Christmas Time is Near!

The stockings are hung,the stuffers are made and ready to go. The tree is up and presents are all under it..I'm so excited!
Baby girl's stocking is going to be filled with a few little teething toys and musical toys for her,then we got her two little books,a pair of leggings,a few little bows I made her and then I made her some yummy apple cinnamon cookies. These were super easy to make and taste pretty great. I found the recipe on familyfeedbag.com and made a few tweaks to make it work better for us.
Apple Cinnamon Cookies
Makes 12-24
9 tbsp apple sauce
1 egg
2 tbsp canola oil
1 3/4 c flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
I preheated the oven at 375 and mixed up the eggs,canola oil, and egg in a large mixing bowl. Then I mixed all of the dry ingredients in a smaller mixing bowl. The princess of course helped with the mixing :) We slowly added the dry ingredients to the larger mixing bowl and formed a ball. Then I rolled it out in a greased pan and stuck it into the oven for 15 minutes.
When they were done I cut them into rectangles. They turned out kind of like a soft biscotti for teething. They're good for 3 days sealed or you can stick them in the freezer. Whenever I pull one out I usually pour a bit of cinnamon on top and microwave it for 10 seconds. She loves them and I have a healthy alternative for a stocking stuffer!

Crib Chronicles:part 2

So we didn't make it to the crib but she did sleep on her own mattress beside our bed for a good 3-4 hours last night! Progress!!
Last night we went with my parents and sister to look at tons of Christmas lights and we had so much fun! The princess loved the lights, she was singing and bouncing the whole time :)
She is 8 months old now! I can't even believe it..time just seems to fly past us. My baby girl now says hey,hi,dada,yeah,blah blah blah,and waves bye bye. She can pull herself to standing and stay standing for 5 minutes.crawling is only in circles but we're getting there! She eats solids twice a day...she's just growing up so fast!
I'll be making her stocking stuffers today so I'll post on those later tonight!

The princess at 8 months

The Crib Chronicles:part 1

We finally moved into our new house last night!! It's going to be a fresh start for us and with that fresh start we thought the princess should start sleeping in her crib. From the time we found out about her I knew she would go straight to the crib when she was born, and the crib was the first purchase we made. We had decided no co-sleeping or bassinets or even the baby Moses. But the princess had other plans..the very first night in the hospital she wouldn't sleep in the bassinet for us. She would in the nursery but I wanted her in my room. But everytime we went to lay her down she would scream and scream and as exhausted as I was from giving birth,I held her in my arms all night while we slept in the bed. After that we tried the bassinet at home but she wouldn't stay and I couldn't get up at night to pick her up from the bassinet because of complications from her birth. So she stayed. We've tried a few times to get her sleeping on her own but no luck,even for naps. So new house, new start. At 9:30 I fed her and laid her down in the crib, 3 tries later she was still waking up and throwing a huge fit. 10:30 fiancé tries 4 times with no luck. We kept trying until midnight and got nowhere. So we decided we would bring in the crib mattress beside ours..she wasn't having it. After 3 hours of trying she ended up back on our bed. We are going to try again tonight and hope it goes better. I'm feeling pretty depressed about this whole thing. How do people do this without using cry it out??


How can you say no to this?

Baby girl's first ornament!

The tree is up! I am so beyond excited for baby girl's first Christmas :) We really wanted something special for her first ornament and we did alot of looking at stores but didn't really find what we wanted. We did get her an adorable picture frame ornament that says baby's first Christmas and we let her pick an ornament and she got a pink baby bottle but that just wasn't what I wanted. So we went to pick up some glass ornaments to put pictures in (more on that later) and I already had paint for another project so we decided to go for the handprint. Next to impossible with a very curious 8 month old! I'd recommend doing this one when baby is asleep ;) I put a little squirt of paint in her hand and she closed it and squished it everywhere of course. Then daddy held her while I let her grab the ornament. Voila! Instant cuteness and a great reminder of baby's first Christmas. I used a paint pen on the other side of the ornament to write her name and 2011 and then tied a sweet baby ribbon at the top. We left it to dry for about 30 minutes and then put it on the tree. While we were making one for our tree we also made up a few extras for her grandparents and aunts. We'll pair those with their other gifts for a cute present from the princess! Best part? I got everything half off so it only cost me about $5 to make all of the ornaments!

