Yesterday Isabelle wanted to play in her play house pretty much the whole entire day. Fortunately we put the play house in my craft room so I decided to work on a project.

Now that Isabelle is starting to help out a little in the kitchen, I thought it would be fun to get her an apron. I haven’t looked around too much to see what aprons cost, but what I ended up doing is definitely a better deal!

I mentioned to my mom that I wanted an apron pattern and so she got one from my aunt (hi Devonne!) and brought it with her while my parents are here for Thanksgiving.

When I looked at the pattern I didn’t want to mess it up with fabric I bought, so I thought I’d raid my scrap pile. I have a friend who gave me a bunch of scraps a while ago and I haven’t really done anything with them. I found some fabric that was big enough and coordinated enough for it to work as an apron.

Turns out the pattern was way easier than I thought it would be and I finished it by the time Isabelle woke up from her nap! That’s my kind of project.

I like how it turned out. I think it has a “Little House on the Prairie” vibe, but I like it that way. Isabelle really likes the pockets and immediately put her toy phone in one of them.

Here’s the front view

Here’s the back (which I like a lot)

Here it is in action

What’s nice about this pattern is that it’s still a bit big for her, so she’ll be able to grow into it. Also, it’s easy enough that I’m thinking about scouting sales for fun fabric with a cooking theme and an art theme to make a kitchen apron and an art smock.

If you want the pattern I’m pretty sure you can find them in a quilt shop- it’s called the Little Spring Fling apron and it’s done by The Apron Lady. (I couldn’t find the pattern on the website, but I’m sure you could figure out how to get it).

Growing up Advent was pretty much lighting a candle at the beginning of the church service each week before Christmas. And, we had one of those flap countdown calendars with verses.

Having a child seems to bring a sense of need to carry on traditions, create new ones, and to make sure they understand the reason for what we do (not that I even quite understand it all). So I was pretty excited when I found this book on sale this summer.

It’s probably not going to do much for Isabelle this year, but I think over the years it will help to incorporate what we are doing during the Christmas season. The book takes the Advent traditions (and ones we’ve added) and gives a small background into the practice, a craft of some sort and a teachable moments section.

For this year I will probably just do the countdown calendar (starting tomorrow!) and maybe add a couple of crafts throughout the month. Isabelle actually understands that something different is going on (mainly because of the tree in the living room!) and so I may be able to get her to connect with Jesus’ birthday.

I guess I’m just writing this to say that I’d like to make sure we are more intentional about this season. Are there things you’ve done with young kids to start them down this path?

I’ve started trying to get Isabelle to help out around the house a little more. A couple of places online have age appropriate chore duties that I have been working on.
Recently she has taken a bit more interest in things so I’ve added a couple more from those lists.

Making her bed doesn’t quite work yet, but she has to stand there with me and try to help.

Then I started having her help with setting the table. At first I would give her just her own plate and utensil as a way to distract her while I’m finishing up dinner. Since we always sit in the same place at the table she knew where to put her things.

A couple of weeks ago she kept coming back after her items were out so I thought I’d see what would happen if she set the whole table! She actually did a very good job.

She can just barely see over the table which makes this whole thing hilarious, but she knew where everything sort-of went and didn’t break anything.

(Still makes me think that I need to invest in a good set of Corelle dishes though.)

Here’s a little visual of what we got to see in her first attempt at setting the table.

I think I had already moved one of the plates when I took this, but they were both hanging off the table just a little too much. The napkin had fallen so Isabelle worked very hard at getting it back on the table (I think we need to start working on folding!).

This has been a fun addition to our routine, I’ve been thinking of ways I can start to make a visual chore chart or something that shows what her responsibilities are. I’ll let you know if I come up with something (and share your ideas with me!)

Today we had a party for Isabelle’s birthday! She had a joint party with her playgroup on Monday (her actual birthday) for all the November birthdays. Today she had a party with some of her friends from church.
Since this little girl loves all things Elmo, we went with a Sesame Street themed party. I probably could’ve done a lot more on this since I really only gave myself a week to put it together, but I think I would’ve gone overboard and this turned out well.

I had some fun in Photoshop and created a couple special touches for the party.
First, I started with outdoor decorations. This was something I didn’t do last year and had fun with it.

A view of “Isabelle Street”

Then we move on to the front door. I used the Pin-the-nose-on-Elmo game to make a banner for the door.

On the screen door it says “This party is brought to you by the letter I and the number 2″.

