A couple of things...

I wanted to show off this little end table James made:

The weird little picture on the table is kind of special to us. It's one of Tessa's first "intentional" drawings. James free-hand etched it into the wood (along with her signature on the bottom) and then brushed gold leaf into it. I can't find her original drawing on paper to show you, but it's exactly like what you're seeing on the table. The wood James used to make the table is what was leftover from when he made our bed:

Notice the bottle of tums on the bedside table.... I was pregnant when I took this photo.

In other news, the kids LOVE the chalkboard.

I highly suggest that you pick up some chalkboard paint and paint something.

......................................

Oh, were you wanting an outfit post?
Well, have a got one for you.
This one's a winner.
Are you ready?

You're welcome.

Saturday morning post of craftiness

I know that some of you saw on my facebook what I did with just a few out of my insanely large collection of empty baby food jars:


Isn't that purty?

I decided to put a few more of our empty jars to use. A few months ago, James had this not so great idea to store/sort stray coins in enormous and hideous containers on the kitchen counter. I wasn't quite on board with idea, but I somehow lost that argument. This is what it looked like:

The piggy bank is Tessa's.

Enter baby food jars.

Four little jars hidden in a pretty red box.

A hundred times better, right?

And since we're on the subject of craftiness, see that chalkboard behind the pretty red box? It started out as a sad little mirror who I covered in chalkboard paint.

I'm happy with my kitchen counter now.

Tessa's "puppet feeder"

That's what she calls the puppet theater I made her. This was my take on the DIY puppet theater seen here.

She's super thrilled with it, but I REALLY need sewing lessons. My husband knows how to use my sewing machine better than I do. That's bad.

On another note, I've been thinking about Christmas a lot lately. I've really been wanting to start listening to Christmas music make Christmas cookies make a homemade play kitchen for Tessa...something a little like this. For all you creative/crafty people, what are you planning on giving your children for Christmas? Anything you've done in the past that they loved and you didn't buy at the store? I'm collecting ideas.....

Rainbow catcher

Have you ever wondered what it would look like if you told a 2 1/2 year old to paint a rainbow on a paper plate? One of my favorite bloggers, Meg Duerksen, has "Craft Thursday" with her kids every Thursday and blogs about it, and I usually try to copy every single one of them because I'm a loser like that. Today's craft was a rainbow wind catcher (Tessa kept calling it a "rainbow catcher). Of course, Meg's family's looked perfect. Mine turned out okay:

Then there's Tessa's:

Epic, I know.

Ta-dah.

P.S. Snaps for those of you who picked up on the "a double rainbow!!" reference.

P.P.S. I do actually put clothes on my daughter. They just always seem to fall off, layer by layer throughout the day.

P.P.P.S. I love Meg Duerksen so much that I have her blog title "Whatever" tattooed on my booty.

P.P.P.P.S. I'm SO kidding.

P.P.P.P.P.S. I hope she doesn't read this.

A few of my favorite things...

...in my living room. We just moved into this house at the end of June, and these are a few things that make it my living room (we're renters).

The silhouettes. I still haven't done one for Max. You try getting a newborn to hold his head still for a picture like this. It's not easy.

My breakfast nook. I don't know why I call it that. We don't eat breakfast there. Heck, we don't even sit there. It just looks cool. (I'm sure you noticed that we haven't completely unpacked yet.)

Somebody gave us this chair, and it was hideous until I breathed on it and made it fabulous. I recovered the seat cushion with this psychadelic fabric from a shop call Fabricworm on etsy.com.

I got this "Moses" sculpture for James last Christmas. He really likes Michelangelo's "Moses", so I got it for him kind of as a joke. I think it turned out to be a neat little gift, though.

I found this clock at a little odds and ends store in Winona Lake, IN. It sort of brings back bad memories of my darker times living out there by myself, but that doesn't make it any less cute. Well, maybe a little.

I LOVE this amish-made rocking horse/high chair/children's desk. It was a gift for us from my in-laws at my first baby shower

Here's another one of my favorite things, although she wasn't in the living room. She saw me taking pictures and said, "Take a picture of me, Mommy, and I'll smile."

Thanks for looking at my stuff. I'm sure it was a great use of your time. Posting it sure was.