May Flowers...

Laeney and I saw the most adorable flower clips 

at Once Upon a Child and after buying one, 

I realized I needed to craft my own...

So Laeney and I had a little mother/daughter craft time

at home last weekend and made a bunch of flower power

hair clips for her and Finney. 

The back side of the clip...

 my lovely model...

 The flower collection...

I also had a few feathers, so I made myself a feather hair clip as well...

who knew a hot glue gun, some creativity,

 and craft time with your preschooler could be so fun!

my little valentines.

Happy Valentines Day from 

Laeney and Fiona!

cookies for 2...

My dear mom came over and helped me 

bake dozens of "2" cookies for Fiona's 2nd Birthday. 

We then wrapped them up in bags with little "2" tags that my 

talented and creative mom made...

My big 2 year old with her very own bag of "2" cookies!

hanukkah cookies

We celebrate hanukkah every year with dear friends of ours

and it is not only a yearly tradition that we look forward to, 

but a truly special night that we get to experience and learn

about another culture and religion.

So for our Hanukkah Celebration this year, 

I made these cookies....not only super cool, but delicious and super kid friendly!

Laeney and Michelle lighting the Menorah

Super kid.

This year for Halloween,  Laeney decided to be a Super Hero, 

which is a dress-up outfit we already had 

and Finn wore a Clown costume that my very 

talented and creative mother made in 1972. 

Boo..not in the Halloween way, but Boo in the Boo-hiss way.

 It didn't quite feel like Halloween, 

if I didn't have any costumes to make. 

I was determined to make something...so I came up with 

a few accessories that every Super Hero needs...

lighting bolts for your chucks and gold arm bands!

 I made these by cutting 4 lighting bolts out of gold foam sticker paper

and placing 2 back to back. Then hole punched the holes! 

They ended up being really sturdy....

1 outdoor Halloween event, 2 Halloween parties, 

trick or treating for a couple hours and they are still intact!

 Gold Arm bands to fight off any danger...found this fabric as 

a remanent in South Dakota for $2. Who would give up this gem?

Super Hero in Action!

Happy Halloween!!!

Laeney's Laboratory

We celebrated Laeney's 4th birthday party with a science theme...

I created lab badges for the kids to write their names on

and screen-printed their names on their lab aprons.

Their take home gift was candy in test tubes!

And we had over 5 experiments that the 

Mad Scientist Daddy came up with!

The kids all had a great time..and the parents did too!

hanging art.

It took me a few years to decide what

to put on the big, open wall in Laeney's room. 

The idea came to me one night, after she wanted me

 to hang up another one of her masterpieces, and we

had run out of Fridge space, wall space, canvas space...space. 

So, I bought two hooks from Anthropologie, 

and some nice string and clothes pins from Jo Ann's, 

and created her very own "art-line" to display

some of her favorites pieces of work!

Inspired by my girls.

I love watching my kids create.

I look forward to every picture they paint, scribble, color and cut. 

Maybe it is the artist in me that truly appreciates their creativity, 

or maybe I am just a really proud mom.

Needless to say, I have a really hard time throwing their artwork away. 

Sure, i have totally recycled the papers that are half colored, 

the totally scribbled nonsense, but I sure have kept a lot of "really good ones" too. 

My stack of their "good ones" was getting ridiculous. 

So, I decided to create a collage on a huge canvas of some of my girl's best pieces. 

Finn checking out her work. 

And so it hangs on the big wall down to their playroom, 

where we all admire their beautiful artwork and talk 

about all the things we see in the collage. 

I even put a "double rainbow" on there for Adam since he can't 

stop singing that song! ha!