Hansen family visit

My whole family almost was here for a few days around Easter! Katrina graduated from BYU, we had a baby shower for her (which was SO fun and I'm mad we didn't take any pictures, at least a sister picture!) and my cousin also got married. Not to mention Easter! It was a fun weekend. Here's Whitney having fun with Jenae.

We got to dye eggs together.

Whitney and Katelyn with their baskets on Easter Bunny Day.
It was fun having cousins and aunts and an uncle and grandparents there.
Whitney was very excited about her Nerds!!
We hunted for eggs
Katelyn with her temple egg!
That afternoon we all hiked the Y (except Allison who left to be home for Easter)- it started out raining lightly and changed to snow once we got up high enough! It wasn't too bad though, and probably better than hiking it when it's hot! Katelyn did it all by herself except a 2-minute ride from Eric, she was awesome! And she ran the whole way down. I carried Whitney most of the way, which was a great workout! And I was proud of my mom for making it up there!
Silly Melissa and Jenae, my Dad and Donny. They keep us laughing! Our cousins came with us too.
An Easter Sunday post will come soon. :)

Here's a onesie I made for my soon-to-be niece Lydia! (Katrina and Phillip's baby!)

This is the front view. I was going for an Aeropostale knockoff in baby form.
And this is the main reason I am growing out my hair. The side ponytail is back baby!! That and the side bun, both with a flower. Love it.

california here we came

I got to take the girls to California last week! It was SO SO fun. I got to run with Allison 3 times and do crafts and talk talk talk to my mom and hang out with Jenae and Melissa whenever they had a spare moment and see both sets of my grandparents and jump on the trampoline and everything in these pictures:

Whit excited to leave at 6 am. We stopped at 4 parks along the way and made it to Madera at 9:30 pm!

We were there for Jenae's birthday! So fun! My little sister is 14! And of course the girls got to play for hours each day with their two favorite (only) cousins! We love Natalie and Caleb.
We spent a couple of hours at my dad's farm (vineyard). The girls LOVED going on tractor rides with Grandpa Jamie!

of course the girls got to enjoy the most abundant thing at the vineyard: DIRT!

yes she was laying and rolling in it.

kate took a little cleaner approach.

and we had to take a picture to prove we were there. love that little caleb by the way!

We got to go to a Track meet of Jenae's! Sweet! She's in 8th grade, and her school was competing against 4 other junior highs. And she's amazing! She has found her niche in the jumping events, even though she's good at the others too. Here she is winning her heat of the 100 meter hurdles, she beat the other heats too by a couple of seconds. She is fast and has great form. She only got to do 3 events and she won 2 and took second in the other. Wow! I love her ponytail in this picture. And I'm excited to watch her compete more in the future!

Jenae winning the triple jump. (she's in the air over the pit right now) She looked so fast and powerful! Two things I never felt when I was in junior high! :) She has a very bright future in Track.

The girls wrestling on the grass at the track meet.

Then we went to see Melissa in her high school's production of "Hairspray"! It was awesome! I love the music and it was so much fun to watch my sister shine. She played Penny, the main girl Tracy's best friend. She was in almost every scene, had tons of lines and big parts in a couple of songs. I loved watching her when she wasn't in the spotlight though, she was always doing something funny or adding to the scene in some way.

Melissa and "Seaweed". She was so cute and hilarious.

with our favorite celebrity! (Whitney came to the play too and LOVED it until she crashed halfway through the second act. She is sleeping on the floor in this picture.)

We stopped at the vineyard again for 5 minutes on our way home and Whitney managed to get this dirty. So cute.

In the previous picture it was 85*.

The night we got home this happened:

Yay for spring snow. Hope it melts quick.

more sewing

These are my February projects. I love Katelyn's picture-taking skills here. Yes she was laying in her bed sick with a cough and I made her take a picture of me! And I discovered I look really skinny from this angle when I suck in my gut! Sweet! Don't worry, I'm really not that skinny at all. But ANYWAY, this shirt is made from parts of 4 other shirts that were stained or too short. I'm totally wearing it for the 4th of July.

I just love the seams on the outside!
Next here's my latest pride and joy. Eric was cleaning out his side of the closet and he came out with a bag full of clothes... which I quickly confiscated and rummaged through and came out with several refashioning idea treasures!! One of which was this sweater I bought him years ago because he looks good in sweaters, haha.
I had seen a tutorial on makeit-loveit for a girl's sweater-dress, and this is what I came up with! Yay!
I was thrilled that I could make these amazing flowers out of bits of sweater, so fun.

And it looks great on Kate! (It looks cuter on her when her hair is actually done. :) )

Then Katelyn helped me make this skirt, and it was really fun for both of us.
The flowers that I just can't stop making!

and there you have it.

P.S. I know I have been mostly making things for Katelyn, but Whitney has more clothes than she'll ever need and actually, all these clothes WILL eventually be Whitney's! Awesome.

what's new

Whitney has decided she likes ground beef, asparagus, broccoli, and red peppers. Katelyn has decided she likes mangoes and some chicken (depending on seasoning). Hallelujah for expanding food possibilities!

I got so excited about the warm weather that I just had to get my hands in that soil. 6-8 weeks earlier than the last 3 years we've lived here I tilled my garden and planted peas, carrots, and onions. We'll see over the next few weeks whether that was a good idea or not!!

