Kate's Spotlight LOs

Kate, my 2nd little girl, just turned 1 July 20th. I threw her a PARTY. Colors were pink and black (which I love!!) I did a LO to spotlight her first year pic and then a place for people to sign, those who attended her party. I did this for my first daughter too and really liked the idea of just knowing who was there, so years later, we can remember who helped us celebrate the special times in our lives. Here's my special girl!

Memory Game

I've seen this on a few blogs and i'm going to do it...even if it may turn out bad, oh well right?   You don't have to join in, but if you want to read the instructions below...

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.

Please do this!  I would love to read what everyone's memory is of me.

Purge Purge Purge

I got ahead of myself when I was adding more and more links and sites on this blog. I don't want my family blog cluttered!

So I've put all non-family/friend related onto my other blog:

Stuff Lyssa Makes

This blog has been around and many of you might not have known about it. It's where I post anything the I've created. I didn't want to stick that stuff on my family blog cause you all might think I was annoying constantly posting stuff that i've made...I would get annoyed and think, man, this girl is such a show off! So I put them all in another blog for those who really cared and interested in still seeing what i've been upto in the creating world. So now you'll find all the fun blogs and sites i've found and like. And I won't clutter my family blog with GIVEAWAYS or CONTESTS anymore. That will all be on my other one. So if you want to, you can go check it out :)

Don't pack the sewing machine just quite yet...

So as you know, i've taken a pause to the CIM blogshop.  And after that decision, I thought that would be the last time i'd make taggie blankets and whatnot.  Well just last week, to my great surprise, I received a wholesale order for $200 worth of taggie blankets for a boutique to a lady in Ohio.  I was shocked and excited.  Ii think wholesale is a great thing when you're a mom working from home.  It's nice to just have a certain amount to make and that's it.  So thus begins my crazy week, attempting to make 20 taggie blankets!  And i'm making lots of new designs too so it'll be interesting how it'll work out.  But I just had to tell someone about this.  

Hair Clip Giveaway!

Hey ladies-Just wanted to let you know about a great giveaway that a friend of mine is doing. My friend, Celeste, makes adorable hair clips that do not slip at all! Her daughter has no hair but she still wanted her little girl to be "girly"! So she came up with these and they are so fun! So right now, she's doing a great giveaway. Go check her out on her site, Hair Flips: Fun, Felt Hair Clips Here are some examples:

PS I got the watermelon one for Kate and I LOVE iT!!!

The Weekend

We have had a pretty productive past weekend. Saturday, we decided to hit Sea World since, I mean, we gotta use our season passes sometime now. Here are some pics from the excursion.

After we got back from Sea World, what else is there to do than watch PBS and their cooking shows! Yes, we are nerd and do that pretty much every Saturday. Anyone ever heard of America's Test Kitchen? It's great and they were making Old Fashioned Chocolate Layers Cake. Joe instantly wanted to make it but who ended up making it? Hmm? yes, nice little me. We couldn't do it on Saturday cause we just ran out of time. So we made, or I should say I made it on Sunday :) Here is the final product and it is scrumdeliscent!


So the real exciting thing happened this morning. I threw Kate a birthday party for turning ONE YEARS OLD!! I was busy preparing for it all weekend but I think it turned out real good. Thanks Jami for having it at your home and helping me prepare. Also, thanks Jaqline for helping me some really good chocolate covered pretzel rods!

Here's the food/write a special note for the Birthday girl area

Here's the main area. Jazmin gave me a good idea for decorating that she found on Martha Stewart. Cut out lots of "K"s and "1"s and put them all over the place so that's what I did and it looked awesome!

Mommy and Katers

Birthday Cake, yum!

Here's her One Year Old Layout. I had a matching page for people to sign.
Some friends came to help celebrate! Melissa J and Dylan, Erin and Luke, Jami and Madison!
Stephanie A. and Nicole and Bradley J.

Eating some yummy cake and having a great time..Happy GIrl!

Here's the "easy way out" for a "cake". I've always wanted a huge chocolate chip cookie cake when I was little and still do! To make it easy on me, I just bought a tub of already make cookie dough and make a huge one! It turned out great and was really yummy!

cakey, messing fingers!
Love this shot
Afterwards, we went swimming. Didn't get any pics. By that time, Kate was down for a nap and a good friend watched her while I had some Mommy & Emma time swimming. Thanks eeryone who came and helped celebrate this fun day with us!

My little Kate is turning one!

I can't believe she's one already! In order to save a few bucks, I practically made everything on here...hair bow, tutu, leggings, invitation (was made on scrapblog.com) So I feel pretty good about myself! I really love to do digital. I can't really dive into it right now because we just don't have the room on my computer but some day...

Kate is Turning One...soon.

Ok so I started writing about Kate and how she is at one but I don't want to write that just yet.  Her birthday is on the 20th so I'll wait till then do write that wonderful stuff.  For now, i'll show you pictures I took the other day for her 1st birthday.  I was going to go somewhere and have them taken but we are trying to save money with Joe's applications and such coming up in the next few months.  So the only option was to just take them myself.  Something i'm proud to say on her outfit is that I got the necklace on ebay for $4 (retailed for $65!), made her tutu, leg warmers and headband, and edited the pictures myself on my computer.  Seriously, who needs to spend money these days anyways, right?  Okay, without further adieu, here is our Katers.

Fourth of July Weekend

Well, we started off the weekend clean :)

We decided last minute to head down to JOe's parents for the 4th of July weekend. It had been awhile since going there and I know they were dying to see the girls. It was a nice break. Kate could have been a pit more cooperative though. She was teething like crazy, 3 teeth coming in so she was not a happy camper...more like a whiny, clingy camper. But here are some pics of the weekend.

Emma, pretending to be a dog. She's been in an "animal pretend" phase. It's pretty funny.

She, of course, loves to read still
We went to visit the Johnson's, Joe friends from home. Ryan, the guy he grew up with, lives 20 minutes away from there so they came to visit at his parents house. They have a little boy, Brayden, who is a day older than Emma. So it was fun to see them play



Emma pretending to be a dog again. This is her leash...

Now Brayden is pretending to be one and Emma is walking him.
Here's Kate! She loves when Joe puts her up on his shoulders.
Here are some goofy pics of us in the car when we went to buy fire works. This is our buck tooth face.




We went to Ryan's sister's house to watch fireworks with their family. THey had an open driveway in the back of their house, perfect to watch fireworks.
Emma did not like the fireworks at all. She had an iron grip on anyone who would hold her. She wouldn't even look at the fireworks. They just freaked her out too much. This is Peter, Joe's brother, holding Emma right then but we all took turns.
Here's Joe getting some ready
Emma, sparkler? Um no...


THough this was a cool shot.

Here's a smoky firework


Emma lightened up a big and jumped on Brother Johnson's (senior) lap...whom she had no idea who he was but still wanted to cuddle up next to him...geez louize!

By the end, when we were almost done, she started looking at them...
Here's Maren, Ryan's wife with their son Brayden and Emma.
So Saturday, we went to Splashtown, this nwe place just down the street that is completely FREE! It was pretty cool. We took Emma there. It might look cloudy but that doesn't mean it was cold...Even in that atmosphere, I was still sweating.



This kid tried to control the sprinkler. He even started pushing Emma...Don't worry, I interfered.

I love this picture because of the background. Here's little Emma surrounded by all this huge chaos!
Tunnel vision


Don't worry, i'll be putting her in gymnastics this year :)

This park might look familiar to some of you in Utah. It's exactly like the wooden park in PG.


Fun weekend full of visits with family and friends. But we're back home to reality and to the next step of life...potty training a 2 1/2 year old!