2 Little Girls - The Harrison Family Blog

Happy Valentines Day

2012-02-16T01:46:00.001+10:00

I had the kitchen island all decorated up for Valentine's Day Morning so we could exchange gifts before Daddy went off to work. I had some pop type love songs playing as they came up the stairs and now Emmy' loves the Faith Hill song "This Kiss" haha.

From Daddy to all of us! I wonder what it could be!?!

Here they are with mouths full of valentines candy and all the goo

dies they got. Daddy got them Lil Sis and Big Sis necklaces that match up to the one he got for me that says Mom and it makes a complete heart. Mine is the same as picture below except the Mom part on mine is yellow gold.

Here's her bag full of Valentines we made together for her Teachers and Classmates at Kindergarden. She wrote out all the names by herself from copying from a list that I had wrote. I had expected it would take several short sessions to keep her focused to do them all but she loved every minute of it and knocked them all out in one go. Such a trooper!

Here she is all ready for school in her V-day dress with V-day Tattoos hhehe.

Later that night we had special Valentines delivered to us from Emmy and Lilah's adorable friend Grace and her Mommy. A big Thank You to our special friends :) Happy Valentines Day!!

Here's a close up of the Valentine the girls handed out and it contained a lollipop as pictures above!

This was Emmy's Valentine's Day School Lunch

Heart Shaped Apple Slices

Jelly Beans with Love Messages on Marshmellows with editable ink.

Heart Shaped Tofu

Grapes

Not pictured is her Heart Shaped Sandwich and separate Jelly packet with Pink Butter Knife so she can make it herself. I always thought premade and packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were so gross as a kid so I always supply Emmy with what she needs to make it fresh. She enjoys it too.

She didn't see me pack her lunch, so it was a big surprise for her and she told me she loved it <3

Lilah had the same lunch too and enjoyed every bite :)

Young Love Just in Time for Valentine's Day

2012-02-13T08:33:00.001+10:00

This is Emmy's little boyfriend at Kindy. I asked him if Emmy was his girlfriend and he said YES haha. Too cute!

Jam'n with Auntie Abby

2012-02-12T14:05:00.000+10:00

I took this video the other day. Auntie Abby called and had a special surprise for the girls. She busted out some tunes on the violin and Emmy wanted to join in and got out her guitar for a jam session! So cute!!

Australia Day

2012-02-03T08:25:00.001+10:00

This is what we did today :) this is the first AUS Day that I haven't got the girls all decked out in patriotic gear and did something with the family.

Taste the Rainbow!

2012-02-03T00:28:00.001+10:00

Emmy and Lilah love it when I make them Jello Jigglers and we hadn't made any in a long while so I thought we would. It's a quick and easy treat for the lunch box too!

Emmy asked if we could make enough to share with her classmates. Of course I couldn't resist her cute little face so we got to work right away.

Silly me, I forgot to spray the molds before pouring the jello, but didn't discover that until I was trying to release them from the molds. I broke nearly everyone!!! I quickly washed up the molds and towel dried them and sprayed them extra well to make a redo batch. They ended up not wanting to release as easy as they should have, perhaps they were damp from the washing.
In the end we had enough Jello Jigglers for each child to have 3-4 during Morning Tea and they ate every last one.

1st Day at Kindy!

2012-02-01T15:18:00.000+10:00

Here's some photo's from Emmy's first day at school. Lilah and I stayed and played until right after lunch time and then I took us home for some food and hopefully a nap for Lilah. She cried and didn't want to leave her sister, but Emmy was totally fine with us leaving. There were a few children that cried on and off for their mom's but over all everyone was pretty happy. I was the only mom that stayed and I think that was more for me then for either of them hahhaha. It's hard watching your baby go off to school and not getting to be the biggest part of her day. Luckily I have Miss Lilah that doesn't want to be left out and we've been invited to come as often as we want and for as long as we want. I decided one day a week is a good amount of time. It's important for Lilah to become secure with everyone and everything that goes along with going to Kindy, but it's equally important for Emmy to have her independent time away from mommy. I'm sorta getting off track about the first day so lets get back to what the kids did!

This is the teacher Miss Kerry! You can see how UNshy Emmy is! She walked right up to be with her when we got there.

We have 12 girls and 8 boys in the class!

One of my favorite things was how dirty they let the kids get. They also let them play with as much water as they want spraying it in the sand pit or dirt area or b

They get to have "Morning Tea" about 30 minutes after they arrive, which this makes me so happy! It's hard to get a 4 year old to eat up breakfast sometimes and you hate the idea of sending them when you know they'll be getting hungry soon. All the kids are given their lunch boxes and they can choose what they want to eat and then the rest of the food carries over to lunch. I'm not sure why more mom's don't do what I do, but I send a separate container for Morning Snack. I figure this gives me a better idea of how hungry she was at that time and then again at lunch I have and idea of how hungry she was by what food is left. I've seen several of the kids wolf down nearly all of there lunch in the morning and then are left with not that much for lunch...that seems sad to me.

Awww she was having such a great time at sissy's school!!

Doing puzzles while wearing dress up shoes! So Lilah!!

Emmy playing with Matilda and Roxy.

The kids had a great time pulling out all the weeds to get their garden box ready for planting and while they were doing that they found several green wormy caterpillars that the teacher put into a bug viewing bucket. How cute are those mini wheelbarrows!!!!

This is Emmy's Rest Time Bed. I made this up the Sunday before she started school. All three pieces (Pillow, bottom sheet, and top sheet) are all connected so none can be separated or lost. The pillow has a removable insert for easy washing. The materials are so soft and comfy and I let Emmy pick them out herself. It rolls up and fits nicely into a drawstring bag and is stored in class. I'm working on getting a tutorial posted on how to make them as they are quite expensive to buy for the small amount of time that that they use them each class time. Emmy loves her bed and she knows how much time, effort, and love went into making it and she's very proud of it!!

Emerson Rose's 1st Day at Kindy (Preschool)

2012-02-01T14:51:00.000+10:00

Awww It's Emerson Rose's first day at Kindergarten!

We had to do a special hair-do and she was very proud of it!

I found the sweetest idea online for Mother and Daughter's to share. I wish I knew where I found it so I could link to it, if someone knows the link please message me, but here's what I did........ I made up matching bracelets and gave them to her along with reading her this poem:

Here are two bracelets,

one big and one small.

We'll be stylish and cool

for your first day of school.

I'll wear the big one

and I'll think of you.

The small one is yours

so you'll think of me, too!

Wear it at school,

while you work and while you play

to have my heart close to you

everyday you are away.

I did alter the poem from the original to make it fit perfectly to our situation. Emmy's has a KEY and mine had the HEART LOCKET. She was over the moon and so happy and excited that we have matching bracelets and wears it to school everyday!

I asked Lilah to stand with sissy for a picture and this is the goofy pose I got hahah!

Here she is walking towards her new school. Construction on the building was completed earlier this month and she is in the first class they've ever had. Kinda special we think!

My Little Fisher Girls

2012-01-28T08:25:00.000+10:00

We went out in the boat this morning and went the furthest we've gone yet to ggrrr I forget the name of the island. It took us about an hour of nonstop driving to reach our spot. It was also another first for us.....we didn't have anyone with us so I was the captains helper with getting the boat into the water, dropping the anchor and getting it back out the water. I didn't do too much really haha. We lost some big bites due to the line being cut by the reefs, but did get to bring home 2 rock cods and we pulled out a frozen dwarf rock cod from the week before and had a yummy dinner. Kim steamed them with ginger and garlic um!

The Many Faces of Lilah

2012-01-19T18:39:00.000+10:00

While I was cleaning up the sewing room the girls found some clip in neon hair things from my beauty school days. We clipped them in and the danced around to the radio I already had going. I asked Lilah for a picture and this is what I got!! After she makes her face she'll give me a big smile and ask me to see it, lol!!

More Face Painting

2012-01-18T08:36:00.001+10:00

Doing some practicing......

More Face Painting

2012-01-16T08:34:00.001+10:00

More face painting!! Lilac smudged hers right away, and Emmy insisted on RED lips over pale pink and Finn was a tiger which I was very pleased with how it turned out.

Face Painting

2012-01-14T04:31:00.001+10:00

I got to do a mini face painting class the other day with Belinda from Fabulous Faces in Adelaide. It was so much fun and something I've wanted to do for a long time and everything magically lined up and I got the opportunity!! As of right now this is just something fun for me to do with my children and I have no plans to become employed as a Face Painter. It's also heaps harder to do than it looks. Mastering control of the brush is the secret to making it look good and that comes from good ol'practice. Here's a few photos from my first child session on my daughters and my nieces.

Cheeky Monkey Play Cafe

2012-01-10T21:21:00.001+10:00

We went to the new play cafe in Gawler this past monday with the cousins. The girls had a lot of fun, but was not happy when grandma called it quits after two hours. Luckily we are going to another play cafe on Saturday so I was able to appease her with a promise that we'll stay as long as she wants to. I hope I haven't set myself up for 6+ of noise squealing lol.

New Phone For Mommy

2012-01-07T23:20:00.001+10:00

I have joined the rest of the world and will be using the blogger app to update from my phone from now on!! Husband bought me the new iPhone 4s wooohooo and surprised me with it! Thank you honey! I love ya!

Emmy's Place: Come and Play

2011-12-10T18:39:00.001+10:00

This was Emmy's sign she madeall by herself. She told me that it said "Emmy's: Play Here" She put it in the front window and said that when people that have children drive by they will know that they can stop and play here if they want to meet a new friend. hahhah How cute is that!?!?! Plus I think it's pretty awesome that she did this all by herself ( 3 3/4 yrs old ) and she got "PL A/O" when trying to write "PLAY" My little smarty pants!

Santa Came Early This Year

2011-12-10T18:12:00.001+10:00

Our Christmas 2011

Santa had to come early to our house this year because we'll be traveling for 3.5 weeks over the holiday season and will miss the 25th. Instead of dragging presents with us or delaying Christmas we decided to have it 1.5 weeks before we leave that way the kids have some time to play with thier new things before we fly out.

It looks to me that the girls made out really well! They must have been very good girls to get so many presents!

As soon as they walked out of the bedroom this is what they saw! A new playhouse and the tree with all the presents!

Tucked behind the corner was the new bounce house. This was a big hit right away!

Of course I have tons of pictures to post and tell you all about those wrapped gifts they tore into, but that will have to wait until another post. Merry Christmas Everybody xo Sari

Just another day at sea...

2011-12-10T15:49:00.001+10:00

Here's our new 2052 Bayliner Trophy 22ft. It was delivered on Wednesday courtesy of my in-laws. The kids were so happy to see them that they were literally running around in circles going crazy haha.

This picture gives a good idea of it's size up against our two story house.

It didn't take long for the kids to climb up in.

Captain Emmy couldn't wait for her turn to drive the boat. She got to sit on Daddy's lap on the way home and have a turn!

Our water babies fishing with their Barbie poles! Lilah has on her practice casting dummy fish and Emmy had a hook. They didn't keep their poles in the water long enough to catch anything and after 10 min's of fishing they were ready to go home.

