A New Favorite Toy

Leah seems to have found a new favorite toy and another use for my cookie cutters.
She loves to carry around the entire can, dump them out and then put them back in.  I'm always looking for the educational value in things(that's the teacher in me!), so I occasionally try to show her the shapes and colors, I guess if nothing else it's good practice at putting things in a can.

Guess we can take back all the expensive Christmas presents, she's perfectly happy with a container of cookie cutters (at least they're getting some use!).

Yum!

Can you tell what is Leah's favorite meal?

Spaghetti

I figure every kid has a picture of them eating spaghetti, so Leah needed one too.  One of these day's I'm sure we'll let her get really messy with it, but I thought I'd share these too. 

Some Glowing Pictures

We put up most of our Christmas decorations on the Sunday after Thanksgiving after we got home from Kansas.  I really dread the thought of hauling all the stuff down from the attic, putting it up, and hauling all the stuff back up to the attic, but I'm so glad we decided to put our decorations up that night.  Normally we get them down from the attic and leave them down for a couple of days, but this time we got them down, put them up, and put them back in the attic all in one night, this forced me to make quick decisions as to where I wanted things and didn't allow me to leave them scattered all over the house (which a few still are) for days.  It also made me work on a deadline (I work much better under pressure), because I knew I wanted to eventually go to bed and I couldn't until the boxes were back in the attic.
Anyway, here are our Christmas decorations from this year.  If you're curious to see what they looked like last year, you can go here.  I hope you notice the difference in the pictures and in Leah, I sure did!

 Mantel

 Our "glowing" tree
I can't get over how bright these pictures are, bear with me I'm still learning. :)
If you'd like to take your own "glowing tree" pictures, here's where I learned (via pinterest)

 My little helper

Helping

Leah got to hang her "L" ornament on the tree, of course she had to play with it for a little while first.  

Thank You!

Leah's birthday Thank Yous went out quite a while ago, but while I was working on them I also created this to use as a possible thank you.  I didn't end up using it because I couldn't ever get it to look right, when I printed it as a 5x7 is was too grainy and I couldn't find envelopes or where to write the personal message and when I printed it as a 4x6 it was too small to read the writing.  Considering I have a tendency to put things off until I can get them just right and this was something that I might never get "just right", I just went ahead and sent out regular ol' thank yous, before it was past the point of being too late.  I decided I still wanted to share it, so to those of you who already got thank yous, consider it a second thank you and everyone else consider it your thank you for reading! :)

*I told you my posts were way overdue and out of order, but how's that for 5 posts in 7 days?!?

Merry & Bright

May Your Days Be Merry and Bright!

I've been playing with my camera and photoshop elements.  These pictures and collage aren't perfect by any means, but I thought you might enjoy them all the same!

She Loves 'Em

Graham crackers!
Leah will do just about anything for a graham cracker: need a few extra minutes to shop at Target, give her a graham cracker; need to put her in her car seat, give her a graham cracker; she's getting fussy on the way home, give her a graham cracker. A simple solution to all her problems and she loves them!
If the saying "You are what you eat" is true, Leah is going to turn into a graham cracker!