A blanket for Berkley

Whoops! I did not intend to have this picture first, but that's ok! Anyway, this is a close-up of the "decorative" panel I added to this blanket for Berkley. I really wanted to make her a blanket that was super lightweight. So, I decided to get some shot cotton (which is extremely light-- it's the pink) and do a medium weight cotton panel to add something pretty to the plain nature of the blanket.
This is a full view of the blanket. It only took me around 3 weeks to complete (thanks in part to a massive to-do list with more demanding projects and to a certain 2-year-old who has decided that napping is no longer a daily priority), but it IS done! Now I've only got one larger project and some more flowers for hair clips to make-- I'll be so glad to be done sewing for a while!

Crazy hair & sand castles

The other night Chad & I had gotten out some hair things that we plan on using for Berkley (since Chloe loves hair accessories... haha), but we hadn't put them away. The next morning, I left the room for a minute and came back to find Chloe with a headband in her hair! It was pretty crazy, but she was happy with her hair styling abilities :-)
Chloe saying, "Cheese," after finishing a couple of sand castles.

If you look closely at the flags, you'll see coloring on them. Chloe wanted to take out some decorations to put on sand castles this afternoon, so we made some flags and grabbed some sea shells. This was the castle I helped her build and she decorated!

This is just a pretty sort of profile shot! I love the color of her hair and how much it compliments her fair skin :-) With her hair undone she's definitely a natural beauty!

Yard Work

Chad was mowing the lawn, so Chloe asked for her mower. Here she is cheesing and posing with her mower! Fortunately, she is not really bothered at all by the lawn mower. Last year, she wasn't quite sure and would always need me to be right there beside her when it came near, but not anymore!
Chloe has been begging to water the tulips ever since they started to come up. Last weekend I bought her a little watering can of her own, and she was elated to try it out! Here she is watering one of them. Sorry for the lighting of this photo-- we have a UV filter for the lens, but we haven't put it back on (it helps block light like the picture showcases).

She's SO excited to be watering. In fact, she loves it so much that I fear the lives of the flowers closest to the water spout!

What a gorgeous smile :-)

Chloe & Berkley's room Take 2

Now that we've pretty much finished Berkley's decor (with the exception of a few other cute things we'll likely add to her shelf), we moved onto Chloe's side of the room. After getting Chloe's toddler bedding, we decided that we should re-paint her name sign. Then I decided that I wanted something different than the boxy shelf we had for her. So, we re-painted and made two new shelves!
This is a close-up of one of the shelves. Chad wanted to put some beadboard below the shelves, and it turned out fabulously!

And this is Chloe's name sign redone! We changed the colors, obviously, and then we decided to put her name to the left and arranging the flowers on the right. I like the changes a lot, and it matches the bedding really well!

Spring Decor

Here is one flower that Chad made me to put out for spring. Chloe "helped" me paint this one and another (see picture below)!
And here is the other. We were in serious need of some spring decor. With extra wood and LOTS of paint already on-hand, we decided that it would be much cheaper to make than buy!

This is a little kite Chad made. It turned out really cute, but I really couldn't get a closer picture of the whole thing. I know it's sort of hard to see, but I just tied on some fabric scraps at the bottom to add a little something to the "string." We've seen similar items in stores that hang, but we really wanted something for our tv stand :-)

Sewing projects

After visiting a store in Bountiful called Sassy Babies, I decided that I would rather take a shot at making fabric flower hair clips rather than spend $14 for one (especially considering the fact that I already have a bunch of plain hair clips and a bunch of scrap fabric. Making this type of flower with a fabric covered button proved more difficult that the pattern I found made it sound, but it did turn out cute and MUCH cheaper than buying one :-)
After trying the traditional fabric flower, I decided to try making a frayed flower that I found a pattern for online. This flower was far easier to make, not to mention less time consuming. And a huge thanks to my fabulous husband who hot glued the ribbon and flowers to the clips! These were both fun to make, so I will likely be making some more (mostly for Berkley though because Chloe doesn't always like to have things in her hair). Oh, and if you're wondering what we'll do if she doesn't have much hair, I bought a white stretchy headband with a place in the middle to interchange hair clips.

