valentines day with c&o

This Valentine's Day was a fun one.  Charlotte was thrilled with everything (as you will see) and Oliver was not feeling that great the whole weekend (as you will see). With this being Charlottes first year in school, she got to attend her first Valentine's Day school party.  I think she was more excited about her party and her cards from her friends than she was about Christmas.  We did some easy crafts to prep for the big day! Earlier in the week I made extremely inexpensive and quick valentine shirts.  I am not too impressed by some of the sayings on the majority of the Valentines shirts especially for young ones.  I found both ideas for these shirts on pinterest, used freezer paper and paint I already had from past projects and picked up two shirts for three dollars a piece.  By making my own I could control the maturity of the shirts and together they only cost six bucks!

I couldn't stop with pinterest ideas for the shirts, so I kept it rolling for the cards also!  Charlotte was so excited to give out her cards to her friends and they were so easy to make!  We used an extra spindle from the front porch to serve for Charlotte's lolly pop handle.

Our family tradition is to go get ice cream and of course we had to keep the tradition rolling, even though we seemed to be in a snow globe that afternoon!  While we enjoyed our sweet treat for the day the kiddos also got a Valentine's Day surprise, electric toothbrushes!  The kids were beside themselves with excitement!

We hope everyone had a great Valentines filled with sweet treats and new toothbrushes!

beginning of the year crafting

The beginning of the year is always busy for our family.  I start getting excited about birthday parties at the first of the year.  Throw in January being a big month for me at school, a bout with the flu, and Jay traveling, we have been a little preoccupied. Earlier in the month I whipped up a baby blanket and pillow for Charlotte and Oliver's second cousin who will be here any day now.

We have about two weeks until Oliver's birthday and we have already made some really cute things to get ready for the big day.  With just a little time with the jigsaw and some therapeutic post flu painting, Oliver's Little Blue Truck is all ready to go.

Of course, I have Charlotte's birthday brewing in my head and planning sheets already going.  If you do not use a planning sheet for parties I highly encourage you to!  It always makes birthdays super manageable if I can see all aspects that go into a celebration.  I have been using these since our first birthday party almost four years ago (sniff, sniff...is she that big already?) and have used one on every party we have thrown since.

You can find this planner back months before Charlotte's first birthday.

Even though I have birthday party ideas swirling around my head I need to think about Valentines first, it will be here before I know it!

-melissa

merry christmas

We had a lovely Christmas this year with our sweet babes.  Here is some of our fun!

our last few days

Last saturday we singed up for a diy craft project at Lowes. We were pretty certain that both kids were old enough to sit there for a while and "help" mommy and daddy make a craft. The event was completely free and as you can see the kids loved it. Yes, this is Ollie's best smile...haha.

Notice Melissa's face of determination and imagine 40 hammers hitting a table at the same time. It was a loud and busy little workshop.

Here is Ollie testing out the light up feature of the train. Check!

Our little carpenter proud of the finished product.

We even got to stop by the bengal-mobile. Turned out to be good luck as we shutout the Cleveland Browns later that day!!!

On Thursday, Charlotte has her first ever program at school. Pre school of course, but it was a blast. Each class did a couple of poem/songs and thanks to a long lens I was able to get some close up shots of her little elf face.

Look at that technique!

Here's a shot of the program. It ended with the whole school singing a few songs together, including a very hearty version of "do you want to build a snowman?" à la Frozen.

Tiki (my mom) held Ollie the whole time and he clearly wasn't entertained by all of the singing going on just behind him.

Here is a group shot. Each class had a different costume that matched the poems and songs they sang. Super cute.

Imagine, "we wish you a merry christmas" being sung during this particular choreography move.

And a nice little smirk as she walked back to her row with her class.

As you can see she did not want to be a part of this picture.

Then this morning we headed to see Santa. Bass Pro Shop has been our "go-to" for the last couple of years and this Santa did not disappoint. After the kids had their picture taken, Santa asked Melissa what she wanted for Christmas. She replied, "I want our two kids to sleep in every morning." Santa's response was, "Well, a very long time ago you asked me to give you two baby dolls" and left it at that. Touché Santa!

Here is Charlotte with Santa.

And Ollie's turn.

We grabbed a few more pictures around the store...

Had to stop and see the fish of course.

This is what awe and wonder looks like...

Cowboy Ollie

And Charlotte the bear kisser.

We hope you have a great Christmas season! As you can see, we're having a fun time so far.