Stuffin' the stocking!

Finding little trinkets to fill Max's stocking was so much fun this year. It is SO easy to fill a little one's sock! I tried hard to find items that are perfect for his age so he could have fun with them now and not have to wait until he is older. I thought I would share what Max will be finding in his stocking this Christmas morning in case you are finding it difficult to think of ideas for your little one.

I have felt lately like I am a totally lame bath time mom, as Max always seems bored at bath time. So for Christmas, I tried to find some new and fun activities for Max to do during bath time. Boon has a "Water Bug" game that comes with a cute scoop and three bugs, and Munchkin has bath crayons. Fingers crossed these do not stain our tub. 

Up until now I have just been using water to brush Max's teeth, so I figured it was time for him to have some fun toddler toothpaste. Not cheap, but it will likely last a long time. 

A barrel of Monkeys!!! Rememba these!? I loved mine. I can totally already see Max carefully linking the moneys together as I hold the chain for him. 

Crayola finger paints. I have not taken on the challenge of painting with a toddler yet. Wish me luck. 

Chocolate! Our traditional marshmellow bar that I have received in my stocking since I was a little girl, and a Santa Kinder egg, because the child loves "ho ho" and chocolate. 

Yesterday I went to the One of a Kind Show in Toronto and picked up the cutest hand painted wooden matching game for Max. There are four other matches as well, but these are my favs :)

And there you have it! I can't wait for those cute little hands to dig through his stock and discover his treats. The chocolate will be going at the bottom or else it might be game over once those are discovered ;)

In other festive news, celebrating the holidays has been so fun so far. Max went to his first parade and he loved it! He waved to Santa and was memorized by the lights and sounds of the floats. We put up a few Christmas lights along our porch and brought good old Frosty out of his box :) Max greets him each evening when we get home from work/daycare. We have been watching the old school Frosty the Snowman movie every morning at 6:30 in the bloody morning (yawn) and I also made a felt tree for Max that we can use for years to come. I also made a snowman to attach to a basic grapevine wreath for our front door. I used white denim and found a simple tutorial online explaining how to make fabric roses.

Next weekend we are taking Max to see Santa, and the following week we celebrate Christmas with my family up north. I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday traditions and festivities with their families as much as we are! 

~ K

It's been awhile... but for a good reason

I have been waiting to write this post for about two months now. October, which is typically my favourite month of the year was a very interesting month for me this year. 

Let's begin with the good news :)

We are going to be adding to our family May 2016 and Max is going to be a big brother!!! 

I am so excited to be able to hold another sweet little baby in my arms and call him/her ours. I just recently had my three month ultrasound, which eased my mind and finally allowed me to be excited and yell from the rooftops that I'm pregnant.

Too bad for me this pregnancy so far has literally been the polar opposite of my experience of being pregnant with Max. The month of October saw me feeling extremely nauseous and ill, morning. noon. and night. Especially night. I'm now on Diclectin which is my new best friend. I don't know why I did not start taking it earlier, I supposed I was living in the clouds thinking it would pass, or maybe trying to be a warrior. Nonetheless, the. shit. works. my friends, so if you are ever struggling with first trimester symptoms as awful as I have been, take it.. your body (and husband) will thank you :)

Bare with me, I'm taking you back to Halloween because I still haven't posted from then! We were still able to make the most out of thanksgiving and Halloween. Thank goodness for helpful mothers and mother-in-laws who bring the meal to you! 

We had such a special moment on Halloween. We took Max to the neighbourhood where I grew up, and my next door neighbour who I baked Christmas cookies with every year when I was little still lives there. Taking Max to see her, and using my old pumpkin bucket was so special, and he did so well!! 

Also in October the year anniversary of the blog passed! Thanks to everyone who has followed me this last year, I have had so much fun dreaming up posts and sharing with you all. Unfortunately time does not allow for me to post as often as I'd like, but I am still enjoying it so much :)

I'm looking forward to filling to blog with nursery and big boy bedroom ideas in the coming months, along with Max's Cat in the Hat themed 2nd birthday party!!

