Crafty in a Snappy

I’ve been in a crafty mood lately.  Sometimes I’m in a cooking mood, other times a reading mood, and sometimes I’m even in a cleaning mood.  It’s been nice to be in a crafty mood because I feel like I can make things for our house or for Carly that usually turn out cuter and cheaper than buying them.   Last week and this week I’ve done two new crafty things.  Both were way easy and cheap.

Yesterday I found a new contraption called the Mini Bowdabra.  It was only $5 so I thought I’d buy it and try it out.  The instructions stunk so I went online searching for info on how to use it.  When I finally figured it out I was amazed why I hadn’t made my own bows for Carly before!!!  It’s so easy and it makes the form for the bow really well.  You have to shape the bow afterwards a little bit but overall it’s really easy to use. 

So, I searched through my stash of craft items and found some cute ribbon and flowers to use and then I also found some ribbon at Michaels that was on clearance!  Next I bought some metal hair clippies and to my delight those were 50% off too.  I figured out that to make one bow it costs me about  20 cents!  In about 2 hours yesterday I made all of these bows. 

Of course on the ones without bows I didn’t use the Bowabdra.  I still have a lot of cute ribbon with different designs that I’m excited to make more bows with. 

The other crafty thing that I completed was a mirror for Carly’s room.  I found this at Goodwill:

I thought that it had some potential and I had a vision of what I could do with it.  First I painted it maroon and planned to hang it in our living room.  The result was something that I hadn’t pictured so I tried Plan B and this is what it looks like:

I ended up painting it hot pink. It looks kind of orange in the pictures but it matches the bow holder.  I really like how it turned out.

9 month stats

I was really interested to see Carly stats at her check up last week. Her 12 month clothes already are getting too short for her! It's been hard finding clothes that fit her well because she's pretty tall but she doesn't ever fill out her clothes. Ever since she's been crawling I've been able to tell that she's lost a little bit of weight. She still has chubby cheeks and thighs though!

Height: 29" (93%)

Weight: 18 lb 14 oz (50%)

Head: 43.5 cm (40%)

A weekend in Des Moines

On Friday morning we drove to Des Moines to visit Casey’s sister, Tearsa, and her family.  Casey’s other sister, Mindy, and two of her kids flew out from Utah to visit too.  Tearsa’s husband just started medical school at Des Moines University.  On Friday night we got to the medical school’s family day where we toured all the school’s labs.  It was way cool to tour the anatomy lab and simulation lab.  The simulation lab had a lot of different hospital rooms with dummies in them.  The rooms looked exactly like real hospital rooms.  In one of the rooms there was a pregnant dummy that could give birth every 15 minutes.  The top of her belly was open so you could look in and see the baby with all the anatomically correct parts.  It was awesome!  The dummy’s chest would rise and fall like she was breathing.  It freaked me out a little because it all looked so real!

On Saturday we went to the Iowa State Fair.  We had a lot of fun there. It was very similar to the Wisconsin State Fair.  There was tons of food, interesting people, rides, and animals.  Carly was a trooper and loved people watching.  She also didn’t mind all the attention she got from fair-goers

It was so nice to take a long weekend and play with family.  Carly had so much fun playing with her cousins.  Mindy’s kids Landon and Brittyn were so cute with Carly, and they were so nice to play with her and give Casey and me a break.  Carly loves them so much!  Carly also loved playing with Tearsa’s son, Cole. Carly kept chasing (by crawling) Cole which would scare him most of the time.  She just couldn’t get enough of him!  When we left I was sad thinking that Carly doesn’t get to see her cousins more often.  We had so much fun.  Big thanks to Ben and Tearsa for letting us visit them!  We had tons of fun.  Here are a lot of pictures!

The group at DMU medical school.

We loved the food part of the tour!

Cole and Ben sitting in one of Ben’s classrooms.

 

Carly loved playing with Aunt Mindy and Cole.

This pumpkin was a little over 2 tons!

Our favorite gourds:

 

Tearsa is having a baby girl in 5 weeks!

