Running from the Law

Monday, February 16, 2015

DIY Valentine Heart Suncatchers

Hello Monday! I hope you all had a wonderful love-filled, sugar-coated, heart-shaped, chocolate-covered Valentine's Day weekend. Ryan bought me a gallon of wine, some chocolate covered strawberries and let me sleep in on Saturday until 10:00 a.m. It was the best day ever! He sure knows the way to my heart.

I mentioned last week that we were lucky enough to get to participate in two blogger Valentine exchanges this year. This one was organized by two of my favorite blog moms, Megan @ The Adventure Starts Here and Elizabeth @ Chasin' Mason. We totally got our "craft on" for this blog exchange and tried something pretty ambitious that we'd never done before - making tissue paper suncatchers!

I thought this would be such a great craft for a toddler to help out with. In theory, I guess it was, but in execution, I was SO wrong. I am seriously out of my mind sometimes when I think that my 2.5 year old will sit, pay attention and help for more than 7 seconds. Within three minutes of me getting the stuff out to make these, I knew I was probably just going to end up with a huge mess, a glue-covered kid and tissue paper everywhere. Unfortunately, I was right.

Step 1: Cut out two hearts from white paper. Place them on a flat surface under some wax paper. Use tape to hold the wax paper down. Try not to let the toddler pull miles of tape off the roll and cover himself, the table and the dogs with tape.

Step 2: Apply glue (or Mod Podge) to the wax paper over top of the heart. Try not to let the toddler eat the glue, stick his entire hand in it or dump it out all over the table.

Step 3: Place small pieces of tissue paper on the glue on the wax paper in any random order you want to completely cover the heart. Beware, tissue paper will not only stick to the glue on the wax paper, but it will stick even better to the glue on your toddler's fingers and then be impossible for them to get off, resulting in lots of shaking, rubbing on pant legs and carpet.

Step 5: Distract your toddler with candy or screen time to keep them completely away from the project while you pour yourself a giant glass of wine and spend the next two hours cutting, gluing and making a ridiculous mess in the living room and cursing yourself for trying to be a Pinterest perfect mom and consider throwing all this crap in the trash can.

Step 6: Place another piece of wax paper on top of the heart and cover with a heavy book (finally found a good use for those old law school textbooks!) and let dry overnight (or a week, whatever).

Step 7: Once dry, peel the top layer of wax paper off and use your heart-shaped paper template to cut out a heart.

Step 8: Apply a paper border to the heart (optional) and a string to hang in the window.

Step 9: Hang and enjoy!

Of course, everyone else went above and beyond with their Valentine's too. I was so impressed with all the great ideas that everyone had. Stickers, puzzles, chocolate, popcorn...Mac is such a spoiled kid with these awesome blogger exchanges. He's going to come to expect some seriously amazing swag for every holiday.

Make sure you check out all the other moms and kids participating in the exchange. A big thanks to Megan and Elizabeth for organizing and including us! We had so much fun with it!

Meghan & Noah @ The Adventure Starts Here

Elizabeth & Mason @ Chasin' Mason

Tawnya & Scarlett @ All of Life's Little Adventures

Ashley & Waverly @ Words About Waverly

Megan & Olivia @ Willow Way

Sara, Mac & Mim @ Running from the Law

Laureen, Tyson & Harper @ Chateau Deveau

Tara, Declan & Calem @ A Tale of Four Maples

Friday, February 13, 2015

Happy Valentine's Day

Wishing you a very happy Heart Day, from these two little love bugs.

This post is made possible by the good people that make Skittles, Starburst, M&Ms, Smarties, sweet tarts, gummy worms and cookies (aka SUGAR!!!!).

Happy Valentine's Day!

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Valentine's Day Blogger Exchange

We are so lucky to be a part of an amazing group of bloggers that participated in a really fun Valentine exchange for the kids this year. Organized by the fabulous Chrissy, of Simple Joys blog, eleven of my favorite mommy bloggers and their kiddos sent each other the sweetest Valentine's you ever did see. We did a similar Valentine's exchange last year and I was just blown away by how little Mac looked in those photos, compared to this year. Man, time is flying by.

I'll start off my admitting that I "accidentally" signed us up for two separate Valentine exchanges and didn't realize my mistake until the last minute, so it was a bit of a scramble on my part to correct my epic screw-up without throwing off everyone's timing (other exchange post coming next week - it'll be like deja vu). Sleep deprivation and life in general have been kicking my ass lately and I'm a walking disaster these days. Don't even get me started on my "to do" list, which I've stopped even looking at for fear of having a heart attack.

Anywho. For this Valentine, we did a simple printable, paired with gummy worms. You can't go wrong with gummy worms - Mac nearly ate an entire bag as we were preparing them. We (tried to) put 12 gummy worms in each bag (and work on our counting as we did that), but I noticed that a few of the worm magically "disappeared" and someone was no longer hungry for dinner. Well, well.

We paired our gummy worm treat, with a "LOVE" card I made using photos of the kids hands and feet. Mac is the top row and Mim is the bottom row. I love the way it turned out, although I was really hoping to use puckered lips for the "O." However, toddlers and babies are incredibly difficult models and very rarely ever perform on command (even for treats), so we went with what we could get.

It was so much fun to receive all this amazing mail last week. Mac was excited for all the packages for him and he was thrilled when I let him open everything the other morning and look at them all.

