Friday, November 25, 2011

Slightly late Insta- Friday

Here is the last week or so as it appears in my camera roll:

'More is more' approach to accessories
A sweet brotherly moment that was totally not posed, aww!
Movember keeps getting creepier
See an empty planter in a parking lot and insist on posing as a statue.
Little sis gets in the act
And one more cool pose.

Thats it. I love how my bad pictures look so great thanks to instagram. And I love having pictures of the everyday things that go on in my life.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Pinspiration- Ear Warmer


My poor sewing machine has been so neglected since I had kids. It spends most of its time in the original box encased in the original styrofoam, living under the stairs. Sad, I know. But this month I pulled it out and gave it some love.
I resisted the urge to photoshop out my forehead lines and under eye circles

What could have possibly prompted this, you ask? The threat of snow. "It's supposed to snow tomorrow." said the hubby on Sunday. Immediately, I remembered a cute ear warmer I had seen on pinterest, with a link to a tutorial.
I already had a plain grey fleece scarf that I had sent to the sewing box to be used as scraps. So I was all set.
Throw in a button I had lying around that belonged to one of L's outfits she has long since grown out of, and were done. Oh, except the flowers. They were free hand cut and hand sewn slightly off to the side using the scarf scraps. It was a very easy project. I didn't have to re-do anything, not one step. This in itself is a major victory for me!
back, I made 2 button holes in case it stretches

Yay for pinterest inspiration (pinspiration)! And it really did keep me warm in the snow/slush on Monday.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Art Display Solutions


The other day I showed you how I found a place for the many art projects that L makes. But the boys have twice as much. They often entertain themselves by drawing or cutting or making books just for fun.

Recently, R made tickets for everyone to come to his martial arts class. He doesn't actually take martial arts, it was just a made up class that he made up tickets for. The tickets were so detailed they had all of our full names on them, including middle names! He does things like this all the time, but then he never wants to get rid of these little scraps and drawings.

Then I saw this on pinterest. Um, cute!
Way back in September I stained some new yardsticks to make them look less, well, new. I also painted up some clothes pegs then asked A to work his magic. He can figure anything out!
A few minutes with drill and here it is. R gets the top row and K gets the bottom. I told them they can keep anything they want as long as it fits in their clips.
Can you see how many things are in each of R's clips? Yep. Never wants to get rid of anything. But now my fridge can relax and these can take over!

Monday, November 21, 2011

Room Rearranged



After the photo shoot with Rosa, L's room was completely switched around. We were going to put it all back but... we kinda liked it. So here is the way it looks now, not perfect but we are seeing how we like it.
K and L like the new reading corner quite a bit!
And there is one other thing I wanted to show off. Since L started preschool the amount of art coming into the house has increased, again. We set up this magnet board for her treasures. I keep a few special ones in a drawer with the artist's name and the date. The rest can be displayed here for her to enjoy!
For the boys I made something special inspired by, where else? Pinterest!
Stay tuned for that little project!

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Photo Shoot

This week Rosa came by to take some pictures of her new juju hat in L's room. She has boys, so I am sure pink bedding and tiny pink ballet slippers aren't floating around her house. We rearranged everything to get a good shot and we fought the crazy windy weather making moving leaf and branch shaped shadow dart all over the wall. But in the end it turned out pretty cute! Go take a look!

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

WIWW-copycat


What I Wore Wednesday returns to walking the rocks this week. Check out Lindsay at the Pleated Poppy as always. (for some reason can't link to the post right now...)


I have been trying to draw inspiration for many places when I get dressed these days. Pinterest is a big one.
This picture of multiple necklaces looked great to me, so I tried it out.
anniversary gift from my hubby (way back, year 2 I think)
hand me down from A's grandma
plain chain with my grandma's engagement ring

And paired it with a plain navy tunic , jeans and boots. It's boots almost every day now that the fall has begun.
navy tunic: Reitmans
grey tank and jeans: Pure at Zellers
grey boots: Old Navy



Another inspiration is the J Crew catalogue. Here is mustard yellow under navy polkadots.
Just so happens that I have a mustard henely and a navy polkadot t.
Easy peasy, and a bit cuter than just a t and jeans.
mustard henley: H&M
polkadot T: Joe Fresh
jeans: Pure at Zellers
shoes: slippers in this picture
but I really wore grey city flats from Gap

The only problem with the J Crew catalogue? (Ok, besides price and the fact that the nearest store is in another country) I totally want to dress like the kids more than the adults! They are so darn cute and not over the top 'styled' I guess.
That's it for today!

