Letters!

~ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ~

My sister reminded me a while back that when I was younger, I carved my initials into the side of my Dad's car. These were no tiny initials...I seriously carved one foot letters onto his car door. I have no clue why and when questioned, I tried to blame a friend.  ???

 My son has quite the fascination with letters. "B" was the first letter he learned and for quite a while, every letter was "B". Now he knows almost the whole alphabet and loves to point them out when we are out, when he sees them on signs or boxes or whatever might have a letter.  In my true fashion, I had to scour the WWW for fabulous letter images.  Here is my tribute:

C is for C O L O R

large wood letter D

Make your own alphabet crayons!

Make your own alphabet marshmallows!

letter pillows

modern classics alphabet poster

vanilla poppy seed letter soap

The Letter S, Peter Blake

word cake

alphabet tree in the Children's Services Early Learning Center, Indiana 

And then when I came across this birthday party, I think I squealed:

Mia and Mike's Alphabet Birthday Party

And then I saw this and it sealed it for me:

alphabet/flashcard party

What a perfect theme for my son's second birthday!  Yay!  This stuff excites me a little too much, perhaps.  My head is spinning!!  Eeeeeee!!  Oh well.  Let the party-planning begin!!  [His birthday is in June, in case you had no idea just how crazy I am.  Ha ha!]

His love for letters started last year just before his first birthday.  Photo by the fabulous Adrian of Canyon Photography, taken in June 2010

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My husband was in New Orleans this past weekend, participating in the Caesar parade.  I cannot wait to share his pictures next Monday for a special New Orleans/Mardi Gras tribute!

Have a great week!!  I can't even believe March starts tomorrow!

Project Artwork, Day 1

I have always adored children's artwork. There is just something so wonderful, so innocent, and so perfect about it. When I taught preschool, the walls of my classroom were covered with the wonderful drawings, paintings, and collages of my little ones and I cannot wait for spaces in my home to be the same.

a masterpiece by my 20-month old son  :)

Last month was the first time my son really started using crayons. He has played with them for a little while, but they usually would go in his mouth or to the dog. Over the past few weeks though, he has gotten interested in coloring on paper and so I decided to start a little something: Project Artwork. For this project I will be keeping a piece of artwork in a file from various stages of his development and plan to display them on a huge gallery wall of sorts.  Obviously I will keep tons of his artwork, but until things start flooding in from school when he is of age, this will keep me organized with projects we work on at home.

Starting from Day 1 (1/26/11):

I think it will be fun to be able to look at a wall years from now and see one of his very first pieces!  I am still not quite sure how I plan to display everything, but these images I have had saved (that have been floating around the blogosphere) sure have my wheels turning:

image source

image source

image source

image source

the jan eleni collage™ – an exclusive archival art piece of your child’s personal art.

image from Better Homes and Gardens found here

image found here

It all brings me back to the post I did back in September about wanting to create a family wall.  You may remember I wanted to do a mix of family photos and also personal prints/artwork:

you can click here if you want to be directed back to that post for image credits

I'd love to incorporate our son's artwork into that wall.  I know this post is all over the place, but once again, that's how the thoughts are in my head!  I know I am not the only one with a love for their children's artwork.  There was a group of posts last week about favorite artists and I could not agree more with the sentiments of a few who named their children as some of their favorites.  [This link will take you to Torrie's list...at the bottom of her post, there is a list of the other bloggers who participated last week.]

I cannot wait to continue our collection of original artwork...starting with the work of my favorite little artist.

Lock and Key...

Key to my Heart, a love letter

Happy Tuesday!!  Can you believe it is February?  This past weekend the weather was absolutely perfect!  We went to the zoo and while my son was fascinated with the animals, mainly the zebras, he would have stayed in the play area all day long, playing with these little things with locks.  He kept saying, "key?  key?"  He kept inspecting them, wondering how in the world you could open it without a key, and he was right...there was no key and no way to open them, unless I was missing something.  I guess that's the point?...keeping the kids curious?

