Casey's New Room

Last week I got to spend A LOT of quality time with Casey while Jack was at school.  Even though we went out to a store every day, we still spent a lot of time at home.  The Barbie/Princess family also had a very busy week.  They celebrated birthdays, went to the pool, went to the beach, went to the hairdresser, changed outfits a lot, and witnessed some amazing high diving by Cinderella.

In between Barbie adventures, I tried to do some little projects around the house that I thought Casey would be interested in.  If I wanted to sew, I sewed something for her.  One dress turned out to be a big failure and the other still needs just a little finishing.  I also decided it was time to get the big bare wall behind her bed decorated.

A few months ago I found a great idea on Pinterest to make silhouettes of the princesses and use them as art.  I thought this was a much more subtle princess decorating idea versus some big poster of the princesses.  Basically I didn't want anything too cartoon-y.

I also have a Silhouette cutting machine that has been sitting idle for some time and now I have a big space near the computer for it.  After a little search online I found the Crafty Mama blog where she had already created templates to use with the Silhouette.

One quick trip to the scrapbook store, four dollars and a few hours later and I had princesses framed and ready to put on the wall.  (And somehow I walked out of that scrapbook store with only what I needed!)

On Friday, I put the frames on the wall and got ready to take some pictures.  I probably spent more time cleaning her room than hanging pictures.  Casey was too busy with her babies to help.

Casey managed to be in almost every picture.  She also wanted to take some pictures with my camera but they didn't make the cut for this post.  I finally convinced her to go get her own camera.  Then she was even more in my way as she tried to get all her pictures.

She has Christmas lights wrapped around her bed and sleeps with them on every night.  After Christmas was over, she didn't want to take them off.  We're now on our third strand.  It makes for a nice little night light for her.

 Her bed still needs a new bedskirt.

This is Casey's wall of butterflies and dragonflies.  We found some vinyl Star Wars stickers for Jack soon after we moved here and I guided Casey towards these butterflies.  It was one of the first things we put up in each of their rooms.

Here are the signs for Casey's room.  It's been used as a storefront lately, which was why I had to do a lot of cleaning.  Casey was selling lotions in there and then it turned into quite an operation one night as they were both making jewelry and selling it.  Casey made the small yellow sign which has her name on it.  Jack made the larger green and yellow signs.  The green one says "Beauty" and he made it fancy (like Grammie did when she was babysitting in April) and the yellow one says "On."  Jack decided that he would rather have No and Yes signs instead of Open and Closed but then No turned into On.

This is the wall opposite the bed.  It's not quite as neat...once again Casey was busy with her babies and the lotion store (which she has staged on her empty doll bunk beds).  And her top drawer is broken from the move or else I would fill it with all the junk beautiful hair bands/elastics/bows/etc. sitting on top of her dresser.

These are a lot of the things that I removed from her bedroom to take pictures.  You can see the cash register that was being used for the store, but I'm not sure where the horse and shield were fitting into the place.  I think that must have been from a cowboy playing day.  (In full disclosure, a lot of that stuff is still sitting in the hallway outside Casey's room 5 days later.)

And so, Casey's room is the first room I've gotten to in showing off our new house.  Casey and I have another long week together so maybe we can get to some more projects.  Pat asked me today when I was going to finish hanging pictures in the rest of the house.  Sometimes I just can't decide what I'm going to do and I do nothing!  We'll fix some of that next week.

Maine Vacation: Lighthouse Trip to West Quoddy Head

There are so many great places to visit when we go to Maine but sometimes it can be a bit of a drive to get to them.  In the past when I had driven 18 hours to get to Maine, we didn't make too many long trips on top of that.  This year we didn't have as much time to take long trips; we flew from Memphis to Maine but then there was 4 hours of driving on top of a day of flying.

One of our adventures this year was to drive to the easternmost point in the United States to visit the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse and have some lunch in the town of Lubec.  (Despite its eastern US location, the lighthouse is called West Quoddy Head because there is a lighthouse further east on Campobello Island (Canada) that gets the name East Quoddy Head.)  

