Three Quarters of a Century!

We love you!

Please let me never...

A Vicious Cycle

Why is it that as soon as the postpartum hair loss starts to grow back the baby is big enough to pull it all out anew?

Self-portraits (really hard, by the way) of the brand new little hairs that are growing in and sticking up. At least the new ones are a little too short to be mercilessly plucked out by little hands.

Happy St. Patrick's Day and a Baby Birthday Shout Out

Grace wanted to wish everyone a

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

and she wanted to give a baby birthday shout out to her favorite Uncle Brian:
Then she was tired from all the shouting out
(and you better believe she shouted!)

Silly Hat

Grace and her cousin Caroline

Reading

Since Grace has become more mobile (not crawling, just scooting) she loves to pull the books out of our little homemade bookcase. This one is her favorite to get out and look at. It's Richard Scary's Best First Book Ever and it was a favorite of mine when I was little. When my nephew Ryan was born I let him borrow it on condition I would get it back when I had a child of my own that I could share it with. Now Ryan is 16 and he's passed it on to Grace. I'm so glad she loves it. I like to think that she loves to read books, but I think she just likes the sound and feel of crinkling paper! :)

Things I Love Thursday: Grocery Smarts

The Diaper Diaries hosts Things I Love Thursday every Thursday (obviously) and I just couldn't resist posting a thing I love: Grocery Smarts. I went to a couponing class for Enrichment a couple of weeks ago and a girl came and talked about Grocery Smarts, a website that helps you to save money by planning your grocery shopping trips. Here's a blurb from their handout "How does it work? Using the stores weekly ad, grocerysmarts maintains a list with the SALE price of each item. In addition, it lines up all the existing manufacturer's coupons and tells you what your bottom line is for each item." When you go to their website (www.grocerysmarts.com), you will need to enter a passport (the shareable passport I use is g84chs), then you can choose which store you want and it will give you a list of all of the items in the weekly ad with how much they're on sale. They even rate each item on a 5-star basis of how good of a sale it is for the item. The best thing, it's really helpful, and completely FREE. I also love that as you go through the list for the store you can click on the items that you need and then shrink the list so it only shows the items you need, then you can add notes for other items that you may need and then print it out. I love that right there on your list it tells you how much you should be spending on each item and which coupons you should use. As far as I can see it's only for Utah grocery stores. This site would be useful even if you don't keep your coupons, but even better if you do. I use this website to see what's on sale, then I plan my meals around what's on sale, add the final items I may need that aren't on sale and print it out and go. I love compiling my grocery lists now!

Friends

One summer I went to a Christian preschool summer school. The only thing that I remember from it was a song. "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other is gold." Last night we went to dinner with some of my old girlfriends from college and their husbands, Lori and Joshua Hewlett and Jessica and Brad Petersen. We had tons of fun catching up. I love new friends, but there is something so comfortable and happy about old friends.

Cute Pictures

How To Make an Earring Holder

Since a few of you requested it, here's how to make an
Earring Holder Door

Supplies:
- 4 pieces of a wooden canvas stretcher. We got ours at Roberts Crafts. You can get any size you want so measure how big you want the finished product to be before you go.
- Mesh screen (from a home improvement store)
- Wood glue
- Paint
- Staple gun and short staples that won't poke through to the front of your wood frame.
- 2 small hinges and screws for hanging
- Carving knife

Instructions:
1. Glue the 4 pieces of the canvas stretcher together with wood glue. Let dry.
2. Paint the frame whatever color you would like.
3. Cut the screen to fit the frame plus 1/2".
4. Staple the screen to the back of the frame with your staple gun. Pick one area to start on and go out from there so that the screen stays as taut as possible.
5. If needed, trim the excess screen on the back so it looks good.
6. On the back of the frame, carve two little grooves so that your hinges fit and will be flush with the wall. If your frame doesn't have a lip then this step won't be necessary.
7. Attach hinges to the frame and hang on wall where you want.
8. Organize your earrings.

It's not a hard project at all. If anyone makes it, please let me know how it went for you.

Happy building!