This beautiful Golden Trevally was pulled up by my father in law after only having his pole in the water for 3-4 minutes. I couldn't believe it!! This fish was so big it totally makes my husbands foot look like a kids foot. He was so big and he tasted so good :)

He gave Kingsley a really good fight. It lasted a solid 5 minutes and he had to chase him nearly all the way around the boat before we were able to net him. Great Job Pops!

After tons of whining and crying, Lilah finally went to sleep while Daddy was holding her and he laid her down in the lower cabin. Because it's so hot I allowed her to take off her swim pack while she slept, so don't freak out when you see the photo's Grandma!! To give you an idea of the size down there it had a table in the middle that was 3ft x 3ft with seating all the way around. I made it into the "bed" right away and laid down a clean sheet (although daddy missed laying her on it) and they had their little portable DVD player. Not a bad way to go fishing if you ask me. Also no need for the amount of complaining we had to hear from both of them!

Whooohoooo! My first catch on the new boat and it was my FIRST SHARK ever!! I was very delighted! We were getting close to quitting time and having to head in and I was so busy dealing with the kids that I barely had time to actually hold my rod and was thinking that I wasn't going to catch anything. I was still trying to keep Emmy from complaining so I gave her my phone and I was posing for a picture when this bad boy took my bait. He gave a good fight, but was by no means difficult. I had him reeled in after about 2 min's.

This picture shows a good representation of his color. He had a slight bronze sheen with a light underbelly. Both Kim and I thought it was a Black Tip Reef Shark, and after using some identifying information I confirmed that it was indeed a Black Tip!

He went into one of two kill tanks, but I prefer to call them something a bit less scary like "catch tanks". Once Kim shut the door he really went crazy and the thumping was so loud. I was a little worried that it might upset Emmy but it didn't at all. She's going to be a good little fishermen just like her momma was when she was little :)

I waited to get my holding picture after he had been on ice for a while. He was way too feisty for me to hold on the boat and I didn't want to drop him in the boat with the girls or even worse, over the side of the boat hahha. I got a bit of sun too. I had sunblock on, but forgot to put it on my face.....duh!

I feel a bad that I don't have a picture of Kim with his boat share. Everything I have of him is on video and when we went fishing he didn't pull up a keeper so again no picture. I also don't have a picture of the boat with it's canopy up or with all our gear on. I'll try and do better next time.

Party Plans

2011-11-17T21:03:00.001+10:00

If I haven't told you yet the girl's 4th & 3rd birthday party theme this year will be PIRATES! (actually it's Emmy's official FIRST BIRTHDAY!! Since she's a leap year baby hahahha) Anyways, Emmy's been a long time lover of Peter Pan and the Disney Channel has a new cartoon called:

Jake and the Never Land Pirates

She really loves it so it was easy for her to pick the theme all by herself. This year Lilah is going along with anything and everything, but next year they'll have to agree on a theme because I'm sure Lilah will have an opinion and that could be interesting!

This is the pirate outfit that I want to order for her birthday party. I've requested a corset style belt to go with it and a loop sword holder. Both requests are from Emmy and she's dead set on it! hahah I'm still looking for Lilah's dress because I don't like them to be in identical outfits. I've asked the lady if she has another design that she can make for Lilah that way it's made from some of the same fabrics, I'm sure she'll be able to come up with something. Esty.com only allow people to sell original hand crafted items so I'm certain it'll be of great quality too.

Originally I was going to make their outfits but it's hard for me to get material now that I'm in the country and after I put the time and money into it I would probably have wrapped up in it what it would have cost to just buy it, and I'll have a bazillion other things to do for their party. For their big gift I have already bought an organizing bookcase thing that holds little canvas boxes on an angle and I want to fill it with homemade felt foods and make it into a fruit and veggie stand for their playroom. Cute huh! So that right there will take up hours and hours of my sewing time!

If anybody has any Pirate Party Ideas please don't be afraid to share them with me! xo

Halloween Style

2011-11-06T15:19:00.002+10:00

The kids are all ready for Library Story Time Group. This was the week before Halloween so they are all dressed up in the spirit of things. Emmy's wearing a top that Grandma Betsy bought her and I had to cut off the selves and him it up because it's so warm here. Lilah's shirt doesn't fit her yet, so I took a plain back tee she had and added a Frankenstein patch that we had. I think they thought they looked pretty cute...wouldn't you agree :)

Lilah's modeling the matching bracelets that Emmy and her have for Halloween that Mommy made them!

Here she's showing off the pretty Curly Ribbon Hair Clips that Mommy made for her.

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Farm

2011-11-06T14:34:00.004+10:00

We quickly threw together a photo background at the Pumpkin Farm! We had just come from the Halloween Party at the Library so the girls were still in costume. Emmy was Alice and Lilah was a Chicken.

When we got home Emmy put on her Cinderella dress and asked me to take some photo's of her with the pumpkins! Lilah was asleep from the very busy morning we had and missed out this time.

OMG! What are we going to do with all of these pumpkins!! I'm sure we'll come up with something though!

Our New Look

2011-11-06T13:40:00.002+10:00

We have a new blog look! Nice, huh? Reminds me of the Secret Garden. xo

Story Time at the Library - Bowen

2011-11-03T21:34:00.000+10:00

We love our Story Time each week at the Library. Of all the free things the kids and I have done over the past few years this one is by far the best. The women that put it on each week put a lot of thought and energy into it. They sing and dance around to 12-13 songs, read 2 books, and have a craft afterwards. Their crafts are not easy ones either. Lots of time is put into preparing them! I have made friends with one of the ladies there, Tania, and we agreed that a Halloween theme would be great to do! For Australia this is kind of a rarity and it's not really celebrated. The kids were all invited to dress in costume and the girls and I made goodie bags for them. I was just going to make some cookies to bring at first, then they looked so nice that I wanted to put them in individual bags, but the bags were so large that it looked like it needed more stuff in them. I added a chocolate bar, a row of Halloween stickers, a Halloween toy or balloon and the pumpkin sign needed for the Trick or Treat night. I then made up quick and easy tops of the bags using Martha Stewart Halloween Paper, some stickers and staples. And Walla..........we have goodie bags!!

Here they are all together.

I love making up goodie bags and could have kept going and filled them up more, but didn't want to wrap up tons of money in them.

I made up two batches of sugar cookies because I knew there was no way I'd be able to bake them and be left alone to decorate them without letting the kids do their own batch. It took me 3-4 hours to make up the doughs, icings, and loading the icings. Then start to finish 3 hours for the kids' cookies. It was fun and they really enjoyed it, but I was glad when I got it all cleaned up and could start on my own.

This is Lilah's cookie creations. I helped her to roll out the dough after she selected her color and then she embellished them with other colors.

Here's Emmy's cookies. She said the orange cookie was her and did that one completely by herself. Her favorite cookie was the bunny rabbit. She rolled out her dough herself and selected her cutter and I helped her with decorating ideas and technical things.

And here's Mommy's cookies! I must send a big thank you to Grandma Betsy for sending over the cookie cutters! They made the whole process easy because they imprinted the styling lines on the cookie. I made tons of pumpkin, ghost, spiders, and bats.

I made ghosts in purple too but didn't get a picture of them. I don't think I'll ever do them again in purple because they came out looking like Grimace from McDonald hhaha

I still had some dough left and decided that I wanted to do a new design so I used the gingerbread man cutter but moved the arms and legs a bit to try and get the cookie out of the traditional shape. I used a butter knife to indent where I wanted the icing to go before baking.

I think my Mummies turned out really cute!

This is still a post about Story Time even though I have you thinking about cookies! Here's Emmy in her Alice outfit that I made her. I think it is absolutely adorable and I was extremely pleased with it throughout it's entire construction. It was an older pattern from 1982. It wasn't an "Alice" pattern so I had to modify and simplify it and make it more "Alice-like". Lilah was in no mood to be photographed so if you look at the picture again you can just see Lilah's face in the bottom right corner. She was wearing the Chicken Costume I made last year. Everyone loved her outfit and commented on it. I thought she was the cutest chicken ever! Here's a link to the Chicken Costume Post from last year. You can click on it worry free ......it will open up in a new tab/page.

Here's a group shot of all the children at the Library. The three ladies dressed up at the back are the ladies that put Story Time together each week.

Lilah had taken off her Chicken Hat by this time and you can't blame her because it was so hot out. In the picture she was too busy watching the other children and babies and wouldn't pay attention to smile for the camera. Notice Emmy is cheesing it in both photo's hahahhaha. Such a ham!!

At the end of the Story session the girls handed out our goodie bags to each child on their way out with their moms. This was Emmy's favorite part of the morning and she asked me if she could do it about a million times! They had a total blast and so did I! Halloween is still my favorite holiday!!

Daddy's Birthday Surprise

2011-10-10T09:14:00.000+10:00

I told Emmy that Daddy's birthday was coming up and that she needed to pick him out a present and she suggested and asked if we could throw Daddy a Surprise Party. She said that we needed a "Due Pinata". I asked her several times what kind of pinata and finally figured that she was trying to say Purdue. How cute is that!! She knows that Daddy loves anything Purdue...... so over the course of the week we made one. Inspiration hit her when we was standing in the post office line...."I found the perfect present for Daddy!" she said. A Princess and the Frog Wii game. Since Kim had already ordered what he wanted for his birthday I thought I'd let it slide and let her get away with thinking that she's fooling me. Plus I wanted to see the look on his face when he opened up a Disney Princess Wii game lol. Before we left the Post Office she suggested that we could play Pass the Parcel with his gift.

The day of the party we filled our pinata with candy and prepared our games. Got out our party hats and noise makers. I made Kim's favorite, Apple Crumble, and the kids helped me to decorate and blow up tons of balloons. They were so excited for Daddy to come home and show him all the great party things! Right before he came home there was a gorgeous sunset so I had to snap a few photos. In the picture at the top you'll notice that the girls have alot of eye make up on too. When I was doing mine they really really wanted to have theirs done so we did abit of make up fun. You'll also notice in the above picture how bright orange the sky was.... I haven't edited the picture or enhanced it at all. It was really that lovely!

Yay....here's the party decorations!

His Apple Crumble with football candles (we didnt' have enough for all 31 so 3 had to do haha)

The pretty cards the girls made for Daddy!

We hid behind the island and jumped out yelling "SURPRISE!!" as Daddy got home from work! He had a big smile on his face! There is only one of me and two cameras that I was trying to use so those moments were caught on video camera and I don't have photo's to share. If I could figure out how to correctly convert my digital camcorder files to something compatible with You Tube then I'd be able to post all kinds of goodies. If anybody knows how to help please leave a comment!

It's hard to see but Lilah is having her turn trying to hit the Black Pinata.

Now it's Emmy's turn!

Daddy had to switch to the broom handle to get the job done.

hahha Lilah jumping in delight because the pinata broke!!

