Girly Skirts - take 2

Feeling patriotic around here:

We are never at our home for the 4th of July, so I never really do anything for it. Kristi made a girly skirt for her daughter for the 4th of July, so I decided that was something my daughters had to have too.And because I am that kind of mom, I made fabric flowers for their hair. Don't tell anyone how really easy these are to make. I've seen limited editions around. M's is glued on a clippie (which has slipped off her hair) and I's is on a headband. Love it!Doesn't everyone play on a pile of sandbags after church?Someone told me I don't talk about my son enough. He doesn't really like twirly skirts and he usually makes silly faces in pictures. But to know him, is to love him.

Tom told me I'm one skirt away from holiday socks and embroidered sweaters! Yikes! I didn't even have time to make the pillowcases and blankets!

Grateful Sunday

I am grateful for

• it didn't rain yesterday - Tom worked about 8 hours in the backyard. Yahoo!
• summer days at the pool
• tan lines on my baby
• a good book to read at night
• a family reunion to look forward to

What about you? Have a great week

It's Days Like These . . . .

I don't mind being a stay at home mom.

Who wouldn't love to spend the mornings hanging out at the pool? I feel bad for my hubby - in his office all day.

We have been to the pool every day for the past 2 weeks. We've spent the entire morning there, come home and have some lunch and put M. down for a nap.

By the time the night comes they are exhausted. We all are, but we wake up and do it again.

Happy 4th of July! My first Guest Post on Laurel's blog, hope you enjoy!

We saw this ribbon wreath at a cute little Boutique in Utah and decided we could make it a lot cheaper. All you need is a round foam wreath and then lots and lots of ribbon. You need to cut about 12 inch strips and then just make bows and knots until all the foam is covered! I have one for almost every holiday and I love it!

I made this tissue balls for my daughter's bday party and have fallen in love with them. All you need is tissue paper (about 10 sheets per color) and some wire and fishing line. Lay the tissue on top of eachother and fold accordian style (about 1 inch folds), then wire wrap the center of the tissue and fan it all out. I then string fishing line to hang from the ceiling.
Here are my apothecary jars that I bought at Costco last year and could not live without them. I fill them differently throughout the year. Candy is one of my favorite ways to bring out the holiday colors. Here I used red gumballs, blue gumballs, and sea shells for white!

Here is my adorable son sipping on a "FIRECRACKER FLOAT"
My sister saw this in a children's magazine. You buy red colored soda pop, vanilla ice cream, pop rocks candy, and I found these adorable straws at Target. The kids will truly feel like fireworks are going off in their mouths when they eat these!!

Hope you guys enjoyed some of my favorite 4th of July ideas! Have a great 4th and be safe. Thanks, Kristi

Meet Kristi

This is my BFF Kristi:

Her resume could seriously be a mile long. You name it, she does it, and she's good at it.

Kristi LOVES the holidays. She goes all out for every holiday. I'm lucky, she usually includes our family in her festivities. Or at least, she shares her ideas and I try to keep up with her. On one of our runs (she's also my running partner that I gush about), I figured out how to abuse our friendship more! She's going to post her holiday ideas on my blog. Yippee! You are in for a treat - they're fun, kid friendly, and affordable.

I can't wait!

Grateful Sunday

Happy Father's Day. I've been blessed with an amazing dad. It's been said that the best thing a father can do for his kids is to love his mother - and my dad does. He met my mom when he was 17 and they are still going strong. There are many other things that my dad did "right" - now I gotta go call him and tell him.

Toy Organization

I struggle with organizing our toys and it seems I try to find a new "system" about every year. This is probably because my kids are always changing their interests, and the Little People aren't getting played with as much as the Speed Racers, for example. A couple things are always consistent:

I have a contained toy room - it's a must for me. They play, and if we don't feel like cleaning up, we shut the door and walk away. They don't have toys in the bedrooms, we have a small basket in our living room (mostly filled with baby toys). All toys are mostly concentrated in the toy room. When we had a smaller home, I put I. and G. in the same room, just so I could use the other room for a toy room.

Toys are stored in bins - like with like. My kids are really good at sorting these toys out. The ones that are played with more often, are kept out. The others are in the closet.

Every bin is labeled - with a picture. We just sorted some toys out, and don't have pictures for some of them, but the bin does have a label. If all the toys don't fit in the bin, we kind of go through them(or at least I do in private) and make sure there aren't any ripped or broken toys taking up valuable space. They don't need much more than a bin of toys. I. used to have Barbies overflowing, but she always played with the same 3 or 4. We took out all the ones she's not a fan of and now the lid shuts.

We have had a problem though. We store the bins with the lids closed, on top of each other in the closet. We've done it that way for years. It worked, but it wasn't easy. They would get out everything, if they needed a toy on the bottom. It was hard to put the misplaced toy away - you had to take out the stack and that was just too much for my little ones. I started getting these Itso Cubes from Target. They make all these features for it - shelves, fabric bins, etc. I already had the plastic bins and didn't want to spend any more money than I had to.

