Hand-y Cards

I realize that I am about a week late.  But since I had not blogged the practically free cards that Michael and I made for his class Valentine swap I still felt obligated to share.  You could really use this idea for a multitude of things, including thank you cards and invitations.  Simply trace a hand onto construction paper, cut out, fold down fingers to make "I love you" in sign language (or a peace sign, or leave 'em all open for a 'high five') and sign them!  For Michael's class Valentines we also added some cheap heart shaped lollipops from Target.

I will shamelessly brag that I got a text from another Mom saying what a genius idea this was.  I saw a much more refined version elsewhere so I can't take all of the credit.  I feel like Michael really got to do a lot of the leg work on ours, though.  He did the tracing of my hand and wrote out all of the names.  That actually makes me happier than if we had gotten these looking worthy of a pinterest photo shoot.  The best part was that when using my own hand there was ample room for my  lefty preschooler to write all of his friend's names along with his own.  Also, if your child is a little more adept with their fine motor skills (or you have more patience than I) these would be great practice for using scissors and they could own the entire project.

All that writing was hard {and messy} work!

Thirty Three

Happy Birthday

to my 

{hard working, loud, "shy", kid at heart, gangsta'} 

Husband. 

May this be your best year yet.

xoxo,

Me

High Five for Friday

While I would really love to be a vlogging supah-star like my gals Jess, Jenny & Bex.... I am just not.  That doesn't mean that I don't want to share this weeks faves with you!  So here are five things that I am high fivin' this Friday.

• My new GelaSkin!  I do like my Droid phone but I won't lie when I say I have serious envy over the abundance of cute covers for the iPhone.  This company make awesome vinyl "skins" for your smart phone and for almost any device you have.  There is some gorgeous art to choose from.  I wish Sean would go for a PS3 cover, cause that clunky sucker is cramping my living room style.  I got the Sea Garden design, but it was a hard choice.  The sticker goes on really easily, too.  Even I managed to get mine on mostly straight.  

• CeraVe Facial Lotion PM formula.  I recently went back to using benzoil peroxide on my skin after trying with no luck to keep breakouts away without it for the last year.  Pimples are gone, flakes and redness are making themselves at home.  I have been using the CeraVe morning and night with amazing results.  Despite being a "night" cream this still has a thin consistency and makeup goes on nicely over it.  If you are dealing with flaky winter skin, check this stuff out.  It's not fancy but your skin will thank you.  Find it in the drugstore next the Cetaphil and other medicinal looking skin stuff.  I may do a skin care post soon with some of the tricks that have been helping me lately.  

• With all of my whining about the price, I actually did order up a pair of the Toms ballet flats on the day they came out.  I was mostly bummed about the cost because I thought I had a lot more time to save my fairly small bi-monthly personal allowance before the supposed Spring time debut.  I really had my heart set on two pairs.  I went with the gray suede leopard print ones thanks to my lovely Mother in law fronting me some money, she is all kinds of awesome.  I love them.  The sole is much more substantial than the classics yet retain the comfort that I love about Toms.  I will say to go down half to a full size down.  I have wide feet and my normal size is still roomy.  Hopefully they will still have the black and burlap ones by the time I save my pennies!

•  Not saying "hey vote for ME" because I don't feel like I am doing the best job in the style department these days but it's Top 25 Fashion & Beauty Moms voting time.  Please do vote for the blogs who put a ton of work into creating style posts and belong in this category.  Like my friends Teal and Mandy to name a few.  Ok, you can vote for me... that'd be awful nice of you.  

• Last but not least... being old married people. On Wednesday morning, Sean texted me that it was date night.  Babysitter would be there at 5:45 and we were going to the invite only grand opening of a swanky new martini bar in town.  We show up and it is wall to wall people who were clearly there to be seen.  We squished through to get our $14 martinis (except they were free, hello open bar!) and then found a spot near the wall.  "This is so not fun for me, you?"  I said to Sean hoping it didn't hurt his feelings too badly.  "Oh thank goodness, this is so not us."  So we downed our fancy drinks and hightailed it over to our favorite steakhouse in the same shopping center. We sat in the bar eating tempura bacon -you heard me- giggling about what NON party people we are. We also spent a good 45 minutes smelling candles in Anthropologie and picking out a cute mug for our babysitter. See?  Old.  

Misikko Review

I am a fan of hair tools.  I love frying my hair into submission.  I have very thin, sometimes curlyish, sometimes straight do nothing hair.  Right now I also have too short to be nothing but too long to be something bangs.  Now, more than ever, I love being able to use my flat iron or curling iron to make some magic happen.

I have been using a CHI 1" ceramic iron for years.  Never really had too much of a complaint.  When I was contacted by Misikko (purveyors of some sweet professional hair straighteners), however, I was pretty intrigued by the thought of using a professional grade titanium flat iron!

If you have read any of the reviews done by other bloggers about Misikko, you may be familiar with the extravagant packaging.  There really isn't any way to prepare you for how fun it is to get a huge box of goodies, though!  It almost made me look around, like "Really?!  For me?!"   My favorite extra is the rubber mat that protects your counter tops from being damaged from the heat of styling tools.  I am sure my landlord is thankful for this gift as well.  

The iron I received is a 1.5" Hana Titanium.  A great feature of the iron is that you can choose your heat setting.  Now, I will say that the first time I stayed on the lower end of the temperature range.  With super fine hair I wanted to stay on the safe side for my first try with a non ceramic iron.  At the lower heat setting I actually disliked the iron, it pulled my hair a bit and didn't get it as smooth as my CHI.  Honestly, I was kind of bummed. 

