Five months.

As Caraline approaches her 6 month milestone, I realize I never posted her 5 month photo!

Shame on me!

She's absolutely the best thing to ever happen to me. Most of the time, she's a smiley, happy, cheerful baby and one can't help by smile back at her. She's so curious about animals and other babies and looks so deep in thought (if only I knew what she was thinking) when she's studying them.

Every day brings a new adventure with her and I am so thankful she's part of my life.

So here is her 5 month photo - and hopefully it won't take me a month to post her 6 month photo after I take it next week!

Happy memory making!

Baby boy neckties.

My friend Karen gave birth to their son, Colton, 2 months ago. She loved the idea of documenting his growth each month (similar to how I document Caraline's, see Here and Here). She wanted something geared for a baby boy.

So, she asked me to design some neckties for little Colton. She plans to attach them to onesies each month and take a picture of him like that.

I love any chance to design and be creative so I said ABSOLUTELY! & I'm happy with how they turned out!

Little Colton is such a cutie! He and Caraline have awesome hair in common, as you can see. Maybe some day they can swap taming secrets with each other!

Happy babies!

Live. Love. Teach.

My good friend Dina is a teacher. An awesome wish-she-had-been-my-fifth-grade-teacher teacher. But that would've been weird because she's only a few years older than I am.

Because she's an awesome teacher she loves her students so much. She recently celebrated a birthday, so I made her an extra special present.

All I used was wood scraps, sand paper, printed images, glue, water and a paintbrush.

Sand Paper not shown. Not sure why I had a pencil, either.

I created my design using Photoshop, then printed it using a laser jet printer. I cut the prints to fit the wood blocks that I'd cut to size.

Mied water and glue (ratio of 3 parts glue to 1 part water) with my brush, then brushed a thin layer onto the wood pieces.

I placed each piece of paper over the wood, and smoothed out any bumps.

After they'd all three dried, I used sand paper to roughen up the edges so it wasn't so crisp.

I was so happy with the final product and I know Dina really loved her gift.

Happy Teaching!

Host A Bridal Shower.

My younger sister got married in October of last year, and I hosted a shower at my house for her. Yes, I'm just now getting around to telling you about it because, oh, I don't know, I'm just that far behind.

It's true. And I've said it before. Having a baby makes you forget things.

Like things that happened almost a year ago.

That I was planning to blog about.

Sorry about that.

So my older sister and I threw my younger sister a shower. It wasn't anything fancy, because lesbi-honest I'm not fancy. I try not to seem fancy, either.

The theme was "travel" because my sister and her (now) husband love to visit places all over the world. They went to Europe for their honeymoon!!

The invitations resembled boarding passes . . .

There were veggies & dip . . . 

And make-your-own fruit pies (complete with cream cheese and all the goodies) . . .

Apple slices . . .

And the coolest cake I've ever seen in person . . .

I bought "Oh The Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss and had guests sign a page inside with well wishes.

It was fun to host and my sister and her hubby are enjoying married bliss!

Happy showering!