What the Girls Wore Part #2

One day Eden wandered off into our bedroom while I was in the living room.  She was there for quite some time before I went to investigate, I had forgot to close the bathroom door and she had a real good time.

We have the worst couches for fort building so I don't ever try but Brad gave it a go one day and Catie couldn't have been happier.  It wasn't terribly sturdy and won't happen often but it was fun while it lasted.

I pulled out my phone to try and get some photos of her teeth cause they're adorable but she very quickly became angry at me because I wouldn't give her my phone.  Not the teeth shot I was going for but I enjoyed it anyway.

Out for a walk on a nice day.  We're struggling with a bug phobia this year.  It wasn't there last year but for some reason Catie is terrified of all bugs, especially if they touch her.  We seem to be making progress but it's slow.

Hanging out at the park one day.

Eating lunch out on the patio.  Catie loves the picnic table Uncle Rob found for her.

I introduced Catie to freezies.  She ate three of them immediately following this one.  To say they were a hit is an understatement.  I think it's going to be the summer of the freezie.

What the Girls Wore Part #1

Eden was so proud of herself for getting those blades of grass in her mouth.  She was less pleased when I took them away.

Love these two girls together and they just love each other.  They are so sweet to one another and I love watching them together.

Bike riding. She's gotten to be pretty good this summer.

Playing outside on a hot summer day

We made our first trip to Calaway Park.  We went opening weekend so it was super busy but we still had a great time and this year she's even tall enough to ride the Ocean Motion.

Keeping herself busy while waiting in an especially long queue.

and this is what Eden did while we were at the park.

Eden has discovered her favourite place and unless the door is kept closed she has much on the toilet paper. She's silly thought she doesn't just want to unroll it, she needs it in her mouth too.

We decided Catie is old enough to start playing games so we introduced Uno, which is a huge hit, Chutes and Ladders and her favourite, Candyland.  I forsee many games in her future..

Funny how parenting is different with the second child.  We never would have let Catie sit on the table but with Eden we had no problem with it, temporarily of course.

I was behind on so many photos that I split this post into two, tomorrow will be round 2.

Gallery Wall

Nothing like a party to give you the motivation you need to finally personalize your house. I'm having a party later this week (we'll talk about that in another post) and I wanted things to look a little better around here instead of just looking like I live in my in-laws (very nice) house so I started with a gallery wall.

Lets talk about the individual pieces and then I'll show you how we hung this baby. 

When Eden was first born we had some photos taken and most of the pictures come from there. Eden and Catie, and Me and Eden both come from that photo shoot. The emerald frame is a sketch we had done at Chucky Cheese shortly after we started dating, so it's 5 years old.  I painted the canvas using my Silhouette and some vinyl to make a template. 

I love the way this large family photo turned out for a couple reasons. One, the frame. I bought it ages ago and planned on painting it and turning it into a chalkboard for Catie. The longer I waited the more I didn't want to make one at all, I was pretty sure it would be messy and Catie isn't really a colouring type so I think she'd use it once or twice and be done. I pulled it out for this with visions of painting it but the more I looked at it the more I loved the gold. That inspired me to incorporate the gold in other pieces as well and I'm so pleased I did.

Reason two. Let me show you what this photo originally looked like.  This photo shoot was done by an amazing photographer but it was a quick mini shoot.  The backdrop of the duvet worked great in all the other photos but none of us thought to fix the backdrop for the family pic.  I just wasn't happy with the background.

Brad is amazing and worked some photoshop magic and now our photo is useable. 

I do want to get some glass for the frame, I think it would look a little more polished. 

Below it is the I love us picture. I had made it as a printable but because of its random size it was going to be difficult to have printed so instead I cut the letters and shapes on my Silhouette and then pasted them onto posterboard.  Same result for easier and cheaper. 

The wedding photo is pretty self explanatory, though it really needs to be reprinted with more space at the top, at night with the shadows you get a nice view of our chins. The photo of Catie is one I took and love the way it turned out. 