Anyway, as I have mentioned before, sometimes it just takes a little moment like that to trigger a post.  Because I am crazy, I had to hop right on to Etsy to see what I could dig up.  Here are a few finds I am loving:

Curious - 25 - Mini art feeling

Skeleton Keys Pillow Cover

Little Key TEETHING TOY, natural wooden teether for infants and toddlers

Locks for the Boxes in the Linen Closet, original petite paintings

Live Laugh Love, large print

Where to stay in Manhattan old map and wood game piece keyring

So dorky  Ha ha!  Love it!


I hope you are having a great week so far!

Favorite song?

Can you remember your favorite song from when you were 7 years old?  Take a look at mine:

ahahaha  Oh yes!  My favorite song in the second grade was Part Time Lover, by Stevie Wonder.  I wonder what my teacher thought of that.

I am so glad my parents kept some of my work from when I was a kid, because it is so fun to look back.  BTW, I find it hilarious that my favorite subject was Spelling and I misspelled "favorites."

Have a wonderful weekend!!!

Take the quiz -----> Send a book!

Please join me in helping k2kUSA, a project brought to you by Save the Children USA Inc.,  reach their goal of sending 90,000 books to children in need!

k2kUSA is an advocacy campaign that empowers kids to connect with and advocate for each other. The goal is to ensure a fair chance in life for every kid in America. Central to fairness for all kids is ending the childhood poverty crisis, which affects one in six kids in the United States.   

In the 5 seconds it takes to answer just three questions, you will be helping to give the gift of reading to deserving children.  By taking the quiz, you will be sending one book.  Easy peasy!

Click here to take the quiz!

For more information about k2kUSA, click here!

I hope you are having a fantastic week!!

Play time...finally!

For a long time I have had a love/hate relationship with toys.  Of course love wins, but I have always had a ridiculous fear of toys overtaking our house and having it look like a preschool or a toy store or just a massive mess.  Our home is on the small side, so dedicating an entire room to toys and books and puzzles was just unfortunately out of the question.  As I mentioned before, our dining "room" was virtually unused and since we still have an eat-in kitchen/family room, we decided to donate that table and make that area a play space.   Room is in quotes because really it is not a room.  It is a portion of a room...a nook...a tiny nook.  :)  We are making it work, though.  Since the other half of the room is a living area and also the first room of our home that you see when you walk in, I wanted the spaces to flow and to make sense in our home and I didn't want the toys to be the first things you see.  I wanted a cohesive space and while we still have some things to do, the play area is really taking shape and we have already spent some quality hours in there.

Before checking it out, I thought I'd show how the space has looked in the past.  It has had it's share of changes over the past few years.  When we first moved in, we had it as our sitting area:

Then we flipped the room and moved the table to that side.  Unfortunately, I never really took pictures of the table area because it left a lot to be desired.  Often it was just a bare table where I worked on art projects or blogged, other times it housed holiday decor:

treats at my son's first birthday party

Halloween 2010

Though you can't see the table, this Christmas decor was on it!  :)  (2010)

the day of the move (2011)

I wanted the play space to be a fun, creative area while also still making sense with the decor in the rest of our home.  I didn't want the space to seem disjointed in any way.   Here is how it looks now:

So that's it!  Connor runs in there as soon as he wakes in the morning, so I am going to pretend he loves the design of the new space, not just the toys.  :)

A few details:

• The shelving and accessories were already in our home, just taken from other rooms, so this was a free makeover.  
• The mirror on the right wall is metal, so not only is it perfect for face-making, but also letter magnets!
• The easel was one of his Christmas gifts from us and is currently doubling as a kitchen/grocery store, with a bin of pots, pans, and utensils underneath, next to his car.
• My husband and I made that penguin from a box.  I 100% copied the one from Gourmet Mom on-the-Go when we had a penguin party for Connor's first birthday.  My mother-in-law helped me sew felt fish bean bags to be thrown into the penguin's mouth.  They are in the bucket next to the penguin.
• I still have that bowl of corks in this room.  :)  Joining them are two (aluminum?) trees my parents gave us as part of our Christmas gift.  I love them!  They will be perfect for Christmas, but I plan to keep them up year-round.

Now we just need to finish the seating area on the opposite end and then this room will be complete.