Big-Girl Garden Room Reveal: Dressing Up

Dear Em,

* This is part of a five post room reveal. For more peaks into the room, see also Big Girl Garden Room Reveal: The Bed, Big Girl Garden Room Reveal: Your Book Nook, Big Girl Garden Room Reveal: Star Gazing, & love letters. *

You've loved playing dress-up for a while now, but we never had a place to store all of your dress-up clothes in your old room. Since you were moving into a bigger, big-girl room, I wanted to create an area where dress-up fun can happen.

In one corner we have your dress-up rack from Ballard Designs. We bought it with a coupon. It was still pricey, but I love it. It has all the storage solutions your last rack does not, & it's sturdy enough to hold all of your dress-up things. You have a lot. Mostly past halloween costumes, hand-me-downs, & things bought after halloween for great prices.

You enjoy sitting at your vanity while you put on your costume jewelry. Someday the vanity can double as a desk. For now, a sense of whimsy is added with these butterflies your Nonnie found at Land of Nod. We used ceiling hooks & fishing line to hang them. They look like they're kind of fluttering around your garden room.

In the middle of your dress-up area is your dresser that holds your regular clothes. It goes with your bed from Pottery Barn. We had bought your first dresser from Babies R Us. It was not a cheap dresser, but it was made with cheap materials & promptly fell apart in less than a year. This dresser is sturdy & will last after continued use. We love it & how much it holds. The best part was that your dresser & bed were assembled upon delivery (even though we had gotten a special for free delivery). Do you know how happy that made your daddy? Have I told you how much we love Pottery Barn?

You're rocking on your "rocking lamb" which was a gift from your aunt Gina.

The wall is decorated with prints we bought when we traveled to Ireland & my grandma had framed before you were born. We used them in your nursery, & I wasn't ready to let them go yet. The definition of your name was a baby shower gift. The bright yellow & blue candle holders we've had but haven't displayed, & the cute blue owl we found at Home Goods (had I gone there first, I probably could have done your whole room from HomeGoods).

I bought a mason jar & silk flowers from Michaels to add to the garden theme.

Santa had put these letters (from Kohls for super cheap) in your Christmas stocking, but we hadn't had anyplace to put them. Now they hold pictures of us, your nonnie & papi, your grandma & grandpa, your aunts & uncles & you. I thought it was a fun way to display the people you love so dearly.

In the corner, by your closet, sits a blue chair that used to be my grandma's. Wasn't my grandma so fun to have a blue chair, & how perfectly does it fit in your garden room? The girl in pink on the circle of wood hanging on the wall is something your Nonnie made for me when I was a little girl. Great, right? The little Emma ornament was a gift to you from your Uncle Briant & Aunt ErinShea, the hope ornament we bought in Ireland, & the Angel ornament was my grandma's. I like to think she's watching over you while you sleep. I love having pieces of our different family members throughout your room.

One of my favorite pieces is the personalized TuTu Bow Holder I ordered from Etsy. It is so beautiful & fun. It combines two of myfavorite things: asthetics & function. As you can see, you have a whole lot of hair bows & this is such an amazing way to store them. 

Last but not least is your very favorite spot, your mirror. We often find you dancing around in front of it...no matter how you're dressed. It was off-white rather than white like the description suggested on Amazon, but that doesn't matter to you. You twirl & dance & giggle in front of it no matter what color it is. 

Lucky for me, your Nonnie painted beautiful vines & flowers throughout & now I'm OK with the color.

A fun spot for a fun girl...& boys...& everyone else who comes to play.

Tomorrow we'll look at the part of your room I would have most enjoyed at your age.

I love you so,

Mommy

coming out from under a rock

Dear Em,
I feel like I've been living underneath a rock. There is technology swirling all around me, but somehow I missed something I feel like everyone else already knows about. Seriously, how did I not know about Restaurant.com?

Well, I knew of it. At least I had heard of it, but I thought it was just a site where you could look up restaurant reviews. Since most of the reviews we care about are word of mouth, we never thought much about checking out a restaurant review site. Then a friend told me the other day that Restaurant.com is a place where you can buy $25 gift certificates for as little as $2. How did I not know about this?!

We've been limiting how often we go out to save money. Paying a mortgage & paying for your school doesn't leave a lot of extra cash lying around. You know what it means if we can get $25 gift certificates for $2? Daddy & I can go out for date nights again (I think there are additional stipulations, but it's still a good deal)! It'll also be a nice fallback for those nights when we can't even begin to think about cooking a meal at the end of a long day.

