bye bye

Someone learned to wave bye bye last night and I caught it on video this morning after she waved bye to Jalissa when she left.

Watching them learn new things is so fun!

thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving. This year we didn't have to be anywhere until noon on Thursday and that was wonderful - it was so nice to relax in the morning, let Lily get a good nap in and then hit the road to spend time with family. First stop was at Grandma and Grandpa Smedley's for a full fledge homemade Thanksgiving feast. Esther is quite the cook and makes everything from scratch - it was so yummy! Luckily I'm not a huge Thanksgiving food fan so I don't have too much trouble passing on some things and trying to keep my plate to reasonable portions. My favorite is Esther's sweet potatoes - so so good. She makes them with sweet potatoes from her own garden and adds just enough sweetness to them to make them delicious but not too sweet. We spent majority of the afternoon catching up with family we don't see very often and had a really great time before heading back to Cedar Falls for dinner at our place with my family! Thankfully our family agreed not to do the whole Thanksgiving spread since most of us were having it somewhere else so we opted for appetizers and soup for dinner. Which made it easy for me to host! We had a small crowd this year as my sister and brother alternate families for Thanksgiving and Christmas and so they were both out of town at their in-laws this year. For dinner it was my parents, my grandma, my sister and brother in law, Jimmy, Lily and I. My mom brought the soup and rolls and my sister brought dessert and salad, and that left me with making buffalo dip and cutting up some fruit - pretty easy huh?! We enjoyed our meal then spent some time hanging out, making our plans for Black Friday shopping, playing some cards, and then cleaning up before hitting the stores.
I love (almost) everything about this time of year - the except to that would be the weather. I love that it's a time set aside to reflect on the blessings we've been given and spend time with family. I love the memories I have of Thanksgiving and Christmas growing up as a kid, and am excited to create traditions with our own family too. I love having some time off work to be with families, I love decorating the house for Chrismas just before, or after, Thanksgiving, I love shopping for the perfect gift for everyone on your list, and so much more. Unfortunately this is always such a busy time of year that it always passes too quickly but I love every minute of it.
I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving as well!

with gma grover - lily's face in this picture cracks me up!

family pic

with gma & gpa grover

thankful #26-50

My continued list of thanksgiving - 25 more...........

26. Iphones
27. The challenge of a new project
28. Finding the perfect gift for someone
29. My new leopard print wedges that I've been on the hunt for and finally found
30. An unplanned visit from my best friend this Saturday!
31. Diet Coke :)
32. Biggest Loser because as I watched it while working out last night it inspired me to run 1.5mph faster on the treadmill
33. Hobby Lobby
34. Plans for Thanksgiving that involves family - can you imagine not having anywhere to go or anyone to celebrate with - sad!
35. Christmas at Walnut volunteer opportunities - this is an upcoming event at our church that Jimmy and I are volunteering at
36.  Awesome weather
37.  Afternoon walks with Lily
38. Late night bedroom chats and giggles with Jimmy
39. Pictures to capture memories
40. Putting together our first family Christmas card
41. Wedding shower and bachelorette party planning
42. Realizing your jeans are too big and it may be time to finally buy a smaller size
43. Generous people
44. Our new small group
45. Chunky sweaters
46. Our warm fireplace 
47. Birthdays
48. Making new hairbows for Lily (and others)
49. Finding a healthy version of a favorite not so healthy food
50. My hair rollers and teasing brush

projects

I've been working on a few projects lately. Pinterest, I'll tell you just gets my wheels turning! I also went to a craft fair a few weekends ago and found so many things that were so unique and cool but were so expensive. So I figured, why not figure out how to make them myself? Now of course I'll sell them to you if you are interested in buying them but I promise they won't be at craft fair prices - it's crazy how expensive some things are!


So here's what my creativity has been up to lately.

• Tulle wreaths. This was something I saw at the craft fair and thought was so cute! They had some at a baby booth, with the intent that you would hang them in a kids room or nursery, and then I also saw them in a Christmas booth in Christmas colors with other Christmas decor. So I thought I'd give it a try and I must saw for my first one it turned out pretty good. The first one I did is in pink and black - I was thinking I'd use it for Christmas with a green bow but I don't think it looks too Christmasy so I may use it on Lily's door without the bow since her bedroom is pink and black! Thinking maybe I'll do one all pink and use the green bow for that.

• New bow hanger. Lily's bow board was overflowing. She has tons of bows and I couldn't even see some of them because of the way I had them organized on her board and there was just too many! So I made her one of the bow hangers that I sell with her initial but experimented with a little bling this time and I like it - what do you think?

• Vintage fabric bows. I've seen a variation of this bow in a number of places, including pinterest and the craft show and love them. I had bought the supplies to make these at Hobby Lobby a while back but just hadn't taken the time to do it, until now :) And I LOVE the finished product. I experimented with the number of pin wheels in a cluster and like the bunch of 3, 4, and 5 but I really like the flexibility to mix and match them. These seriously go with so many things in Lily's closet. I also think they look pretty good in big people's hair too - in fact my sister has already put in her order :)

So that's some of the creative things I've been up to lately - I love spending my time creating new things. I wish I had more time to do them, maybe someday.....:)

Let me know if you are interested in any of these things, I'd love to make them for you!

6 months

Lily is 6 months old today - half a year already!


