My Dorky Confession

Confession: 

I LOVE CRAYONS AND COLORING!!! I have always had crayons and coloring books. 

My favorite coloring books are Disney Princesses, Lisa Frank, Precious Moments, and the most recent... Strawberry Shortcake(Thanks to my cute little girl) A sharp brand new crayon excites me... I had the 120 count pack of crayons... In College... Seriously, I am not kidding at all! I even colored Adam a picture in High School of Sleeping Beauty dancing with Prince Phillip and wrote him a dorky note about how he was my Prince... I'm a dork and I'm proud of it!!!

Now that you know my embarrassing secret let me tell you what I have done with all of those crayons I collected over the years. I did a major clean out and put all the crayons that were still worth coloring with and put them in Tori's art box... With the huge pile leftover, we recycled our old crayons!!  Tori and I had a blast taking the paper off and breaking them into tiny pieces. We put them in a mini muffin pan and melted them in the oven and turned them into, as Tori calls them, Muffin Crayons!

Here's some pictures of our fun day!

The "fun" colors

The "Normal" colors

Aren't they awesome??

It was so much fun!!

Not a Fan

Around here we are not fans of Halloween. I honestly HATE it. I hate covering my baby's eyes in every store. I hate worrying about what she might see and the nightmares that could follow. Why our culture would devote a day to scaring children is beyond me and absolutely no fun in my opinion... That being said I still LOVE fall, and I love that Tori still gets to dress up to go to a Fall Festival and then again for her birthday since it is so close!! I am planning on making her costume, but I haven't put much thought into it yet... I should probably do that soon! lol I have been seeing pumpkins outside of all the stores and I got all excited at the thought of going to the pumpkin patch soon!! And then I thought hmm... how could I decorate a pumpkin that would be fun and different?? So I googled a bit and found this cute picture!! I am going to see what I can do with this example and create a few of my own fun pumpkins! Stay Tuned for pictures of mine!!

Pest Problem- eliminated

So the other night Adam and I had some friends over, and the boys decided it was time to kill the carpenter bees. wasp and hornet killer, a little fire, and some boys having fun acting like 15 year olds for a good 20 minutes...Sorry to my neighbors who were possibly woken up at 10 pm by axes, hammers, laughter, and us girls screaming every time a bee buzzed it's way out of the shelf.... We made a memory, tore the shelf to shreds, and killed all the bees! Success!!

When it was all said and done...

This is what the inside of the tunnels looked like... each compartment was filled with some sort of "bee's wax"(haha) and I'm assuming the eggs were also inside

The pile of wood

So if anyone wants to know how to kill carpenter bees, maybe you shouldn't ask us haha... This shelf was an un-important storage area in our garage that needed to be cleaned up anyways and came with the house when we moved in, so we just demolished it, and the bees with it.

And another thing, if you are going to stand and watch, please control yourself. Keep the squeels to a minimum, and don't hit yourself in the face with a mag-light like I did. I'm usually pretty fearless, but bees give me the willies!! I was holding a large mag-light for Adam so he could see, and some little fly or gnat got in my face, I screamed and nailed myself in the cheek with the mag-light.... ouch! No bruise thankfully haha... all I'm saying is if you can't take the heat get out of the kitchen... I had to let someone else take over the flashlight responsibility, I obviously can't take the heat.

Potty Training.... Step Two

We are patiently awaiting our potty. Tori told me today(and yesterday), "Mommy, my potty come i-i-inn da mail... I-I-I-In a box! but, but it's a blue one mommy, a blue potty!!" so cute! Can you tell I'm loving the stutter? Her brain is working too fast for her mouth, and she just can't get it out! lol anyways back to the matter at hand. So the past 3 days we have been beginning the process of potty training, and today was our first day to wear big girl panties! She did have an accident in them, but I'm so proud of her!!! We sat on the big potty, I gave her some juice, and read "Once upon a potty" at least 4 times today. I will post a picture of her sticker chart later this week!! When it has more stickers on it :).... I'm determined this time, and so is she!! She'll be a big girl in no time!

If you are looking for a good potty book this one is great!!! There's also a boy version if you have a boy :)

We're sensitive around here...

This post is for anyone who has a child with sensitive skin. I thought maybe it would be helpful to others dealing with these issues to know what products we use, and how we handled the issues of dry skin, eczema, and break outs. 

Since the day Tori was born, she has had sensitive skin. The hospital gave me a small pack of pampers diapers, and it took me around a week to figure out she was allergic to the diapers. After some trial and error I realized that ONLY Huggies snug and dry would not break out her little bottom, and for a month and 1/2 I had to make my own baby wipes out of paper towels, until I finally found a wipe that she could handle. As she has grown up we have had 2 cases of the hives, just from someone putting something on her skin, that was not pre-approved by me. Though it has gotten better, and some things she can tolerate much better that she used to be able to we still have break outs from time to time, dry skin issues, and eczema issues. We have prescription hydrocortisone, take baths a little less often that normal, and lotion daily with Aveeno lotion.  3 months ago cupcake icing left little red smears where she had gotten it on her cheeks, and just Sunday a friend of mine made some AMAZINGLY yummy spaghetti sauce, and Tori had red spots wherever it touched her skin!! Usually this clears up on it's own, and if it doesn't one dose of benadryl does the trick, and we really try not to let it effect our daily lives, but I do have to be careful what I put on her skin. Our most recent discovery; a bubble bath that she can use!!  Tori has only had 3 bubble baths in her lifetime because of this problem, and I am proud to say we FINALLY found a bubble bath, that does not break her out!! She was so excited this afternoon to play in bubbles and I was so happy to let her!!!  If anyone out there is dealing with the issue of sensitive skin here are some products we have used that helped!! 

Here's a link to some of the recipes I used for Tori

All Natural Recipes for Babies