I used the green and yellow from the street sign as theme colors throughout the house. We had 8 of her friends and their parents over for lunch, so I set the table for the kids. It’s fun this year to see them all at the table together. Last year it was all one-year-olds and I didn’t get to use the table for kids to eat.

I made each kid a personalized name tag for the table and set it with the theme plates. I decided to use the cupcakes as the centerpiece, and the kids still actually ate their pizza despite the cake being right in front of them.

Here’s a closer look at the cupcakes

I could have gone more complicated with the cupcakes, but decided that I didn’t need to stress myself out on something that will be eaten by a 2-year-old. Hey, I kept it in the theme and they looked cute on the table, so that’s all that matters.

The last part of the dining room was to hang some pictures of Elmo from the ceiling. We did those last night and Isabelle loved waking up and finding those over the table.

The last part of the decorations was the fireplace, which is where we had all the presents. This showed my perfectionist side, I measured each letter as I made it. They are all exactly the same and it took me way longer than necessary. I have a problem.

Overall- we had a great time. It was casual and the kids played great. Someone commented about how quiet the kids were while eating, pretty amazing.

Funny story of the day. When we were doing presents, of course the kids are all excited. She did pretty good at not letting the other kids unwrap her first present, but I think that may be the only one she got to! As Isabelle was having fun with a bubble bottle and a birthday card, all her friends “helped” her out and opened everything for her. It was hilarious and Isabelle didn’t even seem to notice that she wasn’t doing it at all.

Happy Birthday Isabelle!

I have a couple more posts in the works. In the meantime I need to go Thanksgiving dinner shopping!

Isabelle and I were hanging out around the house today and I decided to try out one of the recipes from my new cookbook!

Isabelle likes to “help” me cook, so we got all set up in the kitchen.

I decided to make the French Breakfast Puffs, which look yummy (maybe because they are covered in sugar!)

We were doing pretty good together. Isabelle got to see the Kitchen Aid in action for the first time and was very excited about it.

I got everything together and put them in the oven. And out came this delicious goodness.

Except, that’s where it all went wrong…

I guess I “lightly greased” the muffin pan a little too lightly. That, combined with filling the muffin tin a little too full, made for a lot of stuck and crumbly muffins. I made my way through the tin trying to save what I could. I let them cool a little longer and then tried to dip them in the butter and sugar coating.

I finished up with these:

This just cracks me up! They looked like a hot mess and I wasn’t sure how it’d turn out. But, they are awesome! The crumbly mess and all. I’ll definitely keep tweaking this and figure out how to make them a little prettier. Until then we’ll be scooping up tiny pieces of muffin.

A month ago I posted this picture on Facebook.

The utilities company needed to fix a major line for our neighborhood and did the majority of the digging in our yard. This was halfway through the digging before I realized that they would have to take down a tree in the process (the one behind the tractor, not the one next to it).

The nice thing is that the city contracts with a landscaping company to put it all back together for you. They ended up having to tear through a portion of our existing garden plot as well, taking out two sections of railroad ties.

Once they took down the tree I saw how much more light gets back in that corner so I asked them to have the stump removed so that they could put a whole new garden in for me.

After a few weeks of me being out of town and snow preventing the work, they finished today! It turned out great and really improved the look of our yard.

Here is my new view from the kitchen window.

And here it is a little bit closer.

Isn’t it great? I now have two garden spots and a path to the shed. I looked through my computer for any “before” pictures I might have, but I didn’t have any. Just picture an overgrown garden area, patchy rock covering and a section of broken fence. I would say we got the better end of this situation. *grin*

We’re also going to put a bench in the path area between the two gardens. The sad thing is this is what the rest of our yard looks like.

I think we are going to save up some money so that next spring we can finish off the look. But for now, I’m starting to think about what I’m going to plant in all my new garden space!

Yesterday afternoon I decided I had a free evening and I probably could go to Denver for the book signing of the Pioneer Woman’s newly released cook book.

Fortunately through the magic that is facebook, my friend B was going with her mom (hi Bijou!) and offered to let me tag along!

We headed on our journey and made it to the store with some time to spare. Or did we? If we had chewed our Chipotle burritos a little faster this may have been a totally different story. We’re slow eaters.

B and Bijou had ordered their books but were still waiting for them to come so the three of us came to the store without our own copies. We headed to the cash register where they were selling copies. Turns out we got in line 4 people too late and the store had ran out of copies. So, we made our way to the signing line to figure out what we wanted to do.

