Family Weekend

Last Weekend was FAMILY WEEKEND

The schedules conflicted a little bit,

but we were able to work in almost 24 hours of all of us together

I didn't get a lot of shots,

but I'll summarize what we do have...

We headed over on Thursday to Bri, Nate, Deli and AJ already there.  Uncle Mark flew in that morning.  And our Family Weekend began.  For dinner we had Stuffed Shells and Fruit Salad and lots of pie, mmm!

Eitak arrived near midnight and we spent a little time laughing before heading off to bed.

After family pictures on Friday, we headed back to the house and had pizza night.  Everyone made their own pizzas...

well, almost everyone, a few just gleaned off of others :)

While we were busy making pizzas, Miss Deli came out of our room wearing nothing but Ethylwolfe's undies :)

Smores dessert pizza, mmmm

After pizza, we had craft time!

{Well, actually it started earlier in the day with a lesson on felt flower making}

Here we have an oil painting lesson

inspired from O'keeffe's beautiful flowers

Nani's brother came to town for a visit, he hasn't been here in 15 or so years!

After oil painting, Twistyn gave Eitak and myself a knitting lesson!

It was entertaining ;)

{most of these pictures were taken by KennaKat}

Saturday morning, Eitak and Nate had to leave for an RBC build

and Twistyn and I headed out to service.

We had a lovely morning.

After lunch we decided to take a walk through the neighborhood

and head to the eno

Pat said something about Twistyn's hair smelling funny, she protested "Whoa!  You don't even know what my hair smells like!"...

So he had to smell to prove it...

{Ok, that's not what happened, but you never know with these two! ;) }

Brothers!

The boys were having some kind of deep conversation

And that's all for the pictures that I've got.

That night we had pot roast and more pie.

Then we played the new Trivial Pursuit.

Sunday we attended Nani's meeting.

Good thing we did because most of the congregation was out of town!  Lots of commenting opportunities! yay!

We hung out for the rest of the day and then headed home.

We enjoyed a nice long weekend spent with the whole family.

unfortunately we don't get to see each other as often as we'd like

but the time we do have is priceless.

Love you guys!!

Walking on Air

Less than 24 hours in to having my own shop and I made my first sale!

Words cannot describe how excited I am!

I SOLD SOMETHING!!

Someone actually wanted what I had to offer...wow!

{and it's not even someone I know...a complete stranger...double wow!}

I just finished adding several new pieces,

amounting to 4 gorgeous headbands and 3 new flowers.

Check out how adorable my headband model is...

Don't forget, if you want to purchase something and live near by, enter in the code LOCALFRIENDS so you don't have to pay for shipping!

I know it's blurry but I had to share our morning routine with you all.

The other week it was simply beautiful, with weather in the 70's...

This week, I've been scraping frost off the car window and wearing my winter jacket.

I must say, thank goodness for seat warmers because these leather seats are frigid on cold mornings!

The winter sun has been harsh on our eyes, 

so I lend the kids our sunglasses to shield them from the killer rays.

I ran through or rather chewed through 2 bags of gumballs in a 24 hour period, 

now I'm going through with-drawl

I used to bribe E with chore money if he would get ready for school in the morning without my having to nag him a hundred million and ten times, but apparently, he doesn't care about earning money ever since I 'lent' him the rest of the money he needed to buy that really cool lego set...

So now the deal is, I lay out his clothes the night before, he wakes up and does as much as he possibly can to get ready before I wake up and tell him to do anything, and he gets to watch a few minutes of tv before we head out the door.  Some days work wonderfully, other days..eh, not so much.

{This works so well in our house because he only gets tv/movie/video game time on the weekends}

Saturday I wasted away setting up my etsy shop.

I made a stamp with my store's name on it so that I can brand all of my products

I love stamp making, I'll make a tutorial on it some day.

I made fabric tags for the flowers and paper tags for the wrapping

I'm told by a little birdie that you should brand everything you sell so that people can remember where they got it from, so that's what I'm doing.

{theSpeckledKat is EVERYWHERE wahahaha!}

I also made a few more flowers

I'm in love with making them, 

which makes selling them the only option I have to support  my habit.

I researched shipping options, I hate paying for shipping when I buy stuff, so finding a way to do it as cheaply as possible for others is a must.  It would probably be enticing if they made cute mailer envelopes and boxes like they do the stamps..I love stamps.  If the boxes had VanGogh or comics on them, I'd be much more willing to dish out the bucks.  Speaking of VanGogh, I wish they'd make some stamps with his art on them, I'd have to buy a whole beaucoup to satisfy myself.

It's Sunday now {early Sunday, like 1:30am, Sunday} so I'm off to bed

So much for heading to bed early and catching up on some much needed Zzzz's.

Goodnight!...or rather Good Morning!

TheSpeckledKat meets Etsy

I did it, I finally did it!  