The next 5 photos really made Kim and I really laugh. He wanted a picture of us all together so we sat down and said CHEESE.....and with kids you always have to take a bunch of pictures to maybe get one good one. Notice that Emmy changed pose for EVERY picture and he was snapping them fast.....

Catching Up On Blogging

2011-09-21T14:21:00.001+10:00

I have alot of posts that I missed posting in April before our trip to the states, our entire trip to the states, and the things we've done since we've been home, because of our move from South Australia to Queensland and then the 9 week vacation that followed 5 weeks after the move. I want to get caught up on everything since I want to have this blog printed into a book for the kids to have get all the good stuff in there :) so there will be posts popping up from a while ago.

Happy Father's Day Daddy!

2011-09-19T18:39:00.003+10:00

At 6 AM the girls woke up and could see the presents I had put out on the dresser after Daddy had fallen asleep. They were super excited and right away started jumping on Kim. What a way to wake up!! They are always so rough with him. Emmy and Lilah helped him open up his gifts and Emmy was especially proud to give Daddy the present she had picked out, the Drinking Hat. I laughed and laughed when she spotted this thing in the store and said that this is what she wanted to get him because Daddy would love it! I'd say she knows her Daddy fairly well. If it has to do with beer or Purdue then it's a winner! lol

After lots of hugs and kisses I gathered up the kids & Brodie so Daddy could get more sleep. After about 1 1/2 hours Emmy and Lilah headed back to the bedroom with breakfast for Daddy. We cooked up one of his favorites, Toastie Toaster Baked Bean Sandwiches, gross I know! hahhaa

The girls were very proud of themselves to be delivering his breakfast to him that they helped to make! They really love their daddy! He took it out to their little play kitchen table and sat there with them and ate it. How cute!!

The Fall - Updated

2011-09-09T15:49:00.002+10:00

I was sitting out on the swing reading a magazine while the girls played on their swing set just feet from me. I look up and Lilah is sitting like tweedy bird on the swinging bar. I had no idea how the heck she got up there and would have never in a million years thought that she could do that yet. Not even Emmy had figured out how to do that. I asked her to show me how she got up there and she did and I was floored!

She'd grab onto the handles of the swing bar and then use her legs to climb up onto the trampoline's jumping handle and then stand up...pulling the swing bar close to her and putting one leg over it and then as it made a huge swing out she'd bring through the other leg!! I know this was the first time she has gotten up there like that because she couldn't get down. I had a big talking with her and while I was doing that Emmy flipped upside down and hooked her legs over the bar and let go and was dangling upside down.

I know I should let them be kids and not worry about bruises or bumps but I am worried that if she slips and falls on her neck wrong that she could have major damage and injury. 2 & 3 years old is a bit young for gymnastic tricks, or maybe this means I need to get them into gymnastic classes? I couldn't get the bar to come down so I wrapped it tightly around and now it's too high that they can't reach it.

Now this brings me to Lilah's knot on the side of her head and her purple/swallow ear. With not having the swing bar to swing on she was standing on the small trampoline and grabbing onto the swing and jumping off and kinda doing a tarzan swing. Her hands slipped and down she went. I felt so bad. That fall was from only 2 feet off the ground and if that looks this bad I don't even want to know what it would have been if she fell off the swing bar 5 feet off the ground! uughhh!

-----------------------------UPDATE------------------------------

I can't believe how bad it looked for a couple days! It's almost back to looking normal now, and just has a small bruise on the very top where the blue/purple bit was.

Happy Father's Day 2011

2011-09-03T15:30:00.000+10:00

Happy Father's Day Daddy!

This year we did new PURDUE pictures for Daddy's office! Not a huge surprise to him I'm sure, but he'll love them none the less!

Lilah didn't really want to go along with the photo shoot so it took a lot of coaching and promises of candy to get this shot!

Emmy's always on top of her game and has a pose waiting for the camera so we wrapped up her session fairly quickly and was delighted to get her candy!

I love this photo because it is the true essence of their personalities! Emmy the happy outgoing one and Lilah the disgruntle one! hahahaha Totally reminds me of the PURDUE pictures we did for Father's Day in 2009!!

Father's Day 2009

Here's his PURDUE PACKAGE I made for Kim:

1- 16x20 in Collage Poster for his office.
2 Beer Coolers (I was worried the girls might both insist that he use THEIR holder but then I remembered that real men drink 2 beers at once! hahaha)
1 Homemade Card (I was still working out how to use my Silhouette SD Machine and was very happy how the Outline & Cut feature worked on the footballer! More about my Silhouette in another post!)

Click on the image to see it larger.

I was surprised to see that the drink holders had a Velcro fastener because Snapfish didn't say anything about that on it's site and didn't show it in the picture, but it makes sense because they would have to print them off quickly. Obviously it doesn't have a bottom either. Overall I'm fairly happy with them, but am disappointed with being mislead on their website and would have really appreciated a bottom to help keep bottle sweating under control.

More pictures to come of Daddy getting his gifts and of all the cute things the girls did for him on Sunday and the gift they picked out for him at the store.

Father's Day 2009

Can you believe how much we have changed!?!? We're growing up fast!

Emmy's Performance

2011-05-18T08:18:00.004+10:00

Here's a taste of the concerts Emmy puts on for us everyday! I get anywhere between 2-5 and they are always elaborate. I'll be sad if she ever stops doing them and I hope someday she can start hitting the correct notes lol.

Here she is singing "Believe" from Barbie and the Diamond Castle. This was her first favorite cartoon that she'd watch all 60 min's of at 15 months old and definitely the song she sings most! CLICK HERE TO WATCH

I was hoping to get her full rendition of "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid but she broke back into "Believe" hahah. CLICK HERE TO WATCH

Here's the real song with lyrics that she was singing! CLICK HERE TO WATCH

Coloring Our Easter Eggs 2011

2011-05-12T18:30:00.004+10:00

This year we did our Easter Egg Coloring during Lilah's nap time. Since Lilah is allergic to eggs and I was down from having and extra set of hands like I did last year (my sister Abby was here) I decided that it would just be easier to make it one of Emmy's special time things.

Look at those green hands! I can guess what color your egg is going to be!

After we got done coloring all the eggs she was very sad so we had to recolor all of them hahaha. This year we used a mixture of several different kinds. We had the traditional dyes in cups, then we had a egg stamping set that we also used a paint brush with and then we had a sparkle packet left over from a kit last year, oh ...we also used the clear crayon to write on the egg before dying.

There were some really fun techniques that I wanted to do this year, but the mess could get a bit out of control and I think we'll wait until the girls are old enough to do everything for themselves start to finish. Right now she's happy to dip the egg in a million times haha.

Here they are!

The final touch...... glitter on them!! Over the week she played with them by putting them into their basket and taking them out again. She'd take the grass and make individual nests for each egg all over the table and tell me that they were going to hatch soon and every now and then I'd hear "uh oh" and I knew that we were now down 1 more Easter Egg. LOL

Grandma Jan's Goodie Box

2011-05-12T17:12:00.000+10:00

Right before Easter here came another goodie box! The girls were very excited and were anticipating its arrival.

My mom and grandparents are veterans of what I call "The Web Cam Unwrap". This was Grandma Jan's first time getting to experience a holiday from a distance and sending a goodie box via the post. If we can't be together in person then the next best thing is connecting online and lets face it... one of the best parts of gift giving is getting to see the other person receive the gift. I should note there that the girls didn't get to open Grandma Betsy's goodie box on web cam because our fast speed internet was not hooked up in our new home yet.

This is Lilah NOT holding still to show me her new bunny ears!

Emmy found Easter cards from Grandma Jan and Grandpa Kingsley and also one from Brodie our doggie! How sweet and smart of him *wink wink* They are watching Brodie for us until we get back from our family vacation coming up.

Their goodie box was full of chocolates, activity books, paper dolls, panties, and.....................

RAINCOATS!!

Just what we needed for our new tropical climate!!

I think this was what they had the most fun with....

What a mess!

Did my mother in law sneakingly plan this??

Just kidding!! They loved it and I don't mind a mess in the name of fun!

Grandma's Betsy's Goodie Box

2011-05-12T13:59:00.000+10:00

First to arrive was my mothers Goodie Box this Easter. You never know how long it will take items to ship so sometimes they come much earlier than planned and other times they disappear for weeks on end. I had just told the girls that morning that later in the week Grandma Betsy's Easter Box would be arriving and just an hour later the mail man was knocking and here it was! Of course they were so happy! They sat outside for the first half of unwrapping and then we came in side because the wind was just blowing too much!

Lilah was pulling stuff out as quick as she could.

Disney Princess Easter Window Clings!

Wow! Rainbow Band-aids!!

Yep, we had to stop unwrapping to put on some band-aids!

ooOoooO full of candy and goodies!

Little egg shaped bubble gum was a big hit!

Emmy loved all of her educational books and coloring books.

Lilah was so focused on getting her Chocolate Bunny on a stick open that she wouldn't take a second to smile at me for a picture!

Emmy's my silly one . Can you tell??!

Still no smiles for me Lilah??

Playing with her goodies. They also got different types of band-aids, sparkle tattoos, little easter toys, coloring books, and candies!

Happy Easter Everyone and Thank you Grandma Betsy!! xo

Craft Time

2011-04-29T23:20:00.011+10:00

Paint Brushes - CHECK

Homemade Chalk Paint - CHECK

Emmy's Boat - Wet

Emmy's Boat- Dry

Emmy's Cat

Here's most of our paintings. We also did a big "I Love Daddy" right in front of the door so Kim would see it when he got home from work. It's been 3 days since we did these and they are still just as vibrant and fresh looking. You'll notice that Lilah didn't participate in this. When she takes her naps during the day that's when Emmy and I have some special time. She usually chooses to do art and it's much easier doing the messy projects with only 1 child. Lilah's special time usually consists of quiet time activities with me such as reading books, cuddling, taking a bath together, or caring for her baby dolls.

Now onto more crafts........

The girls and I made this shortly after we moved into the new house. It's nothing pretty, but they had fun with it. Emmy was doing "The Fairies" as her show for Lilah and me.

Peeping out to make sure I'm still watching haha!

Here's the first sock puppet we made. He's a crazy Zebra. It was actually Emmy's request for me to make her a sock puppet that lead us to make the moving box puppet theater.

Here's the second one....a funky Little Girl, you can't just have ONE of anything when you have same sex children nearly the same age!

Who does this remind you of???? Totally my sister Ashley right here! If Emmy had glasses it would REALLY look like her!! There is a particular picture I have in mind that I'd love to do a side by side. I need to go through the box of old pictures and see if I have it to scan in, but if anyone knows the picture I'm thinking about and has it handy I would love it if you scanned it for me! xo

We did good old easel painting later in the day on Easter. Yay, Lilah got to participate in this mess, and a mess it was! Lilah likes to pick up her paint pots and walk around. She never stays on the paper and will trail off onto her easel everywhere ect... I've learned a good trick that makes the clean up easy. They paint with acrylic paints that I water down, 3 parts paint 1 part water, and then add a big squirt of clear dish soap. This helps to make the paint super easy to wipe up and wash off the kids.

