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Flourished Elegance Christmas Card

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Stationery card

Flourished Elegance Christmas Card

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Stationery card

Flourished Elegance Christmas Card

Add one photo or multiple to your Christmas cards this season.

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Ivy's half birthday

Our sweet little girl is 6 months old! How did that happen?
2 years ago we celebrated Harrison's first half birthday so we thought Ivy deserved the same. 

To keep our tradition alive, I baked another half cake. Everyone kept asking me what I did with the other half.. so here's what I did. I used this recipe and only made half. You could always make the entire recipe and but we don't need that much cake at our house! I baked it in a round cake pan and once it was baked and cooled, I cut it down the middle to make two layers. Then I stacked them and decorated.  Ivy got dolled up and we took pictures. Of course the baby doesn't get any cake (or even icing) but Harrison thought the whole thing was super fun. He sang happy birthday over and over to her. It was pretty cute! 

6 months is a pretty fun age. Ivy's projectile vomiting is slowly decreasing which is really helping with the laundry. She is super ticklish and thinks Harrison is the funniest person on Earth.
We finally kicked her out of our bed and she now sleeps in her crib. Even in the middle of the night, she won't go back to sleep in our bed. That means I have to actually wake up when she's hungry, feed her and lay her back down. I'm sure this is something most nursing moms always do but I'm lazy and always laid my babies next to me in bed and let them eat while I go back to sleep. It was a pretty sweet set-up that I'm missing.

She had her 6 month check-up and she's perfectly healthy. Even with all that throwing-up, she has managed to gain 2 lbs since December. She's up to 15 lbs (30%) and 27 1/2 inches (98%)... tall and skinny! The doctor also recommended having Ivy cry it out and sleep through the night. The idea just makes me so sad... I guess we have to do it sometime, but I'm not ready yet.

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Can't wait for our little girl to start using our fabric high chair! 

http://www.etsy.com/shop/littleoneslove?section_id=10230312

Curtain-raising

My household projects have been few and far between since Ivy was born. But today when I was cleaning the kitchen windows and blinds, I realized how much light is blocked by the curtains.

Super dark...

I discovered that the easiest way to clean blinds is by taking them all the way down, and giving them a good wash in the tub. That's why the curtains come down too. So with Ivy in the exersaucer and Harrison yelling at me to get down, I quickly moved up the brackets that hold the curtain rod.

please ignore the paint on the cabinets... but I moved the bracket about 12 inches higher

When I hung the curtains back up, it's amazing how much brighter the kitchen is... and it's not even sunny today!

Whoa! Hiatus much?

So, I kind of fell off the blogging train. Sorry about that!

Starting back to work full-time, two children, a household to run, the holidays, and finally starting to sell things on Etsy, I haven't had a ton of free time.

Here's a quick summary of the past 2 months:

We had our first Thanksgiving with Ivy Mae. I made her a festive fall outfit.  I think she liked it.  :)
I still work part time at a local hotel (its where Adam and I met!) and Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year. So for the first time in 7 years, I volunteered to work Thanksgiving. This meant that we had to cancel our plans to visit my family on Thanksgiving. Adam and the kids went to his parents house while I bar-tended and we took a quick trip to St. Louis the next day.

December FLEW by. I was working 2-3 shifts a week at the hotel on top of full-time teaching and tons of sewing projects/Christmas presents to finish. It was crazy busy. Finally Christmas came and everything was awesome. Harrison is two now and finally was able to get into the whole Santa thing. He actually is terrified of Santa... refused to sit on his lap for a photo or even be in the same room as him. We talked about Santa a lot and how he was going to bring toys on Christmas. Harrison would tell us he liked Santa but when asked if Santa could come to his house, he would always answer with a "nu-uh." (He still doesn't use the word no!)
We celebrated Christmas with my family a week early. We decided to make it an ugly sweater theme. Some of my siblings were too cool but most of us dressed terrible.

Adam and his Christmas tie :)

Chad, Jessika and Lane

Bryce, Jeanette, Reagan and Avery.... Reagan didn't want to wear her sweater because she thought it was ugly. Jeanette had to reassure her that everyone was wearing ugly sweaters. She probably thinks we are super weird!

My candy cane turtleneck was a huge hit!

My mom and Dave

the big kids were going crazy waiting for us to open presents!

Tom, Katie and Jada

On "real" Christmas, we set out cookies for Santa (Harrison screamed for those cookies all the way to bed) and he woke up extra early, 6:00 am to be exact. It took a few presents for him to get excited about opening them but he quickly got the hang of it. Now for the photo bomb!

Some videos for the family :)

New obsession

It's official. My maternity leave is over.... I'm super sad about leaving my babies all day but kind of excited to meet my students. Since Ivy was born on the first day of school, I have yet to meet a lot of my kiddos.

Anyways, this also means I have a very limited work wardrobe since I still have 15ish pounds to lose and my clothes don't fit. Here comes in our healthy eating again. We usually eat pretty well but my addiction to ice cream isn't helping out my weight loss and since I don't work out (or even want to) I need to start eating better. We already eliminated most boxed foods in our house years ago and I cook a lot of our foods from scratch. I recently discovered Larabars. They have several flavors and only 3-7 ingredients. Our whole family likes them.

Here's where my new favorite blog comes in. Katie from chocolatecoveredkatie.com makes the most delicious vegan recipes. Note: I am not a vegan or even a vegetarian. I love ice cream and bacon WAY too much for that to happen. This is why I like her... she has recipes for homemade Larabars! They are SUPER easy to make and so delicious!

