She's famous!

Guess who made a guest appearance on my SIL's blog?

Check it out!

Artsy-ness

 It has become clear to me that I have not spent enough time on artistic endeavors for the last few years.  I'm not an excellent artist so I've shied away from creative tasks because I tend to like doing things I KNOW I'm really good at.  Crafts and such also require time and planning which is hard with 2 kids and grad school and a full life.  But, excuses aside.  It really feeds my soul to tap into my creative side so I've been trying for a few months to do it more often.  I'm writing more, singing more, taking pictures more, and crafting more. So, stay tuned for more crafty blog posts!  Here are some pics of a couple projects from December :-)

Coffee Filter Wreaths and Trees

Penguin Ornament

Weather

So, you could say we've been having some varied weather around here in the last week...

Friday: 70 degrees, sunny.

Activity of the Day: Day at the Zoo!

(sad to say, I did not take this picture-forgot my camera that day!)

Tuesday: 30 degrees, 4 inches of snow

Activity of the Day: Snow Angels

Friday:  50 degrees, INSANE thunderstorms

Activity of the Day: Storm Watching (and holding hands to fend of any fear of the thunder)

Princesses on Ice

Recently we joined a few friends to see Disney Princesses on Ice at the local Arena.  I'm a sucker for a good show especially if it involves Disney music.  My sister and I are known to break into our 20-year-old repertoire of Disney Songs loudly and often. "Colors of the Wind" anyone? "Part of your world"?  

So, given my penchant for a good Alan Menken tune, this show ended up being even better than I expected!  Complete with fireworks, pretty impressive figure skating in full costumes, and a dragon breathing actual fire on the ice, it was pretty awesome.  Oh, and Ella would want me to mention the enormous bag of Cotton Candy i got her at intermission.  That might have been her favorite part.  She did enjoy the show but she's a sucker for big bags of spun sugar too.  And it's ok because she's just beginning her schooling in the wonderful world of Disney Songs.  She's almost got down the lyrics to "A Whole New World."  That's my girl :-)

Easier than I thought

So, in my 5+ years of being a mom there has never been a shortage of advice or "the new best thing" to do for your child.  I try to take it all in and then weed through the biased or blatantly false information and then as a family, with God's guidance, make the best decisions for our family.  I try not to make decisions in parenting (or anything!) based on what's coolest, newest, trendy, or even expected.  I believe strongly in the uniqueness of each individual so what might be right your someone else's kid may be a horrible choice for Ella or Sadie.

I also have complete faith in God's power to direct me and that sometimes, even most times, that direction may not look like what the rest of the world is doing.  In fact, sometimes, that's how I know it's Him.  His ways rarely look like the world's ways (Isaiah 55:8).  So all this to say, something as seemingly insignificant as whether I was going to make my own baby food was a "come to Jesus" process for me.  I knew I had some dirty motivations in there ("everyone's doing it" or the pride I could take in doing the "best" for my baby).  Plus there was my own laziness that felt intimidated by it and would rather throw some money at the problem and buy baby food.  After some talking it out with God and dealing with my sin, the verdict is in.  He wanted me to do it anyway and has done some purifying of my motives and given me so much joy in doing it!  And, it's much easier than I thought!

(Oh, and I learned that it's no longer the new, trendy, "best for baby" thing anyway! Apparently feeding table food from the beginning is the newest trend- Good thing I wasn't doing it for those reasons!)

So here are some fun pics from my adventures is baby food making.  It's so stinkin' simple.  And pretty.  I decided that I like to have pretty things around me so if I was going to put baby food in ice cube trays they better be aesthetically pleasing ones.  So, thank you Ikea for $2 brightly colored, adorably shaped silicone trays! It makes this job even more fun!

Cook Food and then Puree

So, this looks kinda gross but I used the Pamepered Chef scraper to clean up the excess-another use for that great tool!!

Fill up the ice cube trays and then freeze 'em

A cute little fishy of frozen peas!

Carrot Hearts!

Pea Flowers

Pop 'em out, bag 'em and defrost when ready to serve!

This makes it 1000000% worth it!