Repurpose

This is my new favorite word- it's actually what I've been up to for the larger part of the last few months! Here's a few of my favorite projects (no before pictures unfortunately!):

Made this hat out of two old cami's that I stole out of my sister in laws DI bag :)

(thanks Rach!)

Love how matchy she is in this photo (not!) I found the skirt tutorial and socks tutorial here.

This was a teen's t-shirt I found at Munchkin's 25 cent sale! I added a band around the waist and navy flowers for some color.

I got the idea for these Sweater Dresses right here! The only thing I did different was cut the tops of the arms at an angle instead of straight across- gives a nicer feel I think. This first sweater also came from the quarter sale!

Got this sweater at Savers for 99 cents!

Now go make some of these with your old stuff!

I Like Life! Life Likes Me!

My dearest friend, Sarah, wrote a post that reminded me of a little incident a few weeks back with my firstborn sweetie. One of our favorite holiday movies is the 1970's classic, Scrooge. This is seriously a great film. Anyway, one of the many songs that we love from this movie goes something like "I Like Life! Life Likes Me! I think life is a perpetual spree!" and so on and so forth. Well, I got up one morning and was kind of moping around in my robe trying to get a move on for the day and I go into little Brook's room and she's sitting on her little bed playing with her dollies singing "I like life! Life likes me!" in her innocent sweet little voice and it really touched me. Because I get overwhelmed with the pressures of daily life and wishing we were somewhere else financially or physically or emotionally, but when it really comes down to it, I really just do like life!

Here it is! The moment you've been waiting for!

Well, a few of you at least. Some may not know, but for Christmas, Ben and I built a kitchen set for "the Douglass Children." It turned out super cute if I do say so myself. I was able to stock it with some real mini dishes too- real mini silverware from Ikea, real mini pots and pans from DI- even a real mini-mini muffin tin! It is the cutest thing! (I will have to post pictures of these later) There are two things that excite me the most about this project- there are three pieces (four someday, when we have room for the Pantry) so it gives a chance for all my kids to share once they grow up and (hopefully) want one for their own homes. The second thing is that we were able to make the whole set out of scrap wood that we got for free, so I think with hardware, paint, and wood, we spent about $15 on the whole set! It just makes it seem that much cuter!

But the Douglass children aren't the only ones who got a new kitchen set....

Fun in the Snow

Dad and Brook set to work building us a sweet-awesome snowman when it snowed a few weeks ago. He is still melting by our front door- Brook is very concerned about it.

Check him out in all his Gangsta goodness, gold tooth and all!

Brook is a great help when it comes to shoveling the driveway!

My Attempt at Photo Shop

Nothing fancy, but I thought her face was just so adorable in this picture!

(taken at one month old)

Kids....

Don't they just make life worth it? Here's Brook learning to sleep in her big girl bed... how do they do that?

And here's Ellie- caught red handed!

Love 'em!

New Years Blessings

The New Year! What a wonderful time to evaluate our blessings and where we are going in our lives! I have all kinds of plans for changes I want to make! Now I just need to write them down!

We had a kind of rough New Year's Eve, and I'm happy that the New Year started as wonderful as it did! My younger sister who is expecting was in a pretty severe car accident with her husband on their way back to school (and to our house for her baby shower). Their car was hit by a semi, along with her brother-in-law's car, but no one was injured! The cars are both totalled, a few scrapped pinkies and one goose egg, but the baby to be and the others are all okay! It was a New Years Eve Miracle for sure!

The baby shower was really fun, even though it was postponed one day while we waited for Heather to get there! I decorated some cupcakes that turned out pretty cute with The Perfect Cupcake Frosting and made her some Tie Onesies from this lady and some Wee Wee Wigwams from this gal. Lovin' crafty blogs! I would post some pictures, but someone stole my card reader adapter, so I can't! UPDATED: Had to add a picture of the cupcakes- aren't they fun?