Adventures in La La Land

A few months ago, I saw a carnival themed birthday party on Pinterest and decided this would be a good year for Lucy to have her first friend party. I thought she'd love a carnival theme and it'd be easy and fun. And then along came Frozen . There was no question that the carnival was going to be replaced by Anna, Elsa, and Olaf. Thanks to its insane popularity, there were a plethora of ideas on Pinterest . I chose a few of the easiest and went to town. :-) Decorations My amateur pictures don't do justice to the tons of paper snowflakes Lucy and I cut out and hung from the ceiling: I chose a purple, blue and white theme to complement our Frozen  tableware. I originally found the plates/cups/napkins at Party City , but then discovered the same thing at Dollar N' More in Sparta! If you're looking for Frozen tableware in my area, go to Dollar N' More and shop local! ;-) I got this  Frozen  poster at Wal-Mart for $5. I'm sure it will find p...

Lucy has had her capital letters down for over a year, but still struggles with some of their lowercase counterparts. So I came up with this quick little game. This is actually the second time we did it, but I didn't take pictures the first. Lucy was thrilled to do it again. The first time, I just wrote all the capital letters on a piece of poster board. But today I couldn't find any poster board, so I pulled out the Melissa and Doug "Responsibility Chart" (that has never been used for its intended purpose) and taped some uppercase letters to the back: Then I taped lowercase letters all around the house. You can make this as easy or as difficult as you'd like, and even have fun with it by putting the letters on corresponding objects. For instance: d on the dishwasher, f on the fridge, b on a book, etc. I didn't get that involved. I just scattered them around: Then Lucy ran around finding the letters and matching them with the upper case version on...

1. Well the news of the week is that I went on my first official diet. It's not super fun. I'm not doing anything crazy or super-restrictive. I signed up with myfitnesspal and they asked me questions about my lifestyle and goals. I said that I'm sedentary, but want to lose 25 lbs, so they only gave me 1250 calories a day. Yikes. I add 500 to that because I'm breastfeeding, and don't beat myself up if I go over another 50 calories or so. Basically, I'm trying to stay around 1800 calories. I entered my calories all week, basically to get a feel for what 1800 calories looks like. I'm a complete nutrition novice. I was amazed how many calories are in peanut butter and cheese - a couple of my diet staples. Haha. And one day I was ravenous and scarfed down 2 pieces of Papa Murphy's pizza for lunch. That didn't leave me many calories for dinner! It's a learning process, and I honestly hate it, but for the first time in my life I hate my current weight m...

My sister and I love traditions. We complain often that our family doesn't have enough. So I decided (with much thanks to Pinterest) to start a new one with Lucy this year: the Advent Calendar. We didn't do anything like this as kids, so I've just gleaned information from the Internet and relied on my creativity. My Advent Calendar isn't nearly as beautiful as anything I've seen on Pinterest, but I did come up with 25 activities to do from December 1-25. I wrote the activity on the red square and lightly taped the circle over it. She'll peel off the circle to see the activity. Read the Christmas story. [I got the book  The Story of Christmas  by Patricia A. Pingry at Family Christian for $6.99 yesterday. It's just right for Lucy.] Make pipe cleaner/bead ornaments.  [Just let her string pony beads onto pipe cleaners, form into a "wreath"-type circle and let her put it on the tree.] Make peanut butter bird feeders . Pick ...

Niki and I were in charge of favors for ladies' retreat this year. I got this idea from pinterest , but re-wrote it for our event. This is a horrible picture, but I just want to document it in case I ever want to do something like it again.   It says: The Bible is full of candy references: Noah sent out a DOVE from the ark. Moses had  BUTTERFINGERS (he dropped the 10 Commandments, didn't he?) The Israelites journeyed to the land of MILK DUDS  and honey. [Apparently I ate that one before I took the picture. Oops!] Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 13:12 to greet one another with a holy KISS . There are even M&Ms  (Mary and Martha of course). So in that same vein, we hope you enjoy this year's ladies' retreat. May your rooms be filled with SNICKERS  and your hearts be filled with [ALMOND] JOY !