Here is a close up of the nursing apron/cover that I've only been working on for like three weeks! As you can see (hopefully), there are two straps, one with D rings to tighten the other to the right length to fit around the neck. In between the two straps it looks like it bows out and that's because it's supposed to! I used corset bonning to create a little peek-a-boo view to see the baby while nursing. I've never known anyone who has had one, but I had complaints with blankets and so has EVERYONE else I've known. Hopefully this will be more helpful!

A full length view of the apron-- I feel obligated to say that I can once again be proud of my frugal ways since buying one of these costs anywhere between $35-$60! I made this one for barely over $10! YAY for saving money, but still having those little things you've always wanted :-)

Springtime with Chloe

Ahh! How nice it is that we've had good weather that actually resembles Spring! It's great to see the sun shining into our house in this picture. But, what is silly is that Chloe is trying to take a picture of me with our other camera! She's recently become obsessed with picture taking :-)
SUPER CHEESE!!

On Friday, Chad, Chloe, & I headed over to Preston to play at the park. Here's Chloe mid-swing. If you take a closer look, you'll see that she has a TON of hair in her mouth. She kept complaining about it getting caught in there, and I truly feel for her because I too have foward growing hair! Oh, and check out the cute little bermuda shorts ;-) $9 Guess shorts @ a super Dillard's sale!!

THIS is what she did the WHOLE 45 minutes we were at the park-- Swing! It's her absolute favorite thing to do, and despite our encouraging her to choose something else fun to play on like the slide, she'd simply respond, "I swing for a few more minutes, ok?" And that is just what she did :-)

Chloe & Berkley's Room-- Take 1 of, well we really don't know how many yet!

As I'm sure many of you know, Chad and I were having a bit of an issue in our attempts to decide how to organize Chloe's small room to fit Berkley too! We finally decided what we wanted to do, and after planning and re-planning, we finally came to a solution! Our first obstacle was Chloe's MASSIVE toy collection :-) With another crib in the room, we knew we couldn't keep our current toy organizer. So, to maximize our unused space, Chad designed and built these awesome toy cubbies (which do NOT have all of her toys-- her closet is extensively organized to fit a large remainder, and some still reside in our front room)! We stained the beadboard in the back, painted the rest of the cubbies black, and roughed up the edges to give it that worn-in look that we love so much!
And this is the other cubby that rests below the girls' large window (whoa-- "the girls'). Please disregard the paper towel with Pop-Tart-- that will likely not be there all the time :-)

This is the shelf/name sign I had Chad make for Berkley. We both decided on a longer shelf with room to hang fun knobs below to hang the wooden letters of her name! As you can see, I decided to cover the "B" with coordinating scrapbook paper to give it a little zest ;-) It turned out awesome!!

And here is some of my handiwork-- ta da! I've seen so many cute frames covered with scrapbook paper and adorned with ribbons, tulle, buttons, and so forth, but I'm always too cheap to buy them. The ones I've seen have run for anywhere between $8-$12. As I'm "thrifty," shall we say, I thought that maybe I could pull it off myself. I already had the buttons and paper, and the tulle cost a whole 27 cents, with the frame being a whopping $1.50 @ DI. I think it turned out pretty nicely given the cost and doing it myself!

Here is a visual of Berkley's sign/shelf & crib (outfitted with the same crib set that Chloe had). I know it's not the greatest shot, but at least you can sort of get the idea. What you can't see in the picture is that the crib actually has a pull-out drawer on the bottom. We have it stuffed full of quilts because we've already gotten two for Berkley and Chloe has a million!

Chloe crazy bling!

