happy ten

Last week Michael and I celebrated our ten-year anniversary. And I must say, they have been amazing years. I have a wonderful guy. I remember when I was much younger and would hear of someone celebrating their tenth anniversary. I thought it was such a long time. And I guess it is quite a while, but man has it flown by! You can see a little bit of our wedding day in this post from Michael (and the very sweet thing he had to say about me :) )

We didn't have big plans for the day. It was very low key, but nice to just do whatever we wanted for the day and not have to be anywhere.

That morning Lucy and I got out our new paint because she wanted to make something for us. While she was painting I decided to make a little something for Michael (Obviously, I am not a painter). You can see a bit of it up above.

Lucy made us a sweet little painting.

I absolutely love it. Can you see where she wrote mom and dad at the bottom? Sweet. And this little bird it just too cute...

She also picked up this little birdhouse at the craft store the other day and painted it for us. I especially like the blue around the inside of the hole.

I love that we are a family who likes to make things for each other and I hope that value sticks with our kids. I don't expect all of our gifts (received and given) to be handmade, but it is nice to take the time to create something for someone else or to know someone took the time to make something especially for you.

shirt happy

We are currently at our family reunion and I am happy to report that for the first time ever, I actually completely finished my auction items before we got here. Past years have found me huddled in a corner of the meeting room furiously hand stitching. But not this year. I get to relax!

This year I decided to embellish some tank tops. This is partly because Lucy refuses to wear anything but tank tops. Her reason? "They're comfy." You can't really argue with that. But, I wanted to make her some that were a bit more special than the two she currently owns (and as a result, I won't have to wash those every day!)

I'll start with Lucy's...

{Made from scraps left over from this.}

I made two for the auction...

{Made from pieces that I keep cutting off of a dress I made years ago and never wore.}

{Also made from scraps from this.}

I thought it would be fun for the kids to create something for the auction so they made t-shirts using freezer paper stencils.

{Larkin is crazy about Star Wars and has never even seen it!}

{Lucy went with the simplicity of a cat.}

Well, I am off to enjoy a weekend with family. Have a good one!

finger paint and pictograms

The kids came running to me last week with some finger paint from the classroom. Now, I am not one to initiate a finger painting session. I always think of how messy it is and how it is going to get all over their clothes, etc. (I know. I know. Get over it.) Well, after a moment or so of trying to find a reason for them not to use it, I realized that we were studying ancient Chinese pictograms in history that day. Perfect...except that the finger paint was also ancient (no surprise there since we never use it). The kids were quite disappointed so I had to quickly come up with an alternative. And I figured since we have made play-doh (I like this recipe substituting half a pack of jello for the kool-aid) that surely we could make finger paint. It was as easy as brushing your teeth. Here is the recipe:

1 cup flour

1 cup water

food coloring

Yep. That's it. And I didn't have to worry about it staining clothes or being toxic (Of course I am pretty sure the store bought kind wasn't toxic either, but you know...) As you can see above, Lucy wasn't all that concerned with the pictograms, but Larkin did manage to "write" house...