Lilah's always got an eye on her big sister. She's checking out Emmy's "tadoes" and if she gets the opportunity to swipe a bit of her own paint onto Emmy's paper she'll do it every time. While I was taking the picture I was telling her "Lilah, only look with your eyes and don't paint on her paper."

Grandma Betsy sent these colorful peanut molding puffs quite a long while ago and I kind of forgot we had them. In the unpacking process I kept them out so we could try them asap. Emmy really loved them and this was one of our special time art sessions. Mommy made her the heart :)

This was Emmy's Caterpillar.

And this is her Flower.

All we had to do was dip the end we wanted to stick onto a wet sponge and then it would stick to the next piece. They were really fun to play with and as soon as I know that Lilah won't put them in her mouth she'll get to play with them as well.

This reminds me of Ariel while signing "Part of Your World" when she swims to the top of her cavern and she's looking up out the top hole. Okay....I had to try and find a picture of it and this is the only thing I could find of that scene from the cartoon.

I wish I could draw like this!

I tried to get Lilah to give me the same energy but she was not having it. Can you guess what she's saying to me with that look? Best caption wins a prize lol!

Lilah Asenith: Who I Am

2011-04-19T17:45:00.015+10:00

This is just a tiny bit late, so please except my apology Miss Lilah.

Everything you'll need to know about Lilah Asenith at Two Years Old!

This is her normal everyday look. Wild hair, little to no clothing, and a sticky face that I'm constantly wiping. Lilah is still my baby, she chooses to be with me 90% of her day and if she can get away with having me hold her for the majority of it then she will. She's into dress up and putting on her own shoes.

She came upstairs from the playroom dressed like this so of course I had to take a picture! It was so hot outside, but she didn't care! She still wore her ugg's anyway hahaha. The 10% of time she spends away from me is spent with her sister. She has to do EVERYTHING her sister does. If Emmy is playing with a certain type of toy, Lilah will go get a similar thing to tinker with. If Emmy is building something then Lilah will try and do it too. If Emmy is gets excited about something, Lilah is right there cheering along with her. Very cute!

She likes to pick her nose and when you tell her to stop it she'll then do it over and over and laugh at you. We are hearing her speak a lot more lately. Lots of spontaneous words will pop out and she will copy me when I ask her to, the newest word is DARK. Whenever I walk into a room at night that doesn't have a light on she yells out "dark" haha. Kim thinks she'll have the stronger Australian accent out of the two of them based on some of the words she says.

Every time I turned around I was having to pick up the magazines in the toilet and put them back into the holder. Usually it's daddy to blame, but instead of just one or two out it was every single one! I finally caught the guilty one...little Miss Lilah!!
Since this picture was taken (well over a week ago) she's not been pulling them out so much since I started making her pick them up every time I found them all a mess. She's still a monkey too! She gets in trouble at least once or twice an hour for climbing on top of the kitchen counters. She'll push a chair up and once she's up there her favorite thing to do is to play in the sink with the faucet. Obviously she loves water play and takes up to two baths a day.

The girls LOVE their new bath tub and will have really long play sessions in there! Because it's so big and they are so little I can fill it right up and they think they are swimming. Lilah's favorite is lots of bubbles and color tablets that make the water a pretty tint. Her favorite bath toys are the mermaid dolls and Barbie's Mermaid Falls, but really she loves any and all bath toys.

She still doesn't care much for TV but the little that she does watch still remains the same.... Teletubbies and Baby Signing Time although she knows alot of the theme songs to the shows that Emmy watches and will sing along with them and then goes off to do something else.

Everyday she signs "car" and asks to go to the store. I hate to admit it but I've actually made a trip out to the store because she's asked to go and when I told her that we were not going to go anywhere that day, she just looked so sad.

Lilah isn't too fussy when it comes to food and she's usually the easier of the two to convince to try something. She has 2-3 bottles/sippy cups of milk per day. Her boob obsession continues even though she's been weaned for 6 months the end of April. Every time she's on my lap during the day the first thing she does is shove her hand down my shirt and if she finds what she's looking for then she pinches while rolling her fingers back and forth. Yes, it's still an OUCH! IF she's tired or it's bedtime then she's much more aggressive about it and will persist over and over and over again as I smack away her hand each time. I am so over being the boob defender! I can't wait for this obsession/love/habit to stop!

On a positive note.... she nearly makes up for the pinching by giving awesome back scratches. She learned how to do them when her Auntie Abby was here and she scratched Mommy's back lots and lots. Anytime I'm busy with a project or on the computer she'll get behind me and start scratching and she knows she'll grab my attention that way....of course there is lots of positive reinforcement haha. For being 2 years old I'm always amazed at what a great job she does, but it's because it's filled with so much love! xo

When Kim and I were first together (something crazy like after 3 weeks) I came across this picture in a magazine of a little Native American baby and I showed it to him and said, "This is what our babies will look like." and I've kept it all this time. What do you think!?

Lilah's First Plane Ride

2011-04-12T22:53:00.008+10:00

We spent the morning with Auntie Carolyn and Baby Finn at The Beachhouse in Adelaide. We only had 1.5 hours and $66 in gift certificates to spend so that didn't leave any time to take pictures to share. Just to give you an idea of what The Beach House is...here's a photo off of their website.

The kids got to ride the carousal (pictured above), the train, several small coin operated ride-on's and lots of arcade games. They really enjoyed themselves and had such a great time. Emmy's favorites were the games and Lilah loved the Bob the Builder Truck that barely moved when you paid $2 for it to rock back and fourth. The idea was to wear them out before our flights that way they'd have some lunch and be ready for a nap for our 1pm departure. Of course things never go as you plan and I certainly didn't get the experience I was hopping for!

We said our goodbye's at the Airport to our family and friends and headed down the ramp to board our plane. Sorry no pictures again.... I had my hands full, but it's a shame because the girls and I were dressed super cute! I did a bit of a retro throw back to flying in the 50-60's in a retro shaped dress with matching hand bag *smiles* Back to the story.... Immediately I had trouble handling my carry on, the kids carry on and holding Lilah. Lucky a nice gentleman stepped up to help with our bags. The girls were excited and happy to be on the plane. I had really talked it up for weeks and they really wanted to see what all the fuse was about. Emmy kept herself busy with her coloring book, stickers, watching out the window, and snacks while Lilah needed constant entertainment. She didn't have too much interest in any of the goodies I packed for her and acted like a bucket of worms the entire time. She refused to sit in her seat and would cry and scream if I tried to make her. When it came time to start the descent and seat belts needed to be buckled she really went crazy. Screaming and trying to throw herself on the floor. I had to do my best to force her to at least sit on my lap for landing. It was easy to tell at some points her ears where bothering her, but her tantrum started long before the actual descent so the pain wasn't the sole cause of such a melt down. I've never had so many people looking at me on a plane before haha, but I didn't feel bad. The flight was under 2 hours and all I kept thinking was what I wanted to say to all of the onlookers...it would go something like this "oohh you think this is bad? Just be thankful you'll not be trapped 30,000 feet in the air for 16 hours straight when we travel to the states in 8 weeks." Just as we landed she passed out from exhaustion, and it was the absolute worst time for her to sleep. I had to manage both of our roller carts again while carrying her and keeping Emmy close while we met up with Kim in Brisbane then we'd all fly together to Proserpine. He was suppose to meet me at our gate and if he wasn't there then we'd met at Hungry Jack's (Burger King). I had 3 lovely ladies that seen what happened on the plane and they offered to help with my bags and it was just a blessing! We did our quick look around the gate and Hungry Jack's and couldn't find Kim. We then all headed to baggage claim because our bags couldn't be checked through because we had to switch airlines for our connecting flight. Completely ridiculous, I know!! As we came down the escalator there stood Kim waiting at the bottom with both of our new carseats in their HUGE boxes. He was so relieved that I come to baggage claim instead of hanging around waiting for him at the restaurant. He said security wouldn't let him come up with such large boxes but also wouldn't watch them.

We had a descent amount of time to recheck in and get rid of as many bags as possible, go through security again and have our bags dug through. We found our departing gate and waited around 30 min's. The girls spent their time by taking turns going to the bath room. It never fails...I don't care where we are but one of them will have to do a #2 with no shame! This time Emmy demanded privacy and I couldn't be in the stall with her so I went and stood by the sinks hahaha. Even though it was a pain in the butt to take them to the toilets every hour my girls didn't use their pull up's once on the entire trip lasting from 6am-10pm. Whenever they do things that make me proud instead of only telling them how proud I am I will ask them if they feel proud of themselves and try to foster the inner drive for self pride over please others. They were VERY proud of themselves that night! Sorry....I'm drifting off topic again...

With the extra set of parental hands I was no longer out numbered and really hoped that this second flight would be better. Nope, worse!! Lilah constantly wiggled, got up, got down, climbed up her dad, jumped over to me, and then started the process over again. Towards the end of the flight she was getting tired and irritated and started to whine and cry. Emmy had started the flight out doing some coloring and then quickly lost steam and fell asleep. She didn't look comfortable so I scooped her up and really enjoyed holding a peacefully sleeping QUIET child haha. Pretty soon it was time to prepare for landing and it was the same thing all over again except this time she added clawing, scratching, hitting, and kicking me or the seat in front of us. After several minutes of fighting her I just let her go and she slid down to the floor and continued to throw her fit. At least when she was on the floor she couldn't kick the chair in front of us or claw me. After another 5 minutes with no let up in the screaming they came around to say that it was definitely time for her to be in a seat-belt. She watched as I struggled to force her into her seat and buckle the belt but Lilah was arching her back so much that I couldn't get her into the sitting position. The lady came back with one of the baby seat-belts that hook into the mothers seat-belt and we thought that might work better. I put Lilah onto my lap and it took two grown women to get the seat belt on her. She continued to claw, hit, and kick. It took all of my strength to simultaneously hold her hands from clawing and keeping her legs from kicking. Eventually she stopped trying to attack me and focused on getting the belt off. Don't forget she was still SCREAMING while all of this was happening. In a desperate attempt to quite her I took off her seat-belt and finally she was exhausted enough that she turned around and hugged me while passing out. Again...completely asleep at landing. This is really turning into a bad pattern!

The kids and I waited outside the airport for Daddy to collect our bags, load up the car, and install the new car-seats. An hour later we were ready to head out. Since none of our furniture or belongings had reached the new house yet we thought it would be better on the kids if we stayed at a hotel and at least we'd have more than 1 bed and it wouldn't be an empty space. I think we all slept really good that night!

I know this is a bit of a longer post than I usually do, but I really wanted all of you to feel my pain! hahha Also I wanted this experience in Lilah's life to be well documented so she can read it someday. I can only hope she'll have a child as "lively" as herself :) As for the upcoming trip to the States...I'm not as worried as you'd think I'd be. Whatever will be will be, so I'll just have to be prepared as possible. Complete sedation will obviously be requried and some good old fashioned allergy medicine should do the trick. I'll also have several pairs of standard ear plugs for myself and for the people around us. I may not be able to keep her from crying, but at least I can offer some reduction in volume!
I'll give these a try as well! Kids Earplane Ear Plugs for Airplane Travel. My sister has alot of ear troubles and she swears by them, so hopefully Lilah will allow me to put them in and leave them in for take off and landing! Cross your fingers! xo

Back Again...

