A Perfect Playspace...

Since Christmas is officially over I felt compelled to get the decorations down. I usually leave them up until after New Year's but to be honest I am kind of tired of pulling the little one out of the tree!

Here she is helping pre tangle the lights for next year.

Overseeing Daddy taking the lights down

After getting the Christmas tree cleared out we decided that the empty space left behind would be perfect for a play area for the little one. Here is Daddy testing it out during the nap time!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Holiday Festivities...

This year for Christmas we went to visit my folks in Wilmington. We had a great time! It was wonderful to get out of town for a few days and for the little one to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa. Here are a few pics from our holiday.

Grandma had an awesome play area set up for the little one when we got there! Here she is helping to create a masterpiece!

Opening a gift on Christmas morning.

Here is Grandma showing off one of the the little one's new shirts, this one was sent by her aunt and uncle.

It is so CUTE!
It has a real sock monkey face built onto the front!
I'm sure pictures of her modeling it will soon appear.

After she tore into all of her own gifts she decided to help Daddy!

Here is Grandpa showing off his traditional gift from Mom a smoked sausage! LOL!!!

A total guilty pleasure for him!

Thanks so much to Mom and Dad for having us!

Totally Baked!

Last night I began my holiday baking. Below is my sugar cookie dough resting in the fridge. Doesn't it look yummy?! Like a big blob of pizza dough!

While waiting for that magic transformation of my dough I made these peanut butter kiss cookies. I have never made them before but have eaten tons of them over the years. They are simple to do, I used the recipe off the Hershey's Kiss bag.

I had a little help from one of the little one's Little People, Maggie. Didn't realize that she was there cheering me on until I reviewed the pics!

I ate the rejects, so the one you see with the crooked kiss was all mine!

This morning I tackled the sugar cookies.

It took me almost 4 hours to bake and decorate them, and that was with me slacking towards the end. Notice only a few of the Santa's have bow ties...

Hubby even helped by putting some stripes on the candy canes for me!

My favorites have to be the Christmas trees. I think they turned out the best.

I used a powder sugar/ vanilla glaze to cover and to hold the sprinkles on and then piped icing around the edge.


Looking at all the pictures while I type this has made want to go eat. Happy Monday! I'm going to go bite the head off a snowman!

Lights and Snuggies, Oh my!

For the first time since moving here we finally made it to the Festival of Lights . In year's past we have been to lazy to go but now that we have the kid to impress we felt the time was right! This was 20th year the park has done the light display and they certainly have a variety!

Love that hubby caught the picture as the clock was chiming and the mouse ran round! Bong!

Noah's Ark

One of the little one's favorite, since she has an ark and animals at home, thanks to Grandma, who keeps trying to get some religion in to her life. :)

Magical elves and even the old lady and her shoe!

In other exciting news, the little one got a super awesome Christmas gift from one of her favorite auntie's! A SNUGGIE!!!!

Here she is modeling it in all of it's neon hot pink glory! This is the kid size so it will be wearable until she is probably about 15 or 5 ft tall, which ever comes first! It also came with matching slipper socks which she immediately put on and the wore as sock/leg warmers for the rest of the night! I think she's in love with her new snuggie!
Happy Friday!

Picture perfect...

Smocked Dress Madness, Episode 2...

For those of you that have been reading my blog since the beginning, you know that I love shopping for the little one, especially if it is at bargain prices! Today was the first day of the twice yearly Rosalina dress sale here in town. Some of you have probably read my posts about the sale before. Rosalina is a wholesale distributor but twice a year they open to the public. It brings out every crazy mommy and grand mommy from all over the state! Some of these women are like vultures, grabbing every outfit they can manage to hang onto. It can be somewhat ruthless! Even though pictures will eventually be taken of her in each and every outfit and posted on my flickr site, I just get so excited about my purchases I have to show them off asap, especially to my mom and sisters!

I think I did pretty good this time, I was on a mission to get a Christmas outfit, which I did as well as a few other cute things. Due to major budget cutbacks in our household this time I had a set spending amount, I showed great restraint and I feel like I made some good choices. It is tough to decide when there are SO many cute things and they are constantly bringing out new stuff. I had to put my blinders on big time!

So here are the latest additions to the little one's wardrobe!

The Christmas outfit!

I love that it is pants not a dress, as my mom said "it will make it easy for her to run around and open all of her loot come Christmas!"

Christmas Outfit #2

Doesn't seem like I showed much restraint buying 2 Xmas outfits, but I really couldn't decide...At least now she will have something festive for Christmas Eve also (that's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

Sailboat Dress

Fish Dress

Little one loves fish!

Chocolate and Pink Dress

Now that the Christmas dress is purchased it is time to go visit Santa! I hope that it goes as well as the visit to the Easter Bunny did. I think we are going to try to tackle that on Sunday, if she screams it still gives me time to do a few photo shoots with her at home once I get the decorations out for the card photo.

Keep your fingers crossed Santa doesn't scare the hell out of her!

