Santa.

To Santa, or not to Santa - That is the question.

I do not remember believing in Santa. I'm sure my parents told us there was a Santa, but I do not remember anything about ever believing in him. Maybe it was because with 3 older siblings, they ruined it for me and just told me it wasn't true, maybe it was because at a young age I had other, more important things to worry about (unfortunately.) Who knows. But now, having a 20 month old daughter I am wondering if there is a rule that you MUST tell your child there is a Santa? I know the advantage of having them believe in Santa - especially around Christmas time - is that it is a great threat, "If you do not listen to Mommy, Santa will put you on the naughty list!" But isn't it sort of a lie? What happens when they realize you have been lying to them about who brings those presents? At what age do you tell them it isn't true? Or do they just stumble across it at school one day when the class bully shouts out "There is no Santa!" And then they come home and ask you about Santa's existence.

Now I love, LOVE Christmas. Birth of Jesus (yay!), family, giving gifts, 24 hour Christmas music on 102.9. But really, who wants to stand in that darn "Picture with Santa" line anyways?

This post is dedicated to Twon - my #1 fan - lol!

Where Does the Time Go.

Oh my gosh, it has been so long since I have written anything! I actually have been really busy. I feel that if I just download everything I've been busy with from my head onto a blog, I can feel less overwhelmed and possibly start to make some posts on a more regular basis, instead of wondering where to start. So bear with me as I make a seemingly boring list of the fun things I've been doing! Dumb, I know, but who else will listen? lol.

I've been busy making some Christmas crafts, such as Crayon Rolls, Purse Notebooks, Clothespin Magnets, Pillowcase Aprons, and starting Evelyn's Quiet Book I am hoping to have done in time!

Also, Andy and I have been making Evelyn her very own playhouse down in her play nook in the basement. What started out as maybe some wood and fabric has turned into a full framed in-sheet-rocked house complete with a door and windows. It's been so much fun decorating her little house for her! I hung up some leaf garlands for autumn, a flower box full of flowers and a little welcome sign (all on 80% off clearance at Michael's, of course!) We moved her play kitchen inside of her house, naturally, and I found an extra rug we weren't using to make it a little more "homey" for her. With the addition of some pictures hung up w/ extra clothespins on a ribbon, a homemade chalkboard made from an extra picture frame and chalkboard spray paint, a hanging book basket and an old decorative sign I wasn't using anymore, it sure is looking cute! (Photo courtesy of Evelyn)

Now that Andy has switched hours at work and is working a lot more weekends and nights, that leaves Evelyn and myself looking for fun things to do to pass the time while he is at work. One Sunday, we ventured to the Children's Museum with my sister, her 3 kids, the neighbor girl, My sister's sister-in-law and her little one. Uff da! If you've never been there, here's a side note: do not drive your sister's huge SUV with luggage racks on top - it is too tall for the parking ramp.... Anyways, Evelyn had a ton of fun. Her favorite thing, of course, was playing in the water with all of the other little toddlers. She did not like it very much when we had to move on to the next exhibit though....

After the Museum, we decided to bake some cookies together - for the first time! Now that Ev is so old, she can actually help me do things, isn't that amazing? I wish I could skip the baby stage and just have "helping" toddlers, oh wouldn't that be so nice? Evelyn was so excited to get to lick the beater, and I was so excited to see her enjoy doing one of the things I used to do as a child as well. It was one of those little life moments that makes you stop and think of how fast time goes and how quickly your little ones grow up. It reminded me that sometimes you really do need to just stop and lick the beaters!

Crafting on Hold.

As you may have noticed, my little crafting projects have been abruptly been put on hold. This is due to the finding of two baby mice IN my craft room! There is no way I am going back in there until the situation has been resolved by my husband (who thinks it's no big deal.) So, in the meantime, I will leave you with a yummy recipe for the world's easiest chip dip. I recently brought it to my friend Jenny's Uppercase Living Block-making party and it was gobbled up quite quickly. Seriously, the world's easiest recipe. I didn't really use the measurements the recipe gave me, so I'll just write the way I made it. Ready? You probably don't even need a pen.

