Our family has been very blessed in 2011. We have such wonderful family and friends and are so thankful. We have been on many road trips this year and know that next year will be no different. We just can’t seem to stay at home!
We hope that everyone has a very merry christmas and a happy and healthy 2012.
And for those of you that we couldn’t send a Christmas card (we already send 100) I have used it for our blog heading.
I have a list of a million things I want to make. Mostly, ideas I’ve found on Pinterest.com Those of you that haven’t been on there you need to be. So many great ideas! Anyhow, I had bought a ton of horse fabric at a yard sale in July. Marlie has been wanting a dress or skirt out of it. I finally decided to tackle that sewing project on Friday. I gave her several style choices and she chose a fabric tutu. I found some cute pictures of them but no actual tutorials that I liked. I sewed the elastic waistband, cut strips of fabric, sewed them on, and made a fabric flower. I don’t love the finished product but Marlie does and that’s all the matters. I’m hoping to figure out a better way to make them. The concept is very cute. Here are some pictures of the finished product:
I still have a ton of the horse fabric left so I will be trying another style of skirt at some point soon. I’m trying to talk James into donating one of his plaid shirts to me to make the skirt with. I think the horse print and a darker plaid would be adorable! We will see.
I’ve been wanting a Steelers wreath for years and again was inspired by many ideas on Pinterest. Saturday I made a yarn wreath. I used a foam tubing from home depot to make the wreath shape and then covered it in yarn. I used felt to make the football and flowers. All of these tips came from Pinterest and not from myself. I wish I had positioned the football a little higher so it didn’t get covered as much but I think people still get the idea of it. Looks great against our black door!
My last project this weekend was made today. Marlie starts dance class on Tuesday. She has had a countdown going and is so excited. We have been reading ballerina books all week. We bought a ballerina skirt at a consignment sale last weekend and bought her leotard, tights, and ballet shoes online this week. As soon as they came in the mail she immediately put them all on to practice. She then told me that she needed a dance bag because Angelina Ballerina took one to class everyday. I really wanted to make her a bag with a tutu around it! I looked on ETSY and Pinterest for ideas and went from there. Here’s my first shot at a tutu bag. I think it turned out really well and am considering adding them to my ETSY shop.
I had a very fun crafting weekend! My housework and laundry were actually caught up by Friday so I was able to spend time doing other things. Hoping I can keep up with it and have some more craft time. What are some projects you have done lately?
I grew up in the Church of Christ in Somerset, PA. Our church had around 70 members. Most of them were some how related to me. Until I was in my 20’s in college we had the same preacher, John Hinton. John baptized my dad, married my parents, and baptized me when I was in 7th grade. He and his wife had 11 wonderful children. We grew up together, attended church camp together, went to youth rally’s together, went to drive-in movies together, and sat around the bonfire together. The Hinton’s and Thompson’s basically made up the entire youth group. We have so many wonderful memories together. We still keep in touch on facebook and through family members. John’s son, Jimmy is now the preacher at my home town church. He and his wife have done a wonderful job bringing the church closer together and bringing in new members. I look forward to the Sunday’s I am at home and can listen to him speak. Love you, Jimmy!!
The Hinton family has gone through a tremendous ordeal recently. They found out that their father, a preacher for 30 years, has sexually abused numerous little girls. Chris Hinton is now on a rampage to fight against child sexual abuse. Check out his blog - honest, heartbreaking, painful, tear jerking, and empowering: The Making of a Genious. (go to the first post in the september archives and read from there)
This is me supporting him and this cause. I’m a proud member of Unicorn Nation.
Chris- Keep doing what you are doing!!! So many lives are already changing because of your story and your fight in this war. Love you!!
Pray for the entire Hinton family and the Somerset Church of Christ.
I am apologizing for being MIA for the past three months. We’ll see if I can get this blog back up and running.
My first order of business is finding out what other SAHM’s do all week? I have a lot of friends that have their kids in 2-3 days of pre-school or mother’s day out. I also have several friends that have their kids enrolled in music class, ballet class, class that the zoo offers, and they do several play dates a week.
I definitely want my girls to be very well rounded and adjusted kids but I don’t want to overwhelm them at the same time. They are not in pre-school or mother’s day out. Since I taught kindergarten for five years I think I’m pretty good at teaching them the basic skills for kindergarten. Some think I’m crazy for doing this but I love having my girls home with me. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I have talked to some of you about this and it’s reassuring to know that you agree with me. I would love to hear from those that agree or disagree and get your reasoning for either.
Marlie will be starting her first dance class in two weeks! She is very excited about this. She will go once a week for 30 minutes. I definitely think we can both handle this schedule! It will give her the opportunity to be around other girls and listen to directions from someone other then me.
