Egg-cellent Easter!

Posted in Family, Holidays and Seasons by teamtradermom

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Easter this year was made much more fun by the fact that Isabella really got in to it. Last year she could sort of hunt for eggs and help die them and such but this year she REALLY enjoyed it! We had a ton of fun. Instead of me blabbering on and on about it, I’ll just show you the highlights, in pictures!

Coloring eggs!

(she sticks her tongue out when she concentrates)

(chocolate “nests” that I made, with M&M eggs, and a marshmallow bunny)

(Chocolate Oreo pudding cake (with a special blue whipped cream frosting and Easter sprinkles)!)

(someone’s keeping an eye on it…)

Easter morning!

Hunting for eggs!

Celebrating with the family at my parent’s house

(Rockin’ the Easter dress, with dramatic lighting for effect!)

Another egg hunt!

Live action video directly from the backyard!

(Making giant bubbles!!)

The after dinner siesta…(these 2 weren’t the only snoozers…CJ was out in the car sleeping!)

(My favorite part of Easter – the Reese’s peanut butter eggs!)

There you have it! I hope your Easter was as good as ours!

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6Apr2012

From the Mouths of Babes–Bedtime edition

Posted in From the Mouths of Babes by teamtradermom

Isabella says the funniest things at night when she’s talking herself to sleep. Tonight it was,

“Spiderman is a superhero. He is red and blue. That matches. Ironman wears a mask made out of iron. Spiderman wears a mask made of spiders. Batman has a mask like a bat. Robin’s mask looks like a robin. Wolverine wears a mask that looks like a wolver.”

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3Apr2012

Checkpoint–How’d I do in March?

Posted in Goals by teamtradermom

Time once again to check in and see how I’m doing on my New Year’s Resolutions. This is about the time of year when I normally start to get flakey or lose interest. Think I stayed the course?

Family and Home:

1. Do at least one family outing a month. We did a few of these, including going to some new parks, surprise party for CJ and walking the pedestrian bridge downtown and even breakfast at my work!

2. Tackle the following home projects this year:

Buy and hang curtains on all the windows. I bought curtains for the master bedroom but they’re on back order so I haven’t hung them yet. Baby steps. Next room to do will be the living room.
Unpack the remaining boxes in the basement. No…though I did re-organize a few things down there.
Create a sitting room within the master bedroom. Not yet
Add built in shelves to the living room by the end of the year. No progress.

4. Move Isabella to a toddler bed. YES! Check this baby off! We transitioned her over just a few weeks a go and she’s doing great! It was actually really easy too, which is a relief. It still scares me that she has freedom now to wander around, and in fact she did fall down the stairs yesterday, but we’ll get used to it all in a matter of time.

5. Have Isabella potty trained by her 3^rd birthday (September 30). No but we did buy a potty seat for her to start training with!

6. Research pre-schools and enroll Isabella in one to start in the fall of 2012. No progress.

Financial and career:

7. Attend one career professional event a month. Done!

8. Spend less money. We actually did really well on this one. I started employing some simple money savings tricks every day and that is helping me feel empowered. Plus we got our tax refund from the state which helped. The Federal refund will all go to paying off the credit card. I also cashed in some points on 2 of our cards to help reduce the balance. Yeah!

9. Save money for Isabella. Her money saving jar is about 1/4 of the way full!

Physical and health:

12. Adopt one new healthy habit each month:

March – Do some type of physical activity IN ADDITION to regular workouts
April – Drink at least 64 oz. each day (includes water, tea, or juice. Does NOT include pop or alcohol)

I actually switched these around. I figured March would be too cool for outdoor activities (turns out, I thought wrong) so I opted to do the drinking more water one. I actually was doing really well at it for the first half of the month, then I fell off. I’ll keep working on it though!

Social and cultural:

13. Attend at least 4 cultural events this year. I attended a lot of things this month – saw “The Fantastiks” at the local Community Playhouse, saw “Rock of Ages” at our theatre downtown, and attended a Fashion Show with friends! All super fun!