We got crayons, coloring books, bees, painted hearts, cards, tattoos, balloons, popcorn, bugs. Talk about great stuff for a toddler! It was like hitting the jackpot.

I even put my "cool mom" hat on and let him have strawberry shortcake flavored popcorn before breakfast. I think I scored some points with him on that one.

Of course, Mim was totally excited to get some Valentines too. It was so sweet of everyone to include her in the exchange, even though she has no clue what's going on and just wanted to eat all the cards. She's also now covered in glitter, which is going to be impossible to get off of her. I just finally got all the glitter off of her from Christmas.

This was so much fun! A huge thanks to Chrissy for organizing and including us in the exchange and my sincerest apologies to everyone participating again, for being a disorganized mess.

Here's a list of everyone that participated if you want to go check them out too!

Amy@ lukeandamysmith.blogspot.com

Ashley@ runningmomentum.wordpress.com

Ashley@ wordsaboutwaverly.blogspot.com

Chrissy@ simplejoysblog.com

Colleen@ colleenandkeith.com

Courtney@ sweet-turtle-soup.blogspot.com

Emma@ harperandwill.com

Erinn@ strawberryswingandthings.com

Nina@ thejonijourney.blogspot.com

Sara@ runninglawyer@blogspot.com

Veronika@ veronabrit.blogspot.com

Did you exchange Valentines this year?

Monday, February 9, 2015

Valentine's Day Favorites for Kids

I can't believe it's almost Valentine's Day already?! It's a crazy busy time of year, but we are so excited about the upcoming holiday of LOVE! This is Mac's first year in school, so we've been busy making adorable Valentine's for his class, his grandparents and his friends. Plus, we're participating in a couple fun blogger Valentine exchanges (blog posts coming soon), so we've been in a heart-shaped mood for weeks! Here are few of our favorite Valentine's items for kids.

Onesie tie // Skivvies // Heart dress // Huggy Kissy // Hearts headband // temporary tattoos // Heartbreaker shirt // sippy cup // Chair mailbox // baby heart shoes // Valentine hats // Where Is Baby's Valentine? // Marshmallow pops // Stuffed monster // Printable stickers

What are your favorite kids' Valentine's items?

*This post does NOT contain any affiliate links.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

New Mommy Confessions - Part 15

- I haven't pumped in a week. And OHMYGOD there are SO many emotions that I'm feeling about this: guilt, relief, pain, guilt, pride, frustration, guilt, success, failure, guilt. Did I mention guilt? Why do we mamas beat ourselves up over this stuff? I have a freezer full of breastmilk and I'm finally going to get that time (and my body) back, so I can actually spend it with my kids. And yet, I'm a mess about it. I'm in a process of writing a whole post about pumping/breastfeeding and my boobs, so stay tuned. I'm sure you're going to be glued to the edge of your seat in eager anticipation. The way these blog posts are flying out of me like molasses it might be September, but it is coming.

- Mim now has 2 bottom teeth in her mouth and approximately 75 hairs on her head. Progress. Yet, it makes me incredibly sad. Everyday I squeeze her really hard in the hopes that she'll just stay little forever. It's not working.

- Things that I've said in the last week: stop licking your feet, please don't ride the dog like a horse, take the chicken nugget out of your pants, show mommy how the piggies eat, I'll give you a sucker if you will stop screaming, mommy needs love too, don't drink the bath water, stop scratching your butt, get off the counter, stop eating chapstick, knives are for grownups only, stop rubbing your poopy diaper butt on me, you will not die if your sister smiles at you, we don't eat paint, let's play the quiet game, don't pull the legs off that cricket, will you please share your chocolate with mommy and if you go to sleep right now I'll buy you a pony.

- I just realized that I haven't sent out thank you notes for any Christmas or birthday gifts. Add those to the ones I still need to send out for newborn gifts, and I am basically the worst person ever. Seriously, new moms should just get a pass on thank you notes. It's not that I'm not grateful, it's just that I'm completely disorganized and a total asshole.

- I love having a girl. I'm addicted to baby headbands and baby bows. And baby moccasins. And baby leggings. And baby jammies. And babies.

- Is anyone else considering making their toddler get a job to make up for all the things he breaks or loses? He's going to need to work serious overtime to pay me back just for all the hats and gloves he's lost this winter. And it's only the beginning of February. And can we talk about the hell that is putting on toddler gloves for a minute? What did I ever do to deserve that?

- I've been struggling with how to disciple Mac lately. Especially when he won't share. We've tried lectures, time-outs, taking away privileges...nothing works. I asked my friend Claire about this a while back and she gave me the single greatest piece of parenting advice ever, which I've now tried and will admit that it works brilliantly. I'll even share it with you today. She said, when dealing with bratty kids, "Every now and then, you just need to go batshit crazy on them. Freak out, lose your mind and scream just enough to scare them so that they know that you're slightly unhinged and could lose it completely at any moment. If you need to, take the toy they're fighting over and dramatically throw it in the fucking trash and tell them to deal with it. They'll get it together real quick after that." I love her. And it totally works. You're welcome.

- Things I want for Valentine's Day: 18 straight hours of sleep, a case of champagne, Botox, a mute button for the kids, a clean house, my pre-pregnancy breasts and some more baby moccasins. Not necessarily in that order.