Happy weekend everyone!

~ K

Grateful for carousel rides and floating shelves

This past weekend was one with feelings of accomplishment! Max went on his first midway rides at a local fall fair, something I have always been excited for...


and...

 we hung our new floating shelves! One of my good friends has a very talented father who can pretty much make anything you ask him too, and he is so meticulous, so his final products are always beautiful. Last year he made us our dining room farm table which we love so much. 

For some time I have pinning variations of the Shanty 2 Chic floating shelves. I love the rustic, clean look of the shelves sans any type of bracket, and I have so many special items that I have been wanting to display. Let's see, there's my Grandmother's sixty year old sifter, cake pans and pie rack, a very special hand written recipe from an elderly neighbour from the neighbourhod where I grew up, and my fancy new metal measuring cups my mama treated me too in the summer. These items are on the kitchen shelf, and then for the dining shelf I displayed some of my favourite dishes; mainly white, metal and glass for a clean look. 

Here is the link to the step-by-step instructions. Again, I did not make these myself, but it seems as though so many people have tried their hand at them and so if you have the right tools (which I do not) don't be scared to take on this project yourself! 

http://www.shanty-2-chic.com/2015/01/diy-floating-shelf-plans.html

SO pretty! :) Excuse the grainy photos I took the photos at night

I hope all my Canadian friends had a wonderful thanksgiving weekend spending time with loved ones.. and to all my American friends, I am thankful for you reading my blog ;)

Have a great week everyone!

~ K

October I'm in love

Yippee!! It's my favourite month as of tomorrow. Don't ask me why it's my favourite month, there is just something so warm and cozy about it.. especially before the craziness of Christmas season starts in November! Plus you have TWO holidays in one month! It doesn't get much better than that! We don't have many plans for this month other than meeting up with friends at a pumpkin patch, taking Max to a fall fair and getting Max on skates for the first time. We are going to look at used skates this weekend.. eeks I'm so excited!

Last year I blogged about the Fall / Halloween crafts I have made in the past, so be sure to check out that post for some easy ideas and inspiration for decorations around your home. I didn't add anything new this year, I just switched up some of my arrangements. Although, I was super excited to go on Pinterest and see that a friend had pinned a decoration idea that I had already thought of ON MY OWN. Seriously, this rarely happens. Mind you, it was only stacking a bunch of pumpkins in a glass vase.. but still.. to me it was a milestone ;)

I am going to try to make some of the fun Halloween inspired snacks and foods for Max this month that I have pinned on Pinterest. I also need to start gathering supplies for Max and his daddy's Halloween costume.. they are going as a duo and wait till you see it.. it's going to be too funny. Last year I bought a Halloween themed Mr. Potato Head set on clearance for pumpkins. This will be perfect for Max to decorate his own pumpkin, or "ball" as Max refers to every pumpkin he sees. 

 

The bar cart was also given a festive overhaul! 

Daycare has the festive art work covered. This is what Max has brought home in the last two weeks. Just ignore the lopsided / missing eye-balls.. we have a little issue with ripping them off of the picture with our mouths... this is Max's issue, not mine ;)

I finally busted out the Halloween PJs tonight.. here is my little glow in the dark festive babe. He doesn't stay still for long these days, so we have a lot of photos with blurry spots.. I think it is too cute.

Happy October everyone!

