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.

Counting on Spring

Can you actually believe it? Two posts within four days. I'm in shock myself. But here I am making good on my promise to do better. As you can see, I'm hoping that spring is just around the corner and since I already put this in my kitchen, I'm hoping I'm right. After Colby saw this, he said that he's happy to know that if he forgets what season it is or what he should wear that day, he can just walk into the kitchen and be reminded. I shrugged off his sarcasm because I was too busy being proud of what I had just finished. Even if it wasn't very hard of a project. I was just glad that it added a little something to my boring kitchen cabinets. I was also pleased to find out that you can create just about anything with spray paint and a glue gun, two essentials when crafting. It also works out well that they are two supplies that go a long way for the money. Speaking of spray paint, I had quite the experience when purchasing it at Walmart. Apparently you need to be 18 years old to purchase since kids probably use it to get high. So as the cashier scans it, the register beeps and the cashier needs to push yes or no if the customer is over 18. When this happened, the cashier stops and looks at me for a second and then asks if I had my ID. I told her I didn't (Colby was in the car and I had just run in), but that I was in fact 25 years old and she continues to look at me for a few more seconds. Was this a compliment or an insult? I don't mind looking younger than my age and I always have, but come on! Do I really look younger than 18? So she called another lady over and asked her if it was okay that I didn't have my ID. This lady also gives me a curious look before she tells the first cashier to go ahead and let me buy the spray paint. Lesson learned, but I'm still not sure what to conclude about the whole incident.
As for a side note about Korina, since she always gives us something to talk about. She was up to her mischievous ways once again. This is how her headband was when I left the room:













And this is what I found when I returned. Not quite sure how she managed to get the flower off, but at least she was happy!

Commitment to do Better

So I was talking to a friend the other day and she asked if I had a blog that she could look at. I replied yes, but told her that I am horrible at updating it and hardly ever post anything. She then replied, "Oh, you're one of those people." Then I got to thinking, if she meant those as in someone who has a blog just to say that they have one but doesn't bother maintaining it, I realized she was right. Thus, here I am. Vowing to be better at updating our lives even if no one is reading about it. I guess my thinking this whole time has been that I don't consider our lives to be very exciting and so most of the time I don't know what I would write about for an update. Our lives seem to revolve around the same few topics every month so why would everyone want to hear about them over and over again? Maybe this is why I never write in my journal either. I know I should be better for the sake of leaving our history for our children and grandchildren, so this is my commitment to keeping a more updated and detailed blog. And if the writing is boring, at least I will post cute pictures of Korina!

First I will talk about the company. We had the 5 year anniversary on January 6th and we celebrated in style. We had the board meeting at Noah's in South Jordan and decided to cater with Subway and Cold Stone. That may not sound like style, but it beat having me make sandwiches out of rolls and supplying homemade dessert. It was certainly nice not to do as much work. It's awesome to see how far the company has come and how many changes it has gone through in only 5 years. We are still wanting to get bigger and better, but there is a tiny little light ahead as far as reaching a point where we feel stable and not worried that all the hard work would be in vain. It's definitely exciting and scary trying to grow, but if it all comes together, boy would that be amazing.

On to our little muffin. Isn't she just so cute? And she just surprises us and makes us laugh more everyday. We had her 9 month appointment a few days ago and from the way my arms feel after carrying her around all day, I thought for sure she would be over 20 pounds. She was only 18.8. One thing needs to happen: I gain some arm muscle, or she learns to crawl. I'm pretty sure the latter needs to happen. We think she is definitely capable of doing more than she shows. Is it possible we have a lazy baby? From my understanding, babies are curious and anxious to explore the world around them. They scoot and crawl and if they fall over, they work to get themselves back up. If Korina tips over, she must figure there's nothing she can do about it because she just lays there and continues to play. We put her on her tummy, but so far, we can only see the tiniest movement of her bending her knees. I'm definitely not complaining because everyone tells me when they start to move, nothing is ever the same anymore. I'm just hoping the light turns on for her soon so she doesn't get too far behind. And so we don't disappoint the doctor at her 12 month appointment. He told us she has a lot of work to do before then.

Finally, the same friend that urged me to actually write on it if I have a blog, said I should post the crafts that I finish along the way. Too bad for Colby, my newest hobby is crafting of any and every kind. I just love to make things! Whenever I tell him I'm excited about a new idea, he just says, "How much will it cost me?" Luckily for him, I mostly choose crafts that involve little materials or cost, they are just time consuming. I have crocheted for a while always making baby blankets since that's all I know, but I tapped into the tiny creative spot in my brain and made some scarves. I say tiny spot because I am not coming up with these crafts on my own. I admit that I look at other blogs and steal the ideas right off of them. Good thing for me there are a whole bunch of very creative thinkers out there and I appreciate them being willing to share their ideas. These crafts may not be anything special, but I might as well post some pictures since I have such a good time making them. So thanks Jackie for urging me to finally write on this blog and it's good to know I have a craft addict like me in the neighborhood.

Almost 6 Months

So I guess I should write an update since so much has happened in the past couple months. Obviously Korina has been growing like a weed, more so around the middle than up and down. She is short and chunky and perfect. She can roll around for the most part and we are working on her sitting up without toppling over. We would also like to practice standing with her, but she won't have any of that. You'd think with how big her legs are she would have plenty of support, but she refuses to keep them straight and stand up. Meanwhile, she has progressed nicely to solid foods and enjoys opening her mouth as wide as she can for the spoon to go in. She wasn't too fond of rice cereal, but definitely enjoys the squash and green beans that we have started out with. We are happy that she likes her vegetables.

As you can see, she looked so adorable in her very first Halloween costume. She was a sweet little lamb and everyone thought she looked so cute. We probably should have dressed her up as a monster though since lately she loves to growl at us. She loves to get our attention by talking and sometimes yelling. I try to tell her she needs to use her inside voice, but I can't help but smile when I look at her. She knows how cute she is and knows how to use it against us. We were afraid that was going to happen.

As far as the rest of our lives are concerned, things have stayed busy and the time has really flown by. Almost 5 years after starting the company, Colby finally got the automated bagging machine that he has wanted. Why couldn't it have come in when I worked there? That would have made my day. It is a very nice machine, but it came right in the middle of the busy season so he didn't have much time to read the manual and figure out how to work the controls. It has given him a headache some days, but overall it is a lot better than the old method of bagging by hand. It is pretty cool to see it in action and we both can't believe that it's actually here after all this time.

Autumn is no doubt my favorite time of year, but that means the snow is just around the corner and I must say goodbye to warm weather. It also means that this year is almost over and I really cannot believe how fast this year has gone by. Colby and I look forward to the holidays and hope everyone enjoys the season.