Mega cheese while sporting her bling! Chloe decided the other morning that she wanted every necklace she has around her neck, all of her bracelets on ONE wrist (er, arm if you look closely because she has SO many), and all her little rings on ONE thumb! She's so goofy!
Love, love, love pictures like this-- Beautiful smile, stunning blue eyes, and gorgeous flowing hair (and A LOT of it)!

Haha! This is her showcasing yet another mega cheeser. I think this photo is really funny, though, when you consider the size of her hand next to her petite little face :-) I'm starting to think that she is going to be a tall little girl!

What's in a name?!

After much thought and consideration of a LONG list of girl names, Chad & I, with the help of Chloe, decided on a name for the baby. We've actually known the name for about a month and a half, but we were patiently waiting for all the most important people to ask! We've finally gotten the closest insiders to ask, so now we want to tell all the rest of you :-)

We narrowed it down to a list of two when I asked Chloe to say the names for me. With her cute little voice, she said both, and we liked both. But after more thinking and discussing we came to our decision.

We've decided to name baby girl #2... Berkley!

We still don't have a middle name, though we are searching. I'm not sure if we'll release that or not as we didn't with Chloe, but only time will tell that. So it will be our two girls, Chloe & Berkley :-)

Easter Egg Hunt

After Chloe woke up this morning, we asked her if she wanted to come out and see if the Easter Bunny brought any eggs and treats for her to find. She quickly jumped down out of bed and said, "Come see, Daddy!" Check out her cute little smirk, so proud of filling her basket full of eggs :-)
She saw both eggs-- one on the door knob and one on the window sill. Her expression says, "Hmm, which one should I choose first?!"

Well, she chose the door egg first and quickly went to retrieve the windowsill egg!

After searching the front room, Chloe found all of the eggs we had hidden and with little help, I might add! She's got a goofy, cheesy smile :-)

The Easter bunny also left a basket with a few presents for Chloe, though the pictures we took weren't the greatest because she was looking into the sun coming in from the windows. She got a 12-piece jigsaw puzzle (I think we finally found a puzzle that provides a little bit of a challenge for this girl), a little goose (most of you probably know what I'm talking about when I saw those plastic animals that she already has a million of but always seems to want more), a wind-up purple triceratops, a Calliou dvd (I personally think that little boy is mildly annoying, but Chloe really loves it and the story lines aren't bad), a tootsie roll bank, and some Laffy Taffys! She had a great Easter morning and a fun day :-)

Coloring Easter eggs

Chloe was all ready to color eggs. Here she is telling me that she just colored the water blue!
NOT carefully and slowly placing the egg in the dye, but full on dropping it in! This happened every time, but it was an easy mess to clean

Cheesing it up to show her excitement of coloring the eggs!

She even enjoyed taking the eggs out (which she did quite well on her own, but also needed occasional assistance) of the dye and placing them on the drying pad. She really had a blast coloring the eggs and was slightly disappointed when there were no more to color.

On another egg note, she did try one of them and enjoyed it until she bit into a part of the yolk. After that, she didn't want ANYTHING to do with it :-)

Babies in bed, an Easter donut, & "Killer boots, man!"

The other morning while playing, Chloe decided that she wanted to get all of her babies and Mr. Monkey in bed. So we wrapped up nearly everyone and then laid a larger blanket over top of them and herself included. She LOVES playing this game of wrapping everyone up and "going to bed."
We went over to the grocery store and told Chloe she could choose a treat to eat for the ride home. She decided that she wanted a donut. At first she wanted donut holes, but quickly decided against them when she saw the extra large egg shaped donuts. Here is the mess that donut made :-)

"Killer boots, man!" This was Chloe's "Easter outfit" despite the fact that it was FREEZING outside. We were getting ready to go over to Chad's parents' house and told her to pick out some shoes. She chose the boots-- interesting choice, but you can't argue with a child who is actually willing to get shoes on ;-)