Taylor Tuesday

The decision was very hard this week on what photo to use.  I have a photo I really want to use, but Chris would kill me and I would like to remain married for many more years.  Maybe I’ll convince him to let me do a special post with it.  So today’s picture comes to you from Christmas morning.  Ya-Ya and PawPaw got Taylor a Texas Tech tricycle that she loves.  The seat is a bit tall for her so she stands on the back holding onto the handles and gets pushed around. Don’t you just LOVE her pj’s too!  So much fun and excitement occurs on Christmas morning!  I will post on my blog later this week with pictures from our Christmas adventures.

Merry Christmas!

I always thought the coolest thing about being a kid at Christmas was the excitement of waiting for Santa, but I have to say that this year is so much different.  Now the little kid in me is excited for Taylor.  I get see the ‘behind the scenes’ and since she is figuring this present thing out this year I CANNOT wait to see her face when she sees what the big jolly guy and eight tiny reindeer left for her.  I hope your Christmas is just as magical!

ps.  this picture was pretty good considering she wanted nothing to do with Santa but did proceed to tell him that she wanted Elmo for Christmas

Taylor Tuesday

I have to apologize for getting Taylor Tuesday up/out so late today.  We’ve had a busy day of Java Jungle, shopping, tea parties, and booking this Momma’s flight to NY!!!  Once I realized that it was Tuesday(when you eat bon-bons and avoid laundry everyday of the week seems the same) I finished putting up some last minute garland, got a bowl of much needed chocolate ice cream, found the camera, and proceeded to pick a favorite for this week.

What do you do when the sun is shining right in your face on the car trip home and no matter how much they try, Mom and Dad can’t block the sun for you???

Wear Mom’s extra sunglasses of course!(and upside-down is the new cool)

Dukes of Hazzard Style

That’s all I could think of as Taylor tried to play with her new car(Thank you Ricky, Kirsten, and girls!) as Chris was putting it together.  I knew Taylor would have fun with this car since she loved it so much as Marie’s house, but she wanted to play in it as soon as Chris got it out of the box. 

There were other new toys that I tried to distract her with, but she was only interested in the car.  Also notice that even without the door on yet, she proceeded to get in the car from the other side Dukes of Hazzard style.  Chris now understands why his Dad always put toys together after they went to bed.

     

No matter what part of the building Chris was at, she had to be in the car playing. 

     

Check out her hair.  It made me laugh!

So that’s what the door is for! ~ Beep Beep!

Putting the finishing touches on…

           

Now we are hoping for some warmer weather this afternoon so she can try it outside!  Oh and Chris is already trying to figure out how to make the headlights and brake lights working lights and add a stereo system!

What’s cooking?

I’m not sure what Taylor thinks I cook in the microwave, but I guess it is hot pink glitter glue.

Do you snore???

Taylor has taken up a new hobby of pretending to be sleeping, but normally with her eyes open.  Chris plays a game with her where he pretends to be sleeping and makes a snoring noise.  Then we(Taylor and I) wake the great sleeping bear known as Daddy.  It’s funny that she has now taken to making the snoring noise like Chris and will pretend to sleep anywhere… including the kitchen floor.

It’s really hard not to laugh she starts snoring while I’m cooking or just lays down on the stairs to pretend to sleep.  I think this video goes on the list of ones that we will have lots of fun embarrassing her with later in life.  Chris’ sister even thought that Chris was such a loud snorer that Taylor was imitating his ‘real’ sound.  That would be funny, but instead it is a continuation of their game.  When picking which video was the best, I felt like I had surround sound because Taylor decided to chime in with her newfound noise.   

I do love our toddler adventures such as these and can’t wait to see what she comes up with next or what Chris might teach her!

Taylor Tuesday

This week’s Taylor Tuesday should be titled Taylor and Dada Tuesday.  Taylor and Chris looked so sweet this weekend working on their Lego advent calendar together.  She even asks to play with parts of it during the day and makes little swooshing noises for the guy sledding or guy ice skating.  What is really funny is that shortly after this she moved Chris’ hands out of the way because he was getting in the way of her playing.  I love watching them open the next door of their calendar each day, even if he didn’t start it until a few days ago!  Thanks Ya-Ya for getting them such as great gift to do together!

