Glittery Pumpkins

I saw these pumpkins online before Halloween and I REALLY wanted to make them. I waited until the fall stuff was on sale at JoAnns. I bought each pumpkin for $1.50, they are normally $5.00. Because of all of my Christmas and birthday craftiness, I didn't make the glitter pumpkins until last week. I love them! I am planning on placing them on black pillar candle holders on my mantle for the fall. Now I just need to find black pillar candle holders.

Here is the halfway picture. You can see how much cooler the glittery side looks. Yea for glitter!

The finished product, LOVE them:

In case you're wondering, I used modge podge instead of glue like it says in the tutorial. I bought the glitter at Michaels, it's Martha Stewart glitter. I bought a big bottle and I have a ton leftover. Watch out... some of you might get some glittery pumpkins for Christmas next year.

Quiet Book

I FINALLY finished Kaylin's quiet book. I gave it to her for her birthday. Her birthday was my motivation to finish it. I started the book months and months ago, but it took so long that I kept getting tired of working on it. I had to buy a ton of stuff for it too. The worst part was cutting out all of the felt pieces (each removable piece is 2 layers), sewing them all together, and attaching the velcro or snap. The other pages weren't as bad. After Christmas, I spent a few hours a day on the book. I am sooooo glad that it's finished. I will NEVER make one like this again. I might possibly make the 3-ring type using pellon for the pages (mine is muslin). That way I could make 2 pages at a time. I also wouldn't do as many pages with detachable pieces. We have brought the book with us to church twice now. The first Sunday Kaylin didn't care much about it. The second Sunday she enjoyed taking some of the pieces off and putting them back on. She loved the pencil and pad of paper at the end. I really hope that it's something that will keep her busy (and quiet :-)). I worked too hard on it for her to not like it!

I got the patterns for the pages from my cousin Amy. Thanks Amy! Amy is so amazing that she has made two quiet books and she even made carrying cases for them. Crazy girl.

Handmade Christmas presents

I figured since it's been three weeks since Christmas I can post some pictures of some of the presents I made.

I made my niece, Macey, a church bag. There's a bag, a clipboard, an eye spy bag, and a crayon roll. There was some other non-handmade stuff in there too. I didn't take a picture of that :-).

I made a few scrabble tile pendants. Here is the one I made for my sister, Kelsey. Her favorite color is orange.

I made a cute cover for an advent book for my sister's family. I got the sheets for the book through Super Saturday at our church. I colored the pages of the book too. I just finished the cover for my binder. But I haven't started coloring our book yet.

I already posted a picture of the pillows I made for my nieces, Loke and Alyssa. But here they are again a little bit closer.

I made a crayon roll for Kaylin. Santa gave it to her in her stocking. I won't be able to get away with putting handmade stuff in her stocking next year :-).

I made a super cute photo album for my grandparents. It's an altered business card holder. I had my cousins send me pictures of their kids, I cropped the pictures and added each kid's name to the bottom, I put them in the book in age order so that it will be easy to add pictures as new kids are born. I'll probably make them a new set of pictures next Christmas.

So there you have it. Now I need to come up with ideas for next year! I already have a few things in mind...

Flooding

On Saturday we decided to check out the Cedar River. In case you didn't know, our area received a lot of rain recently and between that and the snow melt the rain caused, we had a lot of flooding. Our part of the state was pretty much an island for a couple of days. The freeway was closed between us and Portland and the passes over the mountains to the east side of the state were closed. We didn't need to go anywhere, but it was still a weird feeling.

We went to one of our favorite parks in town, Jones Park, to see what was going on. The stairs in this picture lead to a pathway that goes along side the river. Currently, the pathway is under a few feet of water.

This is the Wells Avenue bridge. The next bridge downriver was closed because there was a big log jam under it. Well, I think that's why it was closed. We couldn't get close enough to the other bridge to get a picture of the log jam.

This next one is by the Renton Stadium. This pathway goes underneath the bridge. It's got to be at least 6 feet under water.

I hope everyone is staying dry!

Kaylin is 2!

Kaylin turned 2 at the beginning of the month. We worked with her for the whole month of December to say, "I'm 2!" She now can say that and not be (unintentionally) lying. See how excited she was to have a party:

Instead of games, we played with the kitchen. Fun times for all, 1 years olds and 10 year olds included:

Opening the quiet book that I made. She was very excited about the pencil:

Kaylin and her tea cart (aka beverage cart, as Eric calls it):

I put cupcakes in the shape of a flower for her cake. Not super creative, but I tried. Sorry the picture is sideways, ever since I started using my fabulous new laptop, I can't get them to rotate on my blog. I'm blaming Vista :-).

Here I am trying to show Kaylin how to blow out her candle. Don't I look awesome? She didn't blow it out, I had to.

She loved the frosting. She ate all the frosting off and then said, "all done!" I tried to get her to eat some of the cake (not sure why, I guess I figured she NEEDED to eat cake since it was her birthday).

I debated about whether or not to post this picture since it's sideways. But it was too good to pass up. Aunt Char decided to model some of the new dress up clothes Kaylin got from the Greens. She looks lovely.

Happy birthday Kaylin! We are looking forward to another exciting, entertaining, and busy year!

Happy New Year!

A few days before New Year's Eve, we realized that we had no plans. Apparently, we are not very popular. But then we realized that many of our friends didn't have plans either. So maybe it's not that we're not popular, it's that we're all so boring that no one planned a party. We decided that we'd better bite the bullet and invite people over. We didn't want to have a big party, just a few friends. You know how parties can grow, if you invite couple "a", then you have to invite "b", "c", and "d". We wanted to stay away from that, so sorry to couple "a" for not inviting you ;-).

I bought a box of party stuff and made everyone wear the tiaras/hats. The girls were okay with it, but most of the boys weren't thrilled. At least they posed for this picture for me. Please don't mind the Christmas decorations in the background.

Everyone brought their kid (we each have 1), three of them slept great, one did not:

Happy New Year! Thanks to everyone who came to our party and brought fabulous food! We had a blast!

Christmas Day

On Christmas morning we drove up to Bellingham. My aunt and uncle and my mom's parents joined us for breakfast. Yum! We had our usual egg and sausage breakfast casserole, my favorite!

My parents got Kaylin this awesome kitchen. She loves it.

My cute brother modeling the new earbuds we got him:

Eric's favorite Christmas present, a world atlas. He's wanted one of these for forever and has spent HOURS looking through it.

Kaylin and Christopher needed some rest before Kaylin opened her presents:

Kaylin loved the hat and scarf that Nana knitted for her:

Kaylin knows that Grandpas will always feed her treats:

Christmas Eve

We spent this Christmas Eve in true Stephens family fashion. We started off at the bowling alley. Our usual place was closed due to to snow, but we found another one that met our needs (read: cheap). I didn't do very well our first game (nothing new), but I did much better the second game. My secret? Bumpers.

This picture is of Eric, Kaylin and Ryanne. Also in true Stephens family fashion, Ryanne is unhappy to be sitting with her uncle. Kaylin is just starting to like Ryanne's dad, Uncle Chris. (She calls him "Uncle Kiss", very cute).

The Greens came with us this year. Kaylin and Carter liked to play with the balls when no one was using them, but that wasn't such a great idea. So we gave them their very own ball return to play with.

After our traditional dinner of potato and taco soups, we had a little concert. Alyssa played a solo on her clarinet and then Gordon and I joined in while everyone else sang. This year we played jingle bells.

I made these amazing pillows for Loke and Alyssa. Thanks Nicole for the idea!

Here is Uncle Parker trying to convince Kaylin that the Christmas tree is not going to eat her: