Happy 8th Birthday Eva

Right after the baptism, we had a big birthday party for Eva at the house. We invited her whole class at school and church and a bunch of our friends. It was such a fun party with the kids running around and just playing together.

One of my favorite parts of the weekend was that Dave's Brother and Sister and their families were able to make it down for the weekend. They left late Friday night after work and rolled in around 1:00 am. I am so grateful that they made the trip. It was so fun to have them and the cousins to play with the whole weekend.

We've been playing a game with the grown ups called BANG! Anytime we play it we always have to wear crazy hats! Here we were with our rockin' it with our super sexy hats!

One of Dave's favorite birthday presents was these shorts/boxers his brother brought him from NASA. Unfortunately, he was encouraged to put them on. Always willing to model new clothes, Dave was more than willing to show them off!

Eva's Baptism

This weekend, February 18, 2012 Eva was baptisted. We were so excited. I've never met a kid more ready to be baptized and have such a strong understanding of what it meant. It was really cute to see.

Here she is all dressed up in her white baptism dress. The dress has "banana straps" (I guess this means they are wider than the more risky spaghetti straps). She still felt like the dress was a little "inappropriate" (who taught her that word?!?), and so I had to max out my sewing skills and make her a little white shall to cover up her shoulders.

She looked like an angel.

Since we were already taking pictures, we decided to get the whole family together. Unfortunately we were faced right into the sun. We took about 100 pics before we got one with everyone squinting in the sun and smiling at the same time.

My images of a quiet, super spiritual baptism went out the window once Dave and Eva started dancing a jig. Between their dancing and Porter in the background trying to peek into the baptismal font, I knew I was lucky to get one serious picture!

This picture of Eva and two of her really good friends totally cracks me up. I guess washing away sins doesn't include washing away all the silliness.

Christmas in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

Dave's suggestion for the title of this post is "Who's Scruffy Lookin'?!" or "I'd Rather Kiss a Wookie." He swears that any "true" Star Wars fan would totally get the reference....Too bad for him that I am the one writing the post. :)

For Christmas this year Dave gave Porter the absolute best Christmas present ever. Early this last spring Dave had bought an Lego AT-AT Walker and has been saving it all year to give to Porter for Christmas. Keep in mind that Porter still hasn't seen the Star Wars movies (yes, Dave is bitter, but I think they were too violent for him until this year). Surprisingly, Porter was still excited about his Christmas present. I think he was more excited that he would get to spend hours and hours with Dad than that it was an AT-AT Walker.

Christmas day they began their building. The day after Christmas they continued to build and built, and build, and build...You get the picture. It took a good week and a half of Porter/Dad time to put the dang thing together. But throughout the whole thing they had the Star Wars movie playing and there was definitely a lot of bonding involved. We actually had to deal with a lot of jealous little sisters because Dad was so focused on Porter. Luckily, Eva got a cross-stitch that she got to do with Mom. For some reason it wasn't considered nearly as fun. ;)

While we're on the subject of crazy Star Wars projects occurring at the Carr household, I would like to brag about how supportive and awesome I am toward my husband's crazy collections.

When we were first married we rented an apartment that had built in China cabinets. At the time, we didn't have anything "fancy" to put on display so I made the mistake of allowing Dave to display his Star Wars action figures in them. It was only a mistake because he laments all the room and positioning he once enjoyed.

Now his collection has been relegated to three book shelves in the hall. As his collection has overflowed these shelves, he has had to put a bunch into storage. So this Christmas he got the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD and three 12 foot shelves on which to display his collections.

We put them up in Porter's room so that they both can enjoy them together. Plus Porter's room already had a space theme. Needless to say, Porter LOVES them, and Dave has spent his whole vacation planning and arranging his display.

I never realized how many figures he had collected over the years...he's almost to the point of being labeled the "Crazy Collector Guy" a close relative to the "Crazy Cat Lady". I couldn't get all the shelves in one shot, but here's a quick picture. In his defense, when I took this shot he had just put them all on the shelves and hadn't arranged them in their final positions. When he's done, I'll be sure to post an update. :)

Quiet Books

This year I decided to make Quiet Books for my sisters for Christmas. It was A LOT of work, but they turned out so cute that it was totally worth it. A girl at church had one and offered to help me get started on one. It was so nice to have her help me realize how simple it is and to help me with things like the button holes and zippers. Each of the pages in the QB were 9x10 which was enough room to do some super cute things on but not too big to fit in a church bag.

This will be very detailed so don't feel like you have to read everything. I tried to include links to my pages of inspiration and will put all of the patterns that I have at the end of my post. Please leave comments, they make all this typing worth it!!

Here is the cover. Sorry the picture is so blurry. I totally stressed over the colors and patterns because I wanted to be sure that it could be used for a boy or girl. I really like the corduroy on the front as a nice texture and color. I wanted to put a pocket of corduroy on the back of the cover to put any orphans or paper or whatever, but I forgot to sew it on before I sewed the whole thing together.

