can be found here. The kiddos can put their cars in their individual garages, and then pull them out to drive on the road. It has been a great toy for Kyle to play with on Sunday during church.

Then it wraps up into a nice little roll that fits nicely in the diaper bag.

I switched gears a little bit, because Kyra really wanted to look spooky for her preschool party...of course I didn't really start to think about it until about 8 PM the night before. We were out shopping so I grabbed some fabric at Walmart and made this little hair clips for her piggies.

Then, for the last project, I wanted to spookify her shirt. Neither walmart nor target had any cute little girl halloween shirts. So I grabbed one of the pairs of halloween socks in the $1 section at target and made them into arm warmers that she wore with her black shirt! She loved them!

Now the effects of the bug bite have subsided a little, and I can go back to panicking about getting ready for the baby!

Halloween 2009!

Halloween was SOOO much fun this year. Both kids loved it. They loved picking out their costumes and getting ready, decorating, singing halloween songs (Thanks Jo-Anne for teaching them some:)..EVERYTHING about it!! For our outside decorations I hung up a spider egg sac, but after some crazy wind I think it may of lost some of its "spookyness", since yesterday Kyra told me, as I was trying to fix some of the webs "Don't worry mom, its still looks cute."

I was so happy that Halloween was on a Saturday this year so that Karl could still do all of the activities with us, including Trick or Treating. This morning, the kiddos and I let Karl sleep in, while we made him a surprise Halloween breakfast of "Spooky Cinnamon Rolls". Basically they are regular cinnamon rolls with orange and purple frosting. They were a big hit! I LOVE food coloring!

After breakfast we carved our pumpkins. The kiddos weren't so amused by the idea of cleaning out the pumpkin guts. Kyra did at least stick her hands in a couple times...Kyle refused, something about a snake being inside (but that's a different story). We did a Minnie Mouse and Goofy pumpkin.

After breakfast and pumpkins we headed to the zoo. The weather was perfect, and apparently no one else goes to the zoo Halloween morning! So the kids pretty much had free run, which was great! For costumes this year Kyle wanted to be Lightening McQueen, and Kyra surprised us by wanting to being a witch!

This evening we went to a friends house for dinner before heading out trick or treating. It was SOOO good, with smoked ribs, and all the trimmings. Karl was one happy camper!! Here is Kyle with his best buddy, Eli! These two are so funny together!

Here is Kyra and Bailee, the inseprable duo!Here is a picture of all the kiddos! It was such a fun night! The kiddos did great trick or treating, other than Kyle trying to walk into people's houses so he could watch TV, trying to negotiate which piece of candy they give him, or if they took to long giving him the candy, taking matters into his own hands...otherwise the kiddos were fantastic! Happy Halloween!