Here is where we were

This is my view for the next 45 minutes. See that light on the right side of the picture? That’s the stairs leading to the room where the signing was happening. We thought we were in line for the signing and instead we were in line to get into the room so we could get in line for the signing. What were we thinking…

I finally decided I needed to go to the bathroom. I squeezed my way through the crowd and actually managed to take this picture (with my hand raised in the air at the back of the crowd).

All these lucky people were participating in a Q & A. Yes, they could see and hear Ree plus, they could actually ask her questions! All the upstairs people were still holding on to some hope that they may get a cookbook signed before midnight!

We got this close to the stairs when we decided we probably should have a copy of the book.

We called around and found three copies available at another nearby bookstore. I stayed in line and B went to go buy them. Remember where I was standing when they left? I was near that lamp when they got back. Yep, they left, got the car, drove to a store and got back during the time it took me to move five feet.

I now had my very own copy. And, I can actually say that this cookbook is gorgeous. On her blog she takes a picture of every step of the recipe and they have incorporated that idea into the book. I have never wanted to make so many recipes out of one cookbook before.

Hey look! We made it to the top of the stairs!

And this is the view I had for the rest of the evening. Yep, we made it four steps down before we realized that there was no order in the main room and the bookstore didn’t have any system for how people were in line (something you should think about if you have two points of access to a room). We think that we actually were moving forward because people were giving up and leaving, not because the line was actually progressing.

It was then that B’s sister-in-law offered to get our books signed for us since she was going to stay. Hooray! So after two hours of waiting we decided to head back home empty-handed. Well, not quite empty-handed. At hour 1 and a 1/2 some Chefs Catalog people showed up and handed out free spatulas.

So what did we learn? If you want to meet Pioneer Woman before midnight at a book signing, show up four hours early with your own copy of the book. Hopefully I’ll actually have my copy later this week.

Here are a couple more pics for the fun of it.

Before we left I went down to the room to get a picture of her. I had the zoom on and this was as close as I got.

The next three pictures is the aerial view of where we spent our evening (think of it as one big panoramic).

B and Bijou are standing where we started.
where we stood most of the evening
we finished right under here on the stairs.

So even though we didn’t get very far I had a fun time, thanks B and Bijou for letting me tag along! And thanks A for getting the autograph for us!

Happy Halloween from A.bby C.adabby!

I had one last piece of Isabelle’s halloween costume that I needed to get finished today. I wasn’t sure how it’d work out- but I had a pretty good idea in my head.

After a $5 trip to Hobby Lobby this morning, I came home with this.

Then I gathered up all my supplies.

Didn’t you know that chocolate chips are a very important part of crafting? Well, they are.
I didn’t get a pic of my first step because I don’t mix saws and cameras. My cheapest option was to buy a long dowel, so I cut it down to size when I got home.

I started out by making the top of the wand. I used pre-cut rug yarn for this step so I wouldn’t have to buy a whole skeen and cut it. I piled the two colors together and then added the rubber band around the middle.

Then I made it poof.

I followed that with wrapping the ribbon around the dowel. I found out when I got home that my white ribbon was see through so I wrapped that twice. I added hot glue in various spots so the ribbon would stay put. The actual wand has colored ribbon crisscrossing around the stick so I added a purple ribbon. I hot glued my puff on the top and came up with this!

This wand is the final step to my A.bby C.adabby costume for Isabelle. Check out the original wand (and Abby):

Stay tuned tomorrow for our version of A.bby C.adabby. I had fun making her costume this year.

Isabelle is turning 2 next month. It’s not hard to believe because, well, we all have birthdays and it has been two years. What’s hard to believe or just fun is to see how much of a little girl she is turning into.

She walks around the house talking, loves reading books, and takes very good care of her stuffed animals. I don’t know if I’m encouraging imagination or in serious need of some new toys, but apparently stuffed elephants can drink from lotion, toothpaste, and little containers (I guess it’s time for doll bottles in the play room, or dolls for that matter).

Our upcoming holidays are going to be a blast with Bue-bo and Buela coming for Thanksgiving AND Christmas (thank goodness for work conferences!). Plus all her aunts and uncles are coming too. She doesn’t know it, but she can hardly wait.

It’s always in my mind to blog a little more. I noticed that I got dropped from one of my friends blogroll- so I’m making my year end goal to get back on it! I’m not just going to ask for it, I’m going to earn it back! If I don’t, feel free to pester me.