2011-04-12T22:36:00.005+10:00

We are finally done with our interstate move to Queensland. I have my beautiful computer back and high speed up and running!! It's been a long 4 weeks without it and I have so many stories and pictures to share with you. I'll be constantly posting until we are caught up and hopefully I'll get them all done in time for the big Easter post!

Our Birthday Morning

2011-03-13T09:23:00.008+10:00

Surprise!!! It's our birthday today!!!

Look at what they woke up to!! We blew up the balloons (Kim helped with a few of them) the night before the party after the kids went to bed. I hadn't planned it to be this way, but it ended up that I didn't get around to doing them until really late so I thought we might as well do something fun with them! I did have planned that they'd wake up to their presents sitting out for them to enjoy!

CLICK HERE if you don't see the video below of the kids this morning!

Lilah woke up first then Emmy, and they were so excited for Kim to be there that they didn't turn around yet and notice the surprise. We asked them what they could see and it didn't take long before they were racing out of the bed!

They kicked the balloons for a while first!

Emmy got a Barbie PC!! She had really really really wanted one of these!

She didn't waste anytime opening it up and playing it!

Emmy also got FurReal Go Go My Real Dog. Brodie really liked her!!

Lilah was a bit slower unwrapping her presents. I think I taped them too good. Sorry!!

Both of the girls really liked this! Butterfly in a Jar!! This was voted Best Toy in 2010 in Japan. I didn't know this until after I had already bought it. I stumbled upon it while I was window shopping and just had to get it for her!! Here's a video to show you how cool it is! CLICK HERE if you don't see the video below.

Lilah got a Sit-and-Spin. A classic toy that every child should have!!

This was the first thing she did with her Sit-and-Spin hahahhahaha I think it was because she was hearing me tell her it was a SIT and spin and it looked like a nice little place to have a sit hahhahaha!

After all the unwrapping Emmy was back to using her PC.

While Emmy was playing with her computer, Lilah was getting lots of Daddy cuddles!

It didn't take long until Emmy went down to get herself some Daddy luv'n too!

Look at the devilish look she's got on her face!!! She waited with a hawks eye for her moment to get up there so she could have a go. The second Emmy got up!!

Our Party

2011-03-06T23:40:00.016+10:00

Emmy turns 3, and Lilah turns 2!

We started off playing a game of Pass the Parcel.

You pass the package around and around.

And when the music stops, you get to open one layer of the present and find a small treat. I used tiny bubble wands, whistles, and candy. There were a few bigger ones in there that were mini coloring books or a 4pk of crayons.

You keep playing until every child gets to unwrap a layer then you may get a second chance. When it comes down to the last layer....aka the big prize (ours was a disney princess 25pc puzzle) the music controller (which was me) turns around so it's 100% fair on who gets to win it. I let nearly a minute go by and could you believe it....birthday girl Emmy won the prize! I'd share the picture, but there wasn't one taken.

My birthday girl, Emmy Rose!

My birthday girl, Lilah Asenith!

Next we put on our party hats!

They loved playing with their mini gifts!

Pinata Time!!

She gave it her best swings!

But it didn't break open!

Now it's little sisters turn!

This picture cracks me up! The stick was as big as she was and it looks like her party hat must weight a 100 tons! hahhahaha

Not a great picture of me haha but I love all t he bubbles in it. It really shows how every few minutes we had tons of bubbles everywhere!

Mitchel broke our panda pinata open last year and he got the rainbow one open this year!

Lilah was totally in her element for "finding" candy!!

She was heading out to find me to open it for her!

How it's time to blow out our candles!

Happy Birthday Lilah!! Make a wish!

Next was Emmy's turn. Happy Birthday baby girl!

Can you guess what happened next?? Presents!

This was Emmy's favorite present of the party. She calls this her "surf board" hahha She loves to watch A Mermaid Tale by Barbie and the main character is Merlia (Lia) and she's a girl that is half mermaid and half human. She competes in surfing competitions and Emmy loves to hang ten just like Barbie!

By the end of the party you could tell Lilah was partied out! Here she's at the water jug filling up her cup!

I think Emmy is trying to get Aden to put the umbrella over both of them, haha.... I don't think he was interested!

awww what a cute smile!

This is what Cousin Markos liked the most.....the bubble machine!!

Our party is over and it was just the girls and their cousins still playing over at the playground!

Party Preparations

2011-02-23T19:17:00.029+10:00

Happy Birthday Emmy Rose & Lilah Asenith!

We went with a rainbow theme this year. Can you tell?? This was the front of our invitations. I used Vistaprint's Over-sized Postcards. I was very happy with the color quality and how they turned out and feel I got a decent deal. 50 was the minimum order quantity and they were "free" but after you add on all the extras plus shipping they were $25.

Their shirts were hand appliqued with felt by myself and then my mother in law used a running stitch to put the girl's name and age on the clouds. Normally I hate clothing or backpacks or anything with a child's name on it for safety reasons, but I made an exception this time. It was like the cloud was saying....write something on me....do it now!! haha

How super cute are their hair bows!! They both really liked them and I think we'll get lost of use out of these since they have so many colors in them. Emmy's really into the big hair bows now. The bigger the better is what I think she thinks and Lilah doesn't like to leave the house with out them in. If I forget to clip on a hair bow she will grab her hair and make her 'eehh eehh' sound.

We even found some rainbow earrings at Big W! They really thought that was special to change out their normal jewelry for the party ones!!

I customized their cups with their names on them. I ordered the stickers through Vistaprint as well. This was the only free picture they had with a rainbow. I would have had to pay an upload fee to use the invitation photo and honestly I think the unicorn is pretty darn cute. At the time of ordering these we were suppose to have a pony at the party, so the unicorn was on the same path, but some unexpected troubles came up so we changed party directions and went with a Rainbow Fairy.

I had alot of fun with the goodie bags this year! I used card stock, a scalloped punch, and a 2"circle punch to do the job along with cellophane bags.

They were filled with lolly pops, gum balls, taffy, powder candy, balloons, necklaces, and stickers.

Of course I had to try out my new handmade by me stamp!! I love how it turned out and was well worth the ebay purchase.

Here we are making our Rainbow Cupcakes. I used boxed cake mix and gel food colorings. Each layer was about 1.5-2 tsp per color. The girls were so delighted with the colors and as you can see they kept showing me while they were eating them hehe.

How pretty!

uummm yummy!

I like how you can see the rainbow layers through the paper. I've seen rainbow cupcakes that others have done online and their paper is nearly see through and it really makes a dramatic effect. I'm not sure if it's a special kind of paper or if it's just really thin and happens to be a positive side effect of poor quality papers. If anyone has the answer to that I'd love for you to leave a comment and let me know!

How cool is that wrapper!

Here's the cake all assembled and ready for icing. I had no idea what I was doing when I made this and I've never ever made a layered cake before. I wanted the icing in between the layers to not show white so I colored it to match the layer below. From this picture you can see how bright all the layers turned out except for the purple....it looks brown on the outside, but don't worry. It turned out the prettiest and brightest purple ever on the inside! Over all my layers baked very flat after a tip I found on you tube. I'll share that with you. If you are using a metal pan then all you do is cut a long piece of towel the same height as your pan. Wet it down and wring it out then wrap it tightly around your pan then bake as normal. It keeps the temp of the pan more even allowing the cake to bake at a more of an even temperature.

I really wish I had a better picture of the cake before it started to crack from the weight. I had a bit of an icing nightmare and I'm still not sure what the heck happened. It was suppose to be fluffy and very 'peaky' if that's a way to describe it. Instead I ended up with play-doh like icing that I had to mold onto the cake. When I tried to smooth it out it would just come off in large pieces. Running late and only hours from the parties start time I was beginning to freak out. My mother in law saved the day by suggesting that we press shredded coconut all over it for a nice textured effect. Brilliant!!

I made the candied rainbow decoration out of a giant lollipop. I slammed it down on the counter top and then arranged the broken pieces onto some baking paper and warmed it slowly in the oven on a low temp. I watched it closely and when it was melted just enough to hold it's shape I pulled it out and let it cool. Perfect!

I wanted the cake to be white, very plain and unimpressive on the outside....and I think I more than achieved that...ekkk! My wow factor was on the inside with all the colors. I so wish that my icing would have not melted away like it did, but that's what happens when you have warm weather and an icing mishap! I also should have used skewers through the cake to give it some support because after a little while of being cut it eventually gave into gravity and fell over. At least it tasted good! I think in the future I'll stick with fondant. I've never had anything go wrong with fondant decorating and it's more predictable for me. You live and learn!

Would you like to taste the rainbow?? Here's the drinks the kids had to choose from. Cherry, Orange, Lemon-Aid, Green Apple, and Blue Mountain Kool-Aids and Cordials.

I can't believe that I didn't take up close pictures of the Editable Crayons, Cookies on a Stick, or the Lollipop Stand, this cropped mega zoomed in picture will have to do. You know how it gets....so much to do and not enough time to do it in. I really took the time this time around to enjoy myself so the memories will just have to live on in my mind :) You could also see in some of the pictures of the cake the sugar cookies I made with 6 different colors of icing. The Cookies on a Stick were also sugar cookies with gel food colorings mixed into the dough. The lollipops were customized with 2" circles that said Happy Birthday or Rainbow. We also had Gum Balls, Skittles and Rainbow Twizzlers, all the way from America, thanks mom, out for grabs!!

I had so much fun making these! Originally I wanted to use glitter, but when I priced it out it was going to be crazy expensive to fill them all up with different colors so I had to get creative. I came up with the idea to just color plain white sugar. I hot glued the lids on and if by chance one of the children did get it open then it was just sugar and no harm would be done if they ate it. The labels were hand punched and wrote. Way too cute! Can you guess who got to hand out the fairy dust??

Our Rainbow Fairy!! My dear sweet friend Kelsey agreed to dress up as our fairy and she did a wonderful job. She looked beautiful and really did a great job interacting with the children. Thank you so much Kelsey!!

I definitely didn't want to make the pinata again like I did last year so I was over the moon when I found this one! Strange thing was that it didn't have any red on it. It started with orange on the outside. It looked totally weird and not right so I added the red layer myself. I don't think anyone could tell that it didn't come that way!!

Also not pictured is the Fairy Ring we had. Our fairy sat in it for awhile at the beginning of the party as the children arrived and handed out the fairy dust. It was really sweet. I just recycled the toadstools that we made last year. You can see it pictured below or check out how we made them HERE.

Our Fairy Ring from 2010

I also rented a bubble machine and that was alot of fun. It did a pretty good job of keeping us in bubbles the majority of the time, but I wouldn't have complained with it had put out more. I think if you were really wanting to fill all of your party space with bubbles then I'd recommend renting 2-4 for an outside setting.

