Creativity:: Baby gifts

Creativity and Design:

Newborn Baby Gifts

So many friends have had babies in this past year.  I suppose that comes with the territory (my friends are all in that stage of life).  I wanted to do something cute, creative and handmade to give as gifts.  Elephant's became my creative inspiration along with coordinating taggie blanket.

Getting crafty!

Creativity and Design:

Custom Recipe Collection

This is a post I meant to write back in the summer!  I put together a heritage recipe collection for my cousin's fiancée for her wedding shower.  I contacted all of the Aunts and cousins to write down their favorite recipe along with a story of the recipe's origin.  I put together a graphic design for the recipe card and backed each card in lime green, pink or silver (Katie's colors).  The theme was "Katie & Cole make quite a Pear".

I love doing crafty and creative things!  Let me know if you need something fun and creative for an event - invitations, cards and specialty items!

Catch up to the New Year

Happy New Year!

And continuation of Christmas

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year... We are now halfway through January and I realized that I have so many great holiday pictures that I meant to share and blog about!  Oh well!  Here is one.

This is one of my favorites!  Santa brought Evey a kitchen set and she spent all of Christmas morning playing with the kitchen.  Every package she opened (or didn't open, for that matter) was dropped down the hatch!  I like to think that in this picture, Evelyn is giving baby a bath in the sink rather than throwing baby out with the bath water.

Rant alert!

Did I mention that Evelyn is enthralled with Dora?  I don't really know how it happened.  

• The backpack is her version of a Dora backpack and she walks around filling it up with favorite objects and sings the backpack jingle from the tv show.  
• The only thing she asked Santa for Christmas was a pair of Dora socks.  
• She demands to only wear "Dora Ummywear" (Dora pull-ups) 

Like I said, not sure how it happened that she has been pulled in to the world of commercialization/disneyfication/nickelodeon.  On the other hand, Dora is a decently educational show.  Case in point: Last night, Evelyn wanted me to peel an orange for her. She handed me the orange and said "abre" which is "Open!" in spanish.  Other foreign words she knows and uses are: "de nada", "merci" and "ciao".

And now we are TWO!

And now we are TWO!

So quickly the time flies... It was just yesterday that I remember still waiting in anticipation of Evelyn's birth.  Here, she is now TWO!  It's amazing how much she has blossomed in the last three weeks since her birthday.  I took 10 days of vacation over the holidays and spent almost the entire time with Evelyn.  I think that special time together really helped her explore her new freedoms in communication and play.

Top new things:
2011 Milestones

1. Make-believe and tea parties
2. The Nuk isn't as important (not needed as much anymore); As Evelyn has learned to say "I no need nooksie" and later ... I need it, I need it"
3. Talking, talking, TALKING!  She can carry on a full conversation - whether we understand her or not.  Her words are more clear and she's been using multiple word sentences!
4. Big Girl Bed - it took a little convincing at first for her to fall asleep in the new bed.  I thought back to my own growing up and remembered how mom would read to us, tell stories, sing and cuddle  before we'd fall asleep.  That's what our new routine is!
5. Next steps towards potty training - she's loves to wear Dora "ummy-wear" and is very particular about it. We can't do diaper changes anymore - must refer to it as underwear change.  The diaper must be pre-fastened together so she can pull it up herself while exclaiming "I did it"!   She sits on her potty and reads, but hasn't yet done anything on the potty.

Playing with Duplos at LegoLand on her Second Birthday.