Let's talk about creativity

You never know when it will strike. The past few days I have felt so inspired to be creative. However, I had no idea where my projects would go. It turns out, they didn't really go anywhere. I have been wanting to try my hand at watercoloring for quite sometime. I have a few mediums that allow water, but this time I wanted to try distress inks. My first project was "ruined" when the makeshift cardstock mask I made allowed the watercolor to bleed. I made it work, but I won't be making it into a card. My second project is still in progress. I shared a picture on Instagram yesterday of "layer one". I feel like distress inks need to be built up for a more opaque look. However, if you're looking for a more muted look, one layer is all you need. I have absolutely no idea what will come of my watercolor wonder. I will be sure to post if anything comes of it!
Thanks for reading,
BreAnn

I'm back!

After what seems like an eternity, I am back! While having a baby is a perfectly justifiable reason for my long absence, I was away a lot longer than I expected to be. I have quite a few exciting things on the horizon. We have recently planted the seeds for our garden this year. I have several card design ideas that I cannot wait to share. And there are lots of exciting life happenings coming up that I can't wait to share. I hope to have two blog posts per week from now on. Thanks for reading!
-BreAnn

DIY learning activities

Hello again!
Recently my husband and I decided that we would jump start Sirah's education a little. Her birthday falls at a time that if she were going to traditional school, she would have to wait an extra year to start. My husband and his siblings were home-schooled. After lots of consideration and prayer we have decided that our children will be as well. Sirah has always been a little ahead of the game as far as development goes, so I am capitalizing on that a little. I have decided to go ahead and start having "school time" as often as she wants to have it. I think that if we instill a love of learning early, it will always be there.
Now that I have rambled, on to the fun stuff! I managed to score a pretty decent starter set of educational books and workbooks from Walmart, The Dollar Tree, and Target. I wanted to have something else that we could do that would be fun too. Sirah loves these little flashcard sets I picked up at The Dollar Tree.

We might go back to these once she gets a more firm grasp on her letters and shapes. However, the pictures on the cards are proving to be more distracting than anything for her right now. So, I did what anyone would do. I went to Pinterest and I heated up the Scotch Laminator. I found worksheets for colors, shapes, letters and numbers. I just printed everything out and laminated them. I cut everything down and boom! Flashcards.

I also decided to make a matching game. I printed two more pages of the shapes. First, I took one set of shapes and cut them all out and glued them onto a piece of paper. Then, I ran it through the laminator. Next, I laminated the other set. Once those were laminated, I cut out the shapes and put velcro on all of them. It turned out to be a very simple project. She hasn't had a chance to play with it yet, but I know she'll love it.

If anyone has any other suggestions for DIY learning activities, I would love to hear them.

Thanks for reading!

20 days or less

Hello again!
 This blog is pretty much going to be me rambling on about all of the things I need to remind myself to do before E is born. I am finally at a place with his room that I feel like I can relax a little. Which is actually pretty wonderful given the random pains I have been feeling the last week or so. There are a few last minute things I would like to do, but I will survive if they wait until after he is born. I snapped a few quick pictures of how his room looks now. Mostly to give myself a little perspective and realize that,even though it feels like I will never finish my list of a million things to do, the room has actually come pretty far.

Now, I obviously need to hang the whale pictures and the anchor. I also have one last DIY project I would like to do. And I need to find a curtain. Or make one. I'm still a little unsure what I want to do with that. Other than that, there are just a few other things left to do before we head to the hospital. I of course need to pack for everyone. Thinking of it is kind of overwhelming, but I know I'm making it a bigger deal than it will be. We need to install the car seat as you see in the picture above. I would love to have a day to clean the carpets in the living room. I still have a few recipes I need to get together so I can take a day to prepare some meals. I would like to have at least a week or two worth of meals in the freezer. I'm not sure how realistic that is, but initially I wanted to cook for an entire month. I need to clear the storage on my phone and cameras.  I have a tendency to take twenty photos when one is clearly sufficient. And lastly, I need to make a list of everything I need to have ready to go, but don't necessarily want stashed in a bag for 3 weeks. That list seems to grow and grow. Making me think that actually packing everyone's bags will probably be a grab and go type of situation. But, as long as I have my list, I should be good to go. Right?

Anyway, I have otherwise been spending my time soaking up my last few weeks as a parent of just one. I know the dynamic in our house will change. I just hope that S is ok with everything. I'm sure she will adjust fine. But I wouldn't be a mother if I didn't worry about it a little. We have 20 short days until he is due. Some days I feel like he could come any minute. Others feel like I will have this basketball under my shirt forever. Hopefully it's more like the first scenario.

Thanks for reading!

-BreAnn

Catching Up

Hello everyone,
 I haven't posted in a few weeks. There hasn't really been a lot going on so I will just put everything from the past few weeks into this one post.
First of all, on Feb 7th, I had the most amazing baby shower. I have some pretty amazing people in my life that made sure that Baby E feels the love already. I snapped a few pictures from the shower, but they definitely do not do it justice.

 I also took a few pictures of some stuff that my Mom made. She is very talented with her crochet hook. I am so amazed by her talent!

After the shower, of course, it was time to start getting the nursery ready for baby. I still have so much more I need to do in the 5 short weeks before he gets here, but I think we have done quite a bit considering how it looked before.

I also decided to make Thank You cards for all of the wonderful things we received from our shower. I don't havve a picture of the finished product yet. I still have another shower coming up. Once I finish those I will do a more detailed post. I am doing quite a bit of DIY projects lately so I will just do one post on all of them.

We have also been getting quite a bit of snow lately, as most of you know. But, with it being so cold we haven't really had a chance to go outside and play. We finally had a day that was reasonable enough that we could go outside for a few minutes. S has never really played in the snow before. She was afraid of it last year and she was too young the year before. I had a feeling she would really enjoy it. And thanks to Frozen, she's been asking to build a snow man for 3 days.

Anyway, sorry for the long post and overload of photos. I hope to be able to stay on top of this more. Especially in the coming weeks since we will be going into full baby prep mode.
Thanks for taking the time to read about our life!

Kitchen Organization

Hey again!
 I decided this week I would make a post about my kitchen. It is probably my favorite room of the house, but also the most neglected. We bought our house almost 3 years ago. At the time I was a month away from giving birth. We pretty much decided that as long as everything was put away, that was good enough for us. As I am about to give birth again, I have a slight advantage this time. We aren't moving- so I am able to nest my little heart out. I decided I would start in the kitchen and I am so glad I did! I'm not sure how long things will stay where they are. But it's definitely a good starting point. Below are a few before and after shots of the cabinets. Feel free to share any helpful tips you have. Or any organization you have been recently doing.
Thanks for reading!
BreAnn

Here goes nothing.

Hello!
 Thank you for stopping by my little neck of the internet. I have been thinking about starting a blog for a while now, and I finally did it. I'm using this blog as an outlet for me and all of the things I consider to be creative. I realized I was taking a lot of time on Facebook to chat to people who didn't seem that interested in canning green beans or making salsa. Hopefully blogging will bring me a little closer to people who share similar interests. I will also be sharing my life as a stay-at-home Mom and wife. I'm not sure at this point where I plan to go with this. I just want it to be enjoyable. And if it is somewhat entertaining or helpful for someone else to read, then that is just a fringe benefit.
Thanks again for stopping by!
BreAnn