Happy Sunday Before Christmas

Today for sharing time the kids acted out the nativity story. Their props and costumes were so cute! they had such a fun time reading about the birth of Jesus and then singing lots of Christmas songs! We have got one cute Shepard!!!

Then after church while we were still cute and matchy we took some family pictures!

In nursery Jarom completely destroyed his cute new sunday outfit, so we had to take off his pants for the drive home, they were drenched in milk! Hopefully all will come out in the wash so he can be just as handsome next week at church in CALIFORNIA!! YAY!

Wooden Toys

OK so those other give aways have come and gone and I did win the Twilight puzzle ball which is fantastic!! But I was hoping to win something for my kids. Anyway, I am trying again. There is another giveaway featuring these incredible wooden toys!! I love toys of great quality! So these great toys would be great to add to our toy collection!

Zhu Zhu Pets

It seems like everyone has got a Zhu Zhu pet but us! Which it ok, but since I have the chance to win a free one, why not? Paisley would have fun with it, as would Jarom! Let's win it!!

Dress ups

This giveaway is for a dress up of your choice. This site has so many cute princess dresses for little girls, but they also have some other dress up for boys and just for times when you don't want to be a princess. They have a cute fire fighter costume, or doctor costumes! I have plenty of princess dresses at my house, but I would love to get something for Jarom!!!

Fun Toys

Here is a giveaway for some really cute toys! A lot of the giveaways are for girl stuff, so this giveaway I really want to win because it is for a cement mixer truck! Jarom would LOVE this!

Want to win it!

Because things always seem to get tight around the holidays I have been trying my best to win a couple presents from different give away sites! Because of this the next few posts are going to be entries for some of those giveaways! So far I have won 2 different things to give as gifts!! yay!

So as most of you know I'm on TEAM JACOB!! And there is a giveaway for an awesome puzzle ball featuring the twilight peeps, so I wanna win it!! Here is the link to the giveaway on Take it from me! Good luck me!

Busted!

Jarom thinks the world is his canvas, but it isn't! He got busted today and had to scrub a couple walls. This kid LOVES to color just like Paisley, but he doesn't keep in on paper like paisley is now trained to do. I tried to find the picture of Paisley also scrubbing walls with a magic eraser, but I couldn't find it. Good news though, Jarom loves to scrub walls, so I see a very good cleaning buddy in my future!

FHE Craft

I saw this cute snowman in a window display as I was driving by a store, so tonight we figured out how to recreate it! It was a lot of fun, and Jarom sure loves his new friend who is almost as big as he is!! What a fun FHE tonight!

Craft Fair

This weekend I had my second craft fair! Some of my good friends joined my booth and so here's the set up before the fair started. We had lots of fun hanging out and meeting new people! What a great way to network! Jason was so great and entertained the kids all day with games, the library and coming to visit at the craft fair!

Paisley's Birthday Party

Today was Paisley first friend birthday party! It was a cupcake themed party, and it was tons of fun!! Here is her cute cake!Jarom getting ready to play pin the sprinkle on the cupcake!

Everyone got their own cupcake piggy bank to paint, they turned out lovely!

Paisley painting away. She had a lot of fun, and surprisingly didn't pick pink or purple to go on hers.

Everyone else lined up for pin the sprinkle on the cupcake!

The results of the game:

Paisley's friends were very nice and gave her some very fun toys and games. Lots of princess stuff here!

Singing and blowing out the candles.

After the party Jarom liked wearing the blind fold as a headband. Paisley LOVES her new baby alive, but she has already been told we will not be taking advantage of the diaper part of this baby! :)

Cute Daddy and Jarom!

My cake was awesome if I do say so myself. I added a pink center to the cake. I do have a cupcake mold thing that helped. I also had cupcakes from the left over batter so most kids chose a cupcake instead, so we have LOTS of cake. Anyone want to come over tonight for cake?

The party was a success! Since it was Paisley's first friend party, it was our first time running a party and I was a little nervous. Everyone paints at different speeds and such so I was nervous about the timing of things, luckily in between activities everyone wanted to go downstairs because apparently Paisley has some pretty fun toys! Yay us! It was fun but I'm glad we don't have to do this again for a few years!

Fire Fighter Paisley

Today was a field trip to the fire station! It was a blast! I was lucky enough to be one of the drivers so I got to go along and take tons of pictures. It was so much fun to see all the big fire trucks and where the firemen sleep and all sorts of things. Here are a couple pictures from the trip!

Upcycled!

Upcycling isn't a new concept, but I haven't ever found an object that I had a great idea to turn it into!! I am so proud of myself for this awesome project that literally took 5 minutes to complete. Here it is. It is also a do it yourself project if you ever find yourself needing to upcycle a frame!

This awesome frame was a fantastic find at Goodwill!! I love the shape for obvious reason (clue: my store name is The Purse Place) but I hated the fabric. Plus it was just old and dirty. So I bought this bad boy with the idea to reupholster it! Here we go...

Here is the finished product. I was going to keep it a frame but then decided it looked cute as just a purse!

And bonus, since it is a frame I have the option of having it stand upright! SO CUTE! This is going to be such a cute accessory at my next craft fair! So next time you are browsing a thrift store, if you see something you love, but hate the fabric, it's nothing a half yard of fabric and a staple gun can't fix!

Vote for Paisley

Paisley is in a flower model contest and she needs votes!! If she wins she will get a cute flower clip, similar to the one she is wearing in the picture! Click on this Tammy's Funky Flower link and vote for #13 (Paisley) in the comment section! The voting ends this Saturday so head on over and vote for Paisley! THANKS!!

