valentines prep

Sometimes you take a picture of your kids and it somehow serves as a little glimpse into the future. That top picture of Elsie feels that way to me. She looks older in it. She looks like she's growing up. She still could use a hairbrush, but it's still amazing to catch these glimpses. I love that girl so much.

We're in full swing for Valentine's day around here. That mostly means the kids have been sorting and scattering their Paw Patrol and Princess valentines all over the house. And most importantly, we made heart cookies. Hot tip: give your kids ten cookies on a baking sheet with their own dish of frosting. This way, when the 3 year old licks her knife after every dip into the frosting dish, you can be sure that only she will get to eat those delicious cookies. The rest of the cookies and frosting never came into contact with all of those licks, keeping our cookies lick-free. And we could remember which cookies were Elsie's based on the amount of sprinkles on each one...

valentine's day

I just got off the phone with my mom telling me to get a blog post up. She misses her grandkids. So here we go. I think I have a few I can fire off. I believe I left off on Valentine's Day. I had a lovely post all about Rory and how recently he told me that he would be thrilled if I made Hamburger Helper once a week. He loves the stuff and is so excited when I make it. He even called it one of his love languages. This little-known-fact used to bother me. I felt I was above Hamburger Helper. But two kids later, Rory's love for Hamburger Helper is one of most endearing, wonderful parts about this easy-to-please Valentine of mine. 

We had a great Valentine's day. I followed in my mom's footsteps and had a heart supper. We had finger jello hearts, cupcakes from our favorite shop, and a heart pizza from Papa Murphy's. Anyone else get Papa Murphy's? When I picked up my pizza, there was palpable excitement in the store. My sister said her's was like this too. The manager was all happy telling everyone it was their busiest day of the year. I got swept up in the giddiness, and then got back into my car and remembered I had only been in a pizza shop on valentine's day. It was as if I had walked into some sort of unexpected christmas joy or something...

And my funny Valentine, while eating his pizza, kept telling me how he couldn't quite figure out how a place like Papa Murphy's broke on to the scene. Rory said, "Just think about it. After delivery was invented, why would anyone open up a pizza shop with unbaked pizza's? It seems backwards."

And those are the sort of sweet nothings my Valentine discusses over a romantic dinner with our children. :)

two little cupids

Two Little Cupids are wondering why on earth their mother has them stripped down to their diapers and holding a bow and arrow. 

Two Little Cupids hope you had a very Happy Valentines Day!

life at the grovestead/ for the grandmas

I got a phone call from my mom saying she needed more pictures of her grandkids. So this post is dedicated to Grandma Margaret!

A few notes from the pictures above:

+Elsie loves to bounce in her exersaucer. She is getting so big! Rolling over, laughing at her brother, smiling with one goofy tooth on the bottom.

+When Ivar gets in the car he yells "Country Roads, Loud!" And as soon as John Denver is done singing that song he yells "Country Boy, Loud!"

+That pink outfit Elsie is wearing used to be mine. Donna Solomonson made it for me and now it fits my daughter. I love it so much. The top zips in the back, all the way up the hood. I love that it fits her perfectly just in time for Valentines!

+We had Annika and girls over on Martin Luther King day. It was below zero so we had a summer lovin' party. Swimsuits in the bathtub, smoothies, fresh pineapple and ants on a log for snacks, a swimsuit dance party and I may or may not have greeted them wearing my very own swim suit and dancing to Sonsurf Beach Camp, their favorite VBS cd. And that may or may not have completely startled the poor girls walking through the door.

+Sonna came over for a sleepover towards the end of Christmas break and helped me finish the stars for Elsie's room. And then she sewed this beautiful heart garland.

heart garland

I got pretty excited about hearts and crafts last week. And I've still got some fun projects to go. This one was easy peasy...made out of Behr paint sample cards, I cut the hearts and taped them to the string. The second lightest color on there is called "bridesmaid" which makes me laugh. I remember those dresses from a few decades ago. I think they also had very puffy sleeves and large bows on the butt.

And then I taped it up to our brand new white tile that was just put up this week in our bathroom! We have one bathroom in this house and have had workers here for over a week. It's be a bit tricky, but the starbucks up the street seem fine with me using their facilities, so whatever. The bathroom looks fantastic. I'll show some before and afters next week.

And speaking of hearts... the real, pumping kind, our friends Scott and Emily were featured on Kare 11 last night telling the story of their son Calvin who was born with his heart and liver on the outside of his body. I wrote about his dedication here. Be sure to watch this video from last nights news segment. It tells the story and gives a little glimpse into the road they have traveled and the complete miracle of baby Calvin.

Happy Valentines Day!

Last week my sister posted pictures of her girls pouring over their valentines, and I was reminded of how much I love this holiday. I haven't ever really felt the need to get into the whole jewelry-fancy-dinner part of this day (though I wouldn't turn it down!), but mostly I just love the memories I have of a childhood filled with valentines days that were crafty and thoughtful.

