Amaia's Busy Book

Well I did it. I started this project beginning of July, took a hiatus for about a week right before Amaia's party (so I could work on stuff for that) and 'finished' it yesterday. I put that in quotes, because as I was going through my pictures I saw a few things (that I won't point out) that I'd like to fix someday, but at this point I've got better things to be doing.

Here is the front cover. It's a little more boyish than I was planning for, but oh well. I have to give Justin credit for the design of this page. Each 'page' is two pages sewn together, back to back, around the edge. It's got a 2" strip of black 'leather' (folded in half, with raw edges in between the pages) that I used to bind the book together. I put 3 button holes in each black strip (there are 9 pages total, I think, so a lot of button holes). The 'rings' are a piece of ribbon with a button on one end and a button hole on the other, just looped through all those button holes I made. That way, if I want to take a page out, I just unbutton the ribbon loop and take the one page out. Then on the other side I've just got the two buttons on the front cover, and two elastic loops sewn onto the back cover to help keep it closed (because there's a lot of stuff in there!)


This is the I-Spy page. I cut the hole out of the page, sewed the clear plastic vinyl stuff over the holes, and then edged the holes with the ribbon. There are 2 layers of the plastic-one on the back that goes all the way around (to make the pocket) and the other on the front with a slight opening at the top so that I can switch out the pictures after a while. Now I just have to find enough small things to make another one! I swear used everything I already have in that one...

This page has 3 strips of the 'pokey' velcro. The letters are just scrapbook paper mounted onto cardboard and then covered with contact paper, with the fuzzy side of the velro on the back. Pretty ghetto, I know, but I didn't like the look of the store bought cardboard alphabets, and now these are a little waterproof if someone decides to chew on one. The pocket holds the rest of the letters and it done up with three sew in snaps.

Here are my buckles. Pretty self explanatory, I guess. Just had to make the fabric tubes and sew them down. I'm a little sad bc my overalls buckle up there only comes off if you hold it at just the right angle, and I doubt any kid's going to figure it out. Oh well.

Shape matching. I bought a package of iron on denim patches. Then I made two copies of each shape-one out of the denim and the other out of a gray fabric. I sewed the velcro onto the gray piece and then sewed the two shapes together, so you can't see the velcro stitching on the top. Then I traced the shapes on the back of the page and used that as my outline for where to stitch the outlines. Again, more ghetto fabulousness. I'm sure there's a more efficient/better way to do it, but I improvised.

Here is my puzzle page. He's a lion, in case you can't tell. I liked how the two fabric coordinated, but in hindsight I wish I would have done a bigger contrast. It's sort of hard to tell what he is. I ended up hot gluing the velcro to the back of the pieces so you coudln't see the stitching because I forgot to add the velcro until after the fabric was already fused together. Each piece has a small piece of velcro on the page, where you attach it, but if I did it again I'd just put a grid of velcro so the pieces didn't have to be so exact in order to match up.

This is one of the first pages I finished, and I hate it :) My shoe lace is too short, I couldn't find a nice outline of a shoe anywhere so I ended up tracing my shoe and then shrinking the image. So it just looks funky. And it's boring. I couldnt' think of any way to spruce it up.

Here's my dinosaur page. Like the letters, these guys were printed off, mounted on cardboard, and contact papered. They've got the pokey velcro on the back so you can pick them up (and the trees and sun) and move them around where ever you want. Sort of like a mini flannel board.

This is one of my favorites. A little barn (the tree has little red brad 'apples') and when you open the barn doors....

you get little animal finger puppets! Don't mind the pig, he was the original-not-as-good pig, but I lost the better pig after I used him in the I Spy picture. Even after a 100% reorganization and cleaning of the craft closet and room, I still can't find him. So the ugly pig gets a turn for a while.

Clock. Eyelet in the clock and then a brad to hold it all together. Just puff paint on the numbers with that fake black leather making the hands.

Flower buttoning. I tried to make each button different (since I couldn't find them all the same). I just used scraps from my pile to make the flowers and then used my buttonholer on my machine to make the holes in each one.

Here's the first page I ever made for this thing. I like the text but I don't like the rest of it. The mirror I 'salvaged' from a foam craft mirror thing, and it got all scratched up in the process of removing it. And then my ribbons all not even. And then I found out that you could just buy those not-glass mirrors at the craft store plain, and I was sad :( That would have been so much easier.

Same idea as the I Spy page, but I put pictures in, that can be rotated when I feel like she's getting bored of the pictures I've got in there.

She got magnets on the back side, and each piece of clothing has a magnet as well.

Probably my favorite page is the cow page. I was originally going to cut out the spots from the white leathery stuff and put different textured black stuff in the holes. But then I saw this one page in someone else's busy book that had little flaps with numbers, and underneath was that # of small items. So i merged the two ideas, and I love it. I'm sad my barn is crooked, but hey. What can you do? Each flap has something different underneath. Here's what's under the 7:

for the rest I just used the smallest random things I could find. Like the 2 has a pair of googly eyes under it, the 10 has 10 mini brads, and the 8 has these little black buttons. You get the idea.

