February 2014

February was an interesting month for us.  Anna and I started it out by making beeswax candles for Candlemas.  Anna made a heart candle for Valentine's day and a purple taper.  I made 4 small red candles to be used for Advent later.  It was a simple activity and Anna had a lot of fun.

A day later, though, I broke out in terrible, horrible, awful hives.  They were so bad!  I had them on my eyelids and the soles of my feet!  I ended up having to go on several medications plus get a steroid shot.  It took the rest of the month for them to completely disappear.  Steve was a trooper and took several days off of work to take care of the kids because all I could do was itch, take oatmeal baths, and be miserable.  Matthew was also a trooper.  Because of the steroid shot, I had to stop nursing him cold turkey that day.  Heavenly Father must have been helping him, because he hardly fussed at all to moving to a sippy cup.  The sister missionaries were great and came over to clean the house because I was so behind.  My visiting teacher also came and took my laundry home to do for me.  My doctor thinks I may be allergic to the antibiotic Flagyl because I had just finished a course when the hives came on.  Needless to say, there are no pictures from this period of time.

Matti Ihalmo & Steve

Steve & Sirpa Ihalmo

The last big thing in February was Steve's week long trip to Poland.  Google flew him and his team out there to meet with the rest of his group to have some team-building time.  On the way, he stopped in Finland to visit some friends, the Ihalmos.  Unfortunately, his layover in Frankfurt turned into a nightmare.  When he arrived, the security people were having a strike so although he got in, he couldn't get out.  His 3 hour layover turned into a 36 hour one.  When he finally did get to Finland, the airline had lost his luggage!  Luckily, Matti Ihalmo had a suit that fit Steve for church.


The rest of the time was spent in Poland at a resort outside of Krakow.  I'll put labels on the pictures so you know what you're looking at.

Christmas Eve

We had such a great Christmas Eve!

Alli came to visit for the weekend and we loved having her.  Unfortunately, she did catch the nasty stomach bug that has been going around the neighborhood and was sick most of the day.  Luckily, it's a 24 hour bug and she was better the next day.

We had a snowstorm on Friday so there was a great layer of snow.  Steve took Anna to the nearby ravine to do some sledding while I did some dinner prep.  They were gone for more than an hour having a blast.   Anna loved the sledding.  She met up with some of our friends from our old neighborhood: Skylar and Rylee.  She wanted to sled with only them.  Skylar wouldn't, but Rylee did.

Later, we made our ornaments.  I wanted to have an ornament that Anna could do and that used materials that I already had laying around.  Luckily, I noticed a few people had made cute holiday people from craft sticks.  I have a bunch of those, plus felt and paint, so away we went.

I used the craft sticks to make a snowflake and a Christmas tree.  Anna painted both of them with the paints.  After she finished those, she went off to bed for her nap and the rest of us worked on our ornaments.  We made ours a little different.  Steve made a snowman, I made a snowman and a Rudolf, and Alli got into it the most.  She made a snowman, elf, Santa, and Rudolf.  It was a lot of fun.

That night we had our fondue dinner.  I thought that I was conservative in cutting up the meat, but apparently I over-estimated and we had a lot left over.  It was delicious.  Anna had fun stuffing herself with ham and chicken dipped in honey and trying shrimp for the first time.  Luckily, Alli was feeling well enough to join in for dinner.

After Anna was in bed, we ended the night by watching A Muppet Christmas Carol.  The perfect ending to a great day.

Making Fudge

Of course, we had to make some treats for Christmas and Anna and I tackled some fudge.  I decided this year to make the fudge a combination of semi-sweet and milk chocolate chips.  I like the sweetness that the milk chocolate gives it, while the semi-sweet makes a firmer fudge.  It worked really well and I love the walnuts in them.  Anna's contribution consisted mainly of stirring the chocolate and licking the spatula.

December Crafts

Here's what you're looking at: Top l-r: Anna's pomander, finished beeswax snowflakes, cutting her snowflake, Steve & Anna decorating the house; Middle l-r: Steve working on his pomander, beeswax ornaments hardening in the pan, proud Anna with her snowflake; Bottom l-r: our finished pomanders, snowflakes I made on the library doors, Anna & I decorating, the finished gingerbread house!

Here's a little bit of what we've done this Christmas season.  We've tried to keep things low-key and fairly simple.