~ K

Daddy issues

Okay, so we have an issue. You will laugh, but for me it is a tad awkward and somewhat embarrassing. But I will share so you can have a giggle at my expense ;) 

Last weekend while Max and I were up north visiting my parents, Max referred to my Dad as "dada." This is what he calls his own Dad. We thought maybe he was trying to say "Grandpa" so we went with it, allowing him to point at my Dad and say "dada" all weekend. We return home on Sunday and then on Tuesday I took the day off work to visit a close girlfriend, her hubby and sweet (and most adorable baby girl ever!!) who was in town for the week. As soon as Max laid eyes on my friend's husband he pointed to him and exclaimed "dada!" Now, it would have been cute if he said it once or twice and then stopped after being corrected, that no, that's not dada, that's Eric, and your dada is at work, except he continued to point at him and say it over, and over and over and over again. Even when the poor guy left the room Max started searching for him immediately yelling dada!! dada!! It got old real quick.. lol.. for me at least. 

Fast forward to today... I pick him up from daycare and take him to the post office. A middle aged man looks at Max and gives him a nice smile. What do you think Max did!? Of course, to the gentleman's surprise, Max pointed to the man and exclaimed "dada!" Insert me melting into the cement floor from embarrassment as the man said to him "oh no, no" and then looked at me and smiled.. OMG dying. 

 So it's official.. Max has daddy issues and thinks everyone is his dada. Makes mama look real classy ;) Especially when I told my MIL tonight and she pointed out the coincidence of us being in the post office and how Max must then truly be the "post man's baby" Hardy-har-har. I'm sure this is the first of many times Max does or says something out in public that I turn bright red over.. he defiantly  keeps me on my toes that little boy :)

Now on a more serious note.. the reason we were at the post office today.. to pick up Max's Old Navy order :) :) A few fall essentials..

It's always fun picking out clothes for the upcoming season. It's hard to believe I am buying 3T shirts already! Happy Fall shopping!

 On a final note, thank you to my friends who sent me messages about my last post. It is always nerve wracking putting your emotions out there for everybody and anyone to read so I appreciate the positive feedback.. I have the most amazing girlfriends :)

~ K

Life lessons in the card section at Walmart

Yesterday I went to Walmart to develop a picture for my mother-in-law's birthday gift. I was in a crazy rush, trying to get my errands done as quickly as I could because I just wanted to be at home with my family. I made a point to keep my head down and motor it, avoiding eye contact at all costs with everyone around me. 

I was in the card section looking for a Birthday card. I was in my own little world without realizing that someone was standing very close next to me. An elderly gentleman began speaking to me. It honestly took me a minute to even clue in that I was being spoken too. He had a hard time speaking, his voice was merely a whisper. I had to lean in really closely to hear what he was saying. 

He told me that he was picking out a birthday card for his daughter. I noticed a single card with a pink envelope in his cart. As his eyes watered he told me that his wife had passed away this past June, and he was not used to picking out cards. Wow. I was officially dropped dead in my tracks and brought back to the world of humanity. I asked him if it was his wife who had done the shopping for them; he said yes. I told him I was sure he had picked out a nice card that his daughter would like. He went to tell me that this was a difficult task because many of the cards read "from the both of us," and in his case, the card was no longer from the both of them. I suggested it still could be. Really, if this was my life and my dad gave me a card that said that, I know that I would be accepting and understanding of that. I probably would even say I would like it even more if it said that. The gentleman told me that he had been married for 47 years last October. He then spoke about where he had been this summer with family, and that he was at the store shopping with his other daughter and his son-in-law, who was recently diagnosed with cancer. He commented "it has been really hard on me." We ended the conversation by him thanking me for talking to him. He added, "sometimes it's nice to have someone to talk too."

We stood there for almost ten minutes, but I honestly would have stood there for a hour speaking with this man if he of needed me too. I left the store thinking... okay world... lesson learned. Let it be a lesson to me and to anyone who so graciously comes on my blog to see what I have been up too... when you are out in public take time to make eye contact with people, smile at people and acknowledge people, even if you are in a hurry, because you never know the awful time that someone standing right beside you is having, and is needing someone to talk too, and to listen. 