Page One

The first page was a house. The is the only place that I didn't use felt in the whole book. I put pictures of the kids behind the windows and a family picture behind the door. It was really hard to get the windows square. Looking back, I wish I would have laminated the pictures then put velcro on the back so that the kids could take the pictures and move them around to the different windows.

Page Two

For the second page I did some cute flowers that the kids can unbutton and move around. I was planning on using normal buttons for the center of the flowers, but then I found these super cute bug buttons at Hobby Lobby and thought they would be super cute. I am worried though that little hands will have a hard time doing the buttoning/unbuttoning because of the unusual shapes.

Page Three

This Noah's Arc page was super fun. To make the rainbow, I just sewed on scraps that I had around. At one point I found a felt fabric that had a bunch of animals on it. I cut those out and was planning on using those, but then I found these animal felt stickers. I thought they were cuter and a different/stiffer texture. I just stuck them to felt and cut out around them. So far the backs haven't fallen off, I'll keep my fingers crossed!!

Page Four

I really like the Tic-Tac-Toe boards that I saw on different blogs. I found some really cute flannel that had these monkeys and bananas on it, but couldn't find a place to use it. When I got to this page, I decided to switch up the game by using the bananas and monkeys as the game pieces. My kids LOVE it and play the game as well as play with the monkeys and bananas.

Page Five

Here is a Lunch Bag with a sandwich, apple, banana, and cookie. I thought this one would be boring, but my kids like to take it and pretend to eat it. I was really excited to find the black/white flannel as the background. I thought it looked like a picnic blanket or a diner floor.

Page Six

I saw this on someone's blog and LOVED the idea. It seems like EVERY two year old loves to snap and unsnap these clips. I put two different kinds of clips on this one.

My husband suggested that because I have it that the life jacket opens, I should put a hairy chest under there. :) While I'm not on board with that I had a friend suggest I put a yellow ducky under there which would have been cute. By that time I was ready to be done with the whole thing and just left it with the background.

Page Seven

This is a fishing page. I didn't get a final picture, but I took a sucker stick (a clean one from a make your own sucker pack) and hot glued some ribbon to the end. I then hot glued a magnet on the other end to use as the lure. I found these foam stickers of the fish and put felt on the back with a paperclip in between. For the ocean water, I put two snaps to help keep the material closed.

It's super fun to go fishing! My kids love arguing over whether you can actually catch octopi, turtles and sharks. It's really funny!

Page Eight & Nine

This is my absolutely FAVORITE page!!! It was definitely the most labor intensive but it was TOTALLY worth it!!!

The gas station has a shoe lace attached so that the kiddos can "fill 'er up" as they drive past. In place of the pine trees I've seen QBs that have a road sign with miles to grandma's house and stuff. I didn't have the patience for that so I added some pine trees. I really like the tire swing. When I took the pic, I didn't realize that it was all wonky like that. For the string I used a piece of burlap. For the words, I used printable iron on paper. My only word of advise is to test it on the same color of felt you will be using. I almost destroyed one page b/c I was in too much of a rush to test it. I used 1/4 inch flat satin ribbon to sew the lines on the road.

This second page has the house and garage. I had a micromachine around the house and was able to use this little guy as the actual car for the road. This one has a round metal ball on the bottom. My husband suggested putting magnets under the street so the car would stick to it. I totally could have done it, but he didnt' suggest it until AFTER I had everything stitched on. Totally not worth unpicking all that!

My son suggested putting a mail truck by the mail box, and my daughter suggested putting some birds in the trees by the house, but once again...too late.

Page Eleven

Of course we have to have a shoe tying page. I put white stitches down the toe to add some visual interest across the toe. I used white stitching along the red to make it pop and white eyelets for the holes. I tacked the shoelace down in the middle so it won't get away and the tongue most of the way. I put it on a textured background so it would look a bit more like the road.

Page Twelve

Here's the shameless plug for love. I put all of our pictures here on the back so that the kids can remember us. I laminated the pics and put velcro on the back so the kids can pull them off and move them around. Also, it'll be easy to update/change this page. The label at the bottom also doubles as a little pocket.

Here are all the patters that I still have. A lot of them I just printed out and then cut them out and traced them onto felt.

Reference Material

I used the flowers from this template.

I used this shoe as an original template then messed around with it to make it look like what I wanted. Sorry, no idea what I did...

Here are the templates for the town. My only real tip is to make sure the roads line up across the two pages before you sew them on.

TONS of Quiet Book ideas: http://vi.sualize.us/bayliss85/quiet%20book/

Lifejacket and Town: http://seanandjennyricks.blogspot.com/2010/09/ricks-family-quiet-book.html

TONS of QB links: http://pinterest.com/originalandrea/quiet-books/

Christmas Lights

One of my favorite things about living in Arizona is going to see the Christmas lights and not freezing to death. Not only does the temple do amazing lights, but there's a neighborhood that closes down their streets and they go ALL out. It makes it SUPER fun!