Tic tac toe. Ugh this page sucked! anyways, it's got a magnet behind each of the 9 cubes, and each of the 10 game pieces (you guessed it, paper with (no cardboard) and contact paper on the outside) has a magnet as well. Then you just store them all in the zippered pouch when you're not playing, so you don't lose all the pieces. Oh, and I hand stitched around every single one of those petals on the flower. Just FYI :)

Crayon roll-I didn't make the 'back' like you would a traditional crayon roll. I just used the page itself as the back, and sewed the pocked onto it. The little envelope is made out of sew in heavy interfacing and then I cut paper to the size of my envelope and hot glued the top together to make a little note pad.

The back cover. Just to point out-all my pages are made from felt (by the yard-I think). Or wool felt. I dunno. All I know is, I bought a whole bunch of it because I was going to make one of those super long trench coat things out of it, (along with the heavy sew in interfacing that I used on some of the pages, and that I put in between the cover pages to make it a little sturdier) and then I changed my mind and went with a dark gray with a sew in interfacing. Which I still haven't finished, for those of you who saw me working on it at sewing group like forever ago. The Outside covers are just plain old regular felt that I bought in squares at Hobby Lobby, but it worked out ok because I had the stiff interfacing to keep it from being so floppy.

So there it is! Took me forever, cost waaaaay to much, but it's cute! I plan to wrap it up for Amaia so she can open it at the hospital. Which is in 2 DAYS BY THE WAY!!!

Yea yea, I told every one I wasn't going to make it my c-section date. Boy did I shove my foot in my mouth. But it works out because I got tons of stuff done (like Amaia's party, this busy book, laundry, vacuumed the car!...) that I really needed to get done. And I still have more to do, so she better not even think about it!

Well I did it. I started this project beginning of July, took a hiatus for about a week right before Amaia's party (so I could work on stuff for that) and 'finished' it yesterday. I put that in quotes, because as I was going through my pictures

Amaia's 2nd Birthday

Happy Birthday Amaia!
I thought I would make this a separate post, so that way I have one less thing to worry about come the end of the month (since I have like 4 days until baby # 2 gets here! maybe less....). I've also 'finished' my busy book. Just need to take photos and then I'll (hopefully) get that posted this week too.

Anyways-back to the party.

We had Amaia's at our house this year. We wanted to do it at the same place as last year, but since I wasn't sure if our friends would be around (plus there isn't much seating for eating there anymore-someone's run off with all the furniture... :)) we just decided to do it here and keep it small (-er than last year).
The theme this year was LADYBUGS! which I think Amaia really liked. She didn't quite get the whole birthday thing at first. Then we went to her friend Kate's birthday party the week before, and that whole week she kept talking about Amaia's 'bo-bay potty'. It was cute.
Here are the pictures (no video I don't think...):

Amaia opening presents

The 'Pin-the-Ladybug-on-the-Flower' Game. We didn't have winners or prizes or anything. And no, Amaia's wasn't either of those two on the yellow (the intended target). She was almost there, but moved it at the last second. Those two in the middle belong to the Larson boys :)

These are just some random pictures-the decorations (what little I had time to put up), Amaia in her birthday outfit that I made. The shirt used to be a onesie that was like 12 month size. I'm sure it would have been just fine if I left it as a onesie and snapped it up, but once I sliced off the bottom and hemmed it up, it definately doesn't fit anymore. Oh well.

Here you see (clockwise from top left): Her birthday outfit, the bean bag toss thinger, the ladybug cake pops that I put in the party favors, the ladybug bean bags that I put in the favors (each had the kid's name stenciled on the black belly), the invites, the pin the ladybug game, the cake, and the little pots planted with flowers that I put in the favors.

Cake time! So Amaia has this little block that is clear on the sides and has a birthday cake with one candle on the inside. She's been carrying that thing around for probably a month and blowing out the candle. I even got her to blow out a little tea candle I had lit for some reason. And then we get to her party. She blew once like way far away, and then kind of flipped when I lifted her up so she could reach-I ended up blowing them out for her. And then of course she ate none of her cake. I'm pretty sure she doesn't like cake or frosting. Definately takes after her dad on that one (brownies she likes though....)

So towards the end of the party one of the ladies there pointed out how my little bean bag toss thing looked like one of those cut outs for pictures. So we put a pan upside down behind it for them to sit on and made all the kids pose with their hands and feet sticking out. Too bad I couldn't get Amaia to smile :( but it's still cute

speaking of bean bag toss, did anyone mention how hard it is to photograph moving objects when it's just not that bright? Usually our camera kicks butt at the whole 'hold-the-button-as-it-takes-a-million-pictures' thing, but it was just dark enough out (we had our party at 5 for a dinner party) that it's all yellow and the action shots got all blurry from lack of light. I'll admit that it's mostly my fault-we could have moved the game, or I could have sat on the other side so I was shooting into the light. But hey-what can you do?

