We don’t get snow here very often and even when we do, it almost never sticks. Today, however, it’s really coming down and it appears its gonna stay around for a little while. Henry’s excited, he wants to go out and build a snowman… But not enough snow yet, hopefully we can get enough to smush together a little snowman this afternoon. Of course we don’t have any weather appropriate clothes (it was in the 70′s here two days ago and probably will be again by Saturday), so mostly we’re just staring out the window and hoping Pizza Hut will deliever today.

We started with plain ball ornaments.  Since they need to travel through the mail and little children frequently visit our house we went with plastic.  The only smallish plastic ones in our local store had this sort of holographic plastic wrap stuff on them which Henry really likes because it’s sparkly.  I think the paint would have adhered a little bit better if they’d had a mat or frosted finish though. 

First we painted Henry’s fingers and the top part of the palm of his hand with white acrylic craft paint, they become the four snowman on the ornament.  He did this part by himself after we did the first one.

Next I had him hold his hand palm up and I placed the ornament in his hand. Henry squeezed the ball tight and then let go as I held on to the top hook of the ornament (sorry for the blurry picture):

Cute little hand-print snowmen:

After we finished with all the hand-prints, I sat down with some paint pens and drew on the faces, arms, buttons, scarves, and hats.

After they were dry I took them outside and sprayed them with a clear sealant.

We also made matching Christmas card/gift tags using a white stamp pad and embossing powder instead of acrylic paint. On most of the cards we used markers instead of paint pens and so Henry could do a lot of the drawing faces and accessories on those.

These shorts have been sitting on my sewing table for a while now. I finished them over a month ago, but they needed a little something. I love this new ribbon by Jessica Jones. It’s cute without being “cutesy” and Henry really loves them.

Ribbon available fromj caroline creative.

Lunch today: Grapes, pretzels, goldfish crackers, chicken, hardboiled egg, and grapes

Head on over to sycamore stirrings for more muffin tins.

One of my friends makes fun of me for dressing Henry like this when we’re at the pool. But it’s a whole lot easier than chasing him down and trying to get sunscreen on him every hour or so. And he doesn’t complain.

Playing video games at Best Buy

Climbing on a clam. Henry’s favorite part of the aquarium is the play equipment… same thing with the zoo… He’d be just as happy at the playground, I’m the one that gets bored.

The riverfront reeks of crude oil right now. You can see the containment boom for the oil spill here:

At the Cafe du Monde there were two mimes having a photo shoot, complete with prop beignets. Then they sat down at a table and ate some real ones.

Henry fell asleep at dinner:

Thanks to Katy over at sycamore stirrings for the inspiration.

In our muffin tray this week:
1. Baby Carrots 2. Grapes 3. Plums 4. Watermelon
5. Cereal 6. White Cheddar Veggie Booty 7. Hard Boiled Egg 8. Picks for the fruit
9. Pretzels 10. Mini Cookies 11. Cheddar Cheese 12. Almond Butter and Jelly Sandwiches

I made the outer fabric long enough so that it can fold over the crayons when it’s rolled up.  That way the crayons can’t fall slip out during transit, but it’s still really easy to slide the crayons into the slots.  This is the roll I made for Henry, the crayons are washable trianguler crayons from Crayola.  My plan is to use this  when we go out to eat and the triangle crayons don’t roll so I won’t constantly be chasing crayons under the table. The crayon rolls for the goody bags have regular round crayons in them.

Each one of the backpacks has a luggage tag with each of the kids first initial on it.  If I get time tomorrow I’m going to make some covered sticky notebooks that I saw over at greetingarts.

I pulled the colors for his party of out of some an Amy Butler striped fabric that I love and everything just took off from there. There were several brown and turquoise batik fabrics on sale at our local fabric store that matched really nicely. I’m happy with how it turned out.

I set out Henry’s birthday ring and his new felt ocean cake from Twinkle-Kids

Henry’s eyes lit up this morning when he came downstairs and he bounced up and down and shouted “I’m Bigger!”
(*I’m tired of initials so I’m going to pseudonyms, it feels really awkward to type the wrong names though)

We bought the birthday pack which comes with invitations, thank you cards, and return address labels.

I love everything about these. The invitations have the directions to our party on the back along with another picture of H, and on the inside of the thank you note there is a very light, watermark type, image of H holding a guitar. They’re beautiful.

I also went to Zazzle and had matching stickers and photo stamps made. Overboard? Yes, I admit it. But it sure is fun.

In other news, the other day we went to play at the place that we’re having H’s party. When I told H where we were going he got really excited, looked himself up and down, and said “Am I bigger?” It took me just a minute to realize he thought it was his birthday.