Yummy Dip:

2 Bars of Creamcheese

1/2 Cup Miracle Whip

Wah lah! You just mix these two things up until well blended. The toppings to put on this are endless. Here is what I topped it off with:

Tomatoes

Red Onion

Cucumber

Sliced Black Olives

Feta Cheese

Other ways to top it off could be a Taco-type dip with salsa, lettuce, and shredded cheese. Or you could do some sort of Spinach w/ Artichokes and maybe some parmesan cheese with it. The possibilities really could go on and on. So try it out and top it with whatever you like!

P.S. I did double this batch for 7 girls and 2 hungry boys. It made a lot more than I had anticipated, there was still some left after we all chowed it down! I probably could have stuck with the one batch.

Life's Little Pieces - Take 2!

Here we go! I now have a picture of the finished top piece of the t-shirt quilt. Isn't it cool? We have gotten a lot of inquiries about these quilts since we have finished this one, and have decided that we will actually make these for anyone who is interested! I am definitely making one of Evelyn's baby blankets, clothes, newborn hats, curtains, etc ASAP! How adorable of a bedspread would that be for her big girl bed that is soon to come?!? Okay, so not that soon, but like 6 months, plenty of time to finish I suppose, life gets busy..... Lots and lots of ideas for these in my head. Do you/someone you know have a million t-shirts from high school sports? Are they just sitting in a box, in storage somewhere. Well, why not actually get some use out of those and be able to look at the memories from them every day by having them made into a quilt, helloooo! Or, on a less cheerful side, a loved one passes away, and you are left with their clothes. Don't box them up for Goodwill - have us make a quilt out of them that you can use all the time and remember that person with: you don't even have to wash the t-shirts first if you don't want to, that way it will still smell like them! Kids going off to college? Adios, that's the last you'll see of them until Christmas; chop up their t-shirts that they leave behind so you can remember the good-old-days when they used to be around-haha. We are going to put up some info. at local fabric stores due to inquiries there, and if you have any questions or are interested, let me know! We're excited to start doing this!!

T-Shirt Quilt.

And so it began on Sunday - the T-shirt quilt experiment. I am not quite sure how to capture this adventure through an actual story, so I have decided to just write the steps down that we went through. Jamie purchased the book from the Too Cool T-Shirt Quilt website, which happened to be quite the live-saver! Who in the world could come up with a system like this, seriously - pure genius! Here we go:

1. Gather t-shirts you want to make up your quilt - they will be cut up, so don't plan on wearing them again....

2. Find the right size template (directions on what sizes and how to make included in the book!) and cut out the design w/ rotary cutter.

3. Organize your piles by sizes of cut out blocks.

4. Figure out how many square inches of pieces you have.

5. Using addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and SQUARE ROOTS....figure out the #/sizes of additional filler pieces you will need.

6. Cut out little pieces of graph paper to scale, to represent each piece size you have and arrange these to make your quilt map. This is like a puzzle, it could really take some time to get the pattern just right. You don't want to have any 4 corners connecting.

7. Divide quilt into sections for sewing.

8. Figure out what colors will go where, so you don't have pieces that are the same colors next to each other.

9. Figure out where your half seams will be...yes, half seams...

10. Using a lot of brain power, sew quilt sections individually and then sew the sections together.

11. Your top piece is done! Yay! (5 hours later, and forgot to take a picture of the final top quilt!) Uuuugh, use your imagination for now I suppose. Will have to post later.

Overall, it was super fun and I can't wait to make many many more of them! I just have to make smaller plexiglass templates so I can do one of Evelyn's baby things...I don't think she has many outfits that are 16 x 16.......yet......

