American Flag Applique T-Shirts

Our 4th of July shirts were inspired by this tutorial, which promises to take no more than 10 minutes to complete.  I used Wonder Under, like with all my applique, which isn't mentioned in the tutorial, so mine took a bit longer, but still.  These shirts for the girls I whipped up in maybe half an hour the other night.  And for Jack?  A matching tie applique on his red t-shirt.  I had a vision of taking their picture in the Radio Flyer in front of the nearby pecan orchard while they were eating ice cream cones... and it almost happened.  The possibility of mosquitoes never crossed my mind.  And, yet, as we were unloading the wagon from the back of the van at the orchard, we were absolutely attacked by the horrendous creatures!  Imagine me, yelling at the kids to get back in the van and close the windows, re-loading the wagon (which didn't fit well in the first place), and worrying about melting ice cream cones.  And now imagine me driving back home (only a couple houses away) with the back of the van open because I didn't want to take the time to wedge the wagon in the right way.  All the while slapping mosquitoes on my arms and listening to Kate's panicked cry.  Mother of the Year right here!  We ended up taking our pictures in front of the garage door.  And they still turned out super cute.

A close-up of the applique on the girls' shirts

Three-Picture Frame for Fathers' Day Gift

Three letters in the word DAD?  Three gorgeous kids?  A nice black frame with spaces for three pics?  Perfect Fathers' Day gift!  Well... the idea was brilliant.  The execution?  Not so easy.  Especially when I left the photography part to the last minute and only had a few minutes at a playground to get pictures of the kids holding their framed letters. 

I got several shots of Jack's tongue.  Six-year-old boys!

Kate was sweet as always.

Maggie, however, was soooo not into it. 

 

I believe she was saying "HERE!" in this shot, trying to give me back the frame.

These photos just crack me up.

Yes, that would be MY hand holding the frame.

Poor thing just wanted to go down the slide.

 

Ta-Da!  Our finished product.  Definitely not perfect.  Someday I'll replace the pictures with better ones.

The Girls' Princess Party Invitation

So, we threw the girls (4-year-old Kate and soon-to-be-2-year-old Maggie) a princess party yesterday.  Although, after going (probably) overboard for most of the kids' birthday parties in the past couple years, I really wanted to make this one simple.  No fancy decorations, no carefully thought-out themed foods, and no elaborate games.  Just a playground, pinata, some backyard games set up to use at leisure, a table of snacks, and a homemade vanilla cake with strawberry cream cheese frosting.  I did, however, create a fun little invitation.  My inspiration: this picture I found on Pinterest (but can't trace it to the source!):

Super cute, huh?  We borrowed several good-quality princess dresses from a friend and hung them on a clothesline in the courtyard of my husband's grandma's condo (the greenest spot in town!).  Set up a couple chairs, gave the girls some books, and took a million pictures, hoping at least one would turn out as magically as the inspiration photo.  We got one!

I fixed up the picture at Pixlr.com to make it into a birthday party invitation. 

I am a little sad that I couldn't take the time this year to put together a special party... but people had fun, and the hubs said last night that he liked that I was much less stressed than in years past. :-) 

Our 2013 Valentine

The past few years I've put together outfits--or at least t-shirts--for our annual Valentine's Day picture.  This year, with waaaay too much on my plate, I decided to just use an everyday picture of the three most darling kids in the world as our valentine.  Have I mentioned how much I love pixlr.com?  I use this site to edit all our photos.  It even has fun effects, overlays, borders, and more that can be applied to photos.  I found a whole bunch of Valentine's Day graphics, including this "LOVE" which fit perfectly on the bottom corner of our photo.