Christmas Card

I LOVE the Christmas season!  I love the way our house look with all the decorations.  I leave our Christmas trees(yes that is multiple) on the entire time we are home so that I can enjoy all the lights and magicalness that a tree has.  Then on top of that people send cards with sweet photos or messages to remind of us that they are thinking of us this time of year.  It is so nice to get mail that is not a bill or junk!  Since I love receiving cards, it is only fit that I spend time making sure our card is just right.  I tried stamping our cards a few years, but we now send out way too many cards for me to try and make each of them and fitting a photo into that is just too much of a challenge for me.  So I look at the normal Shutterfly, Walgreens, Tiny Prints, Snapfish, ect and liked all the cute creations they had, but just couldn’t find the one that was just right for us.  So I pulled together several ideas that I liked and created my own in Stampin’ Up!’s My Digital Studio.  It was so easy to create and then just send to be printed as a 5X7 photo.  Creating the card took less time than trying to take Taylor’s picture.  So to all my blog followers that don’t get the mail version…

 

What you get as my blog followers are the blooper pictures from my ‘session’ with Taylor.  I was ready for a challenge, but what I didn’t expect was all the laughs she gave me and I hope I remember this each year when I try to take her picture for future cards.  Plus I think I created a candy cane monster!  I am a bit of a candy cane snob and have been spoiled by a mom who searches out for Bob’s cherry candy canes for me each year.  Why bother to eat anything else when you have a fav?  So here we go….

Saying cheese, but looking off to the side ~ Someone REALLY likes her candy cane ~ Check out this cool ornament Mama

Sadie did so good posing for me while Tay gave her ‘cheese’ smile ~ Check out those red shoes!  I LOVE ‘em!

 

Did you know a present makes for a great sitting place? ~ She thought I was pretty funny. ~ And in the end she was willing to share with Mama!

I thought about sending out a flip book instead of just a card so that I could include a few more of these, but figured I would save them for you reader.  So I’ll finish my candy cane and get back to my nap time to-do list, but I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and enjoy our bloopers!

Wall of Love

Since we moved into our house almost 7 years ago, I knew I wanted to do something to decorate the walls on the stairs.  We have several areas of the house with large blank walls that just scream to be decorated.  I finally figured out what I wanted to do on the stairs, but knew it would be a it expensive to buy all the picture frames I wanted.  Over several months(and LOTS of Michaels’ coupons) I bought all the frames I wanted for the wall along our stairs.  Then I spent another couple of months figuring out which photos to use and how I wanted to lay the frames out.  Then I traced each frame on tissue paper to make an example so that I could figure out how to hang them on the wall.  I found this quote at Uppercase Living and customized it with the colors to match our house. 

This was the first time I had worked with the vinyl lettering and LOVE the way it turned out.  Once I put this on the the wall where I wanted, then I started placing all the tissue paper examples all around it.  Chris wasn’t sure what crazy things his wife was up to but just nodded and went along with whatever I asked.  He’s such a good husband!  Here’s a picture of my wall in progress.  I forgot to take a complete before or even one without any real frames up, but I think you get the idea.  The have hung tissue paper is where I realized that being 5’1 and trying to hang pictures up high don’t mix well.  One tip that I’ve read several times was to keep all pictures at eye level and it really helped me keep all the pictures in viewing spectrum.(just not Wendy reaching distance!)

Taylor was helping me at this point since the other side of this wall is her room so I had to do everything while she was awake.

Once I was happy with the placement of all my examples, I grabbed a hammer and nails and put a nail where I had marked the hanger on the tissue paper.  Let me tell you how easy this made the process!  After a little help from someone taller here is my finished product.  Please don’t look at the crooked pictures.  I plan on going back and putting sticky tape at the bottom of each picture to keep them from moving. 

View from upstairs:

Going up the stairs:

View from downstairs.  Please look past my clear clips, I was in the process of hanging garland to decorate for Christmas.

Taylor loves pointing everyone out each time we go up or down the stairs and I love that!  Plus it’s so nice to finally let these picture have a place somewhere other than my computer, blog, or a photo album!  Now let’s see how long it takes me to keep the photos in the frames updated!

Taylor Tuesday

For those of you that have been following my blog for a while, this won’t be new info but I wanted to let everyone else know what Taylor Tuesday is.  Taylor Tuesday is actually a weekly email that goes out to my husband and a few family members(aka grandparents).  The whole goal is hopefully to bring a smile to their day or a least give them a new picture of Taylor.  It started when Taylor was about 6 weeks old and Monday had been a really bad day.  When Tuesday went much better I sent Chris a picture of Taylor showing how the swaddle wrap made her(and me) so happy.  It then went on to become a weekly thing that sometimes doesn’t get sent until Wednesday if Tuesday is quite busy.  It started just going to Chris and now I have 15 people that get the email and several who watch my blog for the weekly update.  Hope you enjoy Taylor Tuesday too and it brings a smile to your face too!

These pictures make me think of the line from a song... my future's so bright, I gotta wear shades! 

All dressed up with no where to go

I have always said one of the great things about being a parent is that you get to experience all the things you loved as a kid with your own kids.  Well I also love doing stuff with my nieces, but I don’t remember crazy hairstyles being something I did as a kid very often.  My nieces love to fix my hair for me and they took advantage of an opportunity to do that again tonight.  Taylor even got in there to help them out.

Four different hairstyles, 15 bobby pins, 4 ponytail holders, and one claw clip later….

