Monkey Party

Monkeys monkeys everywhere.  We hunted for bananas hidden around the room, spread PB on them and decorated them with yummy treats. We read monkey stories, ate monkey cupcakes, played with 'monkey dough' and Toby ate cake for the first time.  

Too fun.

Having a themed birthday may just become my new addiction...

 Loved decorating for this.  Will include a link to tutorials here later.

Advent Part 2

A few posts ago I wrote about the Christmas Advent Journey we've started this year.  I have been busy shopping, creating, planning and conspiring since then.  So far, I've compiled my 25 days of Christmas activity list (but it still needs some fixing), I've found a bunch of fun gifts to include and started collecting supplies for all the fun activities we'll do.  I also found a bunch of used Christmas kids' books (to wrap up for each day) and splurged on one new one.  I think we'll buy the kids one new Christmas book every year.  

But the main thing I needed to do asap was actually make our advent calendar boxes.

I found a bunch of cheap (1-2 dollar) boxes from the dollar store, found some christmas cookie tins from Value Village and Salvation Army (as well as some in the back of our tupperware cupboard).  I also had some old jewelry boxes my mom donated.

I got some gold spray paint from Michaels and hosed down the tacky boxes from the dollar store and bought a few sheets of scrapbook paper.  Then I went to work making some cute/scrap book style numbers for each box.

And presto, here is our advent calendar:

They were super fun to make and will be even more fun to fill.  I hope these will bring about a lot of fun family memories.

Back to the workshop I go.

[I plan on including daily/weekly collages of all our December activities!]

Next up: a birthday party for Toby who turns 1 in a week!

Busy Bags

An oldie but a goodie: 

This summer I attended my first busy bag making party. What a great way to meet new people, swap some fun tot-stuff and get my creative juices flowing.  

I made 8 of them.  Silas loved playing with them while I put them together:

This was the one I made: dyed pasta, cut up straws, beads and pipe cleaners.  

Favorite moment over the summer with it?  On a dinner cruise where few other families had activities for their kids.  It went longer than expected and I whipped out this 
bad-boy. 

Crowd pleaser.  Soon I had 10 kids surrounding me and fighting over pipe cleaners.  Good times.  

One received from my friend: cupcake decorating!  (Good one Michelle!)

Party Goer

A busy weekend of parties and creating for 'em.  I loved getting the creative juices flowing again.  Here's some evidence of the messy merri-making madness.

• Baby shower cupcakes.  Yes I made some in baby jars.  No, I wouldn't do it again.  They were cute but hard to eat.  However, it was fun and I enjoyed using up those accumulating jars in my cupboard.

• 40th birthday bash.  I tried this on pinterest and it failed.  Oh Martha.  How do you make it look so easy? [Where did she buy easy-knotting chives from?!]  I ended up with this instead:  

Tooth picks stabbed into tiny bits of vegetables?  Done.  Did it take longer than it should?  Head nod.  I also gave a humorous gift for the birthday boy: 40 suckers with a list of "40 things that suck worse than turning 40" which included random things like this 

[the list was completely assembled sans pinterest]:

1. having rabies

12. sinking your car in a very large puddle*

17. battery operated toys

18. vomiting out your nose

23. burning your nipple with a hot iron

26. decaf coffee

33. getting your tie stuck in an automatic door

*true story

Not a glamorous presentation, mind you.

• It's my birthday tomorrow and when hubby asked me what I wanted, I told him that I wanted him and my 2.5 year old to make me a cake [this was largely because Silas loves baking and loves cake].  I didn't realize Jason had never ever in his life made one before. Result?

Vegan chocolate yummy-ness and fun family to enjoy it with.  Good job dear! 

Advent and the Christmas Countdown

More time together.  More anticipation.  

More planning.  Less spending.  

I've been inspired by a lot of Advent Conspiracy videos and a lot of the home-made, crafting ideas found on pinterest - especially this and this.  How can we return Christmas to it's true meaning, it's true beauty?

Silas is almost 3 and I am so excited to start making some Christmas traditions happen.  I've done lots of reading and have started planning.  We want to teach him the true 'magic' of Christmas:

giving, loving, family, thankfulness, worship, joy, peace, Christ.

Here's the plan:

• Each morning, the 'wise men' on camels will move a little bit from one corner of the house to the nativity scene (as they came from far away).  First thing in the morning he will get to see where they are and we will also share a bit about the Christmas story. 
• Each afternoon Silas will open a box for advent (big or small) with the name of the activity we are going to do that day, with a little present (that most likely will contribute to that activity in some way), and an ornament to hang on the tree (ones we already own)
• Each evening we will do an awesome, family-fun activity that is in the spirit of true Christmas
• Each bedtime Silas will get to un-wrap one of 25 Christmas books (most used, most that we already own, some from the library, all wrapped up fancy-like) and we'll read them together

So excited.

First step:

Make advent boxes. I have collected 15 boxes so far which I will wrap up or paint (haven't decided) and have started searching for cheap Christmas tins as well.  I'll affix numbers on them and decide where to put them.  Stay tuned for our mega-exciting, anticipation building, fun-filled 25 day activity list.  Post to come...

Any activities we must have on the list?  What are some of your favourite Christmas activities?

'Tis the Season

Went to the pumpkin/apple tree farm today.  It was fun for the most part.  The drive was long, but I think the boys had a great time!  Wagon rides, playgrounds, animal petting zoo, apple picking, apple-cider-slushie drink, sunshine, dirt, pumpkins- how could they not like it?  I wonder sometimes though, if it's illegal to text while drive, how is it also not illegal to dangerously toss toys, food scraps, and other things back at your children in car-seats in order to avoid the inevitable energy crash that ensues on a long drive?  Yikes.  I was swerving along trying to placate escalating children with snacks and distractions on the way home.  Worked up a sweat, but we made it.

Anyways.

At the end of this random adventure I get to update my open shelves with some cutey pie pumpkins in honour of our upcoming 7th year wedding anniversary (they were part of our table decor).  Oh.  And we picked and ate apples. Yum.

 What am I supposed to do with those things?!

 The goats were eager to make friends but Toby wasn't game

Toby LOVED the wagon ride! 

White pumpkins: thanks for filling in my open shelf decor!

 Like.  A lot.

 Reminds me of our wedding day.  Sigh.

Kitchen!!!!!

We hadn't planned to improving our kitchen anymore than we already had.  We'd painted the walls, torn out the crummy wood panel backsplash and put up some fancy tile. We thought we were done with renos while still in this townhome.  We asked a real estate agent and she said it wouldn't increase the value if we did anything else so we were happy, la fin.

This is what our kitchen looked like when we first bought it:

Oak cabinets, laminate counters, wood backsplash panels, green walls

 And the living space beside the kitchen (our family room)

After we painted the walls and put up the chalkboard paint:

When we thought we were done: new backsplash up:

Then we had a kitchen leak.  

A big one.

Floors came up, cabinets came down, counter came out and we were deciding if we should let insurance just put it all back in the way it came out...or make some improvements.

10 weeks later, approx 2000 dollars down, and after much hard work, sweat and more than enough tears....we have a new kitchen.

Cream paint on the walls, charcoal feature wall, new butcher block countertops-extended to make a little eating bar (installed professionally), cream paint on the cabinets, open shelves instead of one set of cabinets, new chairs from ikea, took down blinds and put up curtains, new flooring (vinyl), and new pictures to go in all the frames on the wall...

TA DA.

And we love it.  I mean, LOVE our new space.

Would I do it again?  Nope.  Okay, maybe.  However, now we are so blessed and so excited to share this space with people.  After being practically anti-social hermits, working late into the night (every night) we are ready to host, welcome, and invite others [YOU] into our home.  Even though it looks new and lovely, I'm kinda ready to scuff up the counters, splatter the walls with pancake batter, and get my mixer a' mixin again.  The dishwasher is humming (such a happy sound around here) and, well, here are some pictures:

[My Ghanian Quilt] the Journey Continues...

