It's her birthday!

Oh my goodness! I cannot believe my baby girl turned 5 years old yesterday! Seriously it blows my mind how time has flown. I know it sounds cliche but it was just yesterday I was snuggling her in my arms.

Some fun facts about you right now:

• your a major Momma's girl
• you love to cook, clean, and fold laundry and in your words you are "learning to be a Momma"
• you can draw, color, paint like no one's business! 
• you are very creative and are always making something out of fabric scraps and notions

• you love animals. Not just our animals, ALL animals (something you've inherited from me!)
• you say you don't like school but when I pick you up you are having a blast with your friends
• you are incredibly intuitive. You always know when anyone is upset.
• you want to learn to sew. 

• sometimes I think you don't like your sister then I catch you being nice to her and it makes me smile!
• you "mountain bike" down the hills in the backyard "just like Daddy"
• you love to play outside, swinging, sliding, making sandcastles and sand cakes!

Happy Birthday sweet Hailey! I love you so incredibly much and am so honored to be your Momma!

This Weeks Bounty!

This week will be our last bountiful basket pickup until after the New Year. So I wanted to be sure and get a pic of it as well as a meal plan to make the best of what we got. Whenever I have to actually purchase produce I never know what to get, I feel sort of lost. I have to make a meal plan BEFORE going to the store instead of making it around our produce. It seems I've gotten used to the co-op! I am also not nearly as adventurous when I have to pick it out myself!

In our basket this week we received:

2 LARGE heads of romaine lettuce
1 small butternut squash
1 bag of red grapes
1 - 3 lb bag of fuji apples
9 bananas
5 yukon gold potatoes
8 sweet potatoes
8 roma tomatoes
2 large and 1 small zucchini
5 pomegranates
6 green chilies
1 honeydew melon

Our meal plan for the week will look something like this:

Sunday (today): Spaghetti with turkey sausage and whole wheat pasta.

For spaghetti I usually add in TONS of veggies since marinara sauce disguises the taste and I can get some extras into the babes! SO I added a yellow squash (from last week), an onion a zucchini, and all of the tomatoes. Everything is diced up finely except the tomatoes, we like it kind of chunky! For the actual marinara I used some that I canned over the summer. If I didn't have this on hand I'd use Trader Joe's tomato basil, and if I couldn't get to TJ's (its about a 45 min drive for us) I'd use Newman's Own plain marinara (sold at any major grocery store). I started the sauce today around lunch time so all the veggies get really soft and palatable. Later tonight when I prepare dinner I will cook the sausage and slice it and serve it all over whole wheat thin spaghetti.

Monday: Left over night

Tuesday: Chicken stir fry- using the other zucchini, an onion, green bell pepper (from the store).

Wednesday: Left over night

Thursday: Alysa's Black bean sweet potato enchiladas. With the addition of some shredded chicken and red enchilada sauce. No need for a side with this dish, everything is all wrapped up! SOOO delicious!

Friday: Christmas Eve. Not entirely sure yet. We don't have plans so maybe I'll get a small ham for just us and do a small Christmas Eve dinner. Fresh green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy.

Saturday: Korean Christmas dinner with my husband's family. I'm in charge of the bulgogi!

Sunday: We'll probably have leftovers from Christmas and/or Christmas Eve.

All of the fruits will get eaten as snacks throughout the week. If we get to the end of next week and I've still got apples left I might try making apple butter. I still have a drawer full of honeycrisps, as well as almost all of the apples from last week, plus 3 more pounds this week!

Not entirely sure what to do with the butternut squash, I don't really care for squash nor do the kids or the hubby so we'll see what i come up with!

What are you doing with your basket this week?

Love and Hugs,

Family portraits 2010

This weekend my cousin, the family and I headed out to finally take our holiday pictures. She shot all of the "family shots" (anything I was in) and I shot anything I was not in. She really did an incredible job and I am so thankful she didn't get irritated with me yelling "zoom in!", "get this!", "get that!", "No, move a little this way.", "get lower", etc. I suppose I was sort of a backseat photographer so to speak! Anyway we had a lot of fun and got some really incredible shots along the way!

This was Hailey posing for me! See hand on the hip foot turned out...

I think we found the only tree in all of Southern AZ that is actually changing color!

Throughout these pics you can see all of my hard work in creating all of our portrait pieces and how they all came together in the end! Sunday morning (the day of the shoot) I realized I had forgotten to make hair pieces. So I threw our hair pieces together. I like how they came out and if you are unsure about any of them I'd love to show you how. They literally took 30 mins for all three. The most time consuming part was choosing how it all went together!

This one's my fave!

Sweet Sissies!

Precious Belle looks like a big girl!

uhm..yeah! They look like their Daddy! Isn't he handsome!?

Story of my life!

Ok so I know I've been a bad blogger. I never posted the tutorial for the makeup bag hopefully I can get that up tomorrow. But for now I'm going to try and fold my way out of this laundry pile that keeps building up walls around me!