 

THey wanted to do my makeup too, but last time they mixed so many different flavored lip glosses on me that it made me sick.  I told Chris that he shouldn’t waste a great hairdo like this and take me out for the night, but for some reason he wouldn’t go for it.(do you think a UT/Nebraska game has anything to do with that??)  I love these girls and my time with them!  Taylor is finally old enough to really enjoy being around them and is completely in awe of my oldest niece.  I love that!

Short Lived Snow

In Texas, the hint of snow and we go into a frenzy and get all excited.  Going to college in Lubbock I got to see snow several times each year and it actually stayed for more than a few hours.  Even though I saw it often in college, as an Austinite I get excited about the chance to see it again.  So when the weatherman predicted that around 10 am Friday we would have a white wonderland I made sure the camera and our jackets were handy.  A couple hours later we finally saw some flurries.  I bundled Taylor up and we headed outside.  I think Taylor thought I was crazy dragging her out in the cold after telling her all week that we couldn’t play outside because it was too cold, but she was a good sport and played along with the whole snow idea.  You can tell by looking at the ground that our ‘snow’ was just enough to look at but didn’t last for very long and within 30 minutes the sun was back out.  Gotta love Texas weather!

 

This is the look you get when you tell a toddler that Mommy is now too cold and it’s time to go inside.

I hope we get the chance at a real snow sometime this winter so that I can see the delight on her face the first time she plays in the snow!

New Catalogs

In case you don’t know, I am a Stampin’ Up Demonstrator.  I love and believe in their product, so I became a Demo to help support my own hobby and to share my love with friends and family.  One of the benefits of being a demo is that I get to see the new catalogs prior to customers.  Taylor was just as excited as me when we got the Sale-a-bration and Occasions Mini catalog in the mail yesterday.

Do you think my love for stamping has already rubbed off on her???  I’ve been busy trying to create our Christmas card, but hope to have some time to blog about some stamped and non-stamped projects that I’ve been working on lately.  All this rain may keep me from doing our outside decorations and blog a little bit!

Taylor Tuesday

I have a hard time looking at this picture and not laughing so I hope it brings some giggles to your day.  Not sure what Tay was up to or why she is making this face, but between the face and pigtails I couldn't help but grab the camera.  Much better than her corny 'cheese' smile!

Happy first day of December!

More Scraping Thanks

I started out making a page for my frame and somehow ended up that I created a page for my Mom, my grandmother, and now my mother-in-law, but not one for me yet!  At least I have all these great pages I’ve created so far to get ideas from for my own.  You know how much I love layout ideas for my cards, well I found a layout idea for scrapbook pages too.  If you are into scraping you should check out PageMaps Blog.  They come up with some cute layouts and I love all the variations that people come up with!

Here is the layout:

There’s was a 8 1/2 x 11 size, but you can change things up to fit your page size.  The frame is 12 x 12 so I just made it wider.  My MIL hates staples on a scrapbook page or card so I had to come up with something else for that element.  I struggled with the background paper for a long time and actually hoped to have this done on Thursday to give to her for Thanksgiving, but it took me a few days to find a background paper that fit just right.  I found the cute felt buttons in my embellishment drawer and thought they added a touch of softness to all the paper.  I am really starting to enjoy my Cricut and how nice it is to cut letters and shapes the size and color I want!  I put the Sure Cuts A Lot program on my Christmas list so that I can create the wording on the computer using any font and then cut it out!  We’ll see if Santa thinks I’ve been a good girl this year!  Onto my creation:

 

Does it count against my to-do before 30 list if I have created a page for everyone else?

It’s on my regular to-do tonight or tomorrow.  I am almost done with my indoor Christmas decoration and then I need to wrap a few presents before I can sneak back into my craft room again. 

Scraping my thanks

I really like the concept of sending a scrapbook page instead of a card for the holidays and actually had my act together in time for Thanksgiving.  I wasn’t sure what to use for the picture part, so I used one of Taylor 18 month old photos.  All her other photos right now are a bit weird with her ‘cheese’ phase going on.  While I was going thru my papers to find stuff for these layouts, I realized that I need something to tell me to step away from the 12x12 paper the next time I am in Archivers, Michaels, JoAnn’s, or Hobby Lobby unless I have a specific purpose for it’s use in the next 5 days.  Here is what I came up:

 

Both projects use all the same items, I just moved them around to make them a tad bit different.  I hope my mom and grandmother enjoy hanging these in their frame for a couple of weeks until I get a Christmas page done. 

Paper: SU Tangerine Tango(retired), SU River Rock(retired), random yellow from scraps, brown background paper is from Deja’ Views 8x8 pad

Ink: SU Chocolate Chip

Stamps: SU Sketch An Event(retired)

Other: orange grosgain ribbon, brown grosgrain ribbon, brown fine tip sharpie, SU distressing tool, SU Little Leaves die cut, Cricut Mini Monograms catridge(for ‘thanks’)