Our party day was so fun but some of my planning resulted in me being pretty upset when things didn't go as planned and it wasn't coming together like the picture in my head. I really had my heart set on the cute party table with all the children around it with their little party hats on and when our site was occupied by other families we were short on tables and forced to choose another spot. I wanted the balloons to hang in rainbow clusters from the trees and and the beautiful tissue paper pom poms I spent 3 nights making didn't even get hung up for guest to enjoy and just laid at the base of the tree. Because we were short on tables all the presents ended up being tossed under the candy table in a jumbled mess.

No one else would have been bothered by these things or thought that they should be any other way, so when things don't go as planned you must go with the flow. I put so much love and attention into the details and I truly believe that love IS in the details. I know how special and loved I felt growing up when my mom would go that extra mile so I do as much of that as I can because these are the moments are memories are made.

I have alot more birthday pictures and stories to share, but I'll save those for another two posts. Be on the look out for "Our Birthday Morning" and "Our Party".

Happy Valentine's Day 2011

2011-02-22T16:38:00.006+10:00

Lilah's enjoying her Valentine's Day goodie bag from Mom :) There's nothing like candy and cookies for breakfast!

Hey Emmy, What are you eating? Okay, thanks for showing me! lol That's what really happened hahahha

I love your Valentine's Day dress! You look so pretty!

awwww my sweet Emmy Rose!

The girls and I made heart shaped sugar cookies iced with royal icing. They turned out really nice and tasted great!

We delivered them to Auntie Lia, and Cousins Bethany and Jade!

I think they liked the surprise!

Grandma Jan was surprised too!

There was also a nice surprise for the girls and I when we got home from Daddy! Thanks honey!

Big Changes

2011-01-28T00:28:00.007+10:00

We're Moving!!!

Kim has excepted a job up north in Queensland with another mining company. He'll work on site, and won't be required to wear a suit everyday. That'll be really nice for him with how hot it gets, but I'll miss not seeing him come home from work looking so handsome.

We'll be living in a small town called Bowen. In one direction it's 40 minutes from the mine site, and in the other direction it's 40 minutes to Airlie Beach. Most people don't know where Bowen is, but do know about the vacation spot Airlie Beach so that makes it easy for people to get an idea of where we'll be.

The upper arrow is where we're moving to and the bottom arrow
is where we're moving from.

I don't think it'll be too hard on the girls. They 're not in school yet and don't have friends that they hang out with everyday. It is disappointing having to move from the friendships I've made here in Gawler and the activities we've been active in, but we'll jump into Bowen and will see what it has to offer. I plan on sending the girls to Kindergarten, so I'll have to find the one I like pretty quick because Emmy starts in a year and there are usually waiting lists so I have no idea if we'll even be able to get in to the one of our choice. After Kindergarten I'll have to see their learning preferences and styles and if homeschooling will be an advantage for them if they need a faster pace or more of a child led learning process. That is a whole other post, I'm getting off topic here....

Here's some Bowen Facts for you...

Located in the dry tropics. Bowen has all the warm sunny weather of a tropical climate, but it is much dryer than one would expect for tropical beaches.
The Great Barrier Reef is only a boat ride away.
At Bowen's latitude the Trade Winds provide a pleasant breeze. The warmest month is January, with an average maximum temperature of 31 degrees C (88 degrees F). The coolest month is July, with an average maximum temperature of 25 degrees C (77 degrees F) and an average overnight minimum of 14 degrees C (57 degrees F).
Bowen is on a peninsula, with ocean on three sides. This gives eight beaches surrounding the town, namely Kings Beach, Queens Beach, Horseshoe Bay, Murrays Bay, Greys Bay, Rose Bay, and the Front Beach. There is also the clothing-optional Coral Bay.
In late 2006, the movie Australia, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, was filmed in Bowen.
The town has retained much of its old world charm, and visitors to modern day Bowen could easily feel themselves transported to the 1940's or 1950's. (This is true for the majority of country towns in Australia )
Bowen is the gate way to the Whitsunday Islands with more than 70 of them!

If you've been wanting to visit us out here then you should stop waiting around and buy some tickets and mark your calendars because this is THE PLACE to catch us for some pretty exciting things to do.

We're really looking forward to the change and adventure of living in a new place. We have no plans to buy a home up there, but I do have a feeling that we might. I've never felt connected to our house here in Gawler even though our home is nice and I like the town. There are houses you live in and there are houses that are home and I can't wait to find a home house, if that makes any sense! Pictures of our rental property will be posted soon!

Disney Live - My little Cinderella & Snow White

2011-01-27T22:59:00.013+10:00

On Australia Day we took the girls to see Disney's Three Classic Fairytales Live. We got the tickets 6 months ago and it feels like we've been waiting forever!! The show was short versions of Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and it lasted around 2 hours. The girls were pumped and very excited to see it. I made Emmy a Cinderella dress and Lilah wore a super cute Snow White dress (Emmy's hand me down from Disney On Ice). The reason I made Emmy's dress is I couldn't find one that was cute as the Snow White dress I had bought before. All the Cinderella dresses looked so cheap and they were $50! I'd rather spend the $50 making one, so I did, but it didn't cost $50...what a deal! lol

I waited to dress them until we got there because it was really hot outside and I didn't want anything spilled or stuck to their dress during the 45 min drive to the city. As I was dressing Emmy I could tell she was very proud and just glowing. Kim dressed Lilah and while we walked to the venue she insisted on walking herself and bouncing her dress. Too cute!

During the show they got treated to Princess Snow Cone Cups, Popcorn, Cotton Candy, and I nearly had to give both an arm and a leg! Such a rip off, but they loved it and I like them to have the cups from all the shows we take them too because it prompts memories and in the end that's what it's all about....creating memories!

I was curious to see how Lilah would do during the show. She's often scared of people and loud noises and is easily overwhelmed. She wasn't clingy or afraid of anything and she was even wanting to stand on my lap to make sure she could see with no obstacles. We had good seats, 14th row, but when you as tiny as she is there's always someone blocking your view. She wasn't all that much taller than me when standing on my lap so I let her do it. When the "Be Our Guest" song started she totally let go and really started dancing. She was grooving to the beat and was so into it! I wish I could have got that on video haha. Emmy just seemed to be mesmerized while trying to take it all in.

When it came time to say good bye to the princesses I was hoping that Emmy would be ready to go and not be upset, but she was a little bit disappointed. Since then she's asked me several times if she can go watch the 'princess show' again. I tell her .....' in six months we'll go to the princess castle and she'll get to meet them and hug them" she just looks at me like I'm nuts, lol! I can't wait though!! Their faces at Disney World will be worth all 30+ hours in air, 36 hours roundtrip by car, and every dime spent!

So excited for the show to start!

I really wish this picture didn't turn out blurry! She was being such a big girl while waiting for the show to start!

While waiting they popped into the isle to do some dancing and they liked seeing all the other little girls walking by in princess dresses!

Hey you....look at mommy! I know you're over getting your picture taken!

Lets get back to our seats, the show is about to start!

I had to just hold up the camera and take the picture, so they are not very good, but you can get the idea. This is Cinderella and the Prince when he finds out who she is.

The costumes all looked great! The only character that wasn't a real person was the step mother. She was really really tall and had a person inside walking her around I think.

Gaston was atleast 6'5 and much better looking than the character was meant to be, hehe, but I didn't mind!

I was excited to see the Beast's costume. They did a really good job and they guy playing him was good at mimicking the Beast's walking and jumping!

Saying goodbye to the Princesses!

They filled the air with confetti and you could hear all the kids "ooowwww" ing

I took this one in complete darkness....it was while the confetti had just been dropped and she was anxious to get a piece!

Funny Faces

2011-01-14T22:18:00.007+10:00

I was trying to photograph my new fabrics for the sewing page, but the girls were interested in playing games. They kept laying down on the fleece and saying "take our pictures, take our picture!!" I gave up working and we played for a while :)

I'm not sure why a couple of these pictures came out on their sides....huummm!

This one is my favorite!

Big Kisses!

Meeting The Fairies

2011-01-14T21:24:00.004+10:00

Last week we took the girls to the grand opening of the Mt. Barker's new Fairies store/studio. They had the two main characters, Harmony and Rhapsody, to say hello to the kids, take a picture, and sign anything you bought or brought. We got there just in time to push our way into the door and right in front of me... only 3 feet away was the creator of The Fairies!! She gave a speech then the new owner of the store spoke. At the very end they called Harmony and Rhapsody to appear just the way they do in the TV show. It was so fun and the squeals of delight were so loud when they first "appeared"! Because we got there right before the speeches I wasn't aware that we needed to get tickets to see them. I was just about to walk through the door into the dance hall where the meet and greet was going to be set up and they were taking tickets and reading off numbers. They only had 1 room for meeting and 1 room for waiting with entertainment and then the normal seating area. Each group took about 10 min's and there were 20 people per group. When I got our ticket finally we were number 4, so I was a little disappointed with a 40 minute wait, but that quickly changed about 15 min's later when people were coming in and they had #10 and group one hadn't finished yet!

This was the main seating area where the parents sit to watch the girls on live TV from the dance class. Over all the girls did really good waiting, especially compared to some of the brats that were there!

I can't get her to smile---ever!!

While waiting and full of excitement, Emmy did some fairy dancing!

Daddy handled the wait pretty good as well.

hheheh I got her smiling while she's trying to escape because she didn't want to pose with me for a photo!

Finally we got into the "entertaining" area. They had coloring pages and pencils.

Again....Lilah's not wanting to have her picture taken so she's hiding behind daddy's leg.

Caught you!!!

I'm just as fast as you....caught you again!

awwww

I think the novelty of our game was wearing off. Just in time as well..........FINALLY it was our turn to enter into the meeting room!

Emmy was pretty shy, but that is normal for her, but she didn't hesitate when it was her turn to walk up to them. I also heard her say "Hi" to them.

All the kids were given bookmarks, and you would have thought they were made out of gold the way she loved it and guarded it until we got home.

Now it was Lilah's turn.... you can see that she had her normal sour face on. She wasn't scared to stand up there with them without me, but it looks like she wasn't too impressed either, haha. She defiantly knows who The Fairies are and requests to watch their DVD's all the time, so I was hoping she'd be a bit more excited, but I think she did enjoy herself.

All in all it was a fun family Saturday. I was very proud of the girls because they didn't ask mommy or daddy to buy anything for them. These stores are loaded with merchandise...it's even hard for me to not want to buy it all for them! They don't ever really throw a fit over something they want because they know I won't give in, but every where you looked kids where walking around with bags of stuff and I figured she'd want one too, but she was so proud of her bookmark! haha Before we left we grabbed the girls a "fairy box" that had popcorn, jello, and a cookie with a bottle of fairy juice. They had a good time sitting in their car seats eating their fairy treats while we drove home.....talking about it all the way there!

