Rock Painting

My current craft obsession is rock painting. Maybe ‘obsession’ is a bit strong. But, I did spend about an hour and a half painting rocks yesterday. So….call it what you will. Granted, Thad was painting with me and Thatcher was napping. So, I wasn’t completely ignoring my parenting duties.

My inspiration came from a few sources on pinterest:

The Hungry Caterpillar

A Martha Stewart list of rock crafts

Pet Monster Rocks

Obviously, lots of ideas out there. Thad and I test drove the whole rock painting thing by painting a few rocks like strawberries. We just used acrylic paint, then I sprayed them with a couple coats of shellac.

Some of them turned out really cute, and some turned out looking like twisted gargoyle strawberries. I won’t say whose were whose…but they went out to live with the real strawberry plants in the backyard. They have been watered a couple of times and even rained on, and still look fine, so apparently the shellac makes them waterproof.

I also plan on painting others for the garden, like these here to serve as little markers.

But, the ones I really couldn’t get off my mind were the hungry caterpillar rocks. And so, naptime project was created yesterday.

Not to pat myself on the back (much), but I think they look even cooler than the lady I was copying. Truer to the way Eric Carle does his illustrations at least.

Thad got bored before I was quite finished, so I will show them to him today. I am sure he will think they are cool. And if not, I will force him to play with them anyway. :)

P.S. Don’t ask me what my bathrooms look like right now. I had more important things to do yesterday. Like painting rocks to look like caterpillars.

Spiders….my fav

Once I start, I can’t stop. Random project from last month: yarn spider web. Free and easy. Spider made out of pipe-cleaners.

We even caught a cute little fly

Spring Holidays

I haven’t posted for a while, and I have been avoiding posting because I feel like I am too behind to catch up. I had stuff I wanted to post for Valentine’s day that never got done….little late for that. So, this may turn into a 2 month recap, depending on when the peeps wake up for the day.

What the heck, here is a fun Valentine’s craft we did. (Do you see how wishy-washy I am?)

The idea came from here, and it needs minimal explanation: pieces of chopped up crayon between 2 pieces of waxed paper. The instructions said to grate the crayons with a cheese grater, but I found it much easier to just chop them with a knife. We used way more crayon pieces than we needed to, a little goes a long way. Another tip: melted crayon does not come out of fabric. Fun fact.

And there you go. Our Valentines day. Bam. Moving on.

Easter!

Since we have had small kids for a big chunk of our adult lives, we don’t have a lot of holiday decorations, besides Christmas. I guess the reason being that I don’t like a lot of clutter, and decorations sitting places that can be reached by small hands tend to be messed with, destroyed, broken, and otherwise create a bother for me. But, I decided to let go of some of that selfishness and get a couple Easter decorations from St. Vinnies.

Cute? Eh….maybe. If carrot trees with eggs hanging from it is your thing, sure. Gaudy and weird, yes, probably. Nonetheless, Thad LOVED them, and for 3 bucks a piece, you can’t go wrong. Or at least not THAT wrong. Of course, Thatcher just wanted to eat the small pieces, so they were put up on the desk most of the time. But, it still felt oddly satisfying to have some decorations up to signify a pretty important holiday. Do rabbit trains have any significance for the true meaning of Easter? NO, I know this, just let me be happy about it anyway.

We (I) also did a Easter craft that I will attempt again next year using proper materials. (Side note, when you type a capitol I between parenthesis, it automatically turns into a lightbulb…..why??? How weird. Side side note, I’m not sure if that should be spelled capitol or capital….sorry). So, anyway, I wanted to make these cute eggs from this blog:

She used embroidery floss, I used yarn. You were supposed to use water balloons, I only had regular balloons, which were much less egg-shaped when blown up small. I also didn’t have much Modge Podge, so I could only make a couple, and they weren’t as stiff as they could have been. But I think the idea is really cute, I will make some better ones next year.

We spent the actual holiday weekend at my parent’s house, with one of my brothers (soon to be dad, woohoo!) and one of my sisters and her kids. My parents live in the country and have been foraging a trail down to their creek so they could take the kids for hikes. My mom also had the idea to do an egg hunt along the trail.