Life's Little Pieces

So I'm taking on a new endeavor. My cousin's wife is a quilter. When I say a quilter, I mean a quilter; she attends weekend quilting "camps." Much similar to those people who scrapbook and attend scrapbooking "retreats," yes, now some of you may be able to relate. Over about the past year, she has been teaching me how to quilt. Since then, I've made 4 quilts for gifts and just LOVE the feeling of finishing one and seeing how all of the fabrics work together and the expression on people's faces when they open up their gift of a hand-made quilt! So, cousin's wife wanted to start doing something called t-shirt quilts and memory quilts. She asked me if I wanted to be her "partner." Well hello, of course I do! So on Sunday I am going over to her house, with some of Evelyn's old baby clothes and blankets in hand, and we are going to experiment with patterns and figure out pricing and I am so excited to try something new! She has a regular quilt shop she likes to get her fabrics from and we will hopefully be able to post what we do at their store for anyone who has someone's old t-shirts or baby clothes they want to be able to pull out of their storage boxes and actually be able to enjoy. Along with posting on Craigslist and probably even starting our own little blog, we are hoping to get some "clients." We are thinking of calling our new little ditty "Life's Little Pieces" because we're taking sentimental items and turning them into blankets or bedspreads or whatever. Cute, right? I'll post pics of what we come up with next week, but I was just too excited I had to write about it now! (We didn't make the quilt in the picture, but it's an example of a quilt made from old baby clothes - how cute is that ruffle skirt!?)

Camping.

Okay, we did it. We took Evelyn camping in a tent on Sunday night, and it actually went really, really well! We loaded up the truck and made our way to Ham Lake Campgrounds.

We checked in and got to our camp site at about 4:00 on Sunday afternoon and the adventure began. Our spot, which had a nice view of the lake, was not specifically a "tent" spot, but rather a camper spot, which had it's good things and bad things. Good: Water spout. Bad: Rocky, uneven ground (Remember Andy and I are sleeping on the ground, in a tent.) We made the mistake of assuming the blow up mattress was not needed and just packed some thick blankets. Let's just say I did not sleep so well, on rocks and a hill..... Anyways, we got to our site and set up the tent.

Thank goodness I grabbed a bag of popcorn on the way out the door because Evelyn sat in her carseat, eating popcorn watching us set the darn tent up the entire 20-30 minutes in the blazing

hot sun it took us to do it, all the while the empty, completely shaded site sat empty next to us, but I'm not bitter....

Our adventure began by checking out the beach. The water was really low and the sand on the bottom was like mush and gross on our feet, so we decided to play on shore and the docks instead. (Neighbor's Shady Site Pictured Above)

Beach time didn't last very long, so we decided to go for a walk to the petting zoo. Yes, the Petting Zoo - what campground is complete without one? We went into the office and bought 2 ziploc baggies of corn and went back to "zoo" which consisted of llamas, emus and little goats. Evelyn was so brave and LOVED feeding the goats the corn right from her hand! The emus wouldn't come over, but Evelyn really wanted them to. After the zoo, we went back to camp, grilled some hot dogs and had some dinner, Evelyn was doing so great, not even trying to run away! By 9:00, Evelyn was ready for bed, so the true adventure began. I went in and tucked her in her pack and play and she waved bye-bye like she always does at bedtime. With about 10 seconds of whining, she was quiet, I was so worried she would be afraid and put up a fuss and the whole campground would be so mad because of the screaming baby and they'd kick us out and we'd have to go home. But, obviously, that did not happen. She actually slept through the night! Even with it being cold out and her constantly kicking off her blankets, even with the loons making noise throughout the entire night, even with the insanely bright street light right at the end of our campsite, blaring into our tent, and even with the 12 year old's birthday party at the other end of the camp with 5 screaming girls until 11:45 when Andy finally marched down there and told the dad to shut their kids up (but much nicer, I'm sure.) Who knew night time while camping would be so obnoxious!

The next day, we all got up about 7:00 (once again, neighbors being VERY loud, opening and shutting all types of doors, starting at 6:30, what the heck were they doing??) Breakfast consisted of bananas for Evelyn, pancakes, hashbrowns and eggs! Just because we're outside doesn't mean we can't eat fun food!

