Saugatuck Getaway

This past weekend Chad and I took a belated 10th anniversary trip to Saugatuck, MI. It was wonderful! Truthfully, just sitting in a car together for almost five hours and being able to talk in complete sentences and listen to whatever we wanted on the radio without having to console a crying baby or put on Disney Princess songs was a blessing. We stayed two nights--two gloriously, uninterrupted nights--at a cute B&B right in the center of town so we were able to walk to just about everything. The food there was incredibly good (stuffed blueberry French toast, anyone?) and we spent our time walking around, coffee in hand, going to all the cute shops and visiting a few beaches.

It was lovely. And I took lots of pictures.

And despite the peacefulness and lack of responsibility, we missed these two like crazy and couldn't wait to get home to them. Lack of silence and all :)

~Stacy

DIY Bean Bag Chair

Last week I found a tutorial on how to make a kid's bean bag chair on Pinterest, which you can find by clicking here. It looked like a super easy and quick project to make--and it was!

I bought some cute fabric at JoAnn's that was in clearance for $4 a yard. I bought 1 5/8 yards--which was just enough with a tiny bit extra to make this (I used regular quilting weight cotton, which was 43" wide. If you use home dec fabric, like the tutorial suggests, you won't need as much yardage since it's wider).

I also found the bean bag filling at JoAnn's, which came in a giant bag full of small foam balls. This stuff isn't cheap, I discovered, and I needed two bags (one bag was 2 cubic feet and the chair requires 3.5). Thankfully I had coupons, otherwise I wouldn't have made this project since the cost for the bean bag filling would have been quite a bit more than just buying a finished bean bag chair somewhere.

I also only used a 12" zipper instead of a 22" since that was all I had on hand and I forgot to buy one at the store. This was fine, other than making filling the bag a bit of a challenge. A messy challenge.

Behold.

Filling the chair is the most difficult part of this project, and really it isn't that bad--it took about 10 minutes to get the chair full. In total, this was a 30 minute project--seriously. I made it while Elise was napping and Charlotte was eating lunch. Those are my favorite kinds of projects!

Charlotte has quickly become a huge fan of her new bean bag chair. Since it's filled with foam balls it's super light, so she carries it from room to room as she pleases. It has also been outside and used as a landing pad off the deck--which I vetoed after several dozen jumps, fearing that the seams would just burst apart and I'd have to refill the thing completely. So now the rule is that the bean bag chair must remain indoors and not get jumped on from a height greater than two feet. Sigh.

I tried it out myself as well--and it really is quite comfy!

Happy Sewing.

~Stacy

First Home Quilt

A couple weeks ago two of our best friends came to visit from Pittsburgh and it was lovely. We don't get to see them nearly as often as we'd like, but we had a fantastic day with them nevertheless. They recently moved into a place of their own (yay!) and to celebrate I made them a quilt. It was my first project in months (aside from a T-shirt dress I made Charlotte, which really only involved sewing a gathered strip of fabric to a store bought tank top). It felt good to make something again, though it was a little bit of a task to take on with only 9 days to make it before they arrived! I like a challenge though, so it was good.

This quilt went together really quickly and is made up of 8" blocks, 5x8, plus a border. All the fabrics are from JoAnn's.

Welcome to my "studio" where I have two supervisors. One sleeps a lot and the other enjoys playing with plastic Easter eggs in August. 

I admit, I had a hard time parting with this one. I love the yellow/gray combo and it looked so fresh and bright on my porch and the living room! But I managed to let it go and I hope its new owners love it as well :)

Happy Sewing.

~Stacy

First Day of Pre-K

Monday was Charlotte's first day of school. It's her second year of preschool--same school, same teacher, but this year she's in Pre-K. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. She'll technically be old enough to start Kindergarten next August, but we're leaning heavily toward having her start at age six instead of five. That makes me feel a little bit better about this whole Pre-K business, knowing that I still have two years before I need to face the music and send her off to school. On a bus. Without me.