I looked at the selection of restaurants in Rhode Island & was surprised to see how many there were to choose from. Many restaurants we love, some restaurants I have never heard of, & one restaurant we already have plans to go to with friends. I'm excited about trying out some new places for a good deal.

I just had to share incase there are other people out there who were sitting under a rock right a long with me.

I love you so,
Mommy

Personalized Canvas Totes

Dear Em,

When it came to Christmas presents last year, you weren’t ready to have a whole lot of participation. We got your Nannies Dunkin Donuts gift cards. While they’re big time Dunkin/coffee fans, I don't know that it was the most thoughtful gift. This year I wanted to give your teachers a gift that they would enjoy & you could help to create.

I searched the internet for ideas. One retail site sold canvas tote bags that can be personalized with a name for an additional fee. I thought that was a perfect idea, something practical that would be used & that we could have fun with. We use our canvas tote bags all the time for beach-bumming, overnight stays, toy transportation, & grocery shopping.

Here’s what we made:

This is what we needed:

- A canvas tote bag (we made two, ordered them on Amazon.com for $12.99 each)

- green & red fabric paint from the craft store (around $2.50 for each large bottle at A.C. Moore)

- a fabric pen (around $2.50 at A.C. Moore)

- a paint brush

- a blow drier (if you want to quicken the dry time)

- 2 plates

- paper for practice hand prints

- a garbage bag or something to cover the space that you're working on

- paper towels/washcloths (& probably a sink & a bathtub)

- Nonnie (or second person) to help with the hand printing/cleaning/keeping paint hand prints off of the rest of the house
- an adorable little love & his/her two adorable hands

I asked your nonnie if she would help us while she was visiting, & I'm so glad that she did. It was a lot easier to control the madness mess with two adults on hand, & we had so much more fun laughing at the disaster we were making working with her too. We got you smocked up but didn't originally cover our work space (I know, rookie mistake). As our work space became smeared with permanent fabric paint (Daddy freaked & said, "it's permanent?!" & I sweetly said, "well, duh, isn't that the point of fabric paint?"), we quickly covered everything the table.

We did one color at a time, one side at a time. We spread each color of paint onto a plate & dipped your hand in.

After dipping your hands in the paint, we did a practice hand print on a sheet of paper to remove excess paint. We continued to do this each time we dipped your hands in paint. Next we placed each hand on the canvas tote, making sure to press down on each part of your hands/fingers before lifting them back up to get a fuller print. You were so amazing throughout the entire process. You made sure to keep your fingers nice & spread apart & waited to lift your hands until we told you it was time. You were so excited to make a special surprise for your teachers.

We started with the red paint on the front side & then Nonnie washed your hands in the sink before we switched to the next color. After we did the green prints on the front side, your nonnie helped you wash your hands & let you run around to get your sillies out. I used cool air from the blow drier to dry the front sides so that we wouldn't ruin them as we worked on the back sides. A paint brush also helps to remove excess globs & fill in some parts. We did the same with the back of each tote bag. You had paint all up your arms & in your hair. I laid the bags out to dry, & we gave you a nice bubble bath. 

I probably could have finished the bags that night, but it had been a full week of holiday activities. So, I put them to the side, & we finished them this weekend instead. I thought it would be fun to personalize the bags with your teacher's names & also a fun quote/poem. I scoured the internet (& our teacher friend's brain) for just the right sentiment, but didn't find anything that seemed quite right. I did find a whole lot of inspiration & came up with my own message.

I used a fabric pen to write the following message around the hands on the bags: "This little hand, so small, will go to school today, because of your tender teaching, this little hand will grow & learn to work & play, because you lovingly inspire, to dream, to live, to be, this little hand could grow to be anything,

this little hand could someday belong to, a scientist, a pilot, an engineer, a farmer, a nurse, an artist, an astronaut, a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, anything!"

I'm sorry to say the first bag was a little more of a trial run than the second. I got better with writing, spacing, & even changed up the words a little on the second.

I personalized each bag by writing your teacher's names on the front pocket. I thought they turned out well, but the perfectionist in me thinks the names would have been better done with iron on letters. We finished off the bags with your sweet little signature. We spent approximately $30 $15 per bag) on the whole project. I think that's a pretty great deal when the bags I saw online were $35 each.

