Things you should know...

The new year is almost here and I want to start it out right. You all are a part of my blog and it's just like being part of my life. I tell you about things we have going on, vent to you and include you in our celebrations. You guys have become my BFF (whether you knew it or not) so I think it's only fair that you know me a little bit better. So to borrow an idea from Ashely at LMM here are the things you should know about me if we're going to be BFF...


1. I’m truly addicted to Coca Cola and crushed ice. It’s pathetic. I’ve tried and tried to break the habit but I always cave. ALWAYS.

2. I can’t swim. Well, I can sort of swim. I probably wouldn’t drown if I fell in the lake (maybe) but I definitely couldn’t save anyone else. This is why I am adamant that my girls learn how to swim and swim well.

3. I don’t own a vacuum cleaner. Seriously. Every room in our house has wood floors or tile and we only have two rugs (One in Kinsley’s room and one by the front door) so I don’t have anything to vacuum. I do however own several brooms and a swiffer mop thing.

4. I also don’t own an ironing board. I hate ironing so I try to avoid it at all costs. About the only time I iron is for sewing and then I just use a towel on the kitchen table.

5. I love to hang laundry on the clothesline outside, especially quilts. I just think it’s really pretty. I will not, however, hang my underwear out there. (But I have no problem hanging hubby’s)

6. Speaking of laundry…I hate matching socks. I would rather scrub the bathroom than sit down and try to match our socks up. We have a laundry basket in our room full of unmatched socks because of this. The only socks I will match up and put away are for the girls.

7. I hated my husband when we first met and it took him a while to convince me that he was wonderful. (Of course I think he's pretty wonderful now)

8. I can’t share milk. If someone (including hubby) takes a drink from my milk I have to pour it out.

9. I can’t make rice krispie treats. They never work out right for me no matter how many times I’ve tried them.

10. I love love love high heels. I owned 20 pair before I got married and now I’m down to 2 that I never wear. But I still love them.



Hopefully you'll still want to be my friend after learning all of that. Now so I'm not completely alone on this one leave me a comment and let me know some things about you, it's only fair.

Why I wish the weather was warmer...

So we could do more fun stuff like this (picking up pecans with memaw). We miss being outside, come on spring! Or at least bring on some pretty snow to make up for this miserable cold.

Barcode Cross Stitch

Barcode Cross Stitch, originally uploaded by RusticOkie.

My first ever completed cross stitch project. I remember doing cross stitch when I was younger but I never had the patience to stick with it. Truthfully I'm still not sure I do but this project was pretty fun. It was a Christmas gift for a certain gadget loving relative who has a thing for the barcode application on his cell phone. I have to admit it is pretty cool so I just couldn't resist making him his own personal barcode. Hope he'll like it.

And to all a good night...

HOPE YOUR CHRISTMAS WAS MERRY AND BRIGHT!!

Christmas Bags

I was so excited that Kinsley would be old enough this year to start making Christmas gifts by herself. Since she loves drawing so much I decided to go with that and pull out the fabric markers and some tiny canvas tote bags for her to decorate.

I put a piece of cardboard inside each bag so the colors wouldn't bleed through and then stepped back to let her create.

I love that she personalized each one with the person she was creating for in mind. She explained them all to me as she was working and told me why she put what she did on each one. She made this one for Hubby's grandma and so she decided it needed her and her cousins all on it.

I love the curly hair!

Afternoon Activity: Handprint Christmas Tree

Handprint Tree, originally uploaded by RusticOkie.

We're counting down to Christmas and filling our days with lots of Christmas themed Afternoon Activities. This handprint tree is one of my faves so far.

First trace their little handprints onto green construction paper. You'll need 10 handprints to make your tree.

I had this neat textured paper that I never knew what to do with until now. You can see a little template of her hand out of copy paper that I made. I traced her hand onto that and then cut the hands out the night before so she wouldn't have to wait for them. Although they could start gluing while you're cutting or you could make them cut their handprints out themselves to make it last a bit longer. Then cut out a tree trunk and a star to top your tree with and you're ready to start gluing.

(I chose to have her glue the tree onto a large sheet of paper in an effort to keep her from gluing it to the table, lol. I would be cute without the background though. )

Then have them glue the trunk to the background.

(Make sure you are taking your work VERY seriously)

Then they're ready to start gluing the handprints down. They'll need four handprints for the bottom row, three for the next, then two and one for the very top. Make sure the handprints are placed with the fingers pointed down.

Once all the handprints are in place its time to add the star.

After the tree is together let them decorate and add their ornaments. Kinsley chose these neon colored pom poms. and we learned that you can't glue them on with a glue stick.

So we had to bust out the hot glue gun (low temp). It's quickly becoming one of her favorite crafting tools. Love that.

Then be incredibly proud of the end product and tape it to the wall!

Taggie Blanket

Taggie Blanket 2, originally uploaded by RusticOkie.

I really can't share any of the crafty projects I've been working on lately because they are all for Christmas gifts and are pretty specific to the styles and color preferences of the recipient. I don't want to ruin the surprise this close to Christmas. Thankfully (or sadly) I still have lots of projects I completed earlier in the year that I never got around to photgraphing or posting so here you go.