What's Cook'n

2011-01-05T14:48:00.007+10:00

The girls have been doing a lot of pretend baking lately. I ended up giving them some of their Christmas presents early that I had made for them because they saw me making them, so it wouldn't have been to much of a surprise, haha.

Here are a few of the felt doughnuts...

and I made laminated recipe cards with a real recipe for plain cake doughnuts and I used pictures for everything so little pre-readers can understand it too! It really works too. Right after I gave it to Emmy she was telling me, "Mommy, we need 2 cups flour!"

They also got pretty little frilly aprons and lots of felt iced sugar cookies with sprinkles. The aprons were made just a bit bigger that way they'll last a few years before I need to make them new ones.

Everyone wanted to try Emmy's cookies!

How cute are those cookies!?! I love them!

Lilah is feeding her "my pal: violet" some doughnuts. Yummy!!

I asked her if she loved her doggie and she said yes and then showed me by hugging her, haha,

Sitting on the job while her doughnuts are being cooked in the microwave.

It didn't take too long before she was back to her native state: nakie!

Christmas Morning

2011-01-04T22:56:00.007+10:00

The night before I don't think the girls went to bed until nearly 10pm!! I had all the presents wrapped and hidden in my sewing room and Kim was busy in the garage putting together the swing set. Sometime around midnight we dragged the swing set out into the yard and I wrapped silver garland along the top with a huge silver bow in the center. We were planning this to be the last surprise of the morning! Kim and I got out of bed early this year to start preparing things for the Christmas Lunch we were hosting for Kim's fathers side of the family. Next was Lilah to wake up and I kept her with me avoiding any sight into the living room and around 8:30 Emmy woke up. Sadly we don't have many pictures this year as we were video taping it and since Kim was preparing food and I only have two hands! But we did get a few.The first thing we went to check was to see if Santa ate our cookies and the girls found a special letter just for them!

I forgot to get a picture of all the presents before the kids started ripping into them..oops!

Whoa...doesn't she look way older than 2 3/4 in this picture!!

Sharing their Learning Leappad.

Lilah really surprised me this year. Her opening style is MUCH different from Emmy's. She likes to rip into them as fast as she can and do them one after another. Emmy's style is to open them, look them over completely, then open the present, and play with it for a bit before moving on to the next one. This caused problems at the end when Emmy had 4 large presents left and Lilah had none.

My Brodie Noochies with his stocking. He got two different types of treats and a new squeaky chew bone that he hasn't played with much. I think Lilah likes it the most haha.

Here's a quick view of most of the bigger presents. They got tons of little stuff and I didn't want to bore you with all that crap so it's not listed.

Emmy got Baby Star Song: My Little Pony So Soft Newborn, Ponyville: Pinkie Pies Balloon House, iDance Buzz Lightyear and iPod, and a REAL Sewing Machine Toy.

Lilah got Star Song "Style My Hair" : My little Pony, Little People Farm Yard, Little People Zoo, Learning Leappad by Leapfrog, and Baby Alive: Feel Good.

They also had some gifts that they each got the same and some of them included the Bug Catching Set, Swords (they pretend to be Barbie in Barbie and the 3 Musketeers), and Dress-up Cat Costumes made by me.

Gifts to share were the Momma Piggie with her piglets made by me, a Crocodile and Frog Game, and the Swing Set!

Around the 25% of opened gifts Lilah disappeared and I couldn't find her. I knew where to look right away.....OUTSIDE. She loves to go out in the morning though the doggie door. Sure enough, she had stumbled upon what Santa had left and was happily playing away on it! haha So Kim and I opened up the curtains and called for Emmy to come outside and see what Lilah was doing and found. We pushed them on the swings and let them try out all the different things on it before returning inside to open the rest of the presents.

Daddy got a Chili Plant Kit from Emmy and Lilah gave him a new Leather Wallet. Santa was extra good to me this year and I got a Wii. I can't wait to get the old school Mario Brothers!! Emmy has already claimed it as hers, haha, she loves the Resort Sports and Disney Princess Enchanted Journey. We need to get her the child sized control so she can have better control of the game.

A tip for new parents that may have not thought about this yet is to pre open all presents and get them out of the twisty things and the difficult packaging. Make sure if it needs batteries that it has them and that the toys are out of demo mode and turned to ON mode. No matter what it is your child immediately wants to open the box and see, feel, smell, and sometimes taste haha their new toy and if they have to wait 5-6 minutes after each toy while you fight the packaging it makes it a little frustrating for them and very frustrating for you. So do yourself a favor and go the extra mile before you wrap them....you'll be very glad you did on Christmas morning!!

Christmas Eve

2011-01-04T16:20:00.002+10:00

Not a big post, but I thought I'd show you how the decorations looked on Christmas Eve. I never did get outside to take a picture of the painted window with the lights on, so you'll just have to use your imagination! Santa came that night and then around noon that day our Harrison family members started popping in for Christmas lunch, but that'll have to be a separate post. xo

Our 1st Gingerbread House

2011-01-04T16:13:00.003+10:00

I've always wanted to make a Gingerbread House since I was a little girl, so I was very excited when I found a kit to assemble one to decorate! I made templates using cardboard so next year when we make one from scratch cutting out the shapes will be cake! I don't know how editable mine will come out, but it should taste better than this one did! It looked much prettier than it tasted. Oh well.... we had fun!

Here's the front.....

and here's the back!

Christmas Parties

2010-12-26T19:24:00.006+10:00

As the lead up to Christmas was in full swing we took the kids to Breakfast with Santa then to my husbands company Family Christmas BBQ all in the same day.

Emmy felt sorry for Lilah, who was crying AGAIN for no reason!

For the breakfast they got a free McDonald's apple pack and plain english muffin with strawberry jam and an orange juice. They advertised it as a nutritious breakfast.....yeah right! They had balloon animals, face painters, and Santa walking around handing out goodie bags that had pretty nice coloring book packs with crayons, a 5x7 magnetic Santa photo frame, angel wings, candy, and a junky little toy. Of course they loved it!

If you click on the above photo it should come up larger to view it better. They had a Clown and face painter at the BBQ. This was Emmy's first full face paint and of course she sat still and loved every second of it. Anything remotely close to make up she loves!!

We all thought it was pretty. Next time I'd like to see it done in pinks and purples though :) I'd also LOVE to do a quickie course in face painting and get a nice set of paints then I'll be able to do it for the girl's birthday parties.

Lilah and I both got holly on our cheeks.

I was trying to get Lilah to model the cross stitched Christmas Bib that Grandma Betsy made and this was the best shot I could get. I think it looks so cute and festive. Thanks mom!

A perfectly cute picture! Too bad there's a beer bottle in it. I might have to photoshop that out so somdeay when I can get around to scrapbooking it'll be there waiting for me!

aawwww

She's been doing this since she was 22 months old. I have no idea what upper body strength is normal for this age, but she seems to have quite a bit......

and no fear.... she's a little dare devil!

Usually it's too hot at Christmas for this little red velvet dress Grandma Betsy sent out, but on this day it was sooooo cold and it was just perfect! Had it been any colder I would have had to put hats on the kids to keep the wind out of there ears. This is totally odd weather for this time of year.

This was Lilah's favorite thing to ride at the playground!

A true monkey!

Emmy running with the big dogs.

Hang on honey!!

Is this a grumpy face or just his normal disposition? You pick!

Emmy was eager for her turn to pop onto Santa's lap and claim her present!

She ripped into full force....Yay! A Tinker Bell Vet Kit! The only difference from the one pictured and the one she got is instead of the lighting bug she got the Mouse named Cheese from the show. She was very happy with what she got!

Lilah looks a bit bewildered, haha, but at least she didn't cry this year! I have to remind you that we have back our normal Santa this year, and last year we had a super junkie version of Santa and I too wanted to cry....lol.

She didn't need any coaching with unwrapping her present!

At first I thought this toy might be too young for her, but after I read all the stuff on the box about it's features I thought we'd give it a try. You hook it up to the internet and download into it her Name, favorite songs, colors, animal, and food. She absolutely LOVES her doggie!! I would have never picked this out for her, so we're lucky and grateful that she got it!

Merry Christmas 2010

2010-12-13T08:48:00.003+10:00

We are wishing everyone a year full of health,
happiness, and good laughs!

Love, the Harrison's
Kim, Sari, Emmy, Lilah, and Brodie too!

Rainbow Toast or Whatever you want to paint!

2010-12-10T17:47:00.003+10:00

I thought this would be fun to share with all you Mom's! I can't remember where I saw it, but if I come across it again I'll link back to it. Put a drop of food coloring of your choice into a tiny bit of milk (we used soy milk) and then paint it on your WHITE bread (if you want the colors to be bright use white) then toast it. If there's alot of milk on it then it may need more time in the toaster. I started with frozen bread as I thought it would help to keep it from getting too soggy, but I'll have to give it another go to compare. The girls were a little weirded out by it hahha, but next time I'll let them give it a go and paint their own! I guess I wasn't in the mood this morning for cleaning up a milky rainbow off the floor, lol! Plus I wanted to just try it out myself as a little test :) Also the food coloring doesn't come off on your hands while you are eating it. WORKS GREAT!!

Mini Cooks: Kiddo Cooking Classes

2010-12-10T09:52:00.006+10:00

We learned about Mini Cooks right before their last class till the new year. Emmy loves to cook so we headed over there on Tuesday morning. I was unsure how Lilah would be...weather she'd be happy with watching and just doing a little helping or if she'd want all of her own stuff. In the end she seemed very content to watch everyone, to sit on my lap, and only was naughty a few times.

Emmy minded well for her teacher Miss Fiona and did most of the steps herself with a bit of mom's help. They made Christmas Cakes! After class we stopped by Grandma & Grandpa Harrison's house to share them!

We're all ready for cooking class!

But first we need some Sister Love!

Helping Miss Fiona before class starts. She's also wearing her Little Missy Hair Bow.

When you join class you get an Apron and Chef's Hat! How cool is that!!

Here's our class. Lilah looks so teeny tiny watching the big kids!

Hardly ever smiling. That's my sour puss! She's wearing one of mommy's Aprons. If you'd like to order one for your princess please drop by Sewing By Sari and let me know!

Even though Emmy didn't attend the entire class and only came in on the last one she got to have a Christmas present too. They even handed out letters, envelops, and stickers for the kiddo's to write to Santa! For Australia, if you address your letter to Santa, North Pole post code 9999 a few weeks before Christmas your child will get a letter back!

Now she's smiling! Miss Fiona didn't forget about little sister Lilah and she got a special present too. So Kind!!

Uummm yummy! The best part of class is the treats at the end!

We're hoping to join in the New Year providing it doesn't fall on our Fairy Dancing Class times. If you are interested in joining! Go here for more info.

Thank You Miss Fiona!

Playgroup X-mas Party, Letters to Santa, + More!

2010-12-10T08:32:00.011+10:00

A Zion Playgroup Christmas Party

Emmy is all ready for Playgroup. The last one before Christmas Break! She's wearing the cutie outfit I made her. In other pictures you'll be able to see the fancy pants from the back. They are my favorite part!! I fell in love with this green Christmas fabric last year, but at $21/m I didn't go near it, but I was able to get a meter of it this year at 50% off.