Once again I feel like she has grown so much this past month. Not only in her development but her personality too! She definitely keeps us on our toes as she reachs for everything, we often say "she's always in your business", she is now sitting up totally on her own and really likes to sit up when she plays, she reachs to be held and whines until you do so:), she has started crying when I leave the room :(, she was dedicated at church, she grabs for everything and will wiggle her way out of your arms to get to it, she's been doing lots and lots of rolling over to get things, she's drinking out of her camelback and just recently a sippy cup, and she's started to eat big girl food - we gave her rice cereal for the first time last night and gave her bananas this morning with her rice cereal. We also broke her of the habit of her sleeping in our bed. Not sure if I had mentioned this previously but we found her sleeping in our bed consistently after I had let her a few times when she had a cold and Jimmy was out of town (amazing how quickly something becomes habit). So we did a revised version of letting her cry it out about a week ago and so far so good! She cried for over an hour the first night but the last few nights have been little to no crying and she's sleeping entirely through the night without a feeding or needing her paci put back in or anything - it's wonderful for us all!


Her weight this month was 20 lbs 5 oz and heigh is 28 inches. She's near the top of the charts on both height and weight!


Aside from those things she continues to be such a good, happy baby. Her eyes light up when she recognizes someone she knows, her little arms stretching up for you to pick her up is just priceless, and her baby babble and giggles is such a sweet sweet sound.


It's unbelievable how fast they grow but each milestone is so much fun to witness. I love to watch her discover new things, play with her daddy, wiggle, stretch and squarm until she can reach something, and the way she snuggles up when she's sleepy. She is such a joy and a blessing to us and there's not a day that goes by that I don't thank God for a healthy, beautiful baby.


We love you to pieces baby girl - happy 6 month birthday!

sitting up like a big girl - like the new style of bow i made?!

smiles!

silly grin - this has been a common face lately

boo

checking out the blanket

lookin' like her daddy

thankful #1-25

In light of the upcoming holidays I thought I would help prepare my heart for this season by writing a series of thankful blogs. My plan is to write 25 things I'm thankful for for the two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. I'm going to omit the common ones because I feel like those are no brainers. We all know how much I love and am so very thankful for my husband, my baby girl, my family and my in-laws. I want to challenge my brain to think about the other things I'm thankful for, so here's my list of thanksfulness for this week:

1. My morning iced coffee.
2. My part time job that allows me to work from home.
3. Baby babble and laughter - is there a sweeter sound?
4. My Women's Bible study.
5. A new friendship.
6. The beauty of a first snow - now you can melt :)
7. Homemade applesauce.
8. The memories created while making homemade applesauce.
9. Movie dates with my mom.
10. A fun night babysitting my niece and nephew.
11. Pinterest.
12. Tomato soup and grilled cheese on a cold and rainy day.
13. Our 2 "nannies" who are so good with Lily and love her bunches.
14. A comfy couch with lots of blankets to snuggle up in at the end of the day.
15. Mid day naps.
16. Watching Lily discover something new.
17. A healthy body that allows me to run.
18. Crockpot dinners that make dinner time a little easier.
19. A new winter coat.
20. Jimmy being home for the last few weeks and no more work trips scheduled for the near future!
21. New receipes that we both like.
22. Lily's sleep schedule and sleeping through the entire night without a feeding or having to get up to put her paci back in!!
23. The anticipation of Black Friday - do you know Target opens at 12am this year?!
24. A childless stroll through Target with a peppermint mocha in hand.
25. Bath and Body Works candles burning all day.

family pictures

My good friend Bailey King has a photography business and was so good about squeezing us in last minute for a mini family photo shoot because I needed a few updated pics for our Christmas card. I had her come to our house because I wanted them to be casual and homey and they turned out great. I think she even commented at one point "are you ok with that crockpot being in the background?" :)


The only disappointment I had was that I had made a "Merry Christmas" banner for us to hold up in some of the shots for something fun and different - well guess who forgot to get the banner out?! I was so annoyed with myself!


I can't post all the good ones because that will take away the element of surprise on the Christmas card but here's a sneak peak!


Thanks so much Bailey - you are so talented and it's been fun to watch this passion of yours grow and turn into a business! We appreciate your flexibility with our crazy family!

applesauce

Last weekend my sister, mom and I spent the afternoon making homemade applesauce with my grandma. Last year we did apple buter and this year we decided to switch it up and do applesauce. I LOVE applesauce so I was really excited. We don't eat much apple butter - not that we don't like it - we just don't eat much bread so I knew applesauce would go much quicker at our house. My parents went to an apple orchard a few weekends ago and brought back tons of apples so that's what we used for our applesauce. The whole process was actually pretty easy - we peeled and sliced the apples, added a little water, a little sugar and let that come to a boil and simmer for a while. The boiling and simmering makes the apples breakdown and become the consistency of applesauce. From there we let it cool off and then put it in our containers. We got about 30 containers of applesauce out of 1.5 buschels of apples. So divided among us we got quite a few containers and I must admit we've already eaten 3 at our house - yummy yummy!

the apples boiling

getting them in containers

sister jacinda

grandma and mom

a month of firsts & giggles

first taste of melon

first solo road trip with mommy to see these guys

sitting up all by myself

first time eating a puff thanks to her friend lily



first swing ride



and double swing ride with friend lily

first halloween