Check-out was supposed to be at 1:00, but Andy actually had to go to work, and we were all exhausted so we ended up leaving around 10:30. Evelyn fell asleep in the car (pic of Ev sleeping) and even took a 4 hour nap later, when we got home! Which means I got to take a nap as well! All-in-all, it was a great experience, but the most important lesson here, I think, is that if/when we go camping again with Evelyn, we need to buy a camper! lol

15 Month Check-up.

It's the one day I dread every 3 months, for the past 15 months....Evelyn's well check-ups. Well check-ups = shots = holding a baby down = tears for baby (and sometimes almost mommy, almost.) We had Evelyn's 15 month check up and shots this morning and I made daddy come with this time. Please note I do not do shot check-ups alone. If daddy cannot get off of work, then grandma comes, seriously I do not do well knowing she is going to get shots. I was considering bringing my camera so I could have some pics of the experience to post along with this posting, but decided against it because how would I take a picture of Evelyn getting her shots when I have to hold her arms down, not really possible, and you really need the shot picture to make the story complete. So, I went without. She got measured and weighed and comes in at a whopping 27.7 pounds and 33 inches tall. She has always been a big girl, but her height finally out-did her weight. For anyone who knows about percentiles out there, she is in 95 percentile for weight and 98 percentile for height now. For anyone who doesn't know, this means that only 5% of girls her age are heavier than her and only 2% of girls her age are taller than her. Daddy says she will be a basketball player since she is so stinking tall. I say she might be a sumo wrestler, since she is heavy. lol, just kidding, but it could go either way.

The main reason I wanted to post this today was that at her next check-up, the doctor said it is flu shot time again, which is fine, I do plan on getting Evelyn vaccinated against the regular flu, but then he said 2 flu shots - one like normal, and one for swine flu! I told him I didn't know how I felt about her getting the swine flu shot because it's so new, and who knows the side effects of it yet really. He told me that nobody would look badly at us if we didn't get her either one of the flu shots and to just think about it. I think we will do the one regular flu shot (thank goodness only one round of that this year. Babies' first year of flu shots has to be done in 2 separate rounds, which means extra trip to the doctor just to get a shot....) but I just don't know about the swine flu shot quite yet.....maybe we'll have daddy get it first.....

Pillowcase Apron.

I have started thinking Christmas - more specifically, starting my Christmas lists....I always try to do something crafty and cute each year for the women at my work and in my family. The other day, I came across this tutorial which was absolutely perfect! It's an apron, made out of a pillowcase - brilliant! You don't need any extra materials, no measuring, and the best thing is that you don' t have to do the hems of the apron because since it's a pillowcase, they're all already done! What could be better. I began to search online for the perfect pillowcases, and found 3 on Etsy I just had to have. At about $5 each (plus shipping) these are a very affordable project (even if you mess up on your first one...) I had put in my order, and waited as patiently as I could over the weekend in anticipation for that glorious first pillowcase. And finally, after 3 whole days of waiting, it arrived!

The pillowcase in all it's glory. I wanted a detailed, lace pillowcase so that I didn't have to add any rick rack at the bottom!

Here are all of the supplies I used, after I cut up the pillowcase into the different parts. If you are planning on sewing anything that requires cutting, I highly recommend a rolling cutter, a long straight edge that has a little lip on it to keep it straight, and a cutting map. These are my quilting tools, but very multi-functioning and worth the money.

This is how moms sew.......

Wah-lah! The final product. I would have taken a picture of it actually ON me, but it was late and I was in my pajamas. I am going to the store today to look for cute buttons to keep the pocket flaps down.

Now comes the hard part to decide who gets this wonderful creation I have spent the better part of an hour creating...? Hmmmm. I'll have to start my next Christmas list, who's Naughty & Nice!

Lists.

