DIY Sandals

Andy decided that he needed a new pair of sandals for our upcoming vacation to Oregon. He was looking around the internet and saw that a pair of flip flops was around $30. He kept searching, certain he could find something a little cheaper. He located a great pair of simple leather sandals. The cost...$160! So Andy decided to create his own. He went to the leather store and after spending $150 on leather & leather working supplies, he now has his very own custom made leather flip flops. He is so proud! :)

More Art on the Walls

This first one is another Pinterest inspired creation, this time for June's room. After seeing the rainbow one I made for Roxy & Cora's room, June just HAD to have one of her own. She helped pick out the crayons & watched me melt them this time.



These are pictures of the wall vinyls that I had made for Lincoln's room. I believe that Lincoln's room is almost complete. All I really would like to do still is hang Lincoln's friends & family quilt on the wall behind his door.

Pinterest

So after months (years?) of hearing about Pinterest, I finally decided to join. I found so many cool DIY decorating ideas. There are millions of other things as well, but I was looking for inexpensive decorating ideas. Here are some of the decorating ideas that I have copied/adapted for our own spaces. These first ones were made with paint chip samples picked up for free from Home Depot.


An "I Love You" heart gradient in blues & grays for Lincoln's room.



A couple of flowers made in shades of aqua, green & yellow for June's room. I made sure to make the center of each flower a color named "June Vision". It is a very light yellow green color that June was thrilled to hear was named after her. ;)


An owl in pink, orange, yellow & purple for Roxy & Cora's room.


This is a canvas that I painted for Roxy & Cora's room.


These are the prints that I purchased from society6.com for June's room. Andy built the frames for the pictures, and we added a fabric frame behind the pictures to give the room some color. I really like the way it turned out!


This is a melted crayon canvas for Roxy & Cora's room. I think it is so pretty.

Now that we are finally well settled into our new house, it has been a lot of fun planning & decorating the kids' big kid rooms.

More to come!!

Not Sure Why?

I am not sure why June decided to wash the chair with her water sponge toy, but never put a stop to a good thing...right?

Preschool Graduation

Well, it is official! Lincoln has graduated preschool & is now off to Kindergarten. How can it have already been two years since he started school? Time flies!

Videos of the graduation ceremony. :D


Here are some pictures of his graduation certificate and various arts & crafts that he has brought home since Christmas.

8 Month Comparison Pic

Cora at 8 months

Here are Cora's 8 month pics. She was certain that the bear was going to get her. She could not figure out how to get away from it since she was trapped on the couch with him. She ended up finally lunging for me from the edge of the couch. Not sure why she decided to be afraid of him, totally cute though.

Happy Eight Months!

Cora is eight months old today! It is hard to believe how fast this first year is going for us. We are busy busy, and Miss Cora is also busy busy. She is now a very fast crawler, pulls up on e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g all of the time, and is even experimenting with standing up on her own without holding on to anything. I am certain she is going to be walking before we know it.

She gibber-gabbers quite a bit, a lot of dadada, bababa, mamama, but with no real meaning yet. She communicates mostly by whining at me because she wants me to pick her up. She plays pretty well with her siblings and by herself, but it is typically short lived & ends abruptly as soon as she sees me again. She follows me around all over the house, and is pretty good at locating me even when I leave her sight. She will also follow the cat & June around the house.

She will mimic clapping when she sees us do it, but won't do it on command yet. We really don't spend a lot of time working with her on things like this though. I feel like she is pretty smart & could pick up on it quickly however.

She continues to love feeding herself & even eating off of the spoon. She is a snacker through & through however, and will eat off and on all day and all night long. She still wakes up anywhere from 1-3 times a night, sleeping through the night on rare occasions. Which can then be quite painful the next day with breastfeeding complications.

She got her first tooth (front bottom right) on 4/24. She is also working on her front bottom left, and both front top teeth. So some of her intermittent sleep issues may be due to teething pains. Also last week she got pretty sick with a cold and then promptly followed that up with her first flu. Thanks to her germy family. So far we have lucked out with her in that she is (only) having diarrhea & fever, same with June & Roxy. Lincoln & Andy were not so lucky & spent 1 day puking, followed then by a continuation of the rest of the lovely flu symptoms for several more days.