The reason I've been MIA: a felt playhouse...

68,762 hours later I am (mostly) finished!!!!!!! So my friend Amy H. sent me a few links of things on her "to do" list.  I don't know if I should love her or hate her for it. ;) One of them was a link to this.  I thought it was SO cute, I loved it.  Initially I scoffed at the idea of actually taking on such a huge project with my minimal skills.  I talked about it for days and then finally cuteness won out.  I took some of Jill's ideas and also ideas from playhouses found on etsy.  I am so incredibly slow at crafting. I've been working on it bit by bit over the last month.  I can't work on it with the little ones around.  Too many pins!  I lose them and (painfully) find them later as I'm crawling around.  Do people really use thimbles?  So you don't stab yourself?  I just assumed that's what they're for. You can laugh at me at will. I need me one of those.  Maybe ten.   The playhouse has some interactive parts instead of soley decorative pieces. The mailbox opens but I haven't yet made letters for it.  The flowers in the front planter are removable and have bendy stems.  The apples, tomatoes, lettuce and squash can be picked.(They have velcro.)  The carrots and onions can be "unburied" and the British Robin can be on the nest or birdhouse. I think it's about 42 inches wide, 52 long and 46 tall, give or take.  I wanted it to be big enough for both girls to play in.  The etsy playhouses are made to fit over cardtables which would be really convenient but kinda little for an almost 6 year old.  Mira is getting a kitchen set for her birthday that will go in it. There's probably a big problem with it though.  I'm fairly certain it's not going to hold up to Mira grabbing on to it to steady her walking so I might have to hide it for a while.  We shall see, we shall see. =)  I'm so excited to be doneish.  I kinda want to put some things on the inside walls with stitch witchery like a fireplace and endtable and such but I want to be done more at this point!  I do like working with felt but with all the effort it took I kinda wish I had just applied felt decorations to a really sturdy material background.
I have been in a super crafty mood.  I think it was a good time for a change from my video game junkie mood. ;)

Blog hopping...

Miss Danica in her new shirt-dress.

So I was blog hopping a couple days ago, admiring the amazing creative skills of Ms. Amy W.(really she's amazing!) and ended up on THIS site. It "claimed" to be easy and only take 2-3 hours so I thought I'd give it a try.  Ever so often I feel some desire to be crafty but my skills don't always ah...match up...to the projects I find.  Well 297 hours later I was done! Yay!!!  
She recommended using an adult men's XL dress shirt for the project but it was for 2-3 year olds.  We lucked out and found a "Tall" shirt and luckily Danica liked it.  She insisted on trying it on in the store though I kept telling her I was going to alter it before it would be her dress.  =) 

She kept trying to get me to get shirts in this fabric.... or one similar...it looked super bright and Christmas-y.  It must have had green on it too.

It's not what I would have guessed she wanted!

I wonder if I can find any other simple projects to try.  Danica wants a butterfly on her dress so I might try my hand at applique.   I think I like it as-is though. Or I'm afraid to mess it up!  It shan't be difficult to convince her to play with a shirt instead.

10 months and sunny!

So Mira turned 10 months today.  Ten months?!  She's so big! and yet...so little =)
Let's see if I can think of some things she's up to.  She says mama and dada a lot. And "hi." She says "ba" sometimes for bye and is learning to wave. She's hit and miss on if she's going to cooperate though.  She eats pureed fruits, steamed broccoli and cauliflower, Rice chex, cheerios, cheese and milk...that's basically it.  So picky!  She gives mama wet, slobbery kisses but is still not a very cuddly baby. I keep hoping she's going to decide to be a cuddler =(  She loves to walk around holding onto our fingers.  She's getting steadier and I think if we worked with her more she would be walking real soon.  Do we really want that?!  She LOVES her big sis and follows her around everywhere.  She'll wait at sissy's door for her to come out if Danica shuts herself in her room.  She goes from cupboard to cupboard pulling stuff out in the kitchen.  Her "snugglies" are slips so we must look funny carting them around wherever we go but she sure loves them!  She already throws little tantrums.  Oh dear.  If we cart her away from something she wants(like the contents of the fridge) she throws herself face down on the floor and sobs for a little bit.  Luckily she gets over it fast but really? Already?!  We sure are enjoying her!!!
I tortured my poor little children with "photoshoots."  Here are some pics from that...

So funny story behind this BIG, HONKIN' thing... My dear sweet husband wanted a telescope. I don't blame him. I thought it sounded fun...but as he was searching for what he wanted on-line I asked him what kind he wanted and he told me it was an 8 inch "fill in the word that turned out to be a very important word!!!"  I pictured in my mind something similar to the one we had growin up but on a little larger scale.  It was maybe a couple feet long with its legs and a couple inches in diameter.  Well he picks me up from my parents house where I had been while he was driving to Albany to get it and tells me it's a little bigger than he was thinking.  Well a little bigger than he was thinking turned out to be about 29,000 times bigger than what I was thinking!!! Haha.  Meet our new piece of furniture.  Big Bertha.

A couple days ago I was in the kitchen(as I so often am since I tend to eat nonstop) and heard Mira shrieking with joy in the other room.  She had been sleeping so I rushed to see what in the world she had gotten into that she was so exited about....  She discovered that big sis had left the door cracked open when showering and was sticking her arm in the water. 

Okay, so I tend to get excited really easy.  I bought a rug for the kitchen floor and love it.  It was a cheap find at Ross and it fits wonderfully. We wanted to lay something down to prevent babes from slipping since she's constantly in the kitchen wearing socks.  The girls just played and played on it.  Mira kept getting distracted by the feel of it as she moved around and was inspecting it closely.  Danica was excitied to be able to lay on the kitchen floor? 

