Cups and Cousins

Elora definitely isn't interested in sippy cups, but she loves to drink out of our glasses.  She makes a mess with it, of course, but she does it.  We'd shared a piece of carrot cake--this child loves carrot cake--and she grabbed for my water glass.  There was only a bit left in there, but it was a big glass, so I helped her with it.

She kept trying to drink even after it was gone, though, so I went and got her a smaller, more manageable glass and put a little water in it for her.  She did better with it, once she got used to the smaller, lighter glass.  (I guess she was expecting it to be heavier at first, because she dumped half of it down her shirt when she first picked it up.)  

Cute, right?  I'm going to have to get her some little plastic cups to practice with, though Brandon thinks we still need to work on the sippy cup thing.

My beautiful "little" cousin, Merryn, who has been taller than me since she was 13 or 14, is expecting a baby girl this summer.  She's young, and this was not a planned pregnancy, but she is so excited to be a Mommy.  She's taking it in stride, and the family is behind her 100%.   

Merryn is more of a sister to me than she is a cousin, so really, I'm going to be Auntie to another little niece.  Cecelia Michele is expected in June.  :)

SPRING!!!

Thank God for SPRING, and thank God it's finally here!  This weather has been glorious.  The sunshine has done me a world of good, let me just tell you.  I was giddy at the sight of the season's first flowers.  Giddy.  I saw these as I was headed out the door for work last Friday.  I called Brandon and begged him to take these pictures for me, I was so afraid they would be gone by the time I'd be able to do it.

This is why green is my favorite color.  It is the color of new growth, of renewal, of new beginnings.  To me, green, in all its varying verdant shades, is the color of life.  It makes me feel buoyant, and alive in a way I haven't felt since autumn descended into winter, to see the pale green shoots pushing up from the ground and reaching for the sunshine.  I love the way tender new leaves and delicate petals unfurl.  The vibrance and color are a balm after the monochrome desolation of winter.  I am invigorated.

Happy Birthday Elora!

Elora's birthday party was Sunday.  I was really happy with the way it went, but really disappointed too.  Peguy  and Neil were able to come, which made me really happy.  They brought a few guests too, some of her family who happened to be visiting that weekend.  And our friend Brandy came with her 3 children, but her husband (who works with Brandon) stayed home, since he wasn't feeling well.  

The house looked great, and the food was great, mostly because my husband gave his weekend over to helping me.  I couldn't have accomplished so much without his help.  (Thanks, baby!)  The cake turned out really well too, thanks to a hand mixer on loan from Mary A. (Thanks Mary!) and a few icing tips from my mom (Thanks Momma!).  I can't even remember the last time I did a cake like this:

I had a few issues with the icing, but ultimately, I was pleased with the result.  It was pretty; it was yummy.  So what if it wasn't perfect?  Nothing, that's what.

 The party itself went well; I'm pretty sure everyone had a good time.  We had cake and icecream, and we all sang happy birthday.

See the decorations and balloons?  I ordered all the decorations online, and picked out my balloons at the shop.  We just happened to have the mylar balloon that matched my decorations perfectly.  It was awesome! (Thanks Lizy and Katelyn for blowing them up and messing with that yucky high-float for me!)

 Elora enjoyed her cake.  As a matter of fact, she liked it so well that she stuck her face in it.

It was so cute!  We got a lot of really great pictures too.  About 450 of them.  I think this one is my favorite.

 

So what was the problem, you ask?  Only this.

Brandon and Elora were both sick all weekend.  They were both miserable on Sunday, but they were both champs.  I just felt so bad for Elora.  She was so lethargic, so unlike her usual happy self.  She hardly smiled and her eyes were dull.  It made me sad.  Didn't we just go through this?  Oh that's right, yes, we did.  Just last month.   

Brandon is better, but poor Elora is still sick.  I'd scheduled her 12 month well baby exam for today, and it worked out well that I already had an appointment for her to see a doctor.  He said she'll be fine (which I already knew, but it was good to hear him say it anyway) but that she's definitely cutting new teeth, poor thing.  I'll be glad when she doesn't have any more teeth to cut.  The good news is that she's perfectly healthy, aside from the cold, and is right where she ought to be developmentally.  Yay!  I just want her to feel better, and soon.

Happy Birthday, my little Honey Bear.

 

Baby Steps

Elora has been able to pull herself up to a standing position since the fall, and has been briefly letting go since around Christmas.  She's gaining confidence, and lets go for longer and longer without without grabbing for something or sinking to the floor.  Yesterday, I was finally able to catch her free-standing on film.

Even more exciting is that on Wednesday, she took her first steps!   I only got to see her second step; she took her first step before I got home from work.   But that's ok.  She was with her Daddy, so he got to see her take her first step.  He misses so much while he's at work, I'm glad he got to see such a big first.  I'm so excited for her, she's so close to really walking!!!!!

Yay, Elora!!!

Crafting? What is that?

I can't stop taking pictures!!

