By the looks of this picture, I can no longer leave Colby alone with the baby! I leave for maybe a half hour, and I come home to my sweet little girl with a crazy head of hair. He said he tried to do a mohawk, but that didn't work, so this is how it turned out. I can't believe how different she looked just with some gel in her hair. At least most of it rubbed out overnight and now she just has a couple spikes left. I'm pretty sure I like her original hair style better.
As for projects around the house, I finally got to putting something in these vases. I believe we got them for a housewarming gift. So that would make it almost 3 years that we've had them and they've been empty the whole time. I put them on top of the cabinets, but they remained empty. So then I bought some items to put in them, but then those sat in the closet for about a month. It seems I tend to start projects, but I'm not too good at finishing them in a timely manner. Every time I would go into the closet I would see the unfinished project, so I finally brought them out and told myself to get it done. I'm happy with the finished result. There has always been a lot of empty space on top of our cabinets. It's especially noticeable with our vaulted ceilings, so this fills up a little bit of the space, but I am still deciding how to fill the rest. If only decorating didn't cost any money, I could really get a lot done!

The picture you are seeing right now is one of the best I've ever taken. Not for quality purposes, simply because it means we got a new dishwasher! No more pruney hands for me. For the past couple months or so, I have been doing all the dishes by hand and definitely not enjoying it. It didn't have to go on for this long. Colby had actually bought one to surprise me for Valentine's Day, but I ended up finding out a couple of days before. We got to talking and he wanted to make sure he was doing the right thing without actually giving the secret away. Since money isn't flowing freely around here, he wanted to confirm that he should spend the money on a dishwasher instead of putting it on debt. So he finally told me what he had bought and I told him that I had heard of a few different things we could try to see if we could fix it ourselves. Maybe it was just buildup in the water hoses and we could fix it for a lot cheaper. So we decided to return the washer and I proceeded to find a solution myself. It worked for about 2 or 3 washes and then started to not function anymore. So we were back to square one. At least the timing worked out, we ended up getting a bigger tax refund than expected and so we went back to Sears and bought it again. It is one of the best gifts ever! Washing dishes by hand for a family of 3 wasn't horrible, but I'm sure if we had a few more kids, we would only have gone a few days without a dishwasher!
Now that I don't have to wash dishes by hand anymore, that means I have lots more time for crafting. Yay!!! Not that I need it, I seem to find time no matter how busy I am. The other day I made another trash bag for my mom's car, a grocery bag holder and a sandwich bag. All in one day! I was finally fed up with stuffing the grocery bags under the kitchen sink and having them spill out whenever I opened the cabinet. For the most part, we use reusable bags for this reason alone. We were collecting them a lot faster than we were using them. Now they will be neat and tidy hanging on the inside of the cabinet. As for the sandwich bag, I am quite proud of myself for this creation. I had seen a pattern on a blog a while back, but for the life of me, I could not find it again. So, I went ahead and made what I thought would be a funtional bag for Colby to use for his lunches. I was remarkably surprised how it turned out, Colby was equally impressed. I'm not a complete tree hugger, but I like to try and recylce whenever I can or just not use so much plastic in the first place. This will be a reusable and washable bag that can last for a long time. And I can admire my own handy work! My next attempt at a new project is going to be a quilt. Hopefully it will look good enough to post pictures. Stay tuned.

The Simple Things

Anyone who knows me, knows I love food. Especially a good dessert. So how happy was I to find some delicious strawberries at the grocery store. This makes me even more excited for spring and warm weather to arrive. I love eating strawberry shortcake in the warmer months. It takes care of my sweet tooth, but allows me to still feel like I didn't just gain 5 pounds! Also, one of my favorite dessert ingredients is chocolate, so I had to incorporate it somehow. It was just the right amount to hit the spot and make the dish look amazing. Colby was even impressed with my drizzling technique. I may just have to make it again this week!
On to our little chunker! Yesterday, she hit the 10 month mark. I honestly can't believe how fast the time flies. I love every stage that she does something new, but I wish I could stop her from growing up. I need to be better at savoring every moment because they definitely will not last. I just thought I would recap some of the things she is able to do these days. She's such a smart little girl!
- I'll just start off by saying she is not crawling yet. I know it's expected, but let's be honest, she is just not interested
- She does wave bye-bye as of about 4 days ago, but only if she feels like it
- Something she does feel like doing is dancing. No matter what music she hears (even me singing the alphabet song), she moves her little body side to side
- She makes lots of different sounds and says "dad." I am counting that as her first word, although I'm not quite sure why it wasn't "mom"!
- She loves to play peek-a-boo. Even if you're not playing she will lift something over her head, bring it down and give a big smile. That's our cue to start playing!
- She also loves to clap, especially when she does something good, just to make sure that we noticed it too
- She has been turning the lights off for a couple of months now, to help us save money of course!
I know I'm not remembering everything, but it is so exciting when she figures out how to do new things. Hopefully one of those things will be crawling in the next couple of weeks. As for now, I'm not complaining because those little hands are not getting into things they shouldn't be.

She was pretty tired after dancing to a few songs.


Ready for church in her spring dress and flip flops.

Just a quick post about the cute things I made yesterday. My friend Jackie and I got together and made a trash bag for our cars. I know it is much needed in our car, as long as Colby remembers to use it! It was so simple and turned out great. Thank you to Make It and Love It for the cute idea.

Another simple and fast project I found were these purses. I am really happy with the way they turned out. I will probably give some away as gifts. Although I'm sure others are not as obsessed as I am about purses. That's okay, I realize I have a problem. Thank you to Little Birdie Secrets for the purse idea.

Finally!!

So I finally got around to hanging these adorable pictures in the nursery. We ordered them when we first got the set before she was even born. That makes it 14 months that we've had them and you'd think since we payed extra money for the set, we would want to enjoy them. I guess we were still debating how her room would change in the coming years and didn't want to hang them in a spot where the hutch (that came with the changing table) would go. Hopefully they are in the right spot. I just don't like to make a lot of holes in the wall if they are not necessary. Anyway, I am pretty satisfied with the placement and I think they definitely add a lot to the room. Korina even noticed them and gave a smile!

As for my crafting adventures, I'm pretty sure they are causing me to slack off in other areas. Colby would probably attest to this. I don't have a list of the chores I should be doing or the dinners I should be making, but I sure have a list, it's a long one, of all the crafts and projects that I would love to attempt or finish. I might just have to set some limits and tell myself I can only work on one a week. But if the project only took one day to finish, the rest of the week could be very sad.

Here's some random flowers I made yesterday. I also made a hooded towel for Korina, but it shows my beginner skills so I will not post a picture of that one. I'm pretty sure I have too many crafts going on at any given time.