We do play dates as often as we can. Honestly, I love just being at home!! Again, is that crazy? We are so exhausted after days of going out and about that we only do it once or twice a week if at all. We are so blessed to have some wonderful neighbors that are also at home during the week so we only have to walk down the street to play with them or out into our driveway. Love that kind of play date :)
So, what do we do all day? Marlie usually wakes up around 7-7:30 and she and I enjoy breakfast together. We lounge on the couch and watch cartoons until Lyla wakes up around 8:30-9:30. After Lyla gets breakfast we usually head upstairs to the playroom. We play kitchen, farm set, trains, baby dolls, color and craft, do blocks, do puzzles, etc. I usually do a load or two of laundry during this time or clean one of the girls rooms. I am so thankful to have girls that play so well together (for now) and that are very good entertaining themselves. Some days I have a huge “to do list” and usually have no trouble getting it finished because the girls are so good! We eat lunch around noon. After I put Lyla down for her nap Marlie and I do pre-school. We work on letter identification, letter sounds, number identification, writing letters, coloring, and many other pre-k activities. I still have all my kindergarten files and we use those along with some fun workbooks. We usually do a craft of some sort and then she takes a “rest” for 45 minutes to an hour. Sometimes she sleeps but most of the time she plays in her room. Lyla usually naps from 1-4 and then we go outside, as long as it’s not too hot!! We cook dinner and eat when James gets home around 5:45-6. Our nightly routine is to play with James for a little while, take baths, eat snacks while watching sprout, read books, and have the girls in bed no later then 8. I love being at home with my girls!! I thank God every day for allowing me to stay home with them.
What do you do during the day? Would love to hear some feedback from all of you, including the SAHM’s that now have grown kids.
The Price Clan (all 10 of us) spent eight wonderful days in Pensacola. Both the girls loved the sand and ocean water which was a huge plus!! The girls had a great time playing in the sand with their aunts and uncles. Marlie had a lot of fun finding shells with Poppa Joe and Mom-Mom. Unfortunately, after a few days of a very fussy Lyla we found out she had double ear infections. After two days of an antibiotic she was a happy Lyla again (the last day.) We ate a lot of great sea food and delicious key lime pie!!! We are so thankful to have been able to spend time with our family. I have so many pictures to share but will only post a few of my absolute favorites. As always, the others are posted on my picasa web albums.
Our Pappy, Blaine William Thompson was taken to heaven one year ago today. We have all shared in grief and sadness during this time. We know that he is at peace and is watching over all of us. We will always remember the wonderful memories we have of him and look forward to seeing him again one day. He is one loved and very missed man.
Marlie loves to send balloons up to Pappy for a lot of different occasions. Erika, Marlie, Lyla, and I sent an American Flag balloon to Pappy today in honor of Memorial Day and him being a Veteran. Here are some pictures of our Celebration!!!
Many of you know that I’m starting an ETSY shop to sell the tutus I’ve been making. I am still working on the business side of getting the shop up an running. I am working on things like: return policy, shipping cost, best way to ship the tutus, cost of the tutus, etc. If you have any suggestions/ideas I welcome the advice.
We had a wonderful photo shoot on Good Friday. My dear friend, Shashray, so graciously allowed her adorable daughter, Legacy, to be one of my models. A close friends of Shashray’s took the photos for us at my in-laws house. After I narrowed down the 200 pictures I spent several hours editing the pictures to enhance the tutus. To prepare for the photo shoot I made 12 tutus (four for each of the girls to model). I also had to buy shirts and hair bows, etc to compliment each tutu. The entire week and a half leading up to the shoot I did nothing but make tutus. Needless to say, I am still catching up on the laundry and house cleaning! I think the shoot was a huge success and I cannot wait to get my shop up and running. Thanks, Shashray, Christie, and Legacy.
I needed an infant to model my tutus too. My friend, Katie, is a great photographer and just happens to have an adorable 6 month old daughter, Millie Kate. I made two tutus for her to have in exchange for her doing a mini photo shoot with Millie Kate (they live in Atlanta). She did a great job capturing the tutus. Thanks, Katie!
My best friend, Elisabeth, lives in Oregon. She has been so much encouragement during this process and as already helped me in so many way. She created my shop name and then designed the store banner, icon (profile picture), and my business cards. I know I’ll be using her for more help along the way too!! Thanks so much, Elisabeth!!!
I will post the link to my shop as soon as I launch it. I hope I have found something very successful. It’s so much fun to make these adorable tutus!
