Baby's hand

Friday I spent time in the Pre-K class. One of my former students was staring at my big belly and said "Mrs. Jennifer, is that the baby's hand?" and pointed at my belly button...yeah, it's that bad!

The baby checklist...

So as we get closer to this mysterious due date that is driving me crazy, I find myself doing those last final checks to make sure we are "prepared" for our newest family member. Maybe if we have all our ducks in a row, Tyler will decide he is ready to come out! But since he is NOT yet ready to see his new room, I am  putting the pictures up of all the hard work his Daddy and I have done to make room for him :)

 Daddy put EVERYTHING together and made really cool shelves for your books. Mommy made the letters for your name. Mike Cebula (a good family friend) made you a monkey. Lots of your family members spoiled you rotten with everything else in this room, and just wait until you see your closet!

Waiting....

After being inspired by Cheryl and Chelsea who have done such a great job capturing so much of their lives through this blog, I have decided the time has come to make one! I hope I can make the time to add to this blog and share our journey as we get ready to grow our family by one. Can't wait to meet this little guy.

Courageous Sign

This is the 3rd sign I have made no, so I tried to make it more challenging. Oh, I succeeded with that, but somehow in the end it turned out great! I cut out my letters on vinyl with the cricut and then painted my board black. Since I only wanted the letters black I only painted the middle part. FAIL!! Do you know how hard it is to paint over black???? Next I added a layer of gold to outline courageous. To keep the gold I placed a larger vinyl version of the word courageous and then painted red over the top. UGH it looked TERRIBLE! I mean absolutely terrible. The black streaked through the red and not in a cute artsy way. I added 4 layers of red, then a darker brick red, and IT STILL SHOWED STREAKY BLACK! 

In a last ditch effort before I threw it away (yes I was about to do just that) I painted a layer of brown on top and like magic, it saved the sign. This was a gift for Chris and I was working on it on New Years Eve with Lindsay (yes his birthday is New Years day....procrastination is my thing) so I really didn't have time to start over!

*UPDATE: While repainting the bathroom cabinets I found this stain blocking primer for $8 at Home Depot, this would have been a solution to painting over black!

Refill Lysol no-touch soap dispenser

I LOVE my Lysol no-touch soap dispenser but I hate that you have to buy those refills! My frugal self asked my enginerd husband to find a way to remove the cap so I can refill it with any soap. He popped that sucker off so fast with his screw driver I felt dumb that I spent 10 minutes trying remove it with my hands...The point is I can now refill that little bottle over and over again!

Rotini with chicken sausage & vegetables

Rotini with Chicken sausage & vegetables

Ingredients: 

1 head of broccoli
1 box rotini pasta
2 TBS olive oil
4 sweet italian cooked chicken sausages cut into 1/4" cuts
4 cloves garlic
1 can chicken broth
1 tsp pepper
1/2 cup basil

Directions:

1) Boil water and cook broccoli for 3 minutes then scoop (do not drain water) broccoli out of water.
2) Using the same water boil your noodles about 14 minutes.SAVE 1 CUP OF THAT WATER.
3) In a seperate cook sausage in olive oil.
4) Add garlic and broccoli and cook for 2 minutes.
5) Add chicken broth, 1 cup of water from step 2, oregano, salt, and pepper. Simmer for 2 minutes.
6) Add in noodles and let sit for a couple of minutes before serving.

Sewing a blanket

This is my first sewing project and luckily I had great supervision from my mother in law!

1) Cut your fabric the length you need. We went t Joann  Fabric and they had this cute monkey panel so all we needed to do was find a color for the back and trim it down.

2) Place the "good side" of the fabrics together 

3) Measure and cut quilting batting to the size you need. We actually stacked 3 sheets but they do sell batting in different thicknesses. This made this project a little bit more challenging.  

4) Put your 2 pieces of fabric (with the print on the inside) on top of your batting 

5) Pin your fabric and batting together making sure your pin is pointing to the end of your fabric or when you go to sew it you can break your needle on the pin.

6) When you start to run your fabric through the sewing machine you have to hold on to the string until the needle goes into the fabric and then you can let go. Let the machine pull the fabric (if you pull too hard your string will break and you will have to re-thread your machine...I did this twice!)

7) Run the fabric straight through, then turn your fabric to the next side and do it again. On one side sew to the middle and stop so you can create an opening big enough for you to get your hand in. When you are finished there will be an x in each corner. You want to cut the end off so you can make a pointed corner but DO NOT CUT THE X 

8) Put your hand in the opening you created and gently pull your fabric through so that it is right side out. Iron all 4 sides of your blanket to help it lay flat.

8) Now you have to hand sew your opening and this part sucks! When you iron your blanket it will create a line that you can follow to close the blanket. The trick to this is to pinch both sides and sew on that line. Sadly it took me 5 minutes to figure this part out..

Now you are finished! Not too shabby for my first sewing project!