This “vegetable” won first place in the most-unusual category.

The largest pig I have ever seen.

Carly loved this fluffy bunny.  I wish I could have held it.

9 months!

  

Carly is 9 months old today!  Now she’s spent longer in the world than inside of me!  This last month Carly has grown up so much.  She is all over the place. 

- loves to play peek-a-boo

-loves her silky taggie blankie

-says momma and dadda all the time

-crawls everywhere

-pulls herself up onto anything she can!

-awesome at taking naps and sleeping through the night

-she loves to get her way… I can already tell she’s going to be a sassy girl!

We love her so much.  She makes Casey and me so incredibly happy.  We’re so lucky to have such a sweet, energetic, funny, beautiful, well-behaved little girl! We’re taking her to the doctor tomorrow for her well check-up so I’ll post her stats then!

Success!

I’m always on the lookout for cute crafty things to make.  For the last couple of weeks I’ve been on a search for a cute, large, old picture frame to make this.  I was having problems finding something that I liked. During one of my searches I found this pink bodice jewelry holder thingy. Voila!  I bought some ribbon and tied one in each column and now I have a bow holder! I love how the ribbon looks like a skirt.  I think it’s a ton cuter than the one I was going to make plus I don’t need to hang it on the wall.  I love it!

Our weekend

This weekend we finally ventured out to the beautiful Doctors Park for a Stake Youth Activity.  We had a lot of fun relaxing in the perfect weather.  After such fun days outside in the beautiful scenery I sometimes forget how frigidly cold it can get here!  Wisconsin Summers are beautiful – too bad we only get three months of warm weather!

 

 

 

Utah love

Carly and I had a blast in Utah. We spent 10 days with my family in Provo and we also got to see Casey's family in Centerville for a day. I was so sad that Casey couldn't come with us. He's the Scoutmaster in our ward and therefore had to go to scout camp for a week (pics to come). I didn't want to be home alone for an entire week so I decided that it would be the perfect time for Carly and me to take a trip. Carly did awesome on both flights. We flew on Delta's new non-stop flight to Salt Lake. It was sooooo nice. The hardest part of the flight was getting someone to help carry Carly's stroller and carseat down the stairs to get directly onto the tarmac (there wasn't an elevator). It was fun to have The Cheneys from our ward on our same flight-they even sat on the row in front of us.

I loved being able to hang out with my family. I hit up all my favorite food and shopping spots. I even got a relaxing pedicure. I got so spoiled having my family watch Carly while I got to go do some things. My parents and brother went camping for a couple of days and Carly and I got to stay at my sister Brooke's house. Brooke lives just up the street from Seven Peaks so we spent an afternoon swimming there. I hadn't been to Seven Peaks since I worked there 5 years ago! Carly loved crawling on the "beach" at Adventure Bay and playing in the kiddie pool. After uploading all the pictures from the trip I realized that I don't have ANY pictures of me and I only got one picture while we were in Centerville. Casey is usually the photographer when we go on trips so I sometimes forget to take pictures! Here are some pictures:

Brick Oven Lovin'

Sadie (10 months) and Carly after Seven Peaks. Carly was exhausted!

So cute!

My brother Jacob is a lifeguard at Riverside Country Club so we went swimming there too.

My sister Kristen came too.

One of the things that I miss most about Utah is having picnics in the canyon during the Summer. Whenever I'm there in the Summer we always go on a picnic. Here's some of the family minus Kari, Aaron and some kids who were playing in the dirt.

My sister Brooke and Sadie

Kristen's adorable twins Thomas and Taylor (5 months old)

Now we know why Carly loves grandpa so much!

Hmm wonder why she had diarrhea after...

Casey's brother Tyson and Tyson's wife Jami. Carly really liked Tyson, I think she felt comfortable because Tyson looks a lot like Casey.

Hanging out with cousins.

First time swinging at the park

She loved it!

My mom and my sister Brooke.Carly loves Utah as much as I do!

Thanks everyone for such a fun and relaxing trip. We miss you already!