Hayley's Bowtique

 When Petey was born, I wanted her to be dolled up every day. I was kind of a psycho about it and would get frustrated if Boss didn't put a headband on her. She got her ears pierced at 2 months old and I loved them so much. I learned how to make bows when she was about 9 months old and tried to start a little business with it but I was working full time and it just stressed me out.
When she got a little bit older, I started looking around for those adorable chunky bead necklaces. The ones that I found were super expensive so I decided to make some myself for her.
Then recently I had some friends ask about those necklaces and I decided to hold a craft party at my house teaching them how to make the necklaces. One thing led to another and I decided to start back up Hayley's Bowtique. It's only been 2 months but I'm loving it so far.

Petey has a wide range of necklaces that hang on her wall. Some are older and not as fancy, the newer ones have cuter pendants and better clasps. I've gotten better over the years at perfecting the necklaces. I've used ribbon and tied bows, which is cheaper but then Petey started accidentally tying double knots in them and they would get stuck so now I'm back to clasps.

 The most recent necklace I sold was this purple one. How adorable, right? Petey was so excited that I ordered sparkly beads for this necklace. :)

 The rainbow necklace is my other favorite. She wears this one a lot because it matches almost everything!

 My wonderful friend, Leyla, offered to take some pictures of my products to help with my business. She is amazingly talented and I could not pass up an offer like that.

 She took some super adorable pictures of Petey and we have another photo shoot coming up soon. Go visit her website if you need pictures. She's amazing at what she does.

The only downside to all of this?

My poor kitchen table. That picture is from this morning. I did clean it up before dinner but I'm sure it'll look that way again tomorrow. I can't wait to get my desk put in our room so I have a place to work that isn't the same place we eat our meals.

Sending Hugs

I have a couple of sisters who don't live in our same state and we miss them a lot. We don't normally send packages or things to any of them but a while ago I saw this idea on Pinterest to send hugs through the mail. So that is just what we did. {You will be getting these soon, Karin}We rolled out our butcher paper and taped a long piece to the kitchen table. Petey got the first turn and layed down while I traced around her upper body. Then I let her color in her eyes, nose, mouth and hair.She did a pretty good job!Then we got the crayons out and I let her color her picture however she wanted. She asked me to draw a pink shirt on her so that is the only part I helped with.Adorably imperfect drawing. I LOVE it!Spidey had anxiously awaited his turn and was extremely fidgety while I traced his upper body.So as you can see, his was a bit disfigured. Oh well. :) He had fun coloring it, I cut it all out and we sent them both in the mail yesterday to Uncle Chris and Aunt Karin. Petey had also drawn pictures of Chris and Karin a month ago that we never mailed off so they should be expecting TWO envelopes in the mail from us soon. :)

If you want a fun activity for your kids, this one is great! We had so much fun all working and giggling together and I'm glad we were able to pull it off.

And that's how Suze does it.

Valentine's Ruffle Pants

A long, long time ago, I saw a tutorial from Make It and Love it on Pinterest for some cute and easy leggings. I knew that was a doable sewing project for me but never really got around to it.
Then last week we were walking around in Hobby Lobby when I saw that their Valentine's fabric was 50% off and I knew this was the perfect opportunity to try out the leggings tutorial.
To see the original tutorial, go here.

I bought a cute pink fabric for the pants and cut out the pattern using another pair of leggings. I sewed the pieces together using the tutorial above and then got started on my ruffles. Isn't thi heart fabric adorable? I spent less than a dollar on this much fabric and I still have a lot left over! I cut two 4 inch strips of heart fabric and hemmed one side. I then ruffle the fabric and attached it to the bottom of the leggings.Cute cute cute! After the ruffle was sewn onto the pants, I sewed the top and put the waistband in. This literally took me less than an hour from start to finish.And with that extra fabric, I made a pair of leggings for my baby niece, Ellie. So cute!Here's a picture of the matching girls. Unfortunatly, Ellie's pants were too small(!) so we put another pair of pink pants over them for the pictures...and then we brought them home and gave them to Petey's baby doll. :)I also made a cute little headband for Ellie.I am so glad to have another girly in the family. I love making things for little girls! :)

And that's how Suze sews it.

Ruffled Jeans ,Hard Days, and FHE

Wel, today was quite a day.
More on that later but first, I'm here to show off my latest craft project.

I have this cute pair of capri-length jeggins for Petey that I wanted to try some ruffles on. I've seen the idea ALL over Pinterest and wanted to give it a try! And boy, do I love it! I think they turned out adorable and added just the right amount of girly fabulousness to my Petey girl's pants.
So now would you like to hear about my hard, hard, very hard day?
Well, this morning my kids woke up at 6:30. Bleh! But anyway, we got up and I realized we had almost nothing in our kitchen. No milk, no eggs, no bread. So as soon as 8am rolled around, we headed to Trader Joe's to go grocery shopping.
An hour later and a cart full of food, we were checking out when I realized I didn't have my correct debit card to PAY for said food so after a quick call to my husband, I put my groceries on hold and left the store.
My husband insisted he didn't have the card so I headed to my parents, where we'd been staying these past 2 weeks, to see if it was lost somewhere over there.
I came up with nothing so we headed home, still with an empty kitchen. For lunch, the kids and I ate a total of 8 granola bars (I won't tell you how that was divied up), dried blueberries, and tap water. I was feeling extremely stressed out and was a crappy mother most of the morning.
I finally decided we needed to leave the house so we could all be less grumpy (especially me). So we headed to the park for some fun! And it did the magic trick. We were all giggling and playing and had a great time.
And mostly because everyone could use a laugh on a Monday, here is a video from our park trip. Pay close attention to the first 5 seconds of the video. Poor Spidey...
I love that my kids fit in our single stroller together. And no, Petey isn't choking her brother. :) We went on a nice, long walk after playing at the park and it really helped my mood.