More tutu pictures: https://picasaweb.google.com/penelopepinky/Tutus#
We started our Easter weekend with a really fun egg hunt at church. Someone brought free kittens and the girls both loved holding and petting them. There was also a bunny and 2 ducks that they loved as well. I think we need a bunny but James isn’t sold on the idea. Marlie filled her basket immediately and Lyla was more interested in checking what was inside the eggs. Erika and Annie came over later and we made Peep cupcakes and dyed eggs. We had a great time with both. We ended the night with chicken, steak, and potato kabobs on the grill for dinner along with green beans, green peppers, squash, and mushrooms. The weather was perfect so we all ate dinner on the patio with tiki torches lit.
We were woken up very early Sunday morning by a very excited Marlie! The Easter bunny had hidden eggs all over the downstairs and the girls had a lot of fun looking for them. They were even more excited about their Easter baskets. Marlie’s was a horse themed basket and Lyla’s was a kitty themed basket.
We usually don’t have very good luck taking pictures of the girls together or family pictures. Even though Marlie was doing her own little poses and Lyla was on the move we ended up getting two really good pictures of them. One of them is my absolute favorite one ever taken!! We set up the tripod and set it on continuous timer to take a few pictures in a row. We actually had success with that too! We got three great photos in five minutes….wow!
After a wonderful church service we went to James’ parents house for a delicious ham dinner complete with four different desserts. We had an egg hunt there too. We were excited to have the entire family together since Becky and Pratt made the trip from Maryland.
We are so blessed to have such wonderful family to spend our holidays with!
James had to do some work in Atlanta again so we tagged along with him. We spent 4 nights/days with James’ grandparents and had a wonderful time. The girls absolutely love Grandmom and Granddad. We also got to spend some time with aunts, uncles, and cousins. The girls definitely got a little spoiled while there and Marlie is still talking about it. We can’t wait to go back.
We stopped at the Garner’s house on our way down. We had delicious homemade pizza and brownies for dinner and enjoyed each other’s adult conversation. Harrison still loves trains and really wanted Marlie to play with them but she wanted to play horse instead. They still had a lot of fun together. They are always on the go so this is the best picture we got of the two of them. Marlie was dancing around the room and Harrison managed to grab onto her for this quick picture. 
Marlie and Lyla both loved sweet Millie Kate and wouldn’t leave her alone. She is 6 months old and weighs a pound more then Lyla did at her 13 month appointment. Her chunky arms and legs are so cute!! Here’s the best picture I could get of our sweet girls together. We really wish that we all lived closer together. Can’t wait for their visit to Nashville!!
The girls had lots of fun riding around in Grandmom and Granddad’s red wagon. Granddad even set up the tent equipped with flashlights, lanterns, and wildlife for Marlie and Nathan to play in. Such great memories for this 2nd cousins to share. Marlie even used her very big muscles to pull Nathan and Stephen in the wagon. The girls loves picking some of Grandmom’s beautiful azaleas. It was so nice to spend time with everyone in a very relaxing setting. We usually make a trip to Atlanta for a big function like a family wedding or holiday. Don’t get me wrong. It’s fun to have everyone together but it’s always nice to be in a smaller crowd as well!
We also had a wonderful time at the Yellow River Game Ranch with the Abrahams and Mitchell’s. Marlie and Lyla are absolutely obsessed with deer so this was so much fun for them. Both girls really seemed to like the bunnies too. I have so many pictures I could post but I’ll just post my three favorite from the day. As always, there are a lot more pictures from this trip posted on my Picasa Web Album
As usual, I’m way behind on this blog thing. Becky and Pratt (Mike) got married on January 22, 2011. It couldn’t have been a more perfect day. We got a little bit of a snow a few days before which made for a beautiful winter wedding. The ceremony and reception were held downtown at Houston Station. The building is absolutely gorgeous! I had a lot of family members in the wedding party which made it even more special. Becky is James’ sister and we were so anxious to “officially” welcome Pratt into the family. The maid of honor was James’ other sister, Katie and my sister, Erika was one of the bridesmaids. James and our brother in-law, Clint, were groomsmen and Marlie & Lyla were the adorable flower girls. My parents were able to come to town for this celebration along with a lot of the Price extended family. We all had such a wonderful time and were so blessed to be able to share in the important day.
I tried to take as many pictures as I could but the professional photos are so amazing! Becky just sent me a copy of all the photos on cd and I am in the process of narrowing down the 800+ to make into a photo book and print to frame. I have around 190 of them posted on my picasa photo link for you to look at. I am also including some of my favorites on this blog. Enjoy!
https://picasaweb.google.com/penelopepinky/BeckyPrattSWedding# (my photos)
https://picasaweb.google.com/penelopepinky/FavoritePrattWeddingPhotos# (professional photos)