Black Friday at People of Walmart

Everyday during the little one's nap time is my computer time, time to check emails, facebook, and catch up on my blogs. There are certain sites I check daily and others that I may check once a week or so. One of my daily looks is a website that I have posted about here before called People of Walmart.com. Today when I looked this gem of a picture popped up...

.

This poor little fella looks like he is going to be crushed by his family's new shop vac and motor scooter! What the hell was this person thinking?! There are just so many things wrong with this!I guess bargains, not safety come first in his family!

Happy Monday!

Blah, Blah, Blah...

Nothing new and exciting going on around here, so here is a cute collage of the little one to tide you over...

Happy Saturday!

When will it end?

We have hit an interesting stage with the little one.

A stage where she goes from happy little girl to...

a screaming banshee in the blink of an eye!

Today we had our first, but certainly not the last, incidence of public embarrassment. We had been out running errands and when I went to put the precious little one in the car seat to go home she decided that she had NO DESIRE to cooperate! She screamed, she flailed about, she played dead, she all around made me work up a sweat getting her fastened in. All the while the lady in the car next to us, with the window down, witnessed the whole thing! Lovely.

The way the little one was screaming you would have thought that I was beating the crap out of her with a sharp stick! Although I have to admit I was half tempted later after we got home and another tantrum erupted over a simple diaper change.

I was fortunate enough to have a friend stop by to witness that episode. This same friend just days earlier had said, as the little one was snuggled up on her lap for a story, "She is so sweet it almost makes me want one!"

She rethought that quickly as she helped me hold down the little one long enough to get a diaper on her!

Her pants didn't make it back on until well after lunch!

:)

We Survived...

Yesterday was the little one's strabismus eye surgery. We have known for almost a year that surgery was going to be the most likely outcome in her particular case. We are relieved that it has finally come and gone and that it went as smooth as it did. The little one did great and was a real trooper. We hope that she will not need further surgery although we know that that is a possibility. Here are a few pics of our day and the aftermath!

The little one in the pre-op room, not happy as you can see! She was thoroughly unimpressed with the id bracelet on her ankle!

After her drugs kicked in she felt much better!

She didn't even cry when her doctor came in to talk before surgery, which is a first. She normally screams at the site of him!

The marks above her eye designate the surgery area aka let's not be stupid and amputate a leg instead of fixing the eyes!

The nurses in post op told us to expect her to be sleepy the rest of the day but after scarfing down two Popsicles, a glass of juice and a few crackers
in the recovery room she was amped and ready to play the afternoon away. By the time we arrived home she was happy and ready to eat again!


Today the eyes are very red as you can see in the picture but not nearly as bad as what I had imagined that they would be. Hopefully it will only take a few weeks for the bruising to go away.

She was thrilled to receive flowers and balloons from her Aunt and Uncle. They made her day and will definitely help occupy her this week while we are recovering!
Happy Wednesday!

Fall Fun!

Sister and her hubby came down south for a fall visit, I tried to keep them entertained with fun fall activities. The pictures are in random order and I am to lazy to rearrange in the sequence that they actually happened!

At the corn maze! The little one lucked out Daddy was willing to carry her! The rest of us didn't realize how HOT is was going to be and worked up a real sweat getting through it!

Sister's amazing pumpkin!

My hubby's not so amazing pumpkin in the background! (his is Elmo in case anyone was wondering!)

My pumpkin, which I worked hard on to redeem myself after last year's fiasco! A happy goblin, with brother-in-law's traditionally carved one in the background.

Me and Sister showing off our festive shirts courtesy of mom!

Halloween cookies baked with love for the neighbors! Who am I kidding it was 6 labor intensive hours of baking! I totally thought I could just whip these out in no time! At least I now know what to expect for Christmas!

At the Fair

Merry-Go-Round with Daddy

Her first fair game! It was tough, picking up a duck out of a pool! She won a stuffed lizard!
(the toughest thing about this game was keeping her from jumping in the pool!)

We all enjoyed having the family here! I wish they could have stayed longer!

Happy Halloween!

Saturday Stuff...

This morning the little one and I went into town, Saturday's are pretty active in the small downtown area where we live because we have a great small farmers market in the mornings. The little one and I picked up a delicious loaf of cinnamon raisin bread from the Rococo bakery that has a stand there. Yummy!

Today was also the annual book sale for the town library. The Timrod Library is a private library in a cute little historic building in town. We scored this barely used Elmo book that makes noises and a classic little Bert and Ernie book for the little one. She carried the Elmo book around the whole time!

I also managed to find some Japanese flower arranging books for mom for the bargain price of 50cents apiece! (Mom- hope you don't have all of these, the driftwood book has some really neat pics!)

I got myself a few fiction books also for bargain prices! Love a good book sale!

After the trip into town I attempted to take another stab at getting the little one's picture taken in her Halloween costume so I can finish the Halloween cards. This time I had hubby as reinforcement but as you can see the princess was in no mood to to pose.

Hope you all are having a great Saturday!

Picture Phone Friday...

Random pics from the cell phone...

On the Big Kid's Swing

I Think I Have a New Tooth Coming In!

That's A Big Burrito!

Cracking Herself Up!


Improper Use Of Toys!

Happy Friday!!!!