Here's Lilah's Christmas Dress! She's got fancy pants too, but you can't tell because I made the top so long, but I wanted it to fit for more than one Christmas and with as tiny as she is it'll probably fit her the next two Christmas's but we all know I'll end up making new ones lol.

This is Lilah's favorite thing to do at Playgroup!

Awww! Emmy loves Taylor. On the way to playgroup, while at playgroup and leaving playgroup I hear about Taylor!

Later on they went to play with the doll house! Here's also the back view of the fancy pants!

I asked Kerry to snap a picture of us three together. It's nearly impossible to get one with the kids looking or smiling and Lilah was NOT interested in sitting there, but that's what it's like and that's my moment frozen in time forever!

Here's our Santa photo for this year! I wanted to take them to the Santa's of all Santa experiences in the city to Santa's Magic Cave (I think it's called that), but we haven't gone to do that yet. (Carolyn, we're still waiting for you to pick a day! We got 2 weeks till Christmas so the pressure on! haha We can do any day during the week except Thursdays *hugs* Hopefully your studying will be over soon and we'll be able to get a day, if not, we'll save it for next year! xo)

Here's Emmy's first ever Letter To Santa!! Of course I helped her out and did a bit of couching on what items to ask for. Most things she will be getting, but there's a few she put on her self that eehhhhh we haven't bought and I don't think we will. I don't think she'll mind though...still to little yet to remember everything.

She picked the Medical Cart (I'm sure this makes Grandma Betsy proud! Especially since it was pictured with identical carts for Cleaning or Cooking!), Baby Doll, Swimming Pool, and Disney Panties on her own!

Here's the images of the girls that I used to make our yearly Christmas Ornaments. I've been doing these since they were born and plan to do it until they hate me doing it and then I'll secretly do it for a few years after that, lol! Someday they'll be happy to have all the mementos from childhood that I diligently create for them, I hope!

Lilah wouldn't let me have anymore pc time and I had to get my order in because of the sale deadline so I didn't have the time to remove her background, but at least she was in front of the Christmas tree for hers. Emmy was in front of the garage outside for her photo haha.

Our Christmas Window 2010

2010-12-08T07:36:00.001+10:00

I've put lights around the inside of the window and at night time it glows enough for the pictures to still be seen from the road! LOVE IT! Rudolf needs another coat of white paint but there's no point in doing that until all this rain stops!

Christmas Clean Out!

2010-12-07T15:31:00.006+10:00

I rearranged the girl's snuggarie and did a big clean out since we are going to be bombarded with Christmas in a few weeks! I didn't really have too many things to get rid of, but I did put a lot of things into tubs with lids and tucked them away in the hall closet and every now and then I'll switch out the tub of ponies for the barbies or the dolls for all the kitchen stuff...ect.....

My favorite party is their dress up wall! So much fun to be had! I don't really like the rug in the room, but we have it so I use it. I might have to get rid of it though and go for one that matches the room more!

I don't know how long we'll keep the belly cast in their room or what the heck we'll do with it once we take it out. Does anyone have any suggestions?

She's playing with her microwave toy. This thing was worth every nickle. She played with it when she first got it for hours at a time.

I wish we hadn't put the initials on the wardrobe now that the girls share this space! You can see our shoe holder is full... I think I'll have to make another one to hang directly under that one. I don't know what other mom's do with all of the shoes if they don't have one of these? I do have two girls in 1 space, so it's twice as much as what one child would have, but still... it's so hard to keep it all organized.

Gingerbread Men

2010-12-06T14:51:00.008+10:00

The girls and I made some Gingerbread Men to take to Auntie Robin's for our last get together before Christmas. Of course Emmy loved it, but we started when Lilah was still taking her nap and when she woke up she was in no mood for baking, haha so she just watched.

We used a brand called Greens. I've made their cakes before and have been very happy with the quality, but I must say that the taste of these cookies were a bit disappointing, but it did come with a nice cookie cutter to keep as a bonus.

She takes her work very seriously! Can you tell?

Here's Lilah being my little sour puss.

Cutting out the Gingerbread Man! I think this was her favorite part!

He looks great Emmy, good job!!

We'll save this for later....

What are you eating???? You sneaky girl, those are for the gingerbread man!!

He's all ready to be put into the oven!

Yummy! I can't wait to eat them!!

I want my girls to be whatever they want to be as they grow up, but I also want to make sure they know how to maintain a household, to cook for themselves or 50, to sew a dress or mend some socks. I want to encourage a green thumb and their nurturing side. You could say this is a bit sexist but I plan on raising my boys the same way. How great would that be if your man could cook you a meal, fix is own shirts, garden with the best of them and wouldn't be afraid to hold and kiss a baby. I'd love to contribute to society by raising a few men like that! I don't know where this little rant just came from haha..... I just thought I'd put it out there!

CHOP CHOP CHOP

2010-12-03T14:56:00.007+10:00

Most of you probably already know that Emmy cut Lilah's hair yesterday. She hacked off the entire top pony tail that Lilah had plus lots of chunks off the sides. On her own hair she cut a side piece that starts at her cheekbone. She had taken my sewing shears out of my sewing basket and did all of her work in about 3 minutes. I was calling for Emmy because it was quite and I figured she was up to no good, and she came back to me looking very proud and waving her hair around saying "look what I did" When I saw what had happened I was shocked and upset and then I got this punch in the gut and ran to find Lilah, and it was worse than I could have imagined. (You can click on the photo's to enlarge them!)

Her hair before the butchering!

The bang area looks long, but it's not really. It's just the front thin layer because those pieces had to travel the farthest to get into the top pony tail!

I've posted a poll on the homepage of the blog <---- Go there to cast your vote and help me decide what to do with her hair! Voting closes Dec. 31st 2010!

Open Wide

2010-11-27T07:21:00.001+10:00

Emmy had her first check up at the Dentist this month! I had no idea how it would go, but there was no pressure if she didn't want to do anything. She was very happy to pop into the chair and to see all the things the tech was showing her, but when Dr. Michael came in she was very very shy and wouldn't lay down when the chair went back.

I asked her if she wanted to see mommy do it and she said yes. Once I was on there I thought might as well have her lay down on me if that helped her to feel more secure and it sure did! He didn't even have to ask her to open her mouth. He had a look and said he was going to count her teeth, which he did out loud and then we were done. She got an A+ for her check up!

She's scheduled to go back in 9 months and if she's more confident then they'll try polishing her two front teeth just to get her use to the cleaning process. Lilah was with us and it was such good exposure for her to see sissy being a big girl at the dentist office. It will really help her when it comes time for her first visit!

The tech was showing her the "barbie mirror" it's called that because it's so tiny!

Open wide.....I'll show you how it works!

Here she is just waiting for Dr. Michael.
(she kicked off her shoes like she owned the place, hahaa)

Queens

2010-11-26T07:11:00.004+10:00

On this day they were letting out their inner Drag Qeen! hahha

Looking good Miss Diva!

I think she was having a good time :)

Lilah was really going for the evening look!

Is it just me or is this look very Joker'sque?

The Naked Truth

2010-11-25T08:33:00.003+10:00

She's thinking in this picture "hehehe you can't tell that I have no nappy on!"

Lilah is now in full swing potty training and has been for several weeks. She's a whiz at doing a whiz, but her poo's are another story. She's shameless where she will dump....in the middle of the room, on Auntie Robins new cream colored rug, or in front of her sister trying to enjoy a bowl of watermelon (yes we have a picture of that but I think I'll spare you the gooey details just this one time!) She knows that she needs to go, and will tell me about it after she does it....even at times she's literally gave me shit...in my hand.... EW!!! She knows that it's naughty to go on the floor, but why she's not making the connection to just go on the pot is a bit confusing to me.

We did have a break through yesterday! She did a poo in her potty and proudly brought it to me, now this isn't the first time she's done a nugget in the tiny potty, but it's been a long while since it's happened so this occasion is very note worthy!

These photo's are from a couple weeks ago when we started full day time NO diapers. It was still cold in the mornings so she would wear her leg warmers to keep her warm. Notice Emmy refuses to keep warm clothes on....uuggh!

She loved it! Some of the pictures I got from this morning were sooo funny!

This is the after dinner mess she made! While I was busy cleaning and Dad was in the kitchen she decided to smear her chocolate mouse everywhere!!!

Goodness me!!!!!!!!!

Lunch

2010-11-05T21:27:00.000+10:00

Look how cute their lunches are!

Tadoes

2010-11-02T21:30:00.001+10:00

Emmy's made several murals on the walls and doors so before I washed them off I snapped a few pictures. She calls her circles with faces and legs "Tadoes" that's a cross between "oes" for "tomatoes" and the "tad" for "taders" meaning "potaoes" hahaha hopefully you understood all of that! What she's really trying to draw is Mr.Potatoehead because she watches him in the Toy Story Cartoons and she has a set of four Baby Potatoeheads she plays with. Obviously I didn't let her see me taking photo's of her artwork! That would really be the wrong message to send. I'd be soo afraid to know what would happen, but something like 500 million Tadoes would end up on my walls. Invasion of the TADOES..........

The Jump

2010-11-01T17:58:00.000+10:00

I totally forgot about these pictures from back in August and meant to post them but...uuugh not sure what happened. Anyways....here they are!

This was one of the first good rains of the winter I think and they were dying to get outside and play in it. I was taken their pictures through the window and Emmy was really putting on a show and I couldn't believe that I totally caught her falling on her butt in the water. It didn't hurt her, but the concrete is sunken back there and the water pools so it was really really cold winter water. Poor thing! I think she was a bit annoyed with me for clicking one last photo of her crying. So funny and sad at the same time!

Look at how much fun she was having before the fall :)

Halloween Party

2010-10-31T14:59:00.005+10:00

I took the girls up to the local flower shop who just happened to be celebrating it's 50th birthday on Halloween weekend. There was a jumping castle, face painters, and free balloons for the kids. The loved it of course and they got to wear their Halloween outfits. Emmy didn't have one that fit anymore, so I made her a skull dress out of an old t-shirt and used skull & cross bones satin material for the ruffles. I was aiming for a larger size 3, but I think it came out more like a big 4, but now it'll fit her for a long while. She's wearing a long sleeved shirt and pants under it because it's cold right now, but last year it was shorts and t-shirt warm. Because it's spring I think you can get a mixture of both.

She loved getting her face painted and sat perfectly still like a pro, but she's had it done now several times so she knows.

Lilah's had hers done before too but I had her sit on my lap this time because the ladies were a bit scary. We went for a quick and simple pumpkin to match her shirt!

Here's the material for the ruffle.

And here's the skull t-shirt print. This dress could even double as a pirate dress if I put red leggings under it! OoOOoo what a great idea!

Showing some pumpkin love!

It was sooo windy!!

I told Emmy to wave hi to Grandma Betsy! So this one is for you Mom xo!