14. Regularly participate in events put on by the social clubs I belong to (speakers events, parties, happy hours, etc). Did a couple of these as well!

15. Go on a date night with CJ once a month. We actually went on 2 in March! We book ended the month by seeing The Fantastiks on the first Saturday and then going to The Hunger Games on the last Saturday!

I also got a lot of projects done that I’d been putting off, which always feels good. Really good.

In April I’m going to try really hard to get to some of these that I have so far been ignored. They’re not hard, it’s just a matter of doing them!

Here’s to another great month!

2Apr2012

Spring Things

Posted in Family, Holidays and Seasons, Isabella/Munchkin by teamtradermom

Don’t you just love this time of year? It has been unbelievably nice and warm here in Omaha lately. We were in the 80’s and 90’s all weekend and in to today.

No complaints from me. I’d much rather have warmth than cold; sun than snow; green than brown.

But I will miss my cute winter boots.

Remember that glass art project I did a couple Friday’s ago? Well we got them back last week and I forgot to show you how AWESOME everyone’s stuff turned out!

Ta da!

Aren’t they all great? Each one is unique and different, yet super cool. Mine is the second from the left on the bottom row.

Here’s the before pic:

And a close-up of the after!

I am super happy with it and I particularly like how the colors sparkle and shine when the light shines through the window. I plan to hang it in one of the windows above our door. I just have to figure out a way to do that…

Speaking of projects…I tackled another one on Sunday.

A co-worker friend had given me a doll cradle a while back that was hers as a baby. It was in great condition, just needed a little TLC in terms of dusting and touch up work.

(By the way, it was impossible to take a picture without Samson photo-bombing it. Apparently the cradle had some tantalizing smells on it that REALLY intrigued him!)

I decided to paint the wood white and re-upholster the bed part. I’ve done it once before so naturally I’m an old pro…

I started by pulling the bottom out and ripping off the old fabric. I found some cute flannel stuff at the fabric store that would work for a couple projects, this being one of them.

I first laid the board on the fabric so I’d know how much to cut.

Then I trimmed a nice rectangle, making sure I had a couple inches of trim around each side.

The next step involved some very intricate fastening measures that should really only be left to people who know what they’re doing.

In other words, I used duct tape.

I folded in each side and taped it down with a long strip.

Then I folded the corners in and secured those.

The back can be ugly since it’ll never be seen.

When all was said and done, the “bed” looked like this.

Then it was time to tackle the painting. I simply drug the cradle outside and sprayed the bejeezus out of it with white spray paint.

The finished project turned out really nice! Isabella is going to love it!

I plan to give it to her on Easter, and use it as a “basket” for all her other goodies.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t include one final picture of the cradle with Samson in the background.

Somehow I managed to get this whole project done during Isabella’s nap time. Unbelievable.

Finally…you can’t have spring and Easter season without sugar cookies!

Isabella helped me make them yesterday. I got the dough prepared ahead of time and she helped with cutting them out.

At first she didn’t get the concept of using them as actual cutters. She would just set the cookie cutters on top and them pull them off leaving very faint outlines.

Eventually she got the idea though.

Not only did we do bunnies and butterflies and dog bones (for Samson of course), we also had to do Christmas trees and candy canes and gingerbread men.

Naturally.

Once they were baked and cooled, she helped me frost them too. She chose to use yellow and pink frosting.

They all turned out absolutely perfect! And they taste even better because they were made with love!

My last project of the day was to fix her Gingerbread Man doll which she has slept with every night since December. Mind you, “Ginger” was a toy of mine as a kid so he’s not exactly a spring chicken. As such, part of his shirt was coming unstitched and he head was, um, partly falling off.

So morbid.

I used the same fabric that I bought for the cradle to fix Ginger, basically just sewing a new “bib” on him (which also attached his head back to his neck).