Boys Need Pretty Burp Cloths Too

   'Tis the season of boys or so it seems.  I was thrilled when 3 of my buddies (Andrea, Katie, Laura) told me they were expecting in March (partly because my bday is in March).  I did my usual 50/50 guess and to my surprise all are going to be boys. Did you know that in 2010 the global sex ratio was 986 females per 1,000 males and trended to reduce to 984 in 2011 (expedia). Who knew? I have to say, I'm very much in love with my little boy so I'm very happy for them. 
   My new obsession is monogramming/sewing fabric on burp cloths which makes great baby gifts. They are super fast to make and fun because it calls for lots of fun fabrics.  Now, to some people I'm sure the idea of decorating a burp cloth seems impractical.  That's probably because it is.  Its a decorated piece of cloth that gets puked on.  But in the days of sleepless motherhood when you fell disorganized and crazy, you can pull out that beautiful burp cloth and it somehow makes the puke seem better and you seem somehow more organized as a mother. Oh, and its freakin cute because your baby's name is on it!  

 

             
       

playing at Nana's House with cousins

  On Wednesday, we had a  beautiful sunny 70 degree day here (yes, it is Jan. in Memphis) so we decided to get out of the house and go to Nana's.  We love going to Nana's house because there's lots of fun paths to walk on and trees to climb outside. 

smelling tree branches

dinosaur Eva hiding in the bush

Unfortunately, most of my great outside childhood is gone now.  The "bamboo forest" in which I would hold Greenpeace Jr. meetings with old friends like Anna Lockwood, Vivian Jaynes, Anne Bailey, etc. (sorry if I only referred to you as etc) is now gone.  The treehouse that we would spend nights out under the stars that my Dad built is now gone as well when the huge hackberry fell over in Hurricane Elvis.  But the old magnolia tree in the front still stands - missing most of its branches - but its still there.  And as Eva marched in the leaves and climbed the low branches, I remembered the fun times as a kid when Laura Bandura and I would sit high (and I mean really high) up in the tree and make animal sounds as people walked by and laughing hysterically to watch their reaction.

Later on that day, cousins Olivia and Maddux came over while Shannon ran an errand.  The kids had a blast racing in the back yard.

Olivia didn't stand a chance against competitive Eva and Maddux. 

lots of yelling was involved - usually about who won

My New Bed - Sewing Euro Shams

 All my friends know that my favorite color is white.  It looks clean and goes with everything.  However, I am trying to branch out and add more color to my house.  I decided to sew Euro pillow shams (26x26 pillows) with a 3'' flange.  I found a great tutorial at :
                 sew-passionate.blogspot.com/.../easy-euro-shams-with-3-flange.html

BEFORE

  I also made a new sham for the long center pillow (simply measured the pillow to make the pocket sham) and monogrammed it.  I loved the idea of navy blue (my accent wall) and yellow so I went on fabric.com and ordered 3 yards of a great yellow cotton print.  I used an old white sheet for the backs of  the Euro Shams and sewed 2 sheets of 1/4 inch batting to the front of the pillow to keep the flange from falling.
  Materials used:
3 yards of front fabric cut to 33''x33''
sheet for back : each pillow needs two 21.5''x33'' (they overlap in back)
batting 33''

These were so easy because there's no zipper involved!  Just make a simple pocket in the back! The end result came out great shown here:

AFTER (Notice my cat didn't move during the photo shoot)

               

I also decided to add a little yellow to my plain white lampshades by buying a stencil and painting a design on them instead of buying new ones.

 

                                           In the end, all of this only cost me about 30 dollars!

Little People Update

  I'm so happy that Eva is smiling for the camera now.  Nana gave her a camera for Christmas and I think it helped with the fear factor as she went around taking pictures of us and telling us to smile.  Eva is about 3.5 years now and loves to ride her new bike!

 She also loves to help mommy cook and especially making cookies. Her speciality is stirring and tasting the cookie dough when I'm not looking.

   Eva loves to talk about words that rhyme and opposites.  We even have started some addition and subtraction.  Her favorite books are still Dr. Suess books and 26 Princesses. As always, Eva is a big help with JJ and has never shown any jealousy (something that surprised us all).  She doesn't like it when he gets fussy so she plays peek-a-boo and sings songs to him

JJ is a few days shy of 5 months and doing lots of new things.  He eats squash and green bean baby food, in which most ends up on him.  He loves to giggle as you can see in the video.  JJ is touching his toes as much as possible and shoving his fingers in his mouth with lots of drooling.  Sometimes I think that is what it must be like to have a English Bulldog.

 

 

         

Rainy Day

 
  What to do when its wet out and you are waiting on insurance to contact you so you can cut up a massive tree? Go outside and get wet of course!  Eva had a blast playing in the puddles of our driveway with horrible drainage - at least somebody thinks our driveway is fun.

HOLY MOLY! That was a HUGE OAK TREE!

   We are feeling pretty fortunate that our huge oak tree that fell yesterday evening did not hit our house or cause any harm to anyone.  I left the house to go pick up Eva from school and decided to go stop by my mom's instead of returning home.  An angel must have been looking out after us because the tree fell right where I usually park my car! Yikes!

It did however fall on the corner of our neighbor's house. :(

My Rock Remains!

On the plus side, I'm loving all the sunshine coming in through the house and all more reason to convince Jay to let me get plantation shutters. And maybe we can even grow some grass now! But seriously, we are very blessed that it fell the direction it did.

2 years later....the Blog is Back!

   Ok, so I went back to work in 2010 and that's when the blog stopped.  But now that I'm home again, I have ample time to blog.  Well, maybe not ample time.  But lots has changed since 2010.  In brief, we moved to a bigger house in summer of 2011 in what some people would call East Memphis while others consider it more "University Area".  Depends on where you originate I guess. Its a great location  on Walnut Grove(new windows have helped with noise) outside High Point Terrace.  We got an awesome deal on it at the expense of some work that needed to be done in which we redid floors, windows, 1 bathroom, paint, new appliances (house came with none),  granite in kitchen, and landscaping.  WHEW. We still have a bunch to do but happy with the progress we have made on it.    

I am working now PRN as a Dietitian at baptist desoto, but I probably won't be working much since Jay works 6 days a week owning his own electrical business - Jay Alan Schwartz Electric co.

Eva is now 3 and goes to preschool! Wow, time flies. She goes to St. Lukes preschool 3 x a week. Its a nice,small sized methodist preschool where she takes chinese (yes, chinese),music class as well as dance and gymnastics and chapel. Its conveniently located by our new house in East Memphis so that's awesome when I'm running behind and have only 10 minutes before she needs to get picked up at 3:00. And my wonderful husband takes her to school everyday! So I can remain in pajamas basically until 3:00 everyday. She is definitely 3 and can be a sassy pants but she's a sweetie who loves anything purple or princess.

Eva's "thinking" tongue.

Jay Alan Schwartz, Jr.

And we had another baby on August 25, 2012 - Jay Alan Schwartz, Jr.  Our son "JJ' is now 4 months old and is trying to roll from his back and can tool from tummy.  JJ is quite long and he wearing 6 month clothes for the length. He found his toes and loves them!  He is gnawing on everything, especially my face so there's some teeth coming soon.  He especially loves his sister, he just smiles and laughs at her all day long.  Its really sweet - I cannot wait until they are old enough to play together. He is already a seasoned traveller, we flew back from Iowa for Thanksgiving and did great.

So, in a nutshell that's all - happy to be back blogging to share my creative side and family with friends and family!