... and thanks for taking time to listen to me, my thoughts and what is important to me :)

We had a nice night celebrating my mother-in-law who is our "mommy-works-late-too-many-days-to-count" saviour who picks up Max from daycare on those crazy days.. and of course that is just one of the bazillion things she does for our family. She is a real life superhero :) We celebrated with dinner and Ombre cupcakes. 

One more cute pic... Max's new fall boots.. I couldn't resist, and he LOVES them :) He just starting saying "shoe!"

Have a great week everyone!

~ K

The playroom of my dreams

Seriously, I have not been more excited about a post since sharing details from Max's 1st birthday party. We embarked on finishing this room earlier this year, and we are finally in the home stretch with only a couple more minor details to go! aka purchasing a door handle (see below pic) haha.

So without further ado, welcome to Max's playroom!

There are definitely aspects of this room that I had envisions for. There are so many cute ideas out there to choose from, so I borrowed lots of different ideas from Pinterest to bring it all together for a playroom that suited our taste. 

I posted this flag on Instagram some time ago. It was a very inexpensive DIY project using yarn, a small piece of doweling, felt and a dollarstore placement. 

When I was little I loved chalkboards. One of my closet childhood friends had a ceiling to floor chalkboard in her father's workshop. I was obsessed with this chalkboard, playing "school" for hours on end. So when I saw a picture of a framed chalkboard for a little one's playroom I fell in love with this idea. The scrabble letters were also a favourite of mine I saw some time ago. The popsicle art was from Etsy and the fox clock is from a very cool store in Stratford, Ont. If you google fox pendulum clock you can find out where to purchase it. The white shelf is two Ikea picture ledges placed closely together.

 

Max has so many fun toys, and there are a few toys in particular that I love to display; mostly his wooden toys. I had a floating white shelf purchased from Home Depot secured on one of the walls, low enough for him to have easy access too.

We have had one of those large Ikea shelves since we moved into our home five years ago. This is the perfect unit for a playroom. So much space and various cubbies to display toys. I am a tad OCD when it comes to organizing books. For one of my baby showers the theme was Build Baby's Library and we received so many beautiful books. I keep the paperbacks up high out of the reach of curious paws, the board books down low to destroy easily grab, and then the holiday books in a cubby entirely it's own, because you know how important the holidays are to me! Oh and then arranged by height :S.. I know it's a little too much but it looks so nice this way!

The tent has made a comeback after receiving some much needed TLC. I won't get into details about what happened to it, but if you read my blog regularly I am sure have had a good laugh about it's demise.  This is our space to cuddle and read books. Our dog loves to use this space as his comfy vantage point to have eyes on the whole room while we are playing. 

This picture also displays our fun striped wall. Yes, it took a long time to paint, and no, it was not fun. BUT, I love the way it turned out and it makes the room so bright!

Our creative space was also a fun area to decorate. I am really pleased with the Ikea table and chairs set we bought for Max this past Christmas. It is the perfect size for him right now. I went back and forth between decals for awhile. I also really like the saying "every child is an artist," but ultimately this decal won me over. I stained an inexpensive piece of wood and bough some inexpensive oversized clips from Micheals, where they charge you an arm and a leg. Unfortunately I used my 50% off coupon for a donut pan that same night and so I took one for the team and payed full price for the clips against my better judgement. Max still isn't big into the artwork yet... he is more about filling up the crayon container, only to empty it out again all over the floor, just to start all over again. The focus this child has is unreal.  

In the middle of the room we have a small Little Tykes climber (ladder and slide), a car mat and a train table. 

We have been having so much fun in the new space together, and it is also really nice to have our space back that had been cluttered with toys for the past year. This also means, more free wall space for mama to create :) :) Details to come.. 

Thanks for stopping by!

~ K

Sweet summertime

I am just finishing up the last days of my two week summer vaca. I wanted to write a post about it because we have had so much fun and I want to remember everything we did together. For a moment it felt like I was back on mat leave.. what a tease!! It has been so nice to have full, consecutive days with my little guy, and boy did we make the most of those days. My husband was even able to get one of the weeks off so we were together for a whole week! 

