The Birthday Buddies turn 1 and 12??

Mira is 1!!!!!  I can't believe it.  Time goes by waaay too fast.   Her and Uncle Neil are birthday buddies so we celebrated together.  Grandma Julie made cute, delicious cakes for them.  Mira got her own cake so she could "dive in."  Or she could if she wasn't being so grumpy.

Food time!

Play time!

 Gift time!

 It's his party too so he can cry if he wants too.  Neil claims to be 12.  We went along with it, 'cause he's Neil.

 This was the first time Mira tried sweets.  She had a lick of frosting...and didn't like it.  She didn't even get down to the cake.  Her teeth came in with the enamel already pitted so we are extra-ridiculously-careful with them.

Grandpa Swenson sent money for us to pick out a gift for Mira.  We got her a little table to match her kitchen.  It's just their size.

She's ONE!

I made her dress out of an old tank top of mine the night before but should have taken time to tack it closed!  oops.  This is me trying to get a pic of her the morning of her birthday. As you can tell she doesn't have time to pose for pictures she is on the move!

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.)