Today we made the cookie dough balls and with only 4 ingredients I think we will be making them a lot. I have made several of her recipes now and they are all super delicious and HEALTHY!

cookie dough dip

cookie dough babies (Larabars)

cookie pie

coconut banana butter

I hope you too can try some healthy deserts and maybe break your bad dessert habit. Let's loose some lbs and still eat yummy food!  Anyone with me?

Twick or Tweat!

Ivy really enjoyed her first Halloween. Isn't she an adorable pea?

     This was Harrison's third Halloween and by far the most fun for him! His costume was "Sully" from Monsters, Inc. and he is terrified of it. We have been trying to get him to warm up to it for the past month or so. A few times we even got him to put it on but he still didn't like it. Luckily on Halloween, after pinning him down and forcing it on (sorry kiddo!) he was excited to go get candy. We just couldn't leave the house fast enough for him and all my pictures are of him crying because we weren't leaving yet! It does make him look a bit tougher though :)

 

     Adam was in a hurry since the Chiefs were playing in Monday night football so we only went to about 10 houses in our neighborhood. Harrison was so excited even though he didn't know what we were doing but quickly got the hang of it. He would thrust his bucket at anyone who would open the door. Sometimes he would say "tweat" but mostly it was just bucket thrusting! At one house he signed "thank you" to the guy and we could hear him as he was closing the door "that boy just signed thank you." I love it when other people know that he's not blowing kisses! :)

Here's a quick reminder of our past Halloweens with our little guy.

Our little dinosaur who was just learning how to walk - Age 1

Rubble family: Barnie, Bettie, and baby Dino- 3 weeks old :)

My adventure without shampoo

This is by far the most "crunchiest" thing I have done! I think our family and friends have gotten use to not having paper towels at our house, reusing baggies, composting, homemade everything and even cloth diapers, but no shampoo is a different story! 3 of my sisters are hair dressers!  My mom even asked me if I am going to quit shaving my armpits! Umm, no.

First off, why am I doing this?

This is a huge info page of all the reasons behind no 'poo and why it works but I will give a few highlights:

Basically going without shampoo puts your hair in its natural state. It will be healthier, prettier, shinier, and easier to manage.

Shampoo is a detergent, just like laundry detergent, dishwashing powder and the stuff you use to clean your bathroom. It cleans out the dirt in your hair, but is very harsh and also takes the natural oils that make your hair shiny, soft and strong so then you need conditioner to cover up the damage in your hair and make it manageable again.

Most shampoos contain mineral oil. A byproduct of the distillation of gasoline from crude oil, mineral oil is what's left over. It's so abundant that it costs more to dispose of it then it does to package and sell it, so it ends up everywhere. It's added to shampoos and conditioners to give hair an artificial shine caused by coating it with a thick oil. Mineral oil cannot absorb into your skin like other oils do, so it sits on top and forms a barrier preventing oils and toxins from being released as a normal part of your skin's lifecycle. This is one of the reasons you'll find that the more shampoo you use, the more often you need to use it. In the long run, coating your hair with mineral oil makes it weaker, and more prone to damage.

Shampoos also include SLS and SLFS (sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium laureth sulfate) which are skin and eye irritants that also acts as a foaming agent in soaps, shampoos, toothpastes, dishwashing liquid... and just about anything that produces a foamy lather. The Materials Safety Data Sheet cautions to avoid body contact with SLS, it also puts infants and children (whose eye are developing at a more rapid rate) at risk for improper eye development when it's absorbed through the skin and accumulates in eye tissues.

Hmmm... this is scary stuff! So I am going to quit slathering those chemicals on our bodies each day.

So how do I wash my hair now?

Well I "shampooed" with 1 TBSP of baking soda mixed with 1 cup of water. I mix this in an empty ketchup container but you can use any squeeze bottle. Squirt on scalp, scrub in, and rinse after 1 minute. Then I "condition" with 1 TBSP of vinegar mixed in 1 cup of water. Same application. Make sure you rinse really well or else you may smell like vinegar! :)

The first time I did it, I was really worried that I would never be able to comb through my hair to fix it and was very surprised when it was super easy to comb. My hair was super soft and manageable. When you first start, there is a detox period where your hair tries to figure out what to do! By day 3 I was a super grease ball. Good thing I'm still on maternity leave and can hide out in my house. I gave in and washed my hair again with the baking soda and vinegar. I am now on day 9 and have "no-pooed" 3 times. I am hoping this detox thing is almost over. My hair looks really good and although I haven't really tried to fix it (thanks to a certain little girl who throws up on me all day long) I think it would still curl and look nice. I am hoping to eventually only wash my hair once a week (I will shower and shave mom, I promise!).

Now if only I can figure out how to keep coloring my hair... henna maybe?

Worlds of Fun!

Last weekend we took our kids on their first trip to Worlds of Fun here in Kansas City.
Every year Adam's company hosts their company picnic there and its all FREE (Those are the best kind of trips)!

We arrived as the park opened and immediately went to the main carousel.  Adam stayed with Ivy and Harrison and I climbed on. He was terrified and clung to me for dear life! There was no way he was going to sit on a horse so we sat on the bench. You know about the bench? Its the part on the carousel where the grandmas sit. Yeah, that's it. Well, half way through our ride, Harrison decided he loved the carousel and wanted to ride the horse. Too late, buddy. He was so excited when he got off and told Daddy all about the horses. We ended up riding the carousel two more times that day, and Harrison rode a horse both times :)

Ivy enjoyed her "ride" in the stroller!

riding a REAL steam train complete with a conductor and a whistle!

Once he checked out those horses, Harrison was ready for a ride

Mommy and Harrison rode this ride. At two years old, he was definitely the youngest rider but had sooo much fun!