Long time no see, here's baby number three!

Wow so it's been like a year and a half since my last blog post?  I have had a lot going on.  Like, a lot a lot.  I'll do a quick little overview and then (maybe?) do at least some sort of periodic updates.

First up: I now work outside the home full time.  I'm in "Documents and Records Management" which is essentially lots of computer and database work.  I like it; it's something I'm good at, and I have some great coworkers.

Second: we bought a new house.  We needed some more room, and this house delivers.  We love it!  There's still some boxes to unpack and spaces that we have to figure out how to organize, but so far so good.

Third: We had a third baby!

Not only did we have so much going on, it was all happening at the same time.  I started working in January, at the beginning of my third trimester, and worked right up until the day before I delivered at 41 weeks 6 days.  I was pregnant, working full time, we moved in with my MIL for a little bit to sell our old house, got our house sold, bought a new one, moved again, bought a new truck for my husband, and had a baby.  The new house, truck, and baby all happened in April, while both of us were working full time and sharing childcare duties at home, and while I was very pregnant.

We have opposite schedules so we only need help with the kids for 3 hours Monday and 3 hours Tuesday- the rest of the time there's a parent home.  It's been working really well for us, and we're managing to still find time to be a family together most days.  Everything has been so frantic, it's time to try and find our new groove.


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Tagging up the Holidays

The holidays are quickly approaching which means there will be lots of family, food, and GIFTS!!  I love giving gifts and seeing my family open them, and I'm usually just as excited as they are for their presents.  I will admit though, that I've never been a huge fan of wrapping.  I'm more about what's inside than presentation, and I like the ease and convenience of gift bags.

I was at the craft store recently and when I saw these brown paper gift bags I had a great idea!!  I decided to find myself some pretty glittery paper, use my Silhouette Cameo to create custom tags for the gift recipients, and my work would be done.  Cute, personalized gift wrapping without all the folding and trying to make neat corners and smooth out the lumps in my wrapping paper.

I just used my text tool to create a name (my sister, Tania's), added a .5 inch offset, then a .25 inch circle in the corner of the offset background for a little twine to go.  And that's all!!  Super quick and easy :)

~B
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My DIY Woven Wrap and Grad Dye- Part 2

Moving on to the fun part!  Color.  In my part 1 post I went over babywearing in general, fabric choice, and prepping my fabric.  Next it was time to dye, and since I've never dyed anything before, I was nervous.  And I experimented (and failed), but I did my best to fix my mistakes and while it's not perfectly smooth, I have to say I love love LOVE my colors!!  I'm so excited.

LOVE

My DIY Woven Wrap and Grad Dye- Part 1

I'm a babywearer.  It's fun, it's a great mommy hobby since I have two toddlers trailing me 24/7 (may as well include them!), and it's just a great way to keep your babies close and to carry them without lugging around a heavy infant carseat or loading and unloading a stroller every time you have to go to the store.  It can help you get dinner cooked when you have a kiddo who just needs to be near Mommy right this second, it can bring forth wonderful naps when you've given up hope of naps, and for me right now with a 3 year old and a 1.5 year old, it means I can actually run errands and go to the store and keep track of two crazy active littles. I'm even one of the leaders of a babywearing group here in Las Vegas; the Vegaroos.

Go me!

Hey everyone!  Remember my last post where I entered my project into Silhouette America's weekly challenge?  Well guess what?  I WON!!!!  I'm so excited, I won credit for the Silhouette online store so I can download new designs for my machine.  Yay!!!  I feel so special :)

~B
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Silhouette Weekly Challenge- Fonts

I love my Silhouette Cameo that I got for my birthday!  I've been asking friends and family if they need anything labeled or made just so I can use it and get the hang of it.  I've made stencils for shirts using freezer paper, boxes and cards out of card stock, and I'm labeling everything I can with vinyl.

Silhouette does weekly challenges where they want to see what we can do with the machine.  This week's theme is using any font on our computer, so I wanted to show how I labeled my jar of homemade laundry detergent!

It says "Laundry Soap" and "2 Tbsp per load" in Harlow Solid Italic font, cut onto pink adhesive-backed vinyl.  I love it, and on the rare occasion that my husband starts laundry, he knows exactly how much to put in!  It makes me smile every time I go into my laundry room, and that's always welcome when I'm doing laundry :)

~B
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DIY Mail Orgnization

I have a confession: I'm not a tidy person.  Clutter is something that I battle (not successfully, I might add) constantly.  I get easily overwhelmed and just don't know where to start.  Then when I do start, I have two toddlers either undoing my work or needing my attention within 5 minutes of starting.  This leads to lots of piles of mail.  All over.  Which gets really confusing, especially when it's time to pay bills.  So I decided to create an organization center with the family calendar, mail organization, etc. as step one.

I'm going to give a mini-tutorial on how I made my mail organizers out of cereal boxes!