Saturday 29 March 2014

Mealtime

Mealtime is a messy time at our house. Emma rotates between eating everything in sight, smashing everything with her fingers and throwing things on the floor. 


Gracie eats her veggies, but she is also crazy (sorry for showing you her lunch, but she showed me, so I thought I'd share).


 They're so cute, you think they'd be nicer dinner partners....


at least there's been more eating than complaining/ food throwing lately. 


We've had a bit of a sore throat going through our house, so I froze Gracie's yogourt tubes and made yogourt freezies for the girls to suck on. They love them. They're way better when they're frozen apparently. 



 Emma's getting the hang of it, but she's taken three days to finish one. I think it's pretty cold for her little mouth. 



Thursday 27 March 2014

Little Lovey Loves Her Bottle

Emma loves her bottle. She would gladly drink milk all day long. I've been trying to cut her back, because she apparently is nearly doubling her recommended milk consumption (oops), but I also know one day she won't have a bottle anymore and I will miss seeing her with it. 


She is pretty attached to Beary, too. We're trying to make sure he's just a night time toy, but she'd like to drag him around like Linus and his blankie. 


Sometimes, I catch her doing this:


She's not even drinking it, just holding the bottle in her teeth. 


but then she does this, and I can hardly take it away. 


So, I took some pictures, so I can remember how cute and little she is right now, and I'll try to cut her back and get her to drink from a sippy cup...



soon....

Wednesday 26 March 2014

Muttart Conservatory Field Trip

Gracie's preschool visited Muttart Conservatory last week and it was a really fun trip. They went on the first day of spring, which was a nice time to visit, because we woke up to snow in Edmonton. It almost felt like it could be spring inside the pyramids. 

 



Their special display was a greenhouse full of tulips, which was so nice. 


The program was good, it got the kids involved and taught them something. They learned about bees and got to wear 'bee goggles' so they could see like a bee. 

They also learned about ladybugs and how they help plants by eating aphids. They got to release one on the plant of their choosing, to help it grow. 



Of course Gracie picked one with pink flowers.


 All of the kids liked watching their ladybugs to see where they went.


They also got to plant their own plant to take home and it was pink, so Gracie was happy!


Fun field trip, but I remember everytime I volunteer why I am not a preschool teacher! ;)


Monday 24 March 2014

Hello from the Malacko's!

These girls just make me smile all of the time!


Even brushing teeth is a chance for me to snap their picture. And yes, Gracie doesn't always like doing it, and I do hate the pink toothpaste that I constantly have to clean out of the sink, but they share a stool so nicely (most of the time) and Emma just wants to be like her big sister so much, it makes me love this little part of our routine.


 Brad's been busy with work a lot lately, so it's been the three girls together most of the time. I turned out desk in the kitchen into a reading nook for them so I could make supper, which actually worked quite well, they weren't underfoot, but I could keep an eye on them.


 Of course, it started to morph from reading nook to fort, to crazy toy storage locker, and spread from under the desk to under the table, so I had to rethink that one, but for a few blissful days, it was perfect.


This one is a photo Gracie took of Emma playing. Emma is hard to capture, because she moves quick and loves cameras, so you have to be fast. 


Gracie and her babies. She loves to line up her dolls and put on shows for them, or have them watch her soccer games, or whatever she's into at the moment.


Gracie was lucky enough to have a leprechaun visit her preschool on St. Patrick's Day! He left her these two gold coins (which are chocolate! She was genuinely shocked when another little boy immediately unwrapped his and started eating) in her boots and rearranged some of the signs in the school. That sneaky leprechaun!


These are some of the things we've been up to lately, plus colds, playdates, birthday parties, and some crafting. Pretty good life. 

Wednesday 19 March 2014

First Signs of Spring!

We've been out enjoying the beautiful weather and Gracie has been putting the miles on her bike. She's done two 5K bike rides to her new school and back and pedals up and down our street each afternoon, racing imaginary competitors. 


Emma's instinct is to brace herself when Gracie comes by for another lap, but Gracie's got pretty good control, and as you can tell by her singing, she's not out for blood ;)


Emma and Bailey love the fresh air, too. Emma likes to walk around checking out puddles, ice blocks, and any old leaves or twigs that she can find. She also likes to dip her mitten in a puddle and then suck the muddy water out of it (seriously folks, kids are so gross sometimes...).


I put these up because it's supposed to snow tomorrow, so I had to squeeze them in while they were timely. Spring will hopefully pop back quick, but who knows, it is March.