We visited the beach where we splashed in the waves, the zoo where we played in a ball pit and saw so many different animals, we visited the splash pad a bazillion times and thought it was funny to sit and step on the water spouts, we ate homemade popsicles, we went to our favourite drop in center and participated in “water day” with many other little ones, we tried new yummy recipes, we finished the playroom and had our first guest over to play, we wore our rubber boots to lunchtime and mowed the cement with our lawnmower, we took a ferry to the US for some yummy nachos, we had three hour naps every single day (little man, not mommy), we had family visit on two occasions, and we went on countless wagon/stroller/trike rides. Today we had Max's last round of immunizations followed by a play date and picnic with some very sweet and cute second cousins! :)

A few fun photos taken from the past two weeks..

WOW what fun!! It will be so hard to go back and get back into the swing of things, but such is life I suppose. So here is to the best two weeks we have had in many months! Living for the next vacation :)

What are you doing for fun with your littles this summer??

~K

Mud pies in the sun-day (dunk me in the tub please for brown kid tea!)

I am a lucky girl. My friends have many talents. I have a friend who makes the most adorable baby moccasins, a friend who is an amazing sewer and has made my son a number of beautiful items for his nursery, a friend who is a fantastic photographer and captured very special photos of my family last fall, and most recently a friend who is so incredibly artistic and started making story stones.

My friend E for some time has collected interesting and pretty rocks from the beach. She has found a number of heart shaped rocks which she has framed and made into beautiful pieces of artwork for the walls in her home. 

A short time ago she posted some “story stones” on her Instagram. Holy hidden talent. For real. I had one of those “you could totally sell those” moments. 

At the time our favourite book to read was Kid Tea by Elizabeth Ficocelli. Our favourite page is the painting page where it says “blobs of yellow, shake like jello” at which point we shake our heads back and forth. It is always good for a cute little boy giggle :) So when E offered to make a set of story stones to go along with one of Max’s favourite books, Kid Tea immediately came to mind.

We received our set of story stones this week and all I can say is wow. How cool are these right!? Not only does Max have a special set of stones to go along with a favourite book, but these are so educational; teaching him words, colours and sequence. Love, love, LOVE!!

                                  

(these are only about 1/3rd of the rocks E made for us).

Thanks E. You are the best.

We are now in full vacation mode in our home... complete with afternoon mother-son naps today.. Lovely :) We have a whole two weeks of summer fun ahead of us!

Happy weekend!

~K

I love a good theme

 This weekend we celebrated my nephew's fourth birthday. My sister-in-law always does it up right with awesome themes and decorations galore.. a girl after my heart :) She is a teacher to boot so she always has super creative ideas!

My nephew is at the age where he is starting to become interested in LEGO so the theme 'Turning 4 is Awesome' was a prefect fit. 

There was personalized LEGO art everywhere, along with fun 2D banners. The kiddie's lunch consisted LEGO shaped cucumbers, PB and Jelly Sandwhiches and cheese and crackers. So cute and fun! The birthday boy helped make his birthday Brownies and after the kiddos went to bed we decorated the brownies with dyed icing and m&ms. My sister-in-law bought LEGO men decal faces off of Etsy and we put these on balloons, cups, and snack bowls. An easy detail and really added to the decorations!

A perfect theme for kids this age and lots of neat ideas that you can make from supplies you have around the home. 

In other news. Max has had some more 'firsts' this past week. He found a wheel bigger than him, he had his first hair cut and took it like a champ. He went into the water finally at the splash pad, after many visits of just looking at the water from the perimeter, and he had his first freezie tonight while sitting on the front porch bench like a big boy :) He is such a toddler now! Happy 1 1/2 years today big boy! :)

In two weeks from now we have two weeks of vacation!!! We are looking forward to visiting family, going to the zoo, picnics and trips to the beach! We love summer! :)

~K