I love these cubes. They fit a bin with plenty of space - we can store them in the cubes without their lids on or off, which makes clean up so much faster. Sometimes that extra step of opening the lid is enough for them to call cleaning up "hard." They fit nicely in the closet. Now, little M. can even get what toy she wants out - independence can be bliss for a mommy. They're sturdier than I expected. I figure we can use these anywhere, once my kids get too old for a toy room.

If I thought Tom would go for it, I'd love to take off the closet doors and add some curtains - something Michael Millerish would be perfect for our room. I'm pretty sure that idea wouldn't fly with Tom. I have been known to do things without his permission, though.

This is just the closet - I'll have to show you the rest of the room some other time. I've noticed that when the toy room is messy, they hate playing in it. But, if it is clean, and organized, they'll spend hours there! So worth the effort.

Girly Skirt

I've been coveting this pattern for so long, and then when I saw Lindsey sew them up, I bought the pattern without even thinking any more about it.

Isn't it cute?


The pattern fit both girls - I love that!


Aren't my models cute? You think I could have gotten matching shirts on them, but I already bribed them with TV just to put them on. I wasn't about to comb their hair!
Super twirly:

These took me about an hour each - not bad. I seem to be in a sewing mode - I wish I was on more of a home decorating kick. That's what I like to read in everybody else's blog. Sorry if these just bore you

Grateful Sunday

Really? Has a week gone by already since my last post? This was a rough week for the MacDougalls. I was in bed , sick, for at least 2 days. Then hobbling after them for the next couple. And when Momma is sick, well, things don't run very smoothly. I was able to drag myself out of bed just in time for time to go play with the Young Men in our church for the High Adventure. Like I said, rough week.
I'm grateful for:

• my neighbor, who took my kids for a whole day so I could wallow in my bed feeling sorry for myself and how sick I was. Couldn't do that with little ones around.
• Ny-quil and earplugs
• My kids love TV and on weeks like this, I'm so thankful they'll stay away from me and watch a movie.
• The sickness has FINALLY left our home. Every blanket, lovey, towel, pillowcase, etc. has been washed and everything has been sprayed down with Lysol.
• I took the kids to see UP on Friday night (all by myself). I thought it was a darling movie and liked it better than I expected - bonus.

Here's to a good week, a productive week. I gotta get this house back in order!

Laurel

Grateful Sunday

Ugh - G. was sick today and I stayed home with him. That's three of the past four weeks that we have had to keep a child home from church! Hopefully, we're done. Despite all this, I'm grateful for:

• my crock pot - while I'm cuddling my boy, it does all the work for me and leaves us with a nice tasty pork roast for dinner.


• I's play went great. All the pictures are on Tom's camera, and I'm too lazy to go upstairs and download it on that computer. Sorry.


• I won fabric from Nicole and got them yesterday! Thank you and the ideas are swimming in my head. I got to finish the bench before I start something new. Well, maybe I'll finish the bench before I start something new.


• Last night we had a date at home night. We put the kids to bed, hung out in the kitchen while we made dinner for just us together. I put some effort into it and didn't just make quesadillas. I tried to make some of Tom's favorites. We didn't get to eat until at least 8:30, but it reminded me of the days when we were dating and we would just hang out more. Loved it.


• Only 3 more days of trying to get I. out the door on time. Next year, school doesn't start until 9:10!! It's going to be interesting, but hopefully, my little dawdler will not h ave to rush out the door. I doubt it.

Have a great week.

Laurel

For the Last Day of School

School gets out June 10th - and I don't think I. is that excited. She loves her teacher, she loves friends, and she gets along a lot better with her brother when they have a little space.

I'm going to try to make summer an exciting thing to look forward to. I made this shirt for the last day of school:

I just found out that if I fuse wonder under on fabric - you can put it through a Cricut machine! My friend cut these letters out for me. I just had to iron. I'm not even going to sew the edges. I'm making a cute little ruffly skirt to match the polka dots of the letters! She might be sad about being done with school, but at least she'll look cute.

PS - After I showed it to I., she told me she was only going to wear it for one day. It wouldn't make sense for her to wear a shirt that says "here I come" after she is already there. She definitely gets that practicality from her daddy!

Imagine the Possibilities

I've been in love with Layla forever. I devour her posts, re-read her blog regularly while I analyze every detail in every picture. I look around my home and wonder how I could fit those things in my home. This is one of the pictures that stopped me in my tracks:

I'm in love with that bench. You'll see it popping up in random places around her pictures. Seriously - it's love.

So - when I found this on Craigslist, I tried to bargain for awhile. Finally, she got to come home with me.

I'm planning on painting it black - making the exact pillows that Layla has and putting it in my foyer. In Colorado, everyone takes their shoes off when they come into a home. Maybe it's because of the hardwood floors every house seems to have, maybe it's because of the snow. I don't know, it's just that way. I love it because we have brand new carpet. Anyways, won't it be nice for people to have a place to sit while they take off their shoes? I can also imagine pulling it up to our kitchen table or putting it in our Master Bathroom stacked with towels.

I'm having so much fun just thinking of the potential this has -any thoughts?