Of course Boss got home at 3pm and at approximately 3:03pm, he found my card! It was on the floor in my car. I'm so thankful that he found it and as soon as he did, Petey and I headed back to Trader Joe's to pick up the groceries that they still had on hold for me. Phew! I am so glad everything worked out today.

Tonight, Boss had to go to the library to get a bunch of homework done so the kids and I had Family Home Evening by ourselves.

We watched our Living Scriptures video of the Nativity 3 times (Seriously, 3 times) and then had a blast playing Dont Break the Ice and Duck, Duck, Goose.

I am so thankful for my children and my husband. We all play a role here to make this family work and stick together and it is important that we keep our end of the bargain and make this life as much fun as possible (At least that's how I look at it.). :)

And that's how Suze sees it.

Sick Boy & a Christmas Craft

I should'e known that something was up when Spidey fell asleep on his daddy like this yesterday.
It looks really sweet but my boy rarely falls asleep on someone or in weird places unless he is getting sick.
But this morning, I had no more clues so I still wasn't thinking that he could be getting sick.

He got a ride on Sister's pink blanket (One of the positives to having tile floors).

He got to pretend to have a sword fight with Daddy (Yes, we save our empty paper towel rolls).

And then, I decided to take down the Halloween craft the kids made (finally!) and make a new craft to hang in the picture frame.

I washed the kids' feet and then painted the bottoms of their feet with green pain. They loved it and were both giggling. Then, I just pressed their feet onto the red paper and voila! The start to our Christmas tree craft.

Then, I painted brown tree stumps to make them look more like trees and I let that all dry.

After it dried, I let the kids decorate their trees with pom pom balls and we just used Elmer's glue to glue them on. I handpainted the star on top of the tree and we were done!

Doesn't it look adorable up in that frame? We think so. :)

Back to my little sicky. Tonight, after our day of fun, Spidey started coughing and has a green, stuffy nose and started losing his voice. Hello, signs of croup. :( Then tonight, after being in bed for an hour, he woke up crying (more like croaking since he's lost his voice) and he fell asleep next to me on the couch. He is snoring up a storm, which sounds cute but it is so sad because he is all stuffed up.

I was hoping (Actually, I'm still hoping) to have a good winter this year, just like last winter and NOT like the winter of 2009 where my boy was on breathing treatments every other week. I guess we'll see how things go and hope he doesn't get sick too often this winter.

And that's how Suze sees it.

Mayonnaise and Dry Erase Markers

So my hair...my poor, poor hair. It has gone through a lot this year. It has gone brown, blonde, blonde, blonde, blonde, brown, and then red/brown. And well, my poor hair hasn't really liked all of these changes and it has become brittle and breaks often.
I've missed my healthy, soft, long, beautiful hair (picture taken April 2010).
So I decided something needed to be done. I found a link on Pinterest where someone put mayonnaise in their hair, which sounded hilarious and kind of gross but I was desperate for a cheap fix (because I can't afford $20/bottle shampoo right now...or ever).
Yes, that is mayonnaise in my hair. I was actually doing just fine until the smell of mayonnaise consumed my entire house. My brother in law came home and immediately asked what I had done. Don't worry, bro, it's just mayonnaise in my hair.
I left the mayo in for 20 minute and put a shower cap on so it didn't get messy.
I then showered like normal, shampooing and using conditioner in my hair. I noticed a difference when I was combing my hair out before bed but thought maybe I was noticing a difference because I wanted a difference.
But then this morning happened. I woke up and went to brush through my hair and it was easy! And I didn't lose as much hair! And then I thought I'd be crazy and actually straighten my hair. Piece. Of. Cake.

Yeah, it may not be completely back to what it was but I bet if I do the mayo trick a couple more times, it'll be as soft as a baby's bottom. Or not. :)

Also, today I had to share with you a fun thing I made for the Petey girl. For my birthday, my mom got me a laminator. Yes! I was trying to decide what I would laminate first when I came across another idea---yup, you guessed it!---on Pinterest.

I printed these tracing patterns online and laminated each one individually and all morning, Petey was practicing tracing them with a dry erase marker.

And to my surprise, she did really well! I briefly explained to her to trace each line and when I came back into the room a while later, she had done most of them and had done them well! I'm thinking this is going to be a regular thing in our house for her to practice. I could even throw in the ABC's numbers and other things for her to trace.

I have a feeling I'm going to go laminator crazy and laminate everything I can think of. :)

And that's how Suze sees it.

Halloween Project: Hand Spiders

I found a cute idea on Pinterest that I wanted to try with my kids so last night, we made it happen!

Things you'll need:
Black paint
White paint
Orange paper
Cute little children hands
First, we painted Spidey's hand, not including his thumb (because spider's only have 8 legs, not 10.).

Then, I pushed his hand onto the paper to make a handprint (minus the thumb). We painted his hand again and turned the paper around and then made another handprint going the opposite direction.

Then I washed those cute little fingers so he didn't make a mess.

Then, it was Petey's turn. Here we are painting her hand the second time around to make a handprint going the opposite direction from the first handprint you see on the paper.

She did so well and didnt curl her fingers when I pushed her hand onto the paper.

Then, I cleaned up her hand as well.

I sent the kids to watch a movie and I took a pencil eraser and dipped it in the white paint to make circles for the eyes. I added a tiny dot of black on top of that and voila! Our spiders have eyes!

I had a white picture frame laying around so I stuck the spider picture in it and hung it up on the wall. Adorable and homemade. And since I had all the materials, this project was free for us!

And that's how Suze crafts.