I'm having so much fun with my new camera, it's ridiculous.  I have so many pictures of Elora, doing pretty much the same things.  I just can't help myself.  My baby is so cute, and my camera is so awesome...  I took these right after she woke up from her morning nap one day last week:

Isn't her hair wild?  It's always like that when she wakes up.  These are the pictures I took 2 weeks ago and then forgot about, of Corinnea fighting with the long arm machine:

I did a double take when I saw her under there, and she said "Yes, I really am sitting under here...".  These are from Sunday morning:

She was helping him eat his breakfast.  She often pilfers food from our plates now, when she can.

Fantastic Friends

This is the purse and wallet set I commissioned from Lizy and Katelyn, respectively.  I chose the fabric, and they did all the work.  Don't I have incredible friends??  Seriously, you guys are awesome.
  As a bonus, we got some awesome little charms in at the shop, and one of them just happened to match my new set perfectly.  So I brought one home and promptly made it into a zipper pull.

Perfect, right?  Man, I love it when that happens.  Double yay!!  More of the zipity-do-da-ness.

As a side note, this is what happens when you forget to adjust the white balance setting on your camera:

And this is what happens when you correct it:

Zipity Do Da

 After several gloriously sunny, snow-melting days, with temps soaring up into the 50's at times, I was dismayed to find that Saturday had dawned so cold and gray. The forecast called for light snow Friday night, so I wasn't surprised to see it when I looked out my window Saturday morning.  It surprised me that there was 6 inches of it.  I don't know if the break made Saturday's plunge back to winter harder to bear, or if it gave me the lift I needed to get through this last leg of winter.  I'm trying to look at it as a boon, a taste of what's to come.

This was Saturday morning:

Yesterday made it easier to see it as a boon.  It was still cold; it had barely cleared 20°F at 11am, but the sun had sole dominion over the sky.  He'd banished all but a few stray wisps of cloud from his sight.  Since it had stayed cold, the snow was just as powdery as when it first fell.  The wind blew it off of the roofs in great swirling eddies that sparkled in the sun, like so much fairy dust cast willy-nilly into the air.  It was a gorgeous, bright, sunny day and I loved it.

This was Sunday morning:

I got up early with Elora, and enjoyed a nice lazy morning while Brandon slept in.

 
I ran some errands mid-morning, did some sewing, and got some great family time in with both Elora and Brandon in the afternoon.  The whole day was just wonderful, a very zipity-do-da day.

It was a lazy day for Brandon too.  He spent a lot of time stretched out on the couch, reading or playing with Elora.  And maybe checking his eyelids for holes?  He's the one who snapped this shot at sunset.

A lovely end to a lovely day.

New Around the Green World

Thanks to Megan the Wonderful over at Shabbyblogs, I now know that Blogger has added a page gadget for us to play with.  So, of course, I had to play.  See the links across the top of my blog, under the search bar?  Those are my pages. (There will be more to come.)  At first, I thought I could post to the other pages like I could to my main blog page, but that's not the way they work.  So I have a page for my digi scrapbook, and another for my favorite books.  When I want to add something to either of them, I just need to edit the original page post, as opposed to making a new post.  It's pretty cool, I think.  (If you would like to know more about the page gadget, you should check out Megan's tutorial.)

But, that whole process of figuring out the new page gadget got me to thinking how cool it would be to have a recipes page, where I could post awesome recipes of my own, as well as those of others.  Since it doesn't work with the pages thing, I started a whole new blog called The Green World Recipes.  Clever, right?  

If you look to your left, you will see the button for my new recipes page.  Click on it, and you will see the one, lonely little recipe I have posted.  I have more lined up, but I need photos to go with them before I can put them up.  So, I want to open it to my readers!  I will be setting up a Green World Recipes e-mail address, and posting an e-mail button on that page for recipe submissions.  (Those of you who know me personally and have my personal e-mail address, should just use that.)  If you submit a recipe, please include a photo of the recipe, and if you would like to have your photo posted as well, you should send that along too.  If you would like to be anonymous, please say so!  Otherwise, I will put "submitted by Blahbity Blah" at the end of the entry.

The idea here is to have a resource for cooking inspiration.  There are a lot of recipes on the web, but these will be recipes loved by the ones who submit them, so we know they are good.  I'll make sure to tag them all, so that you can easily search among them for whatever it is that you need, whether it be a chicken recipe or something tasty for dessert.  

We'll see how this little experiment works out.  Remember, even though I have a lot of recipes of my own that I want to add, this will need reader support to really work.  And if you have any suggestions for other nifty additions to The Green World, I am all ears!

I'll leave you with a couple of random pictures of Elora from this morning:

Printers and Cameras, Oh My!

I got my new printer and my new camera yesterday.  I LOVE them!  The printer is actually a printer/scanner combo.  I got the Canon Pixma MP620, and I've only played with it a bit, but it is definitely waaaay better than what I had.

I took a picture of Brandon setting up my new printer, with my new camera.  As you know, I got the Canon Rebel XSi, and it's amazing!  It keep giggling or squealing or jumping up and down when I take a picture, and I've already taken a ton of pictures!  So Brandon keeps laughing at me, but he's taken at least as many pictures as I have so I know he's excited too.

 

I didn't do a very good job cleaning the mirror, did I?  Oh well.  This is one of the ones that Brandon took, and I think it looks really cool: