Bubble Bath!

Lydia's first bubble bath. Enough said!

More Splash Pad Pics!

When we first arrived, Lydia was a little unsure. She has done the ocean, and a regular swimming pool, but this was different. Older kids were running and yelling and water was coming out of EVERYTHING!

It didn't take long for Lydia to decide to get her feet wet and after that, everything was wet....including mommy, the towel, and the diaper bag. Oh well!

At the Splash Park

It's a rare post when I get to include a picture of myself with Lydia. We went to a birthday party at a neat public park that had all these water sprinklers for the kids to play with. We both got pretty good and wet. I got a few pictures of Lydia playing in the water, but even that was hard without getting the camera wet. Thanks to facebook and another party guest who was also taking pictures, I have a shot of both of us.

Shoes!

Everyday, I come home from school and immediately take off my too high, high heels and rest my tired toes. Lydia has become very interested in my shoes lately, trying to put them on her feet and, if that fails, carrying them around in her hands. I might find one shoe in the living room and the other, who knows, I might not find it at all. I suppose the only solution is to keep my shoes on my feet until Lydia is safely in her bed. I suppose that means rethinking the high heels....or Lydia's bedtime!

Liddy and Daddy in Indiana

Here is a pic of Lydia and PJ on our trip last month to Indiana. We stopped at a train museum/restaurant for lunch and stent a few minutes checking out the trains in the yard. School is keeping me pretty busy right now, so it may be a little while before I have new picutres up. Sorry!

Butter-mock pancakes

Due to Lydia's dairy allergy, baked goods can be tricky. So far, the brands she can eat have lots of chemicals instead of real ingredients like butter and milk, moon pies for example have not a speck of real milk, butter, or chocolate! I don't want her eating that junk all the time, so I am trying to get creatively cooking. Her daycare feeds the kids pancakes sometimes, and I can't find a pre-made pancake that is dairy free. (Lot's of chemicals, no real milk or butter, but whey keeps popping up in the ingredients.) My favorite pancake recipe calls for buttermilk and I was worried that soy just wouldn't give the same thickness to the batter. My sister gave me a great book a few years ago, The Food Lover's Companion, which features a food substitution guide. Who knew 1 cup of milk and a tablespoon of lemon juice will thicken to the consistency of buttermilk. I gave it a try with the soy milk and it looked and tasted OK. The pancakes are a really good dairy free option for Lydia at daycare.

An amplified blast from the past

I took this picture around Christmas 08 and intended to use it for a thank you photo card for my cousin (who isn't really a blood relative.... and I only mention that because our kids are so cute together, if they ever fall in love... I CAN NOT have spent decades writ ting about how they are related, so here it is in bold print THEY ARE NOT RELATED...) Sarah who bought this sweet ballerina Kitty outfit for Lydia. I never got around to printing the pictures and time marched on so I think i never go around to thanking pseudo-cousin Sarah (ooops, Thank you semi-relative Sarah!) SO now I find myself going back to amp up old pictures with photo shop. I love tweeking the colors so it all pops and is a little more technicolor. Ugh, its like my pictures are now crack addicts and the non-crack filled world just can't compare! I must be stopped before I re-work and then re-print every picture in Lydia's baby book! I go back to school next week. I suppose that will slow the memory tweeking substantially.

In Indiana

PJ, Lydia, Dot, JR, and I are in Indiana for the Burchett family reunion. JR's cousin's and their kids get together every couple of years in a different location. Last time was Gatlinburg, so this time we made the long trip fro a short but fun visit. Lydia was instantly attracted to this small bench and she climbed on it in such a cute way, i couldn't help but snap several pictures. i SWEAR I did not pose her, this is my girl doing what she does. I DID have some fun with photoshop in the hotel room. My friend Kristin posted a before and after on her blog about beefing up the colors in a picture. I don't know why I haven't played more with photographs in photoshop. I have been overwhelmed with Illustrator and all the buttons and gadgets, but it is SO much fun to just play with a picture and learn a little. I admit, the colors may be a little too saturated in my after image, but I can't believe how faded the original looks! All this time I have drooled over these great photographs and assumed that the photographer had better equipment than I have. Maybe, but I feel like the playing field might be leveling a little.

You catch more flies with.... vinegar?

In addition to my normal recycling, I have begun composting. I asked for a composter for my wedding anniversary and it has been placed outside my kitchen window, making it very easy to set aside scraps and toss them out into the composter. Unfortunately, I also have a one year old, a husband, and a full time job, so very often those scraps sit in the sink a little too long and I now also have fruit flies. My cousin showed me this great trick for recycling a 2 litter bottle into a fruit fly trap. It appears to work great for her, but an old bottle filled with liquid and dead bugs sitting on my kitchen counter just wasn't doing it for me. So here is my attempt at decorating the fly death trap, along with instructions for the actual contraption. Enjoy!

Materials: A 2 litter plastic soda bottle, apple cider vinegar, 1 sheet of 12x12 scrapbook paper, scissors, glue, unwanted fruit flies. Cut the top of the bottle off using the edge of the label as a guide.

Place the inverted bottle top back into the bottle so that the two cut edges are together. If the top slides down into the bottle used some tape to hold it in place, but keep in mind that to empty the dead flies you will eventually have to untape the top. It is better if you can get it to stay in place on its own.

Cut a piece of 12x12 scrap book paper to be a little taller than your bottle. The paper won't quite be long enough to wrap all the way around the bottle, so take the extra piece that gets cut off and use it to lengthen the page so it will fit. Your paper should be a little taller than the bottle so that you can fold the edge to the exact height ad have that little overlap piece shown in this picture. I wrapped my paper around the bottle and secured it with a ribbon. Then I folded the overlap over the cut edges of bottle so my finished edge is smooth, AND the paper helps close any potential gaps that could provide an escape route to a smart fruit fly.

Pour some apple cider vinegar into the funnel of the bottle top and set near your sink. Watch, or don't watch, the fruit flies die!

A gift for Baby Charlie.

My friend Cindy is decorating her 2nd nursery in less than two years. When big sister isn't big enough to move out of the crib and your trying to put your house on the market to build something bigger, it can be difficult to choose decorations that will spruce up an old room and still work when you move to the new. Cindy found some nice brown gingham check bedding, but wanted something for the window. She had an adorable stuffed blue bunny in the crib when she asked me what I thought. The bunny's tag said his name was Charlie, just like the new baby. I was so excited to find this blue and brown plaid fabric on the remnant pile at my favorite discount upholstery shop. Then when I saw the brown farm animal fabric, with bunnies included, I knew I would make some type of pillows to coordinate. I was able to get 2 valances out of the plaid and still had some extra to trim out the bunny pillows. My idea is that the valances can be gathered together to cover the one big window in the current nursery, but later they can be separated should the new house have two windows. The extra fabric was just enough to make one last pillow with Baby Charlie's initial.