We started off December by making some orange pomanders.  I got some whole cloves and clementines at the store.  I got some recommendations to use clementines instead of oranges because the skin is thinner and easier for kids to pierce with the cloves.  Anna really enjoyed making them.  I did end up just piercing random holes all over her orange with a knife and that made it really easy for her to do it.  I made a couple and we even convinced Steve to join in.  His is the Christmas tree orange.  It was fun and fast and now our library smells great.

Later, Anna and I decided to make some snowflakes.  I folded hers into a square snowflake just so she wouldn't have to cut through so many layers of paper.  She's still learning how to use the scissors.  In fact, she mostly made random straight cuts along the sides.  I went back and just connected some of the cuts to make them holes.  She was so proud of herself and her snowflake.

One of the crafts I did mostly on my own.  I bought a pound of beeswax from Amazon and a cute snowflake cookie pan from JoAnn's.  I melted the beeswax in a double boiler and then Anna would point to the snowflake she wanted me to fill.  We ended up making 17 snowflakes total.  Later, I used a hot piece of metal to poke a hole in each one and threaded it with a piece of twine to make ornaments.  We passed them out to our neighbors and friends for their Christmas gifts.

Our biggest project so far has been the gingerbread house.  Steve picked up a kit at the grocery store.  We used the candy they provided plus some that we got at the bulk section of Winco to decorate.  Mostly, I put frosting on the house and Anna chose which candies she wanted and stuck them into the frosting.  I did candy corns around the bottom and the front door.  Steve did the jellybean windows.  We had a lot of fun making it and Anna is enthralled by it even two weeks later.  She drags her stool over to the counter to stare at it.  Well, stare at it and slowly eat a piece here and a piece there of the candy!

Just one more project left- ornaments.  We're going to do those when Alli gets here for Christmas weekend.  That'll be another post.  Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving Week and a Visit

 
We invited Steve's parents to come visit for Thanksgiving this year.  We wanted to have it in our new home and wanted to have family there.  They agreed and came the Tuesday before until the Monday after.

It was a really busy, full of work week so I don't have a whole lot of pictures.  Steve and Dad Wheeler spent most of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday working through a super-long list of projects for around the house.  They both went to bed so tired each evening.  By the time they left, they had put up curtain rods around the house, put together shelving and installed it in the storage room, organized the garage so things weren't on the floor, put together all the baby furniture, bought and installed shelving in my craft room, put up the Christmas lights, plus a host of smaller projects.

Mom and I spent Wednesday and Thursday preparing and making food for the big feast.  Kate, my sister-in-law, brought rolls and mashed potatoes.  Mom made two apple pies and crusts for the two pumpkin pies.  She and I worked together on everything else.  We had turkey and gravy (Mom really liked the gravy!), homemade stuffing and cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, cornbread, salad, corn, carrots, and green beans in addition to the things already mentioned.

We also had a chocolate pecan pie for dessert.  I had such a hard time with it!  Wednesday night, I apparently heated the chocolate too much and it was all lumpy so I had to throw it out.  The next day, after talking with Stephanie about what I had done wrong, I tried again.  This time, the chocolate was nice and smooth.  I added the other ingredients and poured it into the pie crust only to discover that I had completely forgotten the eggs!  I tried pouring the filling out of the crust, but it was so thick and sticky that the pie crust just fell apart.  I had to pick little pieces of pie crust out as best I could, add the eggs, and pour it into a new crust.  Luckily, a little pie crust in the filling doesn't ruin it completely.

We really enjoyed having everyone here for the holiday.  We also appreciated all the hard work that Mom and Dad put in while they were here.  I'm sure that they will reconsider the length of the stays in light of the fact that we put them to work, but I hope that they'll come again for just as long.

Crafting with Anna

So, I've started doing a little craft with Anna every once in a while.  We have an hour between lunch and naptime that is sometimes difficult to figure out what to do with.  So, if we have enough time, I've got a few 'crafts' on hand.  Here are three that we have done this month.

Sewing

Whenever I'm working on anything sewing related, Anna wants to sew too.  So, I decided to show her one day how to sew using a big blunt needle, yarn, and burlap stretched in a hoop.  She loved it!  It took a little explaining to get her to go up and down on the same side of fabric instead of looping it around to the bottom every time, but she got it and she was so proud of what she made.  I think she told me it was a giraffe.