Today I opened my very own Etsy shop!

I've been a big fan of Etsy for many years now, it's home to all sorts of wonderful things.

I have finally allowed myself to be persuaded to start selling my stuff.

So here goes...

Check it out, I'll be adding more stuff as I get the pictures taken.  

http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheSpeckledKat?ref=si_shop

For all of you local friends, enter in a free shipping coupon code LOCALFRIENDS and I'll hand deliver them to you myself.

It happened again!...We've been photographed and blogged!!!

Last Friday, the family gathered together for a family weekend, ALL of us at the in laws house.  

The plan was to cash in on the second half of the Giveaway prize from Ariana and spend the weekend together.  

We almost weren't able to coordinate it {Last minute RBC build, work schedule changes, etc}

but in the end it worked out!

I'm SO glad that it did!

Check out Ariana's blog at Faces in Focus for a preview.  

I think she and Brian did an amazing job!

They were on time, we were running late.

The location that we chose didn't work, so they changed it, it was perfect.

We needed serious guidance on coordinating outfits, Ariana came to the rescue and provided suggestions.

 Our 30 minute session ran over, way over, and they were way cool about it.

Everyone had a great time, and they look amazing!

Great job Ariana and Brian, Thank you SO much!!!

I wasn't nervous this time... I felt seasoned. Haha.

You'll probably think me a dork {because I am}, but I kept my families outfits almost the same as last time.

The way the color scheme worked out, I figured...'eh, why not?'

I hate coordinating outfits, I'm SO NOT into fashion and everything I own I buy either severely discounted or used, 

I don't even own a full length mirror, so when it came down to having to coordinate everyone again, 

to the same color scheme as last time, I said No way, I can't do it again!

Plus I knew that to make the colors work as well as last time would probably be impossible

Why mess with a good thing?

Ariana didn't make Hubby and I do gooshy lovey dovey pictures again, 

we already had ours, but she did take some of the rest of the family...I LOVE them!

So consider this a continuation of the last session :)

My most favorite picture is of M&G with their 4 kids, beautiful!

And if you'll check out the one with all of us ladies, you'll notice that we are all wearing flowers made by me!  

I made flowers for everyone, and then they decided to wear them {how sweet!}

Except 'Ana, I made flowers for her girls, but her sweater had flowers on it, so it was all good.

I can't wait to see the rest of the shots!

Thank you Ariana!

Best.Giveaway.Prize.EVER!

I think this family has found themselves a permanent photographer, perhaps next year we can get them to come to the beach for family shots...or the mountains!

What we're reading

Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems

Mo Willems has a knack for writing children's books that they enjoy reading.

Ethylwolfe has checked out almost all of these books from the library and loves reading them over and over.

Mo uses repetition, inflection, words, and situations that children can understand and think are hilarious.

We always giggle together when we read about the adventures of Gerald and Piggie.  Best friends.  

They are different, have fun, learn lessons of friendship, and are silly.

If you have an early reader, they will love reading these by themselves, and if they are younger, well, they will love listening to you read it to them.

If you haven't read Elephant and Piggie books, then definitely do so!

And the Winner Is.....

Drum Roll Please............

Mommy from Violets Garden,
come on down!

Congratulations!

We must now discuss what you would like your prize to look like and all those fun little details, I can't wait!

Sorry it took me so long to announce the winner, I've been busy

{and I kind of, sort of...forgot}

Thank you to those who signed up, 

I love everything about giveaways!

Paint Your Pot

Two weeks ago, we ventured out with D and her double dose of cuties to a pottery painting studio.  I may or may not have given my friend the guilt trip for not seeing her or her girls since AUGUST.  So she kindly invited us to tag along and enjoy a bit of pottery painting.

The kids had a lot of fun {I did too}.  For the first time since the kids were born, I was able to drive our group around.

{I love having a car that seats 8 people!}

The wait was long to get in, I guess we weren't the only people who decided to spend the day off of school actually doing something.  But we put our names on the waiting list and went to lunch.  The kids didn't mind playing around while we waited.

I gave the camera to the kids and let them go at it with photographing our day.

Enjoy!

Our friend LoLo joined us too!

I loved the wall of colorful tiles!

I think C-Bear and I are two peas in a pod, we could have spent the whole day there painting to our hearts content!

To say he's obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog is an understatement

The finished results!

Sorry girly, chocolate milk and doritos mouth, guess I should have timed this shot better :)

I didn't get to see everyone elses pieces, but I'm sure they were way cute as well!

I made the kids paint bowls because their cereal bowls were broken and they needed new ones.

They made me promise that the next time they go, I will let them pick out their own pieces :)

{But I'll have you know that they LOVE using their own special bowls}

So there was our day, it was fun, can't wait to do it again.  

And D, another 3 months better not pass before we see you and the girls again :)

*The kids took over 100 photos, so this was just a sampling of the many photos*