I made this taggie blanket for Kaitlyn when she was still too tiny to care but I just had to make one. I never really understood the purpose of these silly things when Kinsley was a baby and quite frankly thought they were pretty silly. That is until Kinsley decided that she LOVED the tag on her favorite blanket and would rub it on her face when she was sleepy. Now I know.

I loved the bright colors of the printed fabric but chose a more muted pink for the minky dots on the reverse. I think they work well together. And Kaitlyn just thinks that it tastes good, silly girl.

Baby Bunnies

Baby Bunnies, originally uploaded by RusticOkie.

Yes I realize that only one of these actually has bunny ears but Kinsley calls them bunnies so there you go. I love these tiny little flat babies. Kinsley adopted the one on the left, okay kidnapped is probably a better word to describe it. She just loves him and I can't blame her, he's one of my favorite too.

My grandma has some little animals like these at her house that she made 20+ years ago and Kinsley fell in love with them during our last visit. She slept with them every night and wanted to bring them home with her. We had to convince her it would be more fun to make her own. It really was a lot of fun too. My grandmother drew out a pattern for them and away we went. I can't even describe how much I love them. The picture doesn't do them justice at all. I adore the simple design and I want to make a million more. I'm pretty sure every baby born from here on out will be getting one of these from me. They're the perfect size to snuggle with and even Kaitlyn likes hers (which I couldn't get a picture of because she refused to take it out of her mouth long enough for me).

My absolute favorite is this one though...

Kinsley picked out her own fabrics and we made him together. She was so proud of herself and it makes him all the more special.

6 month pictures (a little late)

6 month pictures, originally uploaded by RusticOkie.

So I just realized that I forgot to post Kaitlyn's 6 month pictures on here. It came so quickly. She's growing like a weed and gets funnier every single day. She's still as lazy as can be though. No desire to walk, crawl or even roll over. She can roll, she just chooses not to. Lazy.





She finally mastered sitting up on her own and now loves to just sit in the floor with a basket of toys and "snoop". Her jumperoo is still a big hit but that's as energetic as she wants to get.




I just wish she'd get a little more hair...

November in a nutshell...

November just flew past us and most of it is a blur. Thankfully I took pictures or I might have missed the entire month...

We went on lots of nice walks and gathered a lot of leaves...

And used lots and lots and lots of paint...

Learned that jumping is SO much fun...

And that sitting up is pretty cool too...

Decorating the Christmas tree was very exciting...

And exhausting...

But we couldn't pass up the chance to help grandma decorate hers too...

There were lots of crafts like this...

And baking too...

And of course, lots and lots of eating...

I'd say November was a very good month indeed.

Afternoon Activity: Leaf Fairies

My favorite Afternoon Activity from last week was definitely the leaf fairies Kinsley and I made. They were so fun and easy to make. We got the idea from Twig and Toadstool which has a lot of incredible ideas we'll be using in the future. First you gather up your supplies:

Felt
Pipe cleaners
Wooden beads
Acorn Caps
Yarn or wool roving for hair
Scissors
Glue - You can use Elmer's, fabric glue, hot glue, etc. We used hot glue because I thought it would help the acorn caps stay on a bit better and we're obsessed with the hot glue gun around here.

We started out seeing if we could draw some pictures of leaves we found in the yard to give us an idea of what we wanted our fairies to look like. You can totally skip this step if you are awesome enough to free hand your leaves or you can print a template off the internet.

And then we had to do a little free drawing as well. This is what the leaves look like when they are falling off the tree in case you didn't know.

For Kinsley's first fairy I cut out a template and we traced around it directly onto the felt. This would be a much better idea if you used a fabric marking pen because it's fairly likely that some of the marker will end up showing. If you're doing this with older kids of course they can do all of this by themselves. For younger kids, if you're going to make several, I recommend cutting out the leaf shapes ahead of time. She got a bit impatient while waiting for that part.

But it worked out okay because I was able to cut out the rest of our leaves while she was cutting out hers.

Then you take your pipe cleaner, fold it in half and insert it into your wooden bead. You don't need to use glue if the hole in your bead is small enough. Ours fit snugly inside so we didn't worry about it.

See? This is how your fairy should look now.

Then you pick out your fairy's hair color and style. Kinsley thought this yarn looked curly like her hair so that's what she went with. Just cut the yarn to your desired length and glue on as much as you'd like.

Next pick out the perfect acorn hat and glue it to your fairy's head. Make sure you use plenty of glue on this step.

Then glue your fairy's body to one of your leaf pieces.

Sandwich the other leaf piece on top and glue around the edges. (Make sure you glue the top edge well.) And you have your completed leaf fairy!

This is my absolute favorite one that she made. We started out making these as a gift to give to Grandma but I had to keep this one with the ones I made for our house. Doesn't she look just like a little French Fairy? I love love love her! And I thought it was awesome that Kinsley decided at the last minute to add faces to hers and made each one a different face. So much fun.

Now get to making your own leaf fairies, but I'll warn you they're pretty addictive. I'm already thinking we'll have to make some with different shapes for every holiday!