Sunday 16 March 2014

Treasured Memories - March Kit 2

The second line I worked with this month is called pop quiz and is by Bo Bunny. It is a school themed line, but I didn't really have any school pictures of Gracie, and I wanted to show that lines are so versatile, you really can use them for anything. 

I decided to get a little more up to date with the seasons I'm scrapbooking and capture some spring and Easter photos.

Sunshine and fresh air showcases some more farm photos. Sadly, toques and winter boots are part of our Canadian springtime. 


I really liked the patterned paper I used along the side. It was a whole sheet of old-fashioned library cards. Do you remember checking out library books with those envelopes in the back that housed ratty old cards the librarian would stamp with their due date? No? Well, then I dated myself.... 

Either way, I liked it and the woodgrain background is perfect. 

Because the tags had quotes for school on them, I covered them up with more generic stickers and they add a little antique-y, homey feel to the page which works for farm photos in my opinion.


The next layout is an Easter layout that captures the frenzied action of an Easter egg hunt.


I think these pictures of Gracie hunting for Easter eggs are hilarious! It cracks me up every time I look at them, because I can just picture her diving under that chair to get her egg.




The arrow stickers are handy for highlighting specific things in a photo, like the egg at the back of the picture that's just out of Gracie's reach. I layered a lot of arrows and cut out a few of the triangles in the background paper to capture the movement of the hunt, as I said above.


I didn't want to add tags or anything to this layout, so I added my journaling in short strips along the side. I had to underline and add some doodling to the journaling to make it my own. 

Check these out in person at Treasured Memories.

Friday 14 March 2014

Treasured Memories Layouts - March Kit 1

This month I got two kits to work with. The first was Theresa Collins' new line, Hello, My Name Is and I really liked the dark burgundy, beige, black and white she used in this line. It is really classic and elegant. 




I cut out the title with the Cricut Craft Studio using dark blue, embossed polka dot cardstock from Bazzill. I also added angled border strips to either side to frame the page and add interest. Since I used the same cardstock, it also helped ground the title on the page.


This one is a little more formal, but I still added twine, cork and some rustic buttons to juxtapose the gems, damask pattern, one silk ribbon, and formal colours. Nothing about our family is 100 % formal, so I don't like my layouts to be either. 


You saw 2 of the tags that are part of this line on the previous layout, but I used 6 on this next one.  
I layered the tags behind my photos and created a border across the page with them, then added two to more elaborately decorated tags the top of the page. 



The package has 20 tags and they're really usable with quotes and sayings that are nice, but not really specific. What page couldn't you use a Life is Beautiful tag on?


Quick note: I stole these doilies from the hotel we stayed at a few weekends ago.... they were on the trays in the room, under the drinking glasses, and I thought they were cute. I recruited everyone else to hoard there's so if you need doilies, I'm your person :) 

See... not very formal...

Hope you liked these ones. Head into Treasured Memories to see them in person and pick up some of this line for yourself.













Thursday 13 March 2014

Life is hard when you're one

I think Emma's grunts and points would translate into something like this:

"I said banana bread!"


"Sometimes, it's like you can't even understand what I'm saying."


"Why do I bother?"

:)

Wednesday 12 March 2014

Calgary Vacation

For Christmas, my family exchanged 'experiences' instead of gifts, so our experience was a trip to Calgary for the whole family.

 We stayed in a hotel with a fantastic waterpark and the kids loved it. I wish I'd gotten some pictures of the kids on the slides, but everyone's hands were pretty full, so none got taken. 

Even Emma got in on the excitement and came screaming down the slide (with mom or dad). She laughed the whole way down. You could tell when Gracie's turn was up, too. She came giggling and screaming all the way down. 

Here are a few of the kids playing in the rooms:

Miss Mardi Gras loves a good necklace. 


I love William's face in these two pictures. He was loving the bubbles!



"This gift bag must be for me," thinks Miss Mardi Gras.


"I wasn't doing anything...." To me, it looks like William just pulled his hand away from something else and tried to look innocent (and cute - it worked!)


And Jada's not pretending she's innocent, she'll take you apart piece by piece with her screwdriver.


See that arm on the floor? That's Brad after a pillow fight broke out. 



Craft time. William, Jada, and Gracie all decorated Easter bags. 


And they all found a game on Uncle's phone that was pretty cool.


I think this was one of the best gifts we all got this year!