Here's a fact about me you may not know, I am really good at recreating someone else's idea but coming up with my own is not my forte.  You've probably seen this print on Pinterest, I had too and loved it some recreated it and printed it off. 

I saved my favourite piece for last. A simple W I gave to my I laws years ago. I took it off the wall and painted it cream (they can have mine when I find it in storage, it's the same as their original). I hung it up and it looked so boring. Brad had the great idea to paint the edges gold so I did and loved it but it still wasn't enough, it didn't pop. So I added the stencil that wraps around the edge and now I love this piece. It really adds interest to the whole piece. 

So now how this came together. I started by laying out my frames on the floor, notice my lovely drawings of the pictures I wanted to use?  It was here that the gold really started to grow on me. 

Now this wall is directly above the stairs so hanging it was tricky. 

To make it easier we payed our frames down on a very large piece of paper and made sure everything was level, the. It raced around each frame and then moved them. I cut out each square so we had a large paper with holes cut out. Then we hung the paper up on our wall. We could hang it on either side without it being to awkward because the sides were easy to reach. Then we pulled out the ladder, it leaned against the wall with the legs wedged between the rails of the stairs. Then Brad climbed up, I handed him a photo that was prepped with 3M hooks and he placed it on the wall in the hole we'd previously cut. There was no measuring or levelling, just pasting it up. The. We pulled down the paper and were done. 

Brad said he was pretty secure on the ladder until he looked down :)

There was definitely no way I was going up there. This wall is right across from the kitchen so every time I stand at the sink I get to stare at the wall. 

Sick Eden

With all the posting I do on Instagram I'm always sure I just blogged the other day, I was surprised how long it's been and apparently my aunts started harassing my Mom for blog posts so I'll play a little catch up.

Poor Eden caught some sort of flu bug and was so sick. She threw up for 6 days straight and was just miserable. She slept in my arms which almost never happens these days.

She layed on the couch doing absolutely nothing

And was just pathetic. She would start crawling and then just give up and flop on the floor only to lay there exhausted. 

Staring at nothing. Too tired to move. 

She slept for hours every day, ate next to nothing and threw up, for days and days. 

Finally she felt better and we headed to the park but it was a hard week. 

What the Girls Wore #94

Lets take a moment to enjoy some super cute ladies...

We went down to visit my parents and Eden crawled up on this box and hung out there, pleasantly stuck for quite some time.

A friend brought over some puppies... they were a huge hit!  Catie couldn't stop talking about the black puppies.

Licking her, she loved every minute of them.

Love when these ladies play together, they both love when Daddy helps them play horsey.

We ate chocolate fondue for Family Home Evening one night and it was a really big hit!  Just after I took this photo Catie asked how her lipstick looked :)

She's growing up so quick.  Gotta love that fluffy hair hey?

This girl loves to stand, will pull herself up on anything she can find.

Catie went to a princess birthday party, she was all dressed up and ready to go and I couldn't believe how grown up she was.

My two girls

Eden has this silly habit.  She crawls around on the floor and finds something to put in her mouth, in this case a piece of ribbon.  She puts it in her mouth and then continues crawling while it hangs out, I think it's adorable so I tend to leave things around for her to find, like this piece of ribbon.

We went to the grocery store and were having such a pleasant time, I was struck by how things have really turned around and we've entered this really good phase.

I put Eden in the cart like usual, using the seatbelt, you can see the evidence of that in the above photo, so I have no idea how she managed to end up in this position.

She was very proud of herself.

And this lady looked so perfect that a picture was mandatory.

I've been pretty vocal about the fact that I don't love this baby phase.  People say all the time that their babies are growing up too quickly but for me it's the opposite, I wish she'd grow up a little quicker.  I've had a few people ask me when it changes for me, when I do enjoy things and I've decided it's now.  Eden is almost 9 months and I think she's delightful.  She can look at me from across the room and instead of whine she crawls so determinedly over.  She's sleeping well, she eats real food and she occupies herself some of her time.