Christmas Crafting!

Yesterday the princess and I started our Christmas crafting. We had a little bit of a late start this year because we are in the process of moving into our new house and all of my crafty supplies have been in storage! Our first project was for my soon to be sister in law. She is 18,super smart,and kind of tough to shop for because she isn't really into the normal teen girl stuff. So I thought,why not make her something? Well in my Pinterest obsession I happened to find the perfect gift, a "My Stache" jar..SO cute! I knew it would be an easy DIY and she will love it so I went for it. This picture was my inspiration. http://img0.etsystatic.com/il_fullxfull.226555276.jpg

So I went to the dollar store and found a clear glass jar and then headed off to Hobby Lobby for some cute letters and mustache stickers. I happened to get lucky and get everything half off so I only paid $4 for this whole thing!

I really love mustaches so I wanted them to be on all sides of the jar and of course the princess was having fun sticking them on with me :) I loved the way it turned out and I know she will enjoy it. I am going to pair the jar with a handmade ornament that I will be posting in the next few days so come back soon!

It's been awhile..

Well life has been a little busy in between balancing school work and staying home with my little princess. I love it though!I've been able to watch her learn to sit up,roll over,get her bottom two teeth in,start scooching around,talking more,standing...It's just been a true blessing to be able to stay home with her! I couldn't be happier staying at home, but it does occasionally get lonely. I have a blast playing with my baby girl but I really needed a hobby when she's sleeping to keep me from going crazy ;) so I've picked up sewing and I've been scrapbooking and cooking and just crafting alot more. It's been a blast! I made the fiancé a Pacman cake for his birthday and it turned out super great! I had so much fun making it and I discovered that I really love baking :). The cake was pretty simple. I used a box mix on it because the fiancé LOVES the rainbow cake mix.The princess helped me to mix it of course :) After the cake cooled I covered it in buttercream icing and then rolled out the blue fondant. I've never worked with fondant before so I was a little worried but it was really easy to work with. I covered the entire cake and then cut out little shapes from a darker blue fondant to make the little maze pieces. I only needed a butter knife to cut through the fondant and it made the cake so cute! Then I put on little edible pearls to make up the rest of the maze and cut out little ghost and Pacman shapes to place on the cake. It took me about 2 hours total to make the cake but it turned out awesome and he was so excited about it.

Dating before noon and Staying up all night

Yesterday we had our very first post baby date! We left the Princess with my parents for 2 hours and went to get breakfast and coffee at Roaster's. Then we were off to go play Lights off mini golf! We had a blast(and I won) playing together and just being able to have fun as a couple. It was really nice just to be able to be with Ben and not worry about changing a diaper or where the closest place that I could feed her is at. And it was really great to finally get to talk to each other. So our first date was definitely a success :) But that didn't stop me from worrying and missing my sweet princess the whole time we were gone. Even though I knew she was with people that we could trust and that she loves to spend time with, it was really hard. I'm glad we did it though. Ben is still a priority in my life and making sure that we have time to reconnect is really important to me. He is my rock and I don't know how I would get through the tough hour before bedtime or the mornings after a really rough night without him.

As for the Princess? She is almost 4 months old! In the next few weeks we will be starting her on solids and I am pretty excited about that because we will be makng our own. It should be an adventure. :) Right now she is working on lifting her head when she's on her tummy and she has really gotten good at it! She is grabbing things, she can reach the toys on her bouncer and play mat and she loves to hit them to make them move. She pulls on her bird on her play mat to make it sing. She is talking more than ever! She can 'say' Daddy,Hey,and Ellie. She makes a sound that I know means Mommy but thats as far as we are there. She loves to sing to herself and dances along to music. She gives hugs and kisses and she's working on rolling over..not quite there yet. She wants to stand up all the time so we hold her up and she thinks she's a big girl! And she has a little scoot thing going on. She wants to crawl but can't quite figure it out so she does her little scoot on her tummy. She is getting so big. Lately I feel so overwhelmed by everything she is learning and how fast she is growing. Every day she learns something new and sometimes I feel like I want to just stop time for a little while so that I can keep up :) She is so amazing to me,I just don't want to miss anything.