2 kids in my house - 5 years apart

No, not both mine! Ha! My niece Gianna stayed over the other night. Gianna and Allison are 5 years and 5 days apart. (Sort of strange because my sister and I are 2 years 5 days apart.) This was the first time she's stayed over since I was like 7 months pregnant with Allison. She used to stay over a few times a week when I worked with my family. Then it was down to once every few weeks on a weekend when I had a "real" job. I wanted to wait until 1) Allison was better with sleeping at night and 2) Gianna was better with the little bits of jealousy and tempter tantrums she seemed to have around Allsion. I think it went really well! It was a little rough at some points, but not bad at all. She was a great helper too.

Gianna fed Allison her entire dinner. Shaun just stood by for back up while I did some cleaning around the kitchen and getting Gianna's room ready.

The aftermath of Gianna feeding Allison all of her carrots. Allison has this look of "I don't know if I want to do that again Mommy."

I started to wipe off Allison's face and Gianna stopped me. "I got it Auntie." Then she wiped Allison down and Allison tried to eat the face wiping cloth, like always. (see the tongue?)

Then, I thought (naively), "Let's just give them both a bath at the same time. It will be fun." Humph, it was interesting. Allison was very confused. She just started sitting in the big tub a few days ago. She's still learning. Having Gianna in the tub with her confused her a lot I think. She was all squiggly and kept looking at us.

A moment after this picture was taken, Allison turned around with her catlike reflexes and bellyflopped face first into the water. She was a little bit shocked. I immediately scooped her up out of the water. (of course!) She almost looked like wasn't breathing, like she was still holding her breath. She didn't cry or anything. Just had a sad look of shock on her face. I felt so bad. =( Shaun said, "Well, we won't do that again, huh?" Then I finished with Gianna and Shaun gave Allison her scrub down like normal.

Overall it went really well. We ran some errands the next day and Gianna was awesome. I think we can do this again!

Gianna's Polka Dots

You may remember me saying the other day Gianna wanted a purse so I whipped one out for her...(here) and she mentioned she wanted a closey thing (aka snap closure inside). At first she had picked 4 fabrics for her purse when I started to make it. So I narrowed it down to just the two and then I told her I'd make her another bag sometime and send it to her like pacakage.

So I surprised her with a different bag with a closey thing. Shot showing the closey thing - magnetic snap with a pink button on the outside for decoration.

She liked it and the polka dot note I shoved in there too. She's so funny. I will post a picture of her with the bag as soon as I get a good one. I got a cell phone picture of her in with the purse in her bikini...I will update this post later with a picture! :-)

Gianna wants a purse...Gianna gets a purse

This past weekend (Saturday night) my sister and Gianna came over for dinner and stayed over night. Gianna started toting around the purse I was about to package up from Lani's giveaway and claimed it as her own. Crap. I had to get out of this one... Then Gianna sees my new cabinet nice and filled with fabric and starts picking out lots of fabrics. I told her lets just pick 2....so then she says she wants purple, and pink, and this, and that... I remembered that I had just recently got a HUGE amount of some purple and mixed colors Robert Kaufman fabric. I showed her that and she said perfect, but I want some pink too. So there we go.
She models it for us here...Here is Gianna's bag...I cut off about an inch on either side to slim it down a bit from my normal Tie Top bag. I skipped a step and she noticed. Woops. She wants a "closey thing" on the next bag she said.
Maybe I should make a few more of these and throw them in my shop? :-) Thanks for reading.

Some fun things I've done lately

I have become pretty bad about updating my blog. Some people I know are able to put up a post a day with pictures. I need to get better at that. I have some pictures to post because I know a few people like to see what I've been up to. :-)

I made Angela a boppy cover. I found a couple patterns and tutorials online, but you may know I do not do well with patterns...so I pretty much made my own. I think it looks pretty cute. She had her little boy, Caden, last Thursday, and she loves navy. So its navy blue with little white polka dots. Very cute. I can't wait to make my own. ;-)

Gianna stayed over a couple weekends ago and we made pancakes for breakfast. We normally make something more fun like cupcakes but we didn't quite have that kind of time this time, so funcakes it is. We used cookie cutters to make fun shapes after we made the pancackes. This was Gianna's breakfast.

My favorite part of making these panackes were the leftovers. I put mine in a bowl and mashed it up with some syrup...yummmy! Also here are some of the other shapes we ate.


I will post again soon with an update about my awesome Craigslist find and about something I sent to a pregnant friend. (I can't post until she gets it!!)

Finally redid Gianna's site

I finally updated Gianna's website now that I've started to learn Dreamweaver. I plan to add more pictures and pages, but for now its a start. I think its much cuter than it was before.
Here is a screenshot of the cute new site....more to come soon!

This looks yummy...

I cannot wait to try it out this recipe. I think I might make it instead of regular apple pie for thanks giving. I guess its probably similar to other apple crumble recipes...but oh well. I will try it sooner or later.

(I got the picture and recipe from Daily Candy.)

Gianna's bed is DONE!

Gianna's bed is DONE!

Well, mostly done...still have some paint touch ups to do, but need to do those a day she isn't home so it can dry, and have to install the curtains to hide everything.
She didn't sleep in her big girl bed the first night, but she has been sleeping in it ever since. We installed a different kind of bed rail though, so she felt more safe up so high. But now she's got all that room under her bed to store all her junk!
This bed cost less than $300 for me to make. (Including paint and screws and bolts and things.) We didn't follow a pattern or anything really, just sort of figured out how to make it...not too bad I think. Here are a couple pictures of the bed in her room...

Gianna likes her wagon...

So much that she fell asleep in it while taking a walk with her mommy. Too funny.

The Loft Bed is DONE!

Here is a picture of the bed pretty much done. I realized later that I should've made the rails higher/taller that go around, but I will add another row later this month and make new supports that go perpendicular to the rows...

Now the next project is getting it INTO THE ROOM where it belongs! The bed will have to come apart. :-( But I am going to be prepared with paint and silicone caulking and wood filler to fix any mistakes along the way. Lets home everything goes to plan next weekend!

The BED project..

My sister saw a bed at some furniture store for her daughter Gianna...it was somewher earound $1300, plus, plus....kind of pricey for a little girls bed. So I saw it and figured that I could build it. And build it I did. Its almost done.
Here is a picture of what it looks like after we got the legs and side things on.









It is going to have these things on the top of the posts painted to match.









Here is the bed mostly primed as of yesterday. I have to sand it and then paint it with some good study oil or latex paint.









It is ALMOST done! Woohoo. It is STURDY too. My husband got in to test it out and he is a bit above 200lbs, and it barely budged. More updates to come...

Pink Dress

I wasn't planning on making Gianna's flower girl dress....
I was going to have my seamstress make it, but she's very busy, and she suggested I make it since she knew I was crafty...so I said, "Sure, why not?!"
Here is Gianna trying on a veil in the shop...she had fun with those little veils.











This is Gianna trying on the pink dress I made for her to match my bridesmaids dresses.











I'm going to make another one...this is my "first attempt". My second will be much better! :-)

Update! I ended up using this dress, because it actually came out pretty nice. I hand stitched some of my wedding dress lace onto the white front of the dress and it looked so pretty. :-) Here is a picture of the dress and picture of me and Gianna on my wedding day.