And no, it isn't me selling them. If you've ever seen my penmanship or my creativity (or lack thereof) you'd never in your life pay even one cent for an "Erin" original. For some of you long time readers, you'll remember scary Elmo.
My mother-in-law has been doing crafts for over 25 years and each year she attends a few craft shows here and there at Christmas time. She started with handmade crafts and over the past 7 years has branched out in to cards and some other really unique gift ideas. I only wish I had half as much of her talent.
I also have no idea where she finds the time to hand craft each one of these cards, each card is at least a couple of hours if not 4 to 5 hours of her time. She runs a home daycare with her husband and has been doing so for the last 20 years after coming to Canada from Chile 28 years ago. So can you imagine (I'm sure some of you can relate) to watching 12 children day in and day out-and then spending 5-8 hours crafting? But it's been her way of doing her own thing. Here is one of my favourite cards, the photo doesn't do it justice:
So for Christmas, my husband and I decided to make her an online site for the cards she sells, and surprise her. So here it is!
www.juanascards.com is live and if there is something you love you can order it directly off her site, and she will ship them to you. She does amazing Christmas cards and handmade invitations as well, so if there is something you don't see but are looking for her to make, you can always send her an email and she can quote you the cost and the estimated time it will take.
So if you're looking for something unique and handmade (she even paints the flowers by hand) check out Juana's Handmade Cards! Check back often as we are just starting to get more and more of her handmade cards and crafts online!
With the upcoming arrival of our next baby, we decided to finally move our son out of his crib. This comes a bit late to most people but honestly he loves his crib. He never tries to climb out and is quite content if we kept him in there. But with the arrival of our next one, we thought we'd get some good use out of the crib and get our almost 3 year old a bed.
After hours of research, I opted for bunk beds. A full bed on the bottom and a twin bed on top. We went and looked at a few beds, and i ended up getting the Cadillac of beds. There is one tiny problem. In our two bedroom house, the kids will be sharing a room-and that room is SMALL. So before the new bed we had a crib, a full length dresser, a glider and a change table in the room. Now, we have the bunk beds and the crib.
I guess we don't need a chair in there or the change table, but I mean the dresser is kind of essential. So in stages, my husband took a picture, and this is step 12 out of 92 completed:
Now imagine solid wood furniture and imagine lifting one bed on top of the other. OMG was it heavy! Most furniture weighs next to nothing but not this sucker. So just as my husband has finished the building, 6 hours later, we're almost ready to show our son his new bed. Here's hoping!
Here's the finished product!
Stay tuned for tales of the first night!
Yes, it's true. I'm officially preggers. My one son is 2.5, well actually closer to three and here I am voluntarily doing it again. NEVER thought that would happen.
Between the sleepless nights, and barely existent days-please remind me why I signed up for this a second time? Again there was no draft into motherhood, I signed up on my own accord. Am I ready for this?
I mean as a parent, I already have zero time for myself, does this mean I'll have negative time? What will the first trip to the grocery store entail? Will my husband and I ever have time to ourselves? I remind myself this is temporary; while they are young, that I'll have no life-Or what I used to consider a life.
But I digress, lets not depress anyone out there with my fears.
I have to say the second time around is different. It's less magical in ways, I hurt more. I have had sciatic pain since 6 weeks, and I'm now 17 weeks. I was much more violently ill this time around, and with a toddler running around, I can't just crawl in a hole for the first 3 months. I haven't taken more then 3 belly pictures, and have been showing for a long time already-when I didn't show with my son until 19 weeks.
I have to say I'm more accepting of pregnancy this time around as the first time was a surprise, the growing belly the sore boobs and all that.
I am not as obsessed with every cramp.. but I still have a healthy-albeit a more realistic fear that something might go wrong. I'm way more moody-much to my husbands dismay, and I pee every 5 minutes.
But I have to say I'm looking forward to being a mom again, and I will enjoy my time with my newborn and not worry so much about what the books tell me to do. I will focus on remembering the moments when they're tiny-because as many say (and you find out) they grow so quickly.
I'm at the point in my pregnancy where I can feel movement consistently, which is a nice thing until baby's feet reside in my ribs. The nausea has subsided and I don't generally have to drag my butt through the day because I'm tired.
I just think that next year this time, I'll be the mom of 2 and will have probably lost it by then!
Merry Christmas everyone!
A special look inside the new; highly anticipated, interactive children's book: The Robot Book.
