A Very Pinterest Christmas

I LOVE Pinterest. I "pin" all the time. My husband thinks it's crazy and pointless and I'll never do anything useful with my pinned items. However, lately, I have been taking the time to "do" some of the things I have pinned, and I don't think he totally hates them, either! Here are a few of the items I have done with some Pin-spiration:

Christmas Trees:

These trees are made from rolled cereal boxes. The one on the left is unfolded rafia, the one in the center is gold tissue paper rolled into rosettes and glues onto the cone covered in gold tissue paper, and the on on the right is wrapped in silver ribbon. I'm still considering a topper of some sort for one or all of them, but they are finished on my mantle and I love them!

Christmas Photos:

You can see the edge of the backdrop in this photo (I cropped it for our card).

This year for our Christmas card photos I created a string of lights backdrop. I hung a sheet over the french doors to our den. I then hung white lights from the sheet, clipping them up with clothespins. I sat the kids about 10 feet in front of the backdrop and started snapping. The teddy bear is obviously a test shot, but you can see how crudely the lights are hung and in the picture on the bottom you can see how well they look in a "real" photo. This was perfect and looks like we're in a studio somewhere (I think). :)

Dollar Store Christmas gifts from Mallory:

Here is our $1 plate with the center taped off. We then gave her a red Sharpie and then a green one and told her to color. She did a pretty good job, and since she's not quite 2 years old, she doesn't take very long.

We did mugs for one set of grandparents, and a plate for the other. And since, at this point, I have yet to tell any friends or family about this blog, I am totally okay with posting pictures of their gifts!
And look - not a single bit of marker on her!!

I also have one other gift idea that I have yet to complete, but I have all the pieces so I will post about those when they are finished!

Back in the saddle again

So, a month and a half later....we had a baby girl! I was in just as much shock this time as I was last time the doctor said "It's a girl!" and I couldn't be happier. It was very strange in the beginning, because she looks identical to her sister when she sleeps, which totally weirded me out! In many other ways she is very much like her sister - eats well, sleeps well, pretty content - but she has had major gas issues which cause her to screech in pain out of nowhere...not fun, but we've made some adjustments and she is doing much better.

It took some time to get back into diaper changes and how tiny everything is and putting clothes on a person who doesn't help out at all! I love using my Moby wrap again...especially at the grocery store (I have to use it when I have both kids with me). I also love getting to be at home with both my girls again. And now that she's almost 2 months old we have a good routine down. I'm still having to remember to give her tummy time, which I am horrible at remembering, by the way, but other than that I think we're pretty much back on the horse.

Marin Naomi   (Marin is pronounced like Karen)

Marin (almost 2 months) and her big sister Mallory (20 months)