I decided to fire the Hana up for another go at flat iron curls yesterday so I could truly give an accurate review.  With nothing to lose (and a healthy dose of heat protecting spray!) I cranked the heat up all the way. With the heat on high, I actually loved the results I got.  You could see a huge difference in shine from the pieces that had been done to the the pieces that had not yet been curled. My ceramic iron does not have heat settings and often makes my hair look a little crispy when I am not careful curling my hair with this technique.  Not only that, but after taking the above photo I laid with Griffin, took a long walk and then SLEPT on my hair... and today it still has some nice wave action going on.  

Overall I am pleased with the iron, the lovely customer service at Misikko and the new weapon in my hair arsenal.  Now to add a kick-A CHI hair dryer to my wish list...

Efficiency

What can I say, I'm efficient.  My children are exactly 3 years and 9 days apart.  On this day (actually just after midnight) two years ago my sweet Mama's boy, Griffin Matthew, arrived.

Two years later and he really is just as adorable.  Our Griff is a bit of a tough guy.  At church, he has been in the two year old room for months because he is pretty rough and tumble to say the least.  His favorite activities include jumping from high places and wrestling with his brother.

He is a very good talker and has started to use full sentences.  He is light years ahead of where Michael was at this age with his verbal skills.  He also is a huge fan of vegetables.  Yep, you read that right.  He would eat an entire bell pepper if I would let him.  Some Moms wait until nap time to eat chocolate... I have to wait until nap time to eat my salads!  Again, a polar opposite to his brother.

He is only cuddly with me, every one else gets the stiff arm.  And I wouldn't have it any other way...

Happy second birthday, sweet boy!!  

An Interview With My Five Year Old

This is slightly belated, my dear sweet boy turned FIVE on the nineteenth, but I wanted to post his answers to this birthday interview we did last week.  

1. What is your favorite color? Red
2. What is your favorite toy? Legos, because you can build lots of creations
3. What is your favorite fruit? Strawberries, duh!  (yes, he really said that)
4. What is your favorite TV show? Octonauts
5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Turkey sandwiches with cheese on them
6. What is your favorite outfit? Fireman suit and a hat.  Of course.
7. What is your favorite game? Don't Break the Ice
8. What is your favorite snack? Goldfishie crackers
9. What is your favorite animal? Fish!  (one of his gifts was a betta fish, so he is slightly obsessed at the moment)
10. What is your favorite song?  All the songs on Austin & Ally (if you don't know what this is, consider yourself lucky)
11. What is your favorite book? Yertle the Turtle
12. Who is your best friend?  Moss
13. What is your favorite cereal?  Panda Puffs
14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Make sand castles
15. What is your favorite drink? Lemonade
16. What is your favorite holiday? Christmas
17. What do you take to bed with you at night? My teddy bear and my Blitz.  He's the Seahawks mascot, you know. 
18. What is your favorite thing to have for breakfast?  Pancakes.  With syrup on top.  I don't like blueberries.  But, they are healthy for your body.
19. What do you want for your birthday dinner?  Steak.  And other... stuff. 
20. What do you want to be when you grow up?  A fire fighter!!

A Very Pinterest Christmas

I am a little slow on the uptake and have only just begun really following through on the things that I pin.  With so many awesome holiday things on my boards, I decided there was no better time than Christmas to take these ideas to real life.

First thing we did was make lasagna roll ups for our Christmas eve dinner.   They were just alright, but looking back at the recipe (I glanced at it once and then took to the kitchen - oops) it was definitely user error.  I made a critical mistake in not putting marinara sauce inside the roll ups.  I also added thawed frozen chopped spinach to them... could have sworn it was in the recipe but it wasn't so the proportions were off and the cheesy part was dry.

"Hey, look!  I am doing it wrong."

While Sean bathed the boys I put my next plan into action, the Minivan Express.  As soon as I saw this idea I knew that I just had to do it in some form.  Reading The Polar Express on Christmas eve was a tradition of my family growing up and who doesn't love driving around to look at Christmas lights?!  Our printer was out of ink so I knew the tickets wouldn't look very cool as printed.  I printed them off black and white and then mounted them on a piece of sparkly gold scrapbook paper and some red tag board.  When the kids got out of the bath, their matching pajamas had these laying on top.

I opted to not do any special snacks for the ride like the pin suggests because the kids were already a little hopped up on sugar from our other activities of the day so we just did cups of milk and played the Justin Bieber "Mistletoe" album as our soundtrack.  I am already looking forward to doing this again next year and will put even more effort into making the tickets special - I did these on Saturday afternoon in between 87 other things I was trying to get done at the last minute!  I think it would also be pretty awesome to decorate the inside of the van as a surprise.

Later that night, as Sean and I begun the task of being ninja elves to move our Christmas tree, assemble toys, and do last minute wrapping I also prepped our breakfast.  I did a specific search for breakfast casseroles and nothing sounded just right.  Then I happened upon a french toast casserole recipe that sounded easy AND like something everyone would eat (which is kind of crucial, right?).   It came together much easier than the combo fire + police station Sean was building and the next morning it was a hit. So much so that I didn't even take a picture.  It really didn't look too much different than the gorgeous food blogger picture, though, so lets just pretend this was my version.

How about you?  Did you try any new projects this holiday season?