So my son is head over heals in love with robots in general and loves to watch anything related to robots. This includes but is not limited to, Astro boy--15 billion times, youtube videos of actual robotic life and anything that resembles a robot....but has yet to LOVE a book about robots.
With so many of our children being raised on TV, movies, computers, iPads and the like, traditional means of education like board games and books are not as popular as their electronic counterparts. So books may need to evolve from traditional and classic to hip and modern.
When I was pregnant, I purchased many books, envisioning my son or daughter reading all the time and loving books. Now realistically, I'm a lover of books, so naturally I wanted him to be. The problem was, I bought books, lots of them, but they weren't good books for his age--and they still aren't.
What some people don't tell you is that babies will eat books, toddlers will rip pages and pull off extremities from the expensive books-and you are left with broken mush. So the books you buy need to be very well made and durable. So while all of the beautiful page books are sitting in a box in my closet, waiting for the day they'll be respected-I can at least read him this one... I know.. aren't I a fun mom?
This was all until I found this book:
It's got thick pages that are easy for my son to open and easy for him to turn the pages. It's bright and colourful and best of all, has moving pieces.
Not only does it show that it's what is inside that really counts but it also shows how a robot is put together, allowing your child to move his arm, and his smile and open the robot's chest.
Check it out for yourself!
This book is durable and is a must for this holiday season. My son totally makes me read it every night! Love it!
My crazy summer can be summed up in one Month of sheer chaos.
At the beginning of August my husband finally decided to do something with the bathroom. I mean we're talking a man that get's blisters on his hands when he does any type of manual labour. So the fact he wakes up on Saturday morning and declares war against the bathroom, made me super happy. I had been anticipating doing this myself and already had all of the equipment so we were set.
That whole day we played downstairs, just my son and i, and around 4 pm, my husband calls down to me asking me if I moved the car. To which I replied no. Then he said, "Well it's not there." SO of course i assumed that he was joking and when I came to the realization that he wasn't. I panicked. Someone stole our car, from our driveway. They drove around the car parked behind it, and my work laptop was in there. We didn't hear a thing.
Now we don't live in a bad neighbourhood and honestly it's probably one of the safer ones but obviously crime happens everywhere. So we call the police and the insurance company and get the ball rolling. They had gone through my husbands other car, and it was a mess. The car they store was a Ford Edge. And thus begins and insane week.
One day passes and on Sunday night, they break into our other car yet again. We only find this out Monday morning on our way to work. We call the police and because nothing is damaged they can't do anything. The Police then phone us that evening around 10, and say someone spotted our car in the city and they threw a bunch of our personal belongings out of the car. So they came by to drop them off, and when we told them they broke in again, they asked why we didn't report it, and when we told them that we tried they took down the notes. We were upset because we clearly locked the doors and what can we do to protect our car from being broken into. So this had us all on edge.
So the police couldn't do much, we were losing sleep because all my husband wanted to do was sit outside with a bat, hell they probably drove up to my house in my car! So we contacted our local politician Jeff Browaty to complain that we just don't feel safe in our neighbourhood, and that when we try to report crimes the cops on the phone don't care. He actually came over and hand wrote a note to us and dropped off a crime prevention package. My husband and him were in contact over email due to the second break in.
Now our concern was that these thieves were going to get brave and break into our house. We bought a motion sensor that alerted us inside that someone was outside, and set it up. We took a web cam and it was motion activated and put it in the window as a back up. And in two days we caught them on camera. Stay tuned for the second half of this story, because BOY it does not end here.
And this one:
So the little things that have me just so in love with this age is the little things like him starting to speak really sweet things. Like when I walk by and he'll say Mommy.. NICE! I must admit, I love it.
But it's the little things like when I put him to bed, and he doesn't fit to lay on me anymore, and is more comfortable in his crib (yes he's still in a crib... talk about mommy not letting go of the baby thing).... makes me sort of want to consider having another one. Then I sleep through the night and realize I LOVE this age!
A book I read a year ago has really changed my perspective on the frustrating time of putting children to bed. When they fuss and cry and fight bed time... it's absolute peace when they finally fall asleep. And when they do, remember to realize; they will at one point, not fit in your arms, or not want to be held. And in 20 years, you'd give anything to go back to one night where you could hold them in your arms and embrace their youth.
Now don't get me wrong there are trying times for sure! But I try to remind myself that he won't be small forever.. and wow is that ever true.