Bird Feeders

We did this just a couple of days ago.  Anna has been into collecting all of the pine-cones she finds when we go to the park.  This was an idea of what we could do with some of them.  I showed her how to do one, then we did one together, and then she did two by herself.  She was so excited to feed the birds.  All we did was slather some natural peanut butter on the pine-cone, then roll it in bird seed.  Add a tie to the top and you're ready to hang it from a branch.  We hung them up at the park where we got the cones because we don't have any trees to hang them from here, yet.

Candles

We're almost ready to start the Advent season around here, so we used some time today to decorate our Advent candles.  We have some colored modeling beeswax that we rolled then and then cut or shaped our decorations.  Anna enjoyed making the stars and holly berries and putting them on the candles, but was bored by the holly leaves.   This will make our Advent wreath a little more colorful this year.

Dying Easter Eggs

Today, Anna and I decided to get ready for Easter by dying Easter eggs.  I boiled some eggs, 4 white and 4 brown, and got 4 colors ready: green, yellow, orange, and rose.  Anna was so excited to get started.

I decided to do something I saw on Pinterest and put the eggs inside a whisk.  That made it a lot easier for Anna to dip the eggs in the dye.  She actually did all the dying herself.  We put the brown eggs in the dye to sit for a while because they are so dark.  It's amazing the difference in the colors between the different eggs.

The best part was decorating the eggs afterwards.  We used the beeswax crayons I had bought and drew on them.  Anna thought it was great and tried lots of different colors.  She is so excited to look for the eggs tomorrow when the Easter Bunny comes.

At our house, the Easter Bunny comes on Saturday so we can focus on Christ on Sunday.

We are sewing, daily sewing...

One of the things on my list for Anna for Christmas, was dresses.  It seems we just get a dress for her, and she outgrows it after wearing it twice.  I wasn't looking forward to shopping for them.  Every time I do, either they're sleeveless, incredibly fancy (thus incredibly expensive), or have a cartoon character splashed across it.  So, I decided to make her a couple of things.

Erin turned me onto a blog a couple of years ago called Make It and Love It.  She does all sorts of easy clothes and re-purposing tutorials.  I chose to do the sweater dress for Anna.  I got the sweater at the DI for 4 dollars.  Here are the pictures of what she made and what I made:

I also made a skirt from a blog called Made.  The fabric was leftovers from my laundry room curtains.  Here are the professional one and the one I made.

Finally, I made a skirt from a blog called Two Little Banshees.  I got the fabric from Wal-Mart.  It's actually corduroy and very soft.  Again, pictures:

Projects, Projects, Projects!

Yesterday was a marathon of projects and to-dos.  We started at 8am and didn't really finish until 9pm.  First off was a ward service project.  We had to be to the church by 8 which meant that breakfast needed to be ready by 7:30 at the latest.  Luckily, biscuits and gravy isn't to time consuming.  After meeting at the church, Steve and the other members went around our neighborhood to pick up food for the food bank.  I went home because we were expecting a delivery of our new bedroom furniture between 8:30 and 12:30.

Steve left for the gym at 10am with Anna.  While they were gone, I worked on a project I saw on a blog a couple of days ago.  It's a fall checklist of fun things that we want to do.  It's not too hard, and because I put it behind glass, I can mark off what we do then wipe it off.  I'd like to do one for winter, too.

The furniture delivery arrived just before Steve & Anna got home.  I had to quickly get our mattresses and old dressers out of the way to make way for the new.  Luckily, the delivery guys set the bed up and put the box springs on.  I had to get the top mattress on and remake it.  We then had to transfer everything from the old dressers and nightstands to the new ones.  Now, where to put the old dressers?  Right now, they've taken up residence in the guest room.

Later that afternoon, after Anna had gone to bed for her nap, Steve and I got started on the garage.  We assembled four storage shelves, cleaned out one half of the garage, and started to go through my boxes of teacher stuff.  Steve secured the shelves to the wall while I watched the General Relief Society Meeting and Anna.

Stuff we still need to get put away.

Next project- closet.

 After eating, we loaded the shelves up with our newly boxed stuff.  We cleaned the other half of the garage and were able to put both cars in for the first time in over a year!  By this time, we were both exhausted and stinky so we took showers and gave each other massages.  Finally, we laid down on our new bed and fell to sleep.  What a day.

Organization!

I have been working on getting different areas of my home set up so they are easy to keep organized.  So far, I've done the laundry room and the pantry.