Monday, November 14, 2011

Halloween crafts

I love dressing my kids up and they love getting dressed up. They think you should wear a costume for your birthday, and they usually do. Making these dress up accessories for Halloween was tons of fun for me and the kids appreciate it so much and it doesn't have to be perfect.
Obviously the major creation was the LEGO block. I saw the idea on Pinterest, showed Mr.K and that was it, he was all for it! I ate a lot of yogurt after we decided on his costume, and we collected a few cardboard boxes from Costco and from A's work. The trick was making it so he could still sit down. A's is amazing at things like this, so he thought about it, then when I was at work he constructed this masterpiece:

The box we used in the end was from work, maybe a box for chest tubes or something. Before he built it, I had written the word LEGO on each container with a glue gun for a more authentic touch. Then he cut out holes for each yogurt container and secured them inside. We used green duct tape to seal the edges, then came spray paint:

Green is K's favorite colour so I bought a green shirt and pants for super cheap then bought the spray paint to be close to the same colour. The hat has a label on it that says LEGO in the lego font. Yes, I just happened to have the lego font on my computer, ok? Anyway, I made the hat because although the costume was cool, it didn't have many accessories and he was feeling left out. About 5 minutes of work on the hat and that issues was solved. He also felt pretty cool when all the teeneagers loved his costume, and one mom offered to buy it off us:)
Next up was Indiana Jones and his various accessories. The hat and whip were borrowed, thanks Jo! The clothes were ones we had around the house, the colours aren't perfect but the styles match and R didn't care. The main picture on every Indiana Jones video game cover is that of Indie carrying a golden "idol" that he gets by switching it with a bag of sand. That's the scene right before the giant boulder starts rolling after him if you have seen the movie. Well our Indie had a leather bag (my purse) and a leather journal inside (that we labeled with 'Archeology'), but an idol and bag of sand were needed.
I bought a styrofoam ball at Michaels and A shaped it with paper mache. Here is a bad iphone pic I took on my way to work that morning:

Then R and I painted it, I put some steel cut oatmeal in a bag I made out of a drop cloth, and that was it!
He carried the idol the whole time!


I wish I had made something cute for Sleeping Beauty too, but I didn't. Call it Third Child Syndrome. She wanted to be a princess and this non-licenced costume was cheap from Costco. I did braid up her hair cute, and 'hem' the dress up with safety pins so she could walk. She didn't mind though, just look at that smile:
That's it for this year with my cuties and their imaginations!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Worldly Baby Shower


In October I helped host a baby shower for a family friend. But, the baby is still in the belly so no cute baby pictures today. Just some pictures of a fun party.

One of the ideas for the shower was to make it as green and earth friendly as possible as to honour the Mom to be and her personal philosophies. We decided on a theme of Welcome to our World.
The invites were made using old maps from outdated map books and most of the decorations were too. We used cloth napkins and real dishes, which is actually kinda nice.
Map pinwheels and map hearts. All ideas courtesy of, you guessed it, pinterest!
My sis decorated the cake with marshmellow fondant and it was delish as well as geographically accurate.

The food was internationally themed and almost all made from scratch by my sister and my Mom.
Cool idea for the cabbage dip bowl from pinterest (where else?).
And when all was said and done the new Momma had a house full of baby things and I had these beauties left over.
More than a week later my house is still filled with flowers. Lovely.



Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Decorating with Orange



We had a baby shower upstairs the middle of October, so the Living Room was covered with maps and globes and great flowers. I will write more about that later. But the downstairs Family Room is where the kids spend a lot of time, so I put a few pumpkin touches in there for them (well mostly me) to enjoy.

We had our pumpkins for a few weeks. I put them on the very deep window ledge so we could enjoy them before they were carved. Makes the lack of blinds seem useful maybe even intentional when really it is a result of procrastination:)Then I just added all my fake pumpkins from last year's stash to the mantel decor. I like the turquoise and orange together. It's fun and playful.
Here is one more little project for 'the kids'. My friend Stacy spotted the cool inspiration for this on Pinterest.
We threw our version together at the last minute. It's Cinderella and her carriage! I will probably try this again next year with more 3D embellishments if I have more time.