So that's it. Amaia had a lot of fun. She went around all night talking about her 'yeaga bug' birthday party and that all her 'friends tum'. And at the end we all got to go out and see an awesome double rainbow right out front. All in all, it definately went better than last years party. :)

MY BABY IS 2!!! ACK!

July 2010-1st Half

Ok,
I'm getting this out of the way fast because there's a lot of stuff coming up in the second half of this month, and I dont' want to get behind.

First things first: As of Wednesday I'm 4cm dilated at 90% effaced, and my contractions have gone from just hard-as-a-rock and holy-crap-i-really-have-to-pee to slightly painful. Nothing near bad enough send me to the hospital, but it's definately working towards that. I'll be really sad if this baby comes before Monday (since that's Amaia's birthday), and slightly put out if she comes before Wednesday (Amaia's 2yr appt and I gotta get my hair done so I look good, darn it!), but I'm almost positive we won't make it to the 30th for our scheduled c-section (no one hold me to that, though).

This month was fun-well I'm sure they're all fun but stuff happened that I actually remembered!
First of all, we did a 'maternity shoot'. Meaning, Justin, along with our good friend Sarah, took pictures of my roundness in our backyard. But they turned out super cute and I didn't have to pay a cent for them. Here they are:

We also went to see some fireworks. Luckily we brought our camera to take pictures, although it was a little tough with a street lamp right there. Then you add the humidity+smoke, some of them were super foggy. It was tons of fun though-so many people were there setting off fireworks all at the same time. Needless to say it got a little loud at times! I spent a good chunk of time holding Amaia's ears-one of her ears against my cheek and the other plugged with my finger (leaving me a free hand to plug at least one ear). She would get kind of scared with the noisy ones and start chanting 'no, no', but then as soon as they were over she would ask for more. I have a couple pictures below of the fireworks. They are by no means all the pics we took, but the best 3. Plus a super awesome shot of the clouds from our backyard, plus a couple things I made this month:

(I know you're thinking "wow, only 2 things, huh?" well most of the time has been spent on making Amaia's busy book and doing stuff for her party. Party pics will be up next post and I'll post the busy book as it's own post as soon as I get it done, so you'll just have to wait)

Also, I gave Amaia paint. At least it was finger paint and didn't end up staining anything. At first it took her a while to realize that she could paint on things other than the paper I gave her....Like herself:

But after about a half hour, when the paint started to dry, she was done. I guess she didn't like the stretchy/itchy feeling of dried paint on her. Which was fine, because at least she was the one to end the fun, and I didn't have to be the bad guy :)

On to Amaia's Can-Do's:

She will sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" (first line only, but it's still super cute)

She asks to 'watch soccer ball'-aka the World Cup.

She's got a few big words under her belt (meaning she says them pretty much the right way): controller, battery, toilet, Argentina, alligator, and I'm sure others that I've forgotten. She pretty much picks up everything we say at this point.

She learning the difference between boys and girls. She'll go around saying 'so and so BIG boy', or 'so and so BIG dirl'-most of the time she gets it right

I guess I tell Amaia to be careful too often. If I say ouch, Amaia will say "mom pareful" :)

When we first get in the car from the store, and it's like a friggin oven, I usually comment on how hot it is in the car. Amaia then goes (every time) "eneh-ee-un on?" (aka-air conditioning on?)

She apparently knows all about my teddy/blankey laundry swap every week. We have 2 of each her Teddy and her Blankey, for washing purposes and of course if one gets lost. Every Tuesday I'll take them when she's not looking and hide them in the laundry under a pile of towels, then go to her room and get the spares out of her closet and drop them on the floor like I never did anything. Then I'll wash and dry them and put them away while she's napping. Except one week, all she saw me do was come out of her room with the new ones, and she got all excited about a 'neeuw blankey'-wft? I thought she would flip out if she new I took it away and washed it, but she was excited all day about the new one.

Every once in a while she'll forget to come tell us she needs to go potty. When that happens, she pees a little in her underwear, then remembers and comes to tell us. Except she'll say "unner-ware clean?" instead of "potty". It's her little way of saying she didn't straight up pee her pants, but that it's a little wet down there.

A lady bug is a 'yega-bug' (we've been talking about them alot since that's the theme for her birthday party)

She loves watching the blog videos, like I think I've mentioned. Lately though, instead of asking to just 'watch Amaia', she'll ask to "watch amaia peetler?' (on the computer). As opposed to what, you ask? I have no idea.

On top of know what the # 1,2 &3 look like, she's learned the #5 as well, and it's safe to say that's her favorite number.