I finished the laundry room a couple of months ago.  Kudos to Peter for painting our laundryroom a nice bright blue.  Then, I got a shelf with a rod and a broom organizer as well as a wicker laundry basket to put kitchen rags, towels, bibs, etc in.  The final step was to make some curtains.  One for over the window and another (actually 3 parts) to hide the storage above the washer and dryer.  I have one finishing touch, some flowers for the vase.  I think it turned out great.  I actually don't mind going in there to do laundry.


Yesterday, I decided to tackle the pantry.  For me, this is one of the hardest rooms to keep neat and organized.  When I'm done shopping I'm tired.  I just want to get it all put away and not have to deal with it any more.  I also have trouble remembering what I have and what I don't.  I hate buying something at the store and coming home to realize I have three of them already behind the boxes!

So, I pulled everything out yesterday.  And I mean EVERYTHING.  I've tried organizing before by moving one thing and replacing it with another, not ideal.  Get everything out.  Poor Steve came home to counters, table, stove, and floor covered in cans, boxes, and bags.  Then I decided what would go on the top shelf, because that's the hardest to reach.  I then filled the two most convenient shelves with what I used most often, keeping like items with like.  Finally, I filled in the other areas with what was left over.  As I went, I entered into my phone app what I had and how much.  I'm hoping that I will have enough discipline to mark off what I use.  I have a couple of things that I need to get to make it complete.  A basket, hopefully with dividers, for my envelopes of seasonings.  You know- taco, fajita, chili seasonings?  I also have packets of gravy mix and ranch dressing mix.  They fall all over the place.  I also want to get a hook to hand up my aprons.  Right now they hang on the door knob.  In general, though, I think it looks pretty nice.  Let's hope I can keep it that way.

Our next project, Steve and I are working together on.  We bought some shelves to put in our garage so that we can get stuff up off the floor.  Steve hates having to scrape off his car during the winter.  We'll be working on getting that all set up next weekend!

Date and Super Saturday

Steve and I had a great date on Friday.  We got tickets to the Hale Center Theater for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  It was great!  We were lucky to get tickets in the first place.  It was originally only scheduled for August, but due to high demand, they extended into September.  Even with that, there were only 3 or 4 days available when we got tickets.

We went to a matinee showing at 4pm.  The costumes and sets were amazing.  The Hale Theater is a circular stage with seats 360 degrees around it.  They use that little circle to its fullest potential.  Sections can rise and fall and it has 3 rotating sections.  I especially loved the HUGE camel brought in by the hairy Ishmaelites.  It was controlled by 3 people and it sang!

My only disappointment, was that it was so short.  Only one and a half hours.  Afterwards, Steve and I stopped at the IHOP next door to have dinner and wait out the traffic.  Yum!

Halloween Subway Art

Initial Wall Hanging

The next day was Saturday...Super Saturday!  Yes, our ward/stake still allows us women to express our creative side through crafts.  Steve watched Anna from 10am-3pm while I was crafty with my friends from the ward.  It's amazing to me how I can have so much time, and yet still not get finished.  I had 3 big projects, one little project and I went to a class on teaching children reverence.  By the time I got home, I still had work to do on two of the big projects. You can see pictures of what I did to the sides.

 I got a lot of ideas from the reverence class.  It was taught by Katheryn Nelson, a lady in our ward with 11 children.  It is amazing to see their family during sacrament meeting.  The children are so good!  So, of course, everyone wanted to know her secret.

3 Holiday Banners

Christmas Star 1.5' diam.

This is it.  She teaches reverence first at home during FHE and scripture study.  They are expected to be reverent during these times.  At the age of two, all drinks, snacks, toys, crayons, etc. are put away.  They don't bring Sunday reverent books or anything.  They are expected to sit and listen.  If they aren't being well behaved then after church they need to 'practice' by sitting on the sofa for 30 minutes with their arms folded.  Her other two points were consistency and praise.  You have to be consistent every Sunday for every child no matter which parent is dealing with children.  Also, you need to praise your children for being good.

Crafty

I don't think I'm what you would call a 'crafty' person.  I can't come up with an original idea to save my life.  I look at all those fun, thrifty, do it yourself projects and long to do them.  I often buy all of the stuff, but I just can't seem to finish (or even sometimes start) them.

HOWEVER!  I did do a project last week from start to finish.  I made Anna some cloth blocks to play with.  I got the idea from a blog I follow called, Make It & Love It.  So cute and really easy.  I just got a package of already coordinated fabrics (another thing I can't do myself) from Wal-Mart, cut out squares and sewed straight stitches.  It took me only two days.  That's my kind of project.