When getting Danica ready for school the other morning I saw that the back of her hair was wonderfully curly so I just curled a few pieces in the front half on both sides and she was good to go.  Today I actually got it in pigtails! Wahaha.  And she thought she could escape me doing her hair.  I will learn; I will learn.  (I think she wanted it cut so she didn't have to have anything done to it.)

Springtime

Isn't it lovely?! Well, selectively... We had a couple gorgeous days this past week. We got to enjoy them a little bit.  I finished up the fill-in work that I was doing so my house finally got cleaned this weekend.   I fall asleep right after work. I swear I had 7? loads of clean laundry to put away.  I hate laundry.  Luckily there is often a magic laundry fairy that finishes my laundry when I start it over at my parent's house.  This time my dad came and helped me put it away!  He also cleaned my kitchen for me this week...and babysat my kiddos.... and took me to a movie... I was one spoiled girl this week.  He had the week off.  It was nice!!  We saw Avatar.  I really liked it.  I kept expecting the girl character to break out into the "Colors of the Wind" song at any moment though.  Did anyone else just think of Pocahontas??

My pictures are always out of order, but here are ones from today of the girls in their Easter dresses from Nana Mykie.  I tried to get one of them standing so you could see it better but one of the girls was so wiggly the pics kept turning out blurry.   

I am a frequenter of Value Village...a frequent frequenter!...This week I found a set of play tents and tunnels.  The girls played with them inside for a couple days and then yesterday Gpa came over and they took it all outside.  I love finding things that both of them can play with together. It was a good find!

Danica had a double header yesterday.  It was sunny, dry and very pleasant.  (Not really warm...but pleasant)  She did great.  NO TEARS!!!

I love being able to do things outside.  I know it'll probably take a couple of months for there to be enough breaks in the rain for the ground to actually dry out but I'm looking forward to it. 

I realized I hardly have any pictures of Mira sleeping...mainly because she wakes up sooooo easily but sometimes I really, really enjoy when the sweet little girls are ASLEEP! ;)

 

Easter, Wester

Happy Easter! It sure is fun having little kids at Easter. Well, I mean it always is but holidays sure are loads more fun. ;) Our plans kinda got disrupted since Mira, Rob and I are sickies. On Saturday Danica and I dyed eggs. She did better at it than I. I had seen an egg dying kit in my parents garage so I decided to use that. It didn't work; apparently in the 15 years since it was mixed up something went amiss. We opted for using food coloring and vinegar instead. I tried twice to make purple with no such luck. The first one resembled a grenade. The second just looked like a wadded up piece of trash. I did learn when I rinsed the dark greenish one off when I was peeling it that it turns into a pretty pinkish purple. Go figure. Danica made pretty turquoise, green and yellow ones with glitter. We then made pink cupcakes with yellow frosting. They were okay. Better than I thought strawberry cake would taste. I stuffed Danica's eggs and hid them before going to bed. She came in a couple times in the morning to see if she could do the egg hunt yet but I kept telling her I was SLEEPING! Well when I did get up she magically was able to find most of her eggs right away. I wonder what she was doing while I slept? =) It was fun. We played the hot-cold game to find the last couple. Mira got a bear that had a recorded message from the rest of us. She did like playing with the eggs after her sister emptied them. These girls' grandparents sure spoil them! Well, Rob and I got spoiled too with yummy food delivered to our door since we were too germy to hang out.

Nana Mykie sent an "activity" for Danica to do. She loves activities, of all sorts. I sometimes label something as an activity just so she'll be excited about doing it...like folding laundry ;)
They also got matching Easter dresses. I hope to get a pic of them in them next Sunday. They are oh so cute!
Danica working on her eggs.

One of the few eggs she hadn't found yet...

With Easter baskets from Grandma Julie...

Mira sat there shredding all the tissue wrapping from Grandma Cindy's present.

I bet it could provide hours of entertainment.

Thanks to all who made Easter special for us!!

Jamboree...

So the first season Danica did soccer she loved it right away and would be working on "skills" while most of the other little kids were running around. The second season she was more interested in picking daisies than playing. So this time around I asked her if she wanted to play...yes... but then informed her that she had to actually play soccer, not just play in the grass....still yes. Oh man. I sure had to remind her of this today! We get to the jamboree and she is crying and crying that she doesn't want to play, it's no fun, she doesn't like it, she just wants to watch, and on and on. I was literally pushing her towards the field to try and get her to go out there. I finally threatened to take away her easter stuff if she didn't just try. Bingo. She stopped whining and went out there. We came home with a happy little camper.

Those little kids are so cute. I love how they are just a swarm of kicking that moves around the field together.
I'm not sure if the game was going on at the moment but she is totally trained to pose for pictures.

Totally awful picture, I know, but this is Danica scoring a goal. I was not looking through the camera... and I was cheering ;)

Mira behaved pretty well through the games. It was quite chilly. I was cold! I need to bring hot cocoa next time.

The absentminded toothfairy...

Oh dear. I'm an awful mother. I forgot two nights in a row to dress up in my fairy garb and tip toe into Danica's room to retrieve the prized tooth. She reminded me the first night...then hinted that I forgot again after the second night. Btw in my house Santa is not real, the Easter bunny is not real but the tooth fairy? She's the real deal all right. Anyhow. So I get home this evening and see that Danica has opened up the notepad application on my computer and left me this note. There was a lot of spaces(atleast 30 lines) in between the lines but I'll shrink it down for you.

"i
mom
mom you dint get my too
mom
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mm
m
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
momy
mom you ceep e
mom you
mom you ceep for geti
tooth i love you"

Well the tooth fairy left the message up until she completed her job. ;) Mission accomplished.