Cue this face:

But whether she goes to "big girl school" in one year or two, the fact remains: my sweet baby girl is growing up. She has friends and teachers that she interacts with when I'm not there. She has favorite toys there, and her own supply box, and an assigned seat at her classroom table. She has her own coat hook and someone else helps her hang it up. She sings songs there that I haven't taught her and learns rhymes I don't know and comes home with new and interesting things to tell me that she heard about in a book read by someone who isn't me. She has this whole little world that's hers and hers alone. I'm excited for her future and watching that little world of hers grow and grow into a big, wonderful world that she will take by storm. But still. It's bittersweet.

She was excited to go back to school. I think it helped that her teacher is the same--and one she adores--as last year. It's one less big change for this girl who has had a summer of big changes. As with most four year olds, change is not typically a welcome thing. Especially when it involves losing your "only child" status in the blink of an eye and having your world rocked more than a few times over that. I can't personally relate to what it feels like to get a new sibling since I was the youngest. I can imagine how tough it would be but without any memories to pull from I can't truly understand exactly what she's been dealing with. Nevertheless, I'm very proud of her. We have had our fair share of challenging moments and difficult days but she has never been anything but kind and loving toward her baby sister, always. 

For now, I'm happy to see her back at school and having her own world to enjoy for awhile each week. Until it's time to start Kindergarten. Then you can find me at her bus stop. I'll be the one in a heap in the grass, sobbing and making people wonder if I need a hug or an ambulance. 

~Stacy

One Month

Well hello. Somehow the past three weeks since my last post have flown by. Somehow ;)

It could be because of this:

She's had her big blue eyes open a lot more lately--sometimes at appropriate times, like when the sun is out, and sometimes not, like at 3AM. Thankfully she's pretty easy to please, so long as she's being held when she's awake. Thanks to the magic of the Baby Bjorn, this is doable.

She turned a month old last Monday. One month! She's definitely growing; she's exactly nine whole pounds now and she grew 1.25" since birth. Her little thighs and cheeks are filling out and she's all sorts of delicious.

I love this baby. She started smiling over the weekend (real smiles, not just accidental ones) and I forgot how incredibly cute it is when a tiny baby smiles at you. I could have a terrible day and one little smile and coo from that baby is like magic medicine. She is spectacular :)

~Stacy

Official Photos

Last week and the week before Elise had her first "real" photo shoot, taken by my very talented friend Rachael of Blue Teapot Photography. All photos are by her--check out her website at www.blueteapotphotography.com. If you need photos done and you live in the area, this is the person to choose. She has the patience of a saint and her photos are all beautiful and as simple and natural as possible.

I'm in love with all of these photos! They turned out perfectly--and Elise is sleeping in 99% of them. If they'd been taken this week she'd be sleeping in maybe 10% of them ;)

I can't choose a favorite...I love them all. But if I had to pick, I'd pick the one of her sleeping in a basket in the woods. And the one of Charlotte giving her a kiss. But let's be honest, the real showstopper here is the very last photo in the bunch. An instant classic if I ever saw one, and the result of what a real photo shoot looks like with two kids at the end of a long session after one has recently tripped and skinned both knees and hands and the other has decided she needs to drink a bottle RIGHT NOW OR SHE WILL DIE.

And now for the best...

~Stacy

Side by Side

When Elise was first born I didn't think she looked too much like Charlotte as a newborn, but I quickly changed my mind. After a few days it became pretty obvious that the two of them are sisters. Just for fun, I went through some of Charlotte's newborn pictures from her first week of life to compare and I was pretty surprised just how much they look alike (in each of these, Charlotte is on the left and Elise on the right):

I think the one that strikes me most is the one with my Grandma holding them (and that was a total accident that I ended up taking pretty much the same photo four years apart). In that photo I think they look identical. Also my grandma doesn't age, ever.

And from today, another adorable side by side:

:) They're my best.

~Stacy