"Winter" in Florida ??

Let's be honest, there is not really winter in Florida.  I thought it was super cold this morning.  So, when we went to the park for lunch I grabbed jackets.  When we got there, I was regretting wearing long sleeves.  Oops.    However, it has been super nice weather this past week.  Perfect for playing outside.  Luckily, Kaylie had a 4 day weekend from school, so we had the perfect opportunity to get together with friends.  I grew up with the Johns family.  I was at their house often, they were at mine, our parents were good friends, etc.  Hanna has been my friend since we were very little and we call each other cousins.  So, this past Monday all of the "Johns" children joined us at the park.  We see each other pretty often, but not usually with allllll of the kids.  I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to get all of them in a picture together.  

This is what happened:

Left slide: My Girls, Kaylie, Myla, and Brynlee

Middle Slide: Morgan's Kolin is holding Hanna's Landon

Right Slide: Haley's Evan is holding Abigail, with Paityn in front

Despite all of the craziness of that picture taking attempt, the kids had a great time!

Brynlee and Landon are exactly one week apart.

He is just so cute and always happy!

Evan and Myla

Kaylie made it to the top!

I had to put the lunch box in there so that she didn't lean forward and choke herself on the swing.

Landon had his big beautiful belly to hold him in ;)

The innovative Johns girls came up with the perfect solution!

Yesterday, I told Myla we could run to the library.  On the way I realized it was closed (they have really weird hours), so we made a quick stop at Jigg's Landing.  This is the location of Kaylie's 6th Birthday Party and the family pictures that Ashlie took.  It's about one minute from our house.  It was so beautiful.  Also, it was nice because Brynlee could get down and roll around on the fake grass or go in the baby swing.  So, today we took our lunch there to eat a picnic and play for a bit.  It was beautiful!

She is still trying to figure out those puff things.

God's creation was our view!

She gave up on the puffs and went for Myla's lunch.

This girl LOVES the swing. Like seriously LOVES it!

 

 

I had to use my cell phone as the "carrot on a stick" to get her to crawl through the tunnel.

 I have really been enjoying taking the time to have fun with the girls and breathe in a little bit of God's creation this week.  I hope that Myla can look back and remember having fun with her mom and her sister. 

Craftiness

I have really enjoyed being at home this year.  I have had time for things that I haven't had time for in quite awhile.  For example, I cleaned out the pantry and the toy room, had multiple play-dates, and lately, actually created things off of pinterest! 

My latest find has been the tutorials on felt flowers.  They are super easy!  I used many different tutorials and combined some of them to create different versions, but I believe I found them all through Pinterest.  I have used the felt flowers to create headbands and barrettes.  When doing some of my experiments, I decided to use some of the weird colors of felt that came in my package. 

 

 This was super simple to make.  I'm wondering if it might look good with alternating colors, so I might try that later.

  Happy Valentine's Day! This was simple to make, but hard to make it perfect.

 These are rolled roses.  I think they are the easiest to make/hardest to mess up!

 

 This wasn't too hard to make and I think the second go around would turn out a lot better.

The flower on this headband is a variation of the dark green flower above. 

Rolled Rose with a leaf

Three rolled roses (which unfortunately spread out more than I thought they would)

The large yellow one was the hardest to make and the bright green is meant to be bigger, but I didn't have the right sized felt.

I was very happy with how Brynlee's headbands turned out.  I plan on making quite a few more another time now that I know what flowers I like and how to make them.  Overall, it has been fun and worthwhile!

 

Brynlee's Room

In honor of Brynlee turning 9 months old today, I decided it was time to finally finish decorating her room.  I have been really close to finishing for a few months now.  I'm awful at coming very close to completing projects and then taking forever to add the finishing touches.

This is what her room looked like before (about a year ago):

This was Myla's room before and I didn't even really bother to clean the room since they are "before" pictures anyways.  Brynlee's was the first nursery that I really got to decorate.  I had a lot of fun doing it (even if it took me forever!)  I used Pinterest for quite a few projects. They were all fairly simple, but really helped add to the room.

I added the ribbon to these curtains.

I used a canvas and scrapbook paper to make this piece of artwork.

My mom made this beautiful quilt/wall hanging!

I made the bow hanger with a picture frame and ribbon and even made a few of the bows on there.

 

This is a project that took a lot longer to complete, partially due to my indecisiveness.

Full view with the crib.

Brynlee's Christmas present that I found online.

 Now for the wide views so that you can get idea of how the whole flow of the room:

Brynlee loves her completed room!