Jack remembered visiting the lighthouse a couple years ago and he remembered posing in front of the granite that says "Easternmost Point in the USA".  This year, he became a little camera hog, posing multiple times in front of the sign and directing everyone else to get in or out of the pictures.  It was a refreshing change from the faces he's been making lately when I take pictures.

Casey rarely turns down an opportunity to pose for the camera.

Jack is also a big fan of getting his photo taken in any type of wooden cutout with a place for his head.

After walking around the lighthouse and checking out the displays inside the lighthouse, we walked down to a set of stairs that lead to the beach.  There were lots of rocks to climb on and rocks to walk on and rocks to throw.

Grampie followed Casey pretty closely around on the rocks.  It's so hard to watch her climb on them because every time she takes a step she appears to lose her balance and looks like she is going to fall.  She didn't have any big falls which I thinks was a combination of supervision and that fact that she can climb on them despite how it looks.  She gained a lot of confidence in her rock climbing while we were in Maine but that only made her braver and more likely to fall because she was being silly at times.

We had lunch at a restaurant in Lubec, Maine overlooking the water.  The lobster boats were to the left and the bridge to Campobello Island was to the right.  It was a beautiful day.  The kids and Grampie climbed around on the breakwater and played on another beach.

On the way out of town, we stopped at Monica's Chocolates to find some treats.  Monica grew up in Peru and bases some of her chocolates on recipes she remembered growing up with her family.  She met us at the door and immediately gave the kids balloons and a chocolate lollipop.  She then treated the grown-ups with some samples.  We all walked out with bags of chocolate and I even found a cute Peruvian necklace to buy.  

It was a great Maine adventure...we drove on some dirt roads, saw a lighthouse, climbed on the rocks, ate lunch overlooking the water and got some Maine/Peruvian chocolate :)

1st Grade!

Jack started 1st grade on Monday!  He was very excited about going to school and riding the bus.  He didn't seem to be nervous at all.  I guess I need to try not to project how nervous I would be if I were him onto him :)  New school, new teacher, new friends, new bus experience...and it didn't phase him! 

 

After pictures and getting to the bus stop nice and early, he hopped right on the bus without a second thought.  The driver had to get him to turn around for a picture.  Casey and I had a nice long day together and then walked up to the bus stop to get Jack.  We waited for 20 minutes before we even saw a bus in our neighborhood.  It drove back and forth on the cross street below ours a couple times like the driver didn't know where to go.  Then I saw some people walking from the other end of the neighborhood towards us.  It turned out to be Jack and another family from the bus stop where he decided to hop off the bus.  He got off about 3 stops too early.  The nice family decided to walk with him to make sure he got to our house.  When I asked him why he got off so early he said, "I didn't know how close it was going to get to our house, so I just got off!"  Brave kid!  It didn't upset him in the least.   

There's since been a week of school and I'm not quite sure what he's doing for 7 hours a day.  There's "early bunch" in the morning which means they color until everyone gets there.  There are announcements, two bathroom breaks, lunch, and recess (if everyone is good).  I think maybe the learning starts this week? 

He brought home some homemade play-doh that his teacher made and he said, "It's just like regular Play-Doh but it tells the future.  Isn't that great?  This one said we are going to have a great year."  

I think he's made a few friends but he's iffy on the names.  He said, "The one boy that I expected was going to be my best friend said he didn't want to be my friend."  It makes my heart break and makes me laugh all at the same time.  I'm not sure why he "expected" someone was going to be his best friend...it's kind of cute.  And I'd like to hope he just misunderstood the situation and that boys are not that mean.  Luckily it didn't seem to bother him too much.  And then we talked about making sure he was nice to everyone and friends with everyone. 

So far he's enjoying the experience but he said the homework starts this week.  I hope he still likes school after this week :)