cora's new room

For Cora's birthday her Beemaw got her a new bedroom floor! So, we got the paint and got busy. She loves her room so much, but probably not as much as I do!

The BEFORE pictures. All in all not a bad room (we have others that are in worse need!) But we needed to make it "Cora's Room"!

Jay and Cora had fun pitching in to help paint. The Kilz took FOREVER to wear off of Cora's little legs. I don't know how she got so much on her!

This is the green color i picked out...actually I showed the choices to Cora and she made the final decision. "Cactus Green" is the color. And at this point I am kicking myself..I am not so great at picking out colors. And with the black and white floor..it looked pretty bad.

But once we started putting the new floor down it started to look better. Jay really is a good helper when it comes to home repairs! I wonder if I was so functional @ age 5?? Probably not.

The end result is such a precious site! Cora was sleeping on a toddler bed in Jay's room-then in our room 1/2 of the night! But this is her big girl bed (a beautiful iron day bed we are borrowing from breanna..thank you, breanna!!) These sheets were mine when I was a kid..Strawberry Shortcake! And the quilt came from a super great sale at Pottery Barn. But seeing her sleep in her big girl bed is wonderful! It's been a couple of weeks, and she is doing really well. Better than I would have guessed. She goes to sleep in there no problem, but usually tries to come to our room between 2 and 4am. We've started the "no Max and Ruby" for the whole next day if she comes in and stays. Sometimes she goes back, and other times she says "I don't want to watch Max & Ruby". Then other nights she stays in her bed until morning..so..it's getting better. She's also done a pretty good job of keeping it clean. I don't have an AFTER picture of the whole room yet...i will try to remember to post one later. sweet dreams!

valentine mailboxes

So, being the procrastinator I am...Jay, Cora and I made their Valentine Boxes tonight...due tomorrow! Well, Jay's is, Cora was just along for the ride..but she doesn't know the difference. It all started off very rocky. I could feel my anxiety reaching it's blowing point as the chaos began. Since it was their first experience in making mailboxes they just had no idea what was going on, and didn't really want to listen to direction...just wanted complain and fight over who gets what. but as things progressed everything started to settle down. We just spray painted the boxes silver (just the first can of paint my hand touched) and they got to dig through and awesome bucket of chip board letters and shapes my friend, Bridget got for me. Then they looked through my ginormous book of stickers and such...and they directed and created and I operated the hot glue gun. I think they turned out quite nicely! bring it on, cupid!

Happy Birthday, Cora!

What better way to jump back into the blogging world than with pictures of Cora's 3rd birthday?! As you can see, we went with the Care Bear theme. She loved it. Of course we had the party at home (despite Jay's best efforts) I am just not ready to handle the "invite every kid you've ever known to some party place where the kids run completely wild for 2 hours and then you go home" type of party. I like our homemade parties, and as long as I am the boss...this is the way we will "roll". HA! Okay, on to the pictures!

This is cora with her cake and the Care Bear backdrop is Josh's handy work!

The sweetest picture of the day!

The birthday girl's shirt-a pink version of Birthday Bear


The Care Bears on a cloud covering the mantle, and the awesome pinata my sister, Erin decorated. I wanted to make a rainbow pinata, but anything that's not round seems to be out of the realm of my pinata making skills..so we had to get creative! In case you can't tell, it's Cheer Bear's belly badge.

Goodie Bags! Hobby Lobby had these their canvas bags 1/2 off, and they came in blue, yellow and green, so we made them into Grumpy, Sunshine and GoodLuck bear bags. There's not much Care Bear stuff out there, so the bags just had some rainbow chip cookies, fruit snacks, playdough, skittles, and a Care Bear cup.


Here's her Care Bear Cake, and some TenderHeart cookies too!

The Birthday Gang! (Lauren, Jay, Chyan, Cora, Kennedy & Clara)