This post has been in progress for awhile but with the chaos of our living space right now, it's been back-benched.  So here's the story of my quilt.  

Rewind: 3 years ago.  No kids, no home, no 'jobs' and we were doing missions work in Burkina Faso, West Africa.  During our time there we had a mini 'family vacay' down to Ghana.  Funny, things on the map always seem so close.  Case in point: "Ghana is right next to us let's visit the coast!"  Ha ha, 12 hours later (felt like the longest bus ride ever) we arrived in beautiful, colorful, loud Cape Coast.  I was forever admiring Ghanian cloth before this trip and everywhere we went during it.  If you've ever been to Africa you know that cloth is pretty significant.  You buy cloth then have a tailor make clothes specifically to fit you.  Burkina cloth was nice but Ghanian cloth, well, that 

was something else.

I have always wanted to make a quilt so decided to buy a bunch of different colours of Ghanian cloth to make it into said quilt as a memory of our trip.  However, shopping turned out to be quite the ordeal.  Sweaty, busy, loud, pushy, aggressive marketplaces.  Hot sun, indecision, walking walking walking. Not like shopping for cloth here.  

We had a lovely trip at the coast and finally did find all the cloth I wanted to (phew).

We then carted those cloths home through 5 European countries and stored them until we were back in Canada and bought a home for them to reside in.  

I didn't have a sewing machine which delayed my project and then I had this handsome project delayer:

Finally, when Silas was almost 8 months old I just threw caution to the wind and as I often do, dove headlong into this outrageous quilt project.  I didn't research, didn't plan, just started cutting. 

My grandmother donated me her mother's old, quality, swiss Bernina sewing machine (affectionately known as 'Bern') and I was off.

That was 2.5 years ago.  YEARS.
And it's still not done.
I finally cut it and sewed the top of the quilt together, bought back material and filler, and basted the whole beast together.  You might have remember a post with me displaying what the quilt looked like at that point.  

Through one maternity leave and entering into another one the quilt was finally 'almost' complete but then I had another cute project delayer:

Funny, having not researched I didn't realize that all of the above, which took me over 2 years to do, was actually the FASTEST part of the project.  [So funny].  I put it in my calendar "stitch whole quilt together" on one evening.  I had no idea that the actual quilting begins now.

Oh.

So back in November before baby boy the second arrived, I had a King sized quilt that still needed to be sewn together.  Oh boy.  I could send it out to get someone to do it, do it by machine (which would be tricky since it's so thick) or do it by hand.  Well, even though no one hardly does this anymore, I opted for the less convenient, most time consuming, and ridiculously tedious job of hand stitching/embroidering this gigantic memory blanket together.

Once I resigned myself to how much work this was going to be and stopped focusing on the end result, I have to say that I am thoroughly enjoying the process.  Stitch by glorious stitch I am making my way.  I get to sit.  I get to think and pray.  I get to enjoy the bliss of seeing my dream project come together.  Me.  Who often enjoys getting much done in little time, the queen of efficiency, this fast-talking, multitasking mama is enjoying the slow pace of hand sewing.  Crazy.  I am realizing that a lot of things in life are like this quilt: garden growing, child-rearing, relationship building, character change, spiritual development,  all of these happen little by little.  One square a day, stitch by stitch.  And here's the kicker: the process needs to be experienced and enjoyed every bit as much as the end result.  I am learning a lot through this memory making.

 So here it sits.  Like this.  And most evenings or nap times, if the blinds are open and lights are on, you will see me sitting here stitching away.

 *Special shout out to all the grandmas, omas and nanas that helped me along the way: my great 'grandma' Carole for her sewing machine,  Oma Brink helped me baste it together, my mom: Grandma helped me figure out Bern, and Nana purchased my fine quilting frame.