My crafting has slowed with the arrival of spring, but I've still managed to squeeze in a few creations. I'll post pictures soon. Probably the best part has been sewing with Katelyn though. She gets so excited about our projects, it's so cute. Last week we were making her a skirt and I was pretty focused on the task when all of a sudden she exclaimed "this is SO fun!!" and I looked up to see her smiling so big, her eyes shining, and I thought, "wow! what a cute girl I have! I'd better pay attention to her and appreciate her instead of just trying to keep moving to the next step to get it done." So that's what I'm trying to do.

I've been laughing a lot lately with Eric, just about random everyday things. We're in a good place right now.

I read the Gregor the Overlander series, fun. And Eric just finished re-reading the Harry Potter series. I love reading.

I started reading the "Little House" books to my girls at night, sitting in their doorway like my mom used to read to me and my sisters. To my surprise, they love it, I just thought they wouldn't be old enough yet to enjoy listening without pictures. (Eric still reads them regular picture books some nights too.) But it's been so fun, we're nearing the end of the second book, Little House on the Prairie. I loved those books when I was young and I'm so glad my girls can experience them now.

Katelyn had her kindergarten assessment today for the charter school here in town. We're really excited to try it. And she did awesome on the "test" of course. Probably the cutest part was when we were on the way there we were talking about things they might ask and I told Kate they might ask her what was her favorite thing to do. She thought for a minute and then said " I think I like hiking the best. And camping." So cute, I guess she really did love the hiking and camping we did last summer. I was so happy she said that, it made me feel good that our family activities really have been memorable and special for her.

Anyway, while we were at the school I found out they might have afternoon kindergarten, and I hadn't even thought about that as an option. So we've thought about it, and requested afternoon kindergarten. I guess I might as well enjoy one more year of sleeping in a little (aka the girls not waking up until 7:30 or so), at least not having to leave the house at 8 like we would for morning kindergarten. It will be our last year for MANY MANY years! So we're excited about afternoon kindergarten now. And school uniforms, oh my. But they said I can embellish the shirts with ruffles and such as long as they're solid colors. So I'm good!

Whitney is now night-time potty trained. That was RIDICULOUSLY easy. Easy as in I did nothing but give in to her begging to wear undies to bed, every night expecting to be up in the night changing sheets, and waking up surprised every morning! She's amazing.

Oh and I think we're on the down slope of Whitney's terrible twos- or whatever crazy emotional storm hit her a couple of months ago. It's been HARD but thank goodness I've had Eric to see me through. I called him many times at work to tell him what she had just done so we could laugh together and I could stay sane and not be so frustrated. I'm happy to report that she is emerging from this stage basically the same cutest little girl. I thought I'd lost her for a while! But her little brain is finally calming down and accepting reality occasionally. And she's the same little clowny, big-squeezing-hug-giving girl. I love her.

I'm now working with the kids at church (Primary 1st counselor) instead of the teenage girls (Mia Maid Advisor). It's been a big change but I'm really happy. I miss the girls, but the kids are pretty fun and I get to work with some amazing women. It'll be good.

Well, I think that's about all that's new.

January crafts

And here's what I have been doing in January! Crafts! My first sparks of inspiration came from www.u-createcrafts.com and www.makeit-loveit.com. And I went from there! The first thing that got me excited was re-making old clothes. I love to sew, especially without a pattern when I'm just making stuff up, just going for it and seeing if it works! So this was perfect for me.

Sewing projects:

First was this dress for katelyn, made out of pieces of 2 of her old stained shirts and 2 of my old shirts that were too short. Oh and some tulle and ribbon.

I love the japanese sandals, the "American", and the star stamps I put the brown fabric.

Then I took more old stained shirts and created this ruffle shirt for Whitney.

I made myself this shrug- I had cut off the bottom of the white shirt to make ruffles on another shirt, which did not turn out well. :) So at least I got this out of it.

flower detail

And my favorite, this was a pair of pants that had a hole in the knee, so I cut them off and made a skirt and added ruffles. And I LOVE it!

Home Decor: I love this frame I bought in Mexico for like a dollar, but I wasn't using it for anything, so I came up with this little ribbon-and-stuffed-heart deal. I was going to hang it on my front door but I didn't want it to get wet.
This is one of three panels I bought at Walmart a couple of years ago for $10 total. We don't like it anymore so I had considered giving it to DI.
But instead I got this idea from makeit-love-it.com and now we have this wall hanging. I need to find a different middle fabric though. I love it close up (see below) and it's this cool fake leather, but on the wall it's too dark and boring.
close up of the middle brown
And my old/new/forever favorite, flowers!

I've had these shoes for about 10 years and never really liked them. But I rescued them out of the DI pile for this! Left is before and right is after! These are just clipped or pinned on, I still want to try to make a ruffle instead, or mod poge some fabric on (see makeit-loveit) to cover the whole ugly color of the shoes. Eric thinks it's the ugliest color on the planet, and I almost agree.
I made little flowers for this necklace, and more big ones for a belt, and it was suggested to me that I make a ring. So I will!
And my newest excitement, last night my friend heather showed me how to make the rosettes she sells on etsy, woo-hoo! I never thought I would love tulle and flowers, but here are the girls and I in our new flowers!



Ah, so much fun...