Love and Hugs, 

Makeup brush roll

I finally got my act together yesterday and actually created something. Yippee! I know the idea isn't exactly original (basically an adult version of a crayon roll!) but I made it my own and used whatever supplies I had on hand. I'm actually quite proud of myself because I've been in a bit of a funk. This would make a good neighbor/teacher/babysitting/hairdresser gift, and if you are anything like me you have amounted quite a mass of hoarded fabric! haha And thats about all ya need!

Want to make one?

You'll need:
2 pieces of fabric 15 x 17 "
some ric rac or ribbon
matching thread

Take your two pieces of fabric and place them right sides together. Pin and stitch around both long ends and one short end. Leaving one 15" end completely open.

Turn right side out, press, and topstitch around those three edges.

On the unfinished edge press about 1/4 inch towards the "lining" piece of fabric and stitch down.

Then put some ric rac, ribbon, or even bias tape if you want over that stitch line.

Then fold the fabric up enough to cover the handles of your brushes. You can press this if you like. I just pinned it and it was fine.

Grab some more ribbon (or whatever embellishment you chose) and snip a pretty long string fold in half and tuck under (and pin) one side of the short ends. I chose the right side. Stitch down the two short ends to make a pocket and secure your tie.

Finally tuck all of your makeup brushes into the big pocket and pin in between them. Then remove the brushes so they dont get caught up in your machine. You could use a disappearing ink pen to draw lines if you want but I just eyeballed and stitched it.

Then snip your strings, put your brushes back in and wrap it up! Easy peasy, right?

Fold the top over to keep brushes clean.

Then wrap it up!

I made mine in vinyl covered cotton left over from this post. Sometimes ::cough cough:: the bottom of the makeup bag can get kind of dusty from shadows and powders. I thought the vinyl would keep the brushes nice and clean and wipe off easily. You could definitely do this in cotton it might just need to be washed every once in awhile which isn't a problem because it is totally washable!

A friend of mine suggested to put the vinyl on the inside because the brushes are dirty when you put them away. For me this ins't an issue. I wash them after every use because I have super super sensitive skin. If I didn't I'd get really bad breakouts. But by all means if you like put the vinyl on the inside! It is a very good idea if you don't obsessively wash your brushes like I do! haha

Be sure and check back tomorrow for a matching makeup bag! 

Love and Hugs,

Rest In Peace Grandma Bunny

Wednesday morning I got the call. The call I knew was coming. The call I was dreading. The call that my beloved Grandmother had passed. Fondly referred to as Grandma Bunny. I think I'm ok though. I mean not ok ok, not normal I am sad, very very sad. My heart is broken. I miss her so so much. But she was in so much pain the past couple months and it broke my heart each time I saw her little face wrench. It broke my heart to see her slipping away.

I know that she is in Heaven now, resting peacefully, and watching from above. I know that she is an angel watching over me and our family. I especially know she is watching the babes. She loved them so much. Even in the end when she didn't remember their names she continued to ask for them to come and visit. When she was healthier she would go to bingo at her assisted living home and win them beanie babies so they'd have something to play with when they came to visit.

My Grandmother was an EXTREMELY creative person. Which in turn led to my Dad being so amazingly creative. Therefore forcing me to be creative in some way or another. I see alot of my Grandmother in myself. She was an incredible artist working in mediums such as paint, drawing, sewing, quilting, sculpting, etc. the list truly goes on and on. She taught me to sew when I spent the summer with her. We made this adorable Winnie the Pooh pillow. It was a picture of Pooh appliqued onto a cloud fabric and made into a pillow. It was adorable and I promptly lost it on the flight home. I had to only have been about 11.

I now see a lot of my Grandmother in Hailey. She is incredibly creative and truly amazes me with her drawings, colorings, ability to read people, and general intuitiveness (is that a word?!). Belle is a bit young to recognize any of these things but she too loved her Great Grandma Bunny. Towards the end we would visit and Belle would crawl in bed with her and just lay. Not move, not wiggle, not babble, not irritate, not laugh, just lay. Very unusual. Very unusual indeed. In hind sight I wonder if she understood. I wonder if she knew Grandma was close to the end? Hailey was unusually intuitive about the entire situation as well. One day as we were walking in she says to me, "Mommy is this where people come to die." It hit me like a ton of bricks, I didn't know how to respond. I told her something along the lines of when people get older they need help with things. Like when your kids you need your Mommy to fix you meals, clean your room, and remind you of things that need to be taken care of. She understood why Grandma needed me there. I would comb her hair, put lotion on her hands, chapstick on her lips, and hold her hand for countless hours while she slept. Things that a Momma would do. I will never forget her asking me that. I dont know if she understands death and dyeing. Obviously not because when I told her Great Grandma passed she said she wanted to go to Heaven as well. I told her absolutely not!

Grandma as I remember her. So full of life always smiling and beautiful!

So I am taking a bit of time to gather myself. I know that she would want me to continue to be creative, which I will eventually do. But it seems like every time I start to do something I am grief stricken, the tears come and I have to stop. Obviously since it took me 3 full days to get all of this written...

Love and Hugs,