Day one: the preparatory hike

Day two: the hunt!

Super fun.

Family picture:

I guess I also need to mention that the boys had another birthday celebration while we were there, since Saturday of Easter weekend was Thad’s actual birthday. Ashlyn’s bday is right in the middle of the boys, as is my nephew Ezra’s (who couldn’t be there that weekend, miss you Ezra!)

And let’s make sure to represent my sweet Thatcher

Clearly it was a BUSY weekend. Hopefully next year we will have a bigger gap between our March birthdays and Easter, it was a bit overwhelming to do so much in a 2 day weekend. Okay, well I am still a month behind, but I better quit here. It is almost 8:00 and the boys are both still asleep. Probably should go make sure they are alive…

Mold and Fungus

In my short 3 years as a mom, I have found that one of my struggles is against an ugly monster called Comparison. Especially since we live in an Internet world, we se so many little snippets of people’s lives. But what I often forget, is those snippets are carefully chosen, pieces of a life that the person deems worth sharing. The beautiful pictures, the happy moments. Not the bad stuff. And apparently, I have a hard time keeping that in mind, because I often look at these things and think, “man, I suck”. I am not doing this, or feeding my kid that (side note: does anyone else feel an odd guilt about not being gluten free? I have no reason to stop feeding myself or my kids gluten….but everyone else it doing it...I’m weird), or taking them there, or making that for them, or, I don’t look like that, or have those clothes, etc, etc. It’s easy for me to get sucked in to that mentality.

So, if you are ever reading this and ever feel that little feeling of the comparison monster crawling up your leg….DON’T. And, lucky for you, I have a little illustration to prove my point.

I hate cleaning the bathrooms. Of all unpleasant mother tasks, it is probably my least favorite. I hate cleaning toilets, I hate cleaning showers, and bathroom floors, and most of all, I hate cleaning showers. As a result of my hate, I put it off as long as possible. So long, in fact, that there is ALWAYS mold involved in me and Justin’s shower before it gets clean. (2 disclaimers: One: There is never mold in the kids’ tub…I do drawn the line somewhere. Two: Do you know how hard it is to clean the bathroom when you have two kids? Thatcher only takes one nap, Thad doesn’t nap….THEY ARE ALWAYS AROUND!)

Anyway, yesterday was said day of terror….the day I had to bite the bullet and clean our bathroom. The mold-less area on the floor of our shower was getting smaller and smaller (do you think less of me yet?). So, during Thatcher’s nap, I plugged my other child into Looney Tunes on my Kindle, sitting on the floor of my room (how about now?) and cleaned our bathroom. As usual, it sucked. The sucking reached a whole new level when I realized a horrible fact. There is a groove under the edge of the shower door. (dum dum DUMM). I had never known of this groves presence, much less EVER cleaned it. And it is a deep groove. A groove FULL of chunky, slimy, brown mold. I almost died. It was honestly one of the most horribly disgusting things I have ever seen in my life. It will haunt me at night. It was that bad.

So, if you EVER look at any of my silly little projects, and feel self doubt. Remember: at least you keep your home sanitary. Kudos to you. I make light of the whole comparison thing, but it is really something that I struggle with. I feel like parenting comes really naturally to some people, and I feel like it does not come naturally to me AT ALL, and that always makes me harbor feelings of self doubt. I have been reading a daily devotional by Rick Warren (author of Purpose Driven Life) and Monday’s reading made a good point. It said this:

“When you compare your abilities to others, you begin to doubt God’s abilities. Instead of looking to God, you start looking at everybody else. You think these other people have more talent, more abilities, more education, more experience. The moment you start comparing yourself to them, you are going to be filled with self-doubt. The Bible says, “It is dumb to compare yourself to other people”. (2 Corinthians 10:12 Msg) God doesn’t want you comparing yourself to anybody else. He created you to be unique. He wants you to be you.”

Birthday Boys!