A few favorite memories: Growing up, my mom would make an entire red supper with spaghetti, red jello, and food coloring in our milk to turn it pink. She decorated the table with a red table cloth, lit all sorts of candles and had small gifts for each of us. During my elementary years I would work so hard decorating the shoe box that would become my valentine mailbox at school. I loved either making or picking out my valentines and writing each kids name. One year I got DuckTales valentines that included stickers for me to decorate each DuckTales scene with before I gave them away. I loved those valentines! I also have good memories of the school valentines party and decorating my heart sugar cookie with pink frosting and sprinkles.

So after I saw Annika's post I decided it is time for me to take over these traditions for my own family. Naturally I enlisted my son and we got to work making his first valentines. I had wanted to make 20 valentines, but at 13 my little helper had enough and we had to cut 7 recipients from the list! So, if you think you should have gotten a valentine from Ivar, please count this post as good enough. I'm not into forced crafting with kids...

I hope you're Valentine's day is filled with love and a frosted sugar cookie.

fabric flower pots

Mom and I got crafty on Wednesday at put together these little bouquets. I had a vision in my head ever since I made the fabric flower wall art. I had no idea what sort of container I would put them in until I found the red pepper shakers (like the ones they have on pizzeria tables...) at Michaels in the dollar aisle. It's perfect...the holes in the shaker keep the flowers in place!

I found some wire in the jewelry section and the buttons were from my grandma harrington. I love everything about this project. I could see making a bouquet to go by each place setting for easter or a special brunch...super fun stuff.

And the possibilities of colors and candy are endless! I am eager to try Pinks and Red fabric with heart candy at Valentines or fall fabric with colored corn for harvest....

And! I forgot to mention that my sister, Annika, posted pictures of the headbands I made for her girls using the same fabric flowers... Check it out here.

reunion album complete!

I had posted the first two pages of this album here, explaining Grandma's birthday party and how amazing this family reunion was. And, since posting those pictures, Grandma has been talking seriously about planning her next birthday party. I can't wait!

This is a completely different way to scrapbook. It is more art than story. The pictures are stunning and I loved decorating them. But the wordy girl in me was dying not to journal on each page. With the pages so skinny, a lot of text quickly ate up the layout. So I gave up trying and finally settled into just playing with ribbon and flowers and buttons. It was so different and it was so fun to experiment and play.

I think it is really good to challenge myself creatively like this. I have a pretty standard way that I scrapbook, with lots of layered paper, borders and a few embellishments. But this was totally new...to use ribbon and make everything three dimensional..to use some sequence and fabric and glue was just good and helped me get out of my creative box.

I still wanted to get the story of the week told within the album, so in the end I wrote out one long journal post and printed it out for the last page.

I love how this album turned out and now I have lots of ideas for how to incorporate these new techniques into other projects and handmade albums. I tell you what. That Donna Downey is pretty amazing and I am so grateful for her style and example while playing with ribbon, flowers, fabric and ink. So stinkin fun.

fabric flowers

I am inspired. I took what I learned on Saturday night from Donna Downey and went to make it my own. Sunday was a perfect day watching the Olympics as Rory napped on the couch beside me as I hand stitched these colorful flowers. I felt very domestic!

I had a vision of this little art piece in my mind, sketched in out on paper and it turned out exactly how I had envisioned it (although I am planning to add a few more leaves...) The buttons on the flowers are from my Aunt Jane...they were my Grandma Harrington's and I love that I am able to use them like this.

Donna has a fabric flower tutorial on her website. You can watch it here. These flowers are so simple, and turn out so stinkin' adorable! I've got a few more ideas sketched out, and can't wait keep on playing.

Canvas Art

The first class I took with Donna Downey was called, "Elegant Garden." This class was full of new techniques and I can't wait to start making my own creations based on her stunning ideas. I mapped out the basic steps of how we created this layout below. And for the record, I am in LOVE with the fabric flowers. I have many ideas of ways I want to use these...

I used the picture of me and my niece, Mara, working hard at the balloon toss at the last Bredberg family reunion. I love this pictures because we are working so hard just handing the balloon back and forth and everyone else was ten feet apart at this point :)

our superbowl

Sunday came around, and it was time to stop going places. Do you ever just hit that wall? I have been in and out all month, and I just wanted time in my own livingroom. So we cancelled our superbowl plans, and decided to lay low.

We watched the game and commercials, after we tivo'd an hour or so, allowing us to skip through the many car and cbs commercials.

At some point during the game the multi-taskers in us took over, and I made sugar cookies and Rory built a battery-free radio. I was happily mixing my dough and Rory was happily coiling wire. By the time the Saints won, we feasted on cookies and milk and listened to the talk radio station Rory found on his little radio. He kept saying, "lick your fingers and then stick this wire between them and then you'll hear the station." No clue how that actually works, but it sure was cool.