As we wrapped them up, you exclaimed, "what about my friends?!" As much fun as they were to make, I don't know that I want to make ten more for all of your classmates. Although, Nonnie did seem to like them an awful lot. So, we might be making another canvas tote for Nonnie's birthday.

I hope your teachers love their gifts as much as we loved creating them. It was such fun project to share with you & Nonnie. 

I love you so,

Mommy

* Readers, what is your favorite DIY gift project to do with kids? *

cut the cost, not the traditions

Our family Christmas card, 2010

Dear Em,
I love the holidays. It has always been my favorite time of year. I love the music, the lights, & celebrating with friends & family. This season is something that I look forward to all year long. That's why I was a little surprised when I had a mini-melt down last year.

I mean, when did the holidays get so expensive? I know that this season is about giving, but there gets to be a point when I just feel like we're passing gift cards back & forth. Instead of holiday bliss, I was feeling financial stress. I hated it. This feeling was ruining our Christmas spirit, my Christmas spirit. Instead of falling victim to the holiday burn-out so many feel this time of year, we looked at ways we could cut the costs without cutting the traditions.

Black Friday Shopping
I've been Black Friday shopping for years. What's better than waking up at 3am to fight a sea of shoppers over a Wii that's $50 off? I can't think of anything. You can get what your special someone really wants for a fraction of the cost. Last year, instead of suffering in the crowds, we did most of our Black Friday shopping online. From my comfy seat I was able to get incredible deals. We bought the TV in our family room at a reduced Black Friday price & chose the in-store pick-up option. We didn't have to stand in line before dawn or pay for shipping. It was amazing. I like to make my list each year, scan the online & newspaper ads, & then make my plan of action. Black Friday saves me a ton of money, I get 75% of my shopping done in one day, & it's fun to do with friends & family.

Elfster
As I talked about here, I'm the oldest of 5 kids. Exchanging Christmas gifts with just my immediate family is quite an ordeal & can become quite pricey. In order to cut costs but not tradition, we decided to do Secret Santa this year. Instead of buying gifts for all, we have a $50 limit to buy for only one. The problem: we weren't all going to be in the same room together to pick names out of a hat. How were we going to secretly assign names? I learned about Elfster from another blog. It's an online way to secretly assign names & create wish lists without us all having to be together for the planning stages. You can ask your assigned person questions without the person knowing who the questions are coming from. So far, so good. Although, it seems that the public can also see our wish lists, & that freaks me out a little. Many of us have been asked weird questions. So, either someone in our family is a comedian, or weird strangers are asking us personal questions about our gift preferences. We haven't decided if we're going to use it again next year or have a Secret Santa that's not secret at all.

Yankee Swap
We have so many unbelievable friends. We'd love to give gifts to all of them to let them know how much they mean to us, but that just becomes too costly. Instead, we open our house to our friends for dinner & celebration each year. We call it Thanksmas Swap, & we host it on a weekend night between Thanksgiving & Christmas. It's one of my favorite nights of the whole year. We prepare a thanksgiving meal at our house & everyone else brings hors d'oeuvres, drinks, or dessert. We sit down for dinner with some of our dearest friends & give thanks for having them in our lives. After dinner we gather around the Christmas tree & have a fun (& competitive) Yankee Swap. Have you ever had a Yankee Swap? This site does a great job of explaining how it works. Our Yankee Swaps typically provide eruptions of laughter, at least one "must have" present, & us being able to share such a fun experience with some of the people we love most. We try to keep our gifts in the 10-15 dollar range. This year will be our 3rd annual Thanksmas Swap. It's such an inexpensive way to celebrate with friends & we hope to host it every year.

Christmas Cards
For our friends & family that are unable to make it for Thanksmas Swap, we've asked if instead of presents we could just exchange Christmas/Holiday Cards. Some people still use traditional cards, & I can tell you that their words of love & friendship mean more than any gifts they could give. Most of our friends & family send photo cards. We have a great big cork board in our entryway that I pin the cards to. Most of the Christmas photo cards stay up on the cork board all year through. It's a beautiful reminder of those we love. It's amazing to see how everyone has grown year after year. Last year we used Snapfish.com for our Christmas cards. If we ordered before December 1st, there was an amazing deal. This year I am so drawn to the styles of the Shutterfly.com & they're 35% off. I'm thinking we're going to design our cards on their site this year.

I'm so thankful that we've been able to cut the cost & stress of the holiday season without cutting the traditions & celebrations with our friends. I'm looking forward to the precious moments & memories this holiday season brings us.

I love you so,
Mommy