Saturday was the big shindig for the boys’ 1st and 3rd birthdays. Everything came together pretty much as I had planned, with lots of help from Justin and my in-laws. And, it was fun! A bit chaotic and messy, but I suppose that’s all you can expect from a party for 2 little kids.

The theme was “construction”, which I promptly searched on Pinterest, and found all of my ideas. My goal was to make most of the decorations, and not spend much money on any of it, saving my birthday budget for their gifts. So, forgive me if stuff looks a bit “home-made”. It is.

The kids table, covered with a dollar tree black table cloth, and given road stripes with duct tape. I did spend $5 on a roll of caution tape, and used it various ways, including around the edge of the kid table.

The “punch bowl”

Birthday banner, printed onto construction paper and cut out

(thanks Justin, you are a straight cutter!)

The play area, turns out that this really wasn’t necessary. None of the kids really played here, and it just created more mess. The signs I made out of poster board.

The food. Again, tablecloth with road stripes. Balloons tied onto the dowel that usually holds one of my quilts. I guess I didn’t take a picture with all the food out on the table. We just had stuff like, a veggie tray, chips and salsa, a meat and cheese platter, candy, etc. The trucks were dispensers of food, which was really cute. (So the dump truck was ‘dumping’ chips into the chip bowl, a smaller truck was full of reses pieces…etc).

The silverware and napkins were in Justin’s grandpa’s old tool box

The cake…SUPER easy, and turned out really. A chocolate cake, with a chunk cut out and piled up to make a mound. I cut the hole, then frosted it, then dumped crushed Oreos into the hole and onto the mound. Chocolate covered “rocks” I found at winco in bulk, and I made safety cones out of orange spice drops and starbursts. Took about 5 minutes to decorate. My kind of cake.

For little gift bags for the kids, I got $0.77 tool belts from Home Depot, and put candy, a little measuring tape, and a construction pencil in the pockets.

Thatcher immediately crushed his cake his his fists, and then proceeded to eat 10% of the little pieces, and throw the remaining 90% on the floor

Thad ate his properly with a fork.

The aftermath. They both got a ridiculous amount of gifts. They got some really fun stuff though. Going to have to re-organize some closets.

Overall, the party was really fun. The only thing I regret, is no family picture. (Justin, are you reading this? Why do we NEVER remember to do that?) Maybe next time.

ONE!

It happened. Our sweet little boy turned one. This kid has such a special place in my heart. He has such a happy smile, a goofy walk, loves his bro, he is just an all-around good guy. He has eyelashes that won’t quit, and went a loooonnnng time with only one top tooth. We were starting to worry. I feel like I am really just starting to see his personality come out, and have an idea of the little boy he is going to be. Motor skill-wise, way ahead of the game. Language….maybe not so much. Does making growling noises count? He’ll get there.

Time for a photo montage:

In typical Shelton/Crossland fashion, we are celebrating birthdays two different times. Since the boys’ bdays are so close together (10 days), we will have a party (for both the boys) here on Saturday with JC’s side of the family, and then head North to celebrate with my side of the family. (My side of the family is a little heavy on March birthdays…4 of the 5 grandkids have birthdays between March 20th and March 30th). Technically, this will be the first time that I have been responsible for a child’s birthday party…for Thad’s first birthday, (and my niece’s 2nd…the only 2 grandkids at the time) we rented a house in Newport with my family and went to the aquarium. For Thad’s second birthday, my family graciously brought all the birthday party makings to our house, since I had just given birth a week before. Thanks, fam! I have probably invested an inappropriate amount of mental time on the party, but it should be fun. Details/pictures to come. Wear your Carharts.

Moral of this story is: I love me some Thatcher Reid. He is such a blessing and such a sweet boy. I am so thankful for him, and so excited to be his mom.

Rude Awakening

Yesterday morning I came out into the front room first thing in the morning. Justin had left for work. Boys were still asleep. Dark outside. And who do I see, lurking in the shadows?

Gloria. (Madagascar, anyone?). Sitting in her “pond”, where Thad put her, apparently since Saturday. I have to say, she gave me a bit of a heart attack. Gloria is currently in the beanie baby bin, back where she belongs.