Where have we been lately? Why haven't we been posting? Because we have been working like CRAZY to get ready for this!! My very first craft fair! I will be representing The Purse Place at this awesome barn sale about an hour from our house! We have been gluing and sewing like crazy. I got a new website for my store, so we have also been figuring out how to get my new signage onto business cards, a store banner and stickers. Trying to set up a table display so that it shows everything and remain attractive and not too busy is hard work! I'm pretty excited and super nervous! I will be sure to take lots of pictures and post all about how it goes. This is a sort of trial run before a HUGE holiday market I am participating in in November. But for now... BACK TO WORK!

This is Paisley after church wearing her new skirt I made Saturday night! She loves her new primary teacher, and who wouldn't when you get to have cute sack puppets like that!

Here is our big Paisley on the second day of school!

Off to School

Paisley is off to her first day of Preschool! She was so excited all morning. She called Jason and got a pep talk from him, (she didn't need it) and off we went. She was happy to take pictures of every little thing.

She was very excited to put on her backpack and head out the door.

In front of school!
Good Beginnings Preschool that way
Here is her backpack hook! Right by the OTHER Paisley in her class hook!! I didn't think we'd ever have double name issues in school with her!
She knew right where to go to get the dolls out and start playing. She wasn't nervous at all. Just very excited to go to school! What a big girl she is!

My little girl

I'm sitting in the basement by myself feeling a little lonely and sad. Jason is off on a business trip until Friday night (grumble, grumble) and so I have to be super Mom and do everything for everyone the next couple of days. This is really hard for me. I depend a lot on Jason. I love lunch time when he can help feed people and clean up the mess. I really look forward to five o'clock and handing the kids over to him so I can make dinner in peace, or just run to my bed for 5 minutes of alone time. I miss him!! I'm feeling sad tonight because all of the sudden my baby Paisley is going to school! What happened? Tomorrow is her first day of preschool. I got lucky and her birthday missed the date to start Kindergarten. I'm not ready for Kindergarten, although she might be. Yesterday we had a preschool meeting and she got to play while I listened to them talk about the school and the schedule. She loved it. When I went to pick her up her response was "why did you come back?" I was glad to hear that. Glad that she is well adjusted and can function without her Mom, but still I thought she was my baby. I'm sad that I forgot to have Jason give her a father's blessing at the beginning of the school year. It will just be a week late, so it will be ok, I just need her to have strength for her first day, and I probably need more than her. I've been brave this whole time, but tonight when I tucked her in bed and closed the door I really had to choke back tears. It was like I was putting my baby to bed and tomorrow I'll get my grown up girl from her room and drive her off to school. I know this is a little dramatic, but hey, I'm lonely so crazy thoughts can float through my head right now. Tomorrow I'll be sure to post pictures of my big 4 year old going off to preschool!! She is so excited I bet she won't be falling asleep for a long time! :)

The Final Days

Since my neicev requested the ending to our trip here it is. The final days were slow compared to the rest of the trip. They included meeting spiderman!

Going to IKEA on the bus. It was our first time going to IKEA and the place is INCREDIBLE!

More subway rides and buss rides!

Playing with toys in our hotel room!

Our last taste of the delicious Tichy Gelato! Yum yumm!!

A HUGE rain storm that soak us through! We had to run from the bus stop down a block into the hotel and we were soaked by the time we got to the lobby!

And finally great seats on the plane home that let us use this great baby seat for when Jarom was sleeping! The trip was so long, but equally amazing!

An A-MAZING Weekend

Thursday was filled with more palaces that look similar to what we have already posted. We also went to a couple museums that were fantastic. We visited Mozart's apartment and took an audio tour. Walking through some of the streets you run into street performers. These two were very impressive. Paisley put some coins in their cup and they came to life and took a picture with her. It was pretty cute.

Friday Jason had a half day. We met up with him after a tasty lunch at subway. It was nice to eat something familiar.

Then we went to a music museum that was pretty fantastic. Paisley loved the interactive exhibits. After the museum it was recommended that we hit the amusement park. It was free to walk around, you just pay for rides. It was fun to see all the things they had there. Paisley drove this jeep.

Jason came across a type of ride he has always wanted to ride so we went for it. It was kind of expensive, but well worth it. You lay flat in the cars like your flying. It was fun, and a little scary.

Saturday after getting the rental (which was an adventure in itself) we were off to Italy!! We all crammed into a "7 passenger" car and headed for Mestre, Italy.
We parked in Mestre and took a train into Venice. Venice was AMAZING! We were there for 22 hours. It took a total of 11 hours round trip driving to get there, but completely worth all the effort. This beautiful bride was the bridge over a canal to our hotel.
Standing in front of the Grand Canal.
The famous Rialto Bridge. Disappointed with the graffiti but it is still beautiful.
This is the beautiful canal in front of our hotel.
Standing on the Academia bridge.
We ate incredible lasagna at a cafe on the Grand Canal. It was beautiful and amazing.
Jason in his handsome Italian hat.
Once again the pretty canal in front of the hotel.
We took water buses around to the island of Murano to get some famous Murano glass.
In front of the grand Canal down the walkway from our hotel.
One last shot before we got back on the train to Mestre.

Goodbye Venice. Wish we didn't have to drive 5 hours back to Vienna now!!

Venice was incredible. I'm having a hard time convincing myself it wasn't all a dream. It was so beautiful. Completely worth the extra effort, time and money involved in going. I'm so happy we did it. It was a little scary to get a car and drive that long through two foreign countries, but it was fantastic. Marvelous! It really is a grand place.