A couple of months ago, Tim’s sister decided to purchase a brand new camera. She ended up giving us the old camera and we allowed Kalyssa to take pictures from her perspective. Well here is one of the best pictures she took. I absolutely love it!!!! Take a look!

Self portrait

For those of you who have read this blog in the past, you would remember me telling everyone that I won a giveaway over at Frugal Family Fun Blog. I ended up winning Printies. Printies are actually very cute and allows your child to make toys using their own imagination.

Kalyssa's Jungle Prinities-after receiving in the mail

Theses prinities came with a number of different sheets of printable fabric paper, stuffing and tool, shoes, and shoe decoration stickers.  In order to officially be able to make these, one will have to upload an Adobe program as well as create an account. To successfully create an account, you will have to add in your code which comes in the box. After getting the account up and running, you can create Printies of your imagination. Kalyssa received the Jungle set. This particular set included a butterfly, lion, elephant, monkey, hippo, and a person.

Four of the six prinities

Once you and your child are ready to create their master pieces, you will have to decide which pattern you want to start with. Once the pattern has been chosen, the features can be added. Here are a few of the creations Kalyssa came up with:

Monkey side #1

Monkey side #2

Person side #1

Person side #2

Butterfly and Hippo

After all of the prinities are designed, use a laser jet printer and print them off. Below, I will show you each step in pictures!

Step one:

Remove the printies from the paper. Follow the directions on the website to get the printies out.

Before removing printies

Step two:

Using the tool, stuff the printies with the included stuffing.

Stuffing printies

Step three:

Fold in the flap to keep stuffing from coming back out.

Stuffed Printie

Step four:

Add shoes and stickers for decorations!

Adding shoes

Adding shoe decorations

After completing these steps, you will have created the printie. Here are pictures of Kalyssa with all of hers.

Completed printie

Kalyssa and her printies

First I want to apologize for not blogging as much as I want to. Things have been coming at us at whirlwind speed and changing our course of direction. Hopefully things are getting back on track….. yes there is still a change, but we are getting through it!!!

Last month, I was sitting around the room and watching Kalyssa playing with her kitchen set. I happened to notice that she was washing her dishes with a slice of bologna that I had made her. That is when it dawned on me that she really needed some necessities to complete her kitchen. So I took pieces of left over material as well as quilting squares and started sewing.  The only additional item I used to make a couple of these  of these was baton (washcloth and pot holders). Here are some pictures:

Pooh Dish Cloth

Pooh Dish Towel

More Dish Towels

Pot Holders

More Dish Clothes

Making these was a lot of fun and I am planning on making Kalyssa some oven mitts!!

As I sit here sipping a cup of hot chocolate, listening to my three year old playing with her kitchen set, and hearing the television in the back ground, I decided that it is time to write my first official blog post of the new year.  I honestly cannot believe that the new year is here already. Last year surely came and went in a blink of an eye. Last year brought a lot of things that made everything a little hard, but hopefully this new year will bring better things. I am hoping that all that comes our way this year is positive, wonderful, and life changing.

So far we have not had the exact start that we wanted. We all have battled being sick the last few days. Kalyssa started out coming down sick for a few days. Then Tim came down sick for a few days, it went away, and then it came back again. I actually have been a little lucky. I have only dealt with a sore throat and a little head cold, but I am not going to make a big deal out of it. If I do, I will be the next one to get sick and it will not be good at all. The other thing that did not go so well, was the fact that my car decided to leak power steering fluid everywhere the other night when visiting with neighbors. So right now it is sidelined  and Tim’s car has no heat….. looking pretty great huh???? Good thing that Tim’s dad has allowed me to use his truck to go back and forth to work. For that I am very thankful!!! Amongst all of this so far this year, we did actually have something really good happen. The other day, Tim had a job interview. We should be hearing back from them to see if he got the job or not. We are waiting patiently and hoping for good news on that front! For me, work is still crazy. We have definitely slowed down a little bit. The winter weather is starting to really slow us down. However, the last few weeks I have been working crazy hours. I have pretty much took over the position as an Assistant Manager (although that is not my title) due to the fact that we do not have a restaurant manager. We have not had one  for some time. However, we are all hoping that this gets figured out soon. Only time will tell when this will be taken care of!

With the turning of the year, everyone wants to know what everyone’s new year resolutions are. I have not made any resolutions to lose weight or anything like that. Mine are more realistic to me and what I am doing right now. My biggest one is to spend more time with Tim and Kalyssa (together and separately). I have also decided that I want to get back in touch with friends/family that I have not spoken with for some time. So once or twice a month, I am going to write a letter or email to someone just to catch up and just to see how they are. Not sure exactly who I am going to start with, but I hope it will be successful. I also decided that I want to try things that I may have never done before. I need to live a little bit more and enjoy everything that I have. I also want to get back to being me and finding the person I really am. I get so swept up in all the things that are going on around me that I forget about myself. A little “me” time would be good not only for me, but for my family as well. Those are just some, however, I am sure that more will come as the year progresses on!

Before I head off of here for the night, there are a few craft things that I have decided that I want to do this year. The first thing is to buy myself a real good sewing machine so I can get back into sewing. I also want to learn how to knit and quilt. I also want to be more creative in my sewing. I will definitely show you all everything that I come up with and what I do!

I hope everyone’s new year brings them everything that they want and good night world!

Happy New Year! Hope this year is full of wonderful things for you all!