My life revolves around lists. I use lists for EVERYTHING. Organized lists. My grocery list is typed up, in order of which aisle it is in at Cub. I put an indication next to it if I have a coupon for it, or if it is something that is on sale - which I find online every week by going to Cub's website. They have coupons you can print right online, how convenient! I fold the piece of paper up, staple it on one side, and put my coupons in the middle, so none of them get lost. Some say this is not normal, but I say it's genius.... This leads me to the reason I did this post; we are going camping....for just one night....in a tent.....with a 15 month old. We decided to try just one night, close to home, just in case Evelyn does not enjoy sleeping in a tent (or I don't enjoy sleeping in a tent, either way.) I started compiling my list and it just kept growing and growing and growing. It's almost a whole page long, with 2 columns. Most of the things under "General" column, I can put in a big rubbermaid container and keep for the next time (fingers crossed) that we go. I attached my list below for anyone to look over and please let me know if I am missing anything, or have added things that are not necessary. I have never been camping, so I'm not sure if I really need all of these things, or I'm just getting carried away with the joys of making a list....

(I don't have any idea how to upload the Word Document I have this list saved in, so I just cut and paste. Any advice as to how to do that would also be appreciated. lol)

General

q Tent

q Rubber Hammer

q Tarp

q 2 Blankets

q 2 Pillows

q 2 Chairs

q Ev’s Little Chair

q Lighter Fluid

q Matches/Fire Starter

q Paper Plates

q Napkins

q Plastic Silverware

q Paper Cups

q Camping Stove Cooktop

q Pan

q Spatula

q Wooden Spoon

q Lantern

q Mini Lantern/Nightlight

q Picnic Table Cover

q Card Table

q Bug Spray

q Extra Batteries

q Fishing Pole

q Tackle Box

q Camera

Food

q Cooler w/ Ice

q Lots of Bottled Water

q Chips

q Watermelon

q Hot Dogs

q Hot Dog Buns

q Ketchup

q Milk for Ev

q Bisquick

q Veg Oil

q Eggs

q Bananas

q Bread

q Cheese

q Butter

Evelyn

q Pack N Play

q Swim Suit

q 3 Swim Diapers

q 10 Regular Diapers

q Pack of Wipes

q Baby Powder – travel size

q Baby Soap – travel size

q Towel

q Baby

q Blankie

q Extra Thick Blanket

q Nuk

q Bottle

q Sippy Cup

q Stroller

q Travel High Chair

q Bedtime Music thing

q Pajamas – shorts and pants

q 2 Outfits

q Socks

q Shoes

q Lightweight Jacket

q Sunblock

q Folding Chair

q Beach Toys

q Shoes

Us

q Swimming Suits

q 2 Beach Towels

q Pajamas

q Change of Clothes Each

q T. Brush/T. Paste

q Brush

Happy Things.

Giant Chocolate Cupcakes! I made these giant cupcakes for Evelyn's first birthday party! I used this pan from Wilton. Greatest thing ever! Fun & Uncomplicated, of course! :)

Neat and Organized Craft Room! This is an older picture from before I (my husband) put up the shelves on the sides for more storage. I made the cute bulletin board with just a scrap piece of fabric, some paint, and a little bit of ribbon for a border! Love it!

Andy & Evelyn! We took Evelyn to a carnival on the 4th of July. This was her first ride, and surprisingly, she loved it! Andy walked around the carousel with her so she could pick just the right pony to ride. (I think she really wanted the giraffe, though!)

#1.

Here we are, my first ever blog. I never thought I would get to this point because I couldn't come up with a stinking name for the darn thing! It was probably about 2 months ago I actually created my blogspot account. I was thinking, why in the world is this name thing so complicated?? I wanted it to be about things to do to make life a little easier, being a full-time working mom and wife. Once I got the name down, I was suddenly faced with more challenges - you pick fonts, colors, sizes, styles, layouts. Since my name actually has the word "uncomplicated" in it, I decided to use that to my advantage and stick with black and white and whatever size font comes standard - talk about a life saver, people must spend hours just decorating and deciding on these things for their pages - not me.... And that is how Life Uncomplicated was born - on my way back from picking up some lunch at the always-pleasing Taco Bell. lol. I'm not totally sure as to how all of this stuff works, but I figure posting some pics of simple things that make me happy would be a good start!