New, Old Decorations

I'm so proud of the decorations in our playroom and especially love the history behind some of them. One in particular is this little shadow box. Up until a few months ago, my Mom has always had it up at her house and decorated it for every season. In fact, I remember countless times as a child changing out the decorations when the seasons changed! I saw it at her house when we were there at Christmas and told her I'd be happy to take it if she didn't want it anymore. She said sure, and gave me the shadow box along with her tackle box of decorations for it. The girls were really excited to see all the decorations and have enjoyed helping me change it out for Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day so far. I love how the shadow box is displayed with these two paper fans in the play room. The gold on the fans perfectly match the gold on the box!

The other shelf is one I've had for quite a while and it came from my parents as a gift. I've always had my knick knacks and figurines on it, but decided to take my stuff down and put the shelf up in the play room to let the girls enjoy it with their treasures. My sister has a shelf exactly like this and had it up in her kitchen, decorated for each holiday. They recently redecorated their kitchen and did not put this shelf back up. I asked her if I could have some of the items she had on her shelf to use on my shelf and she said yes. It will be so much fun in the future to continue combining everything I have for these shelves, along with that from my Mom and sister, and anything new Lucy and Molly might get to decorate the shelves! 

Playing Shoe Store

Lucy and Molly are so creative and really do love to play together. One day they decided to play shoe store in our kitchen. The got all of their shoes out of their shoe box and lined them up along the island. Molly brought their little play cash register in and set up her check-out station. Lucy brought shoes to her that she wanted to buy and Molly checked her out. It's quite fun to watch them play! You can watch a transaction here!

Play Room!

The girls have a designated play room now! They've actually had it for a little over five months, ever since Ross started his new job last October, but I'm just now getting around to posting about it. The play room is located inside our front door and to the right. It's nice because it has doors to close it off when it's just too messy to look at! We put the bigger toys in the room and I had a fun time decorating it. Lucy was a good help with decorating, too. I bought a few decorations, but most of it came from other parts or my house or things my Mom passed along to me that she didn't want anymore. It's such a happy room and I'm so pleased with how it turned out! I think this was such an important project and room to me because I had a play room in the basement of my parent's house while growing up that I absolutely loved to play in. I played house, babies, restaurant, office, and school. Oh, the hours upon hours upon hours that I played school in that play room! If my girls enjoy their play room just half as my as I enjoyed mine, I will be a very happy mom!

Valentine's Day Box

This was the first year Lucy got to make a Valentine's box to use with trading Valentine's at school. Last year she had a Valentine's Day party with Valentine cards, but they just make a sack or something to use for the box at school. I was very excited to learn that we got to make our own box for this year!

Lucy and I looked on Pinterest for ideas and inspirations and we settled on making a bird house box. I think it turned out so cute and it was really easy to make, too. I used two boxes and after a little cutting and taping, had the house ready to decorate. We used some very pretty pink heart wrapping paper we found at Target and some brown scrapbook paper I had on hand to cover the box and make it look pretty. I also hot-glued on some fringe-like ribbon to go around the border. I wanted to cut out some cute little birds to stick on the house and put her name on it in a really cute font, too. We didn't share the same ideas in decorating her house, so I let her have fun with decorating it. She used some heart stickers to decorate the box, along with a little piece of ribbon and a bell so the bird would have something to play with. :)

It was kind of hard for me to let her decorate it as she wanted because I had a grander vision for it. But I am very glad that I let her take over because after all, it was her box to decorate and she did a good job with it!

Valentines Day #10

Valentine's Day 2018 was the tenth Valentine's Day that Ross and I have shared together! It's funny how time sneaks by so slowly, yet so quickly. We celebrated Tuesday with a Valentine's Day party for Lucy and her dance friends, and then went out to eat for our traditional dinner at Popeye's. We've been eating there for Valentine's Day since 2013. It's one of Ross' favorite places to eat. Wednesday I got to help out with Lucy's preschool party and then that evening we gave the girls their presents and Ross took Lucy to life group while I took Molly to dance class. Last year Ross was at class on Valentine's Day.....maybe next year we can have an evening at home to celebrate the day!

Ross did surprise me with a very sweet gift. I had mentioned to him about a month ago that I wanted a gold bar necklace. I told him I'd send him a link to what I wanted, but never did mainly because I couldn't decide which necklace I wanted. He never asked me about it again and I forgot about it, so wasn't expecting anything at all. Our tradition is to put our gifts to each other on our bed with Steve, the teddy bear he gave me for our first Valentine's Day in 2009. (I don't know why we put the gifts on our bed, we just do.) I started to open the card but then noticed something shiny on Steve's neck. I looked closer and found it was a bar necklace! It wasn't what I wanted, but I didn't care at all! That was the sweetest gift because he remembered what I wanted and said he looked at lots of places to find it, too. Happy Valentine's Day!