Whales: Finished...?

I know, I know. I said I was going to do the followup to the previous post about the boys' whale outfit and then never did. Until now.

The whale shorts were perfect for the boy to wear to the beach. He wore them the first time he saw the ocean.

 

Instead of making an applique whale to go on a white t-shirt, like I had originally planned, he opted for the bright orange tee from his closet. It's the perfect match. I think he may still want the applique shirt, but only for the whale I will  put on it. I may do a long-sleeve shirt instead of a short-sleeve. That way he can wear the shorts when the weather starts turning cooler, but not cold enough to wear pants.

 

 

I will declare the whales project finished, until I decide that it isn't.

 

Beach Robe: MADE pattern

Dana was having a sale on her patterns and I had some money in my paypal account. I had been wanting to buy the Beach Robe pattern for a while. I just thought it was the perfect thing to take along to the beach, or pool. So I bought it.

I had been stocking up on beach towels ever since I saw her post. I had the perfect towels for my boy and my girl. All I needed was the pattern and time to do start/finish a project. And a trip to the beach was coming up soon, so I had to get to work.

Finished product:

 

I used a pink and white striped beach towel for the girl and yellow bias tape for the edges. I think it adds a much needed pop of color. 

 

 

I found a dark blue and white striped towel for my son. I didn't want to use red bias tape because I wanted to avoid any traditional summer holiday colors. But it did need some something to make it stand out more. The lime green bias tape was the perfect find. When he outgrows it his sister can wear it, too.

 

 

 

Because of the way the stripes were laid out on the towels, there were not any leftovers to make hoods. The pink robe has long sleeves, while the blue robe does not. I used the already finished edge of the towel for the short sleeves, mainly because it was available, looked good, and I didn't want to sew on any more bias tape than I already had to. Win, win.

 

 

Now we just needed the beach.

 

 

We had never been on a family trip before. Mainly because we don't plan ahead for things like this, we already have so much to do at home the way it is, traveling with small children is hard. We opted to wait until they were both older, sleeping reasonably well at night, potty trained, and halfway traveled well.

 

I also wanted to go to the beach to just get away for a weekend and have fun. I didn't want to go in the middle of summer when it would be crowded and expensive, and hot. So, the middle of September just seemed perfect, and after peak season is a great time to go. The weather was great! Sunny and warm, nice ocean breeze to keep you from getting too hot. Just nice.

 

On the way to the beach we stopped to eat lunch and the kids enjoyed their very first Happy Meal from McDonald's.

 



 

I think the enjoyed them. Especially the toy that came with it.

 

Once we got settled into our new home for the weekend, we got ready to head to the beach.

 

The kids in their beach robes:

 

 

They had such a good time playing in the water and the sand. It was just one big sandbox for the girl. Eventually they were brave enough to play in the water. Once I showed them that they could just sit in the water and have the waves come to them, it was hard getting them out of it.

 

It was a fun trip. I look forward to seeing them explore new places and have different experiences again. Of course I will have to work it around the school calendar next year though.



7 years

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon on September 10, two people got married and started a life together, as one.

My husband and I try to stick to the traditional wedding anniversary gifts as much as possible. The modern ones seem so strange but the traditional ones are cute, well, cute to us at least.

For the seventh wedding anniversary the traditional gift was copper/wool. Hmm. Pinterest gave me the perfect idea, and I got to work on it. Here's what I made for my hubs.

Pennies are made of copper. Well, sort of. But for the purposes of this gift, they represent the traditional gift of copper.

I located four pennies with important years on them that represented our lives. One for each of our birth years (1979 and 1980). One for the year we started dating (2001) and one for the year we got married (2005).

 

I thought finding the ones with our birth years on them would be hard, but it wasn't. Finding one from 2005 proved to be more difficult.

 

 

I drilled a small hole into the top of each penny.



 

The purpose of the holes is so that they can fit onto a key ring, which can be put onto his key chain so he will always have them with him. A simple project that serves as a constant reminder of our life together so far.

 

Also, for our anniversary I picked up a composition notebook. When we were dating we wrote letters to each all the time. That sort of dried up some after we got married, and when the kids came along our letter writing is pretty much nonexistent. There are times that I think of stuff that I want to tell him or find something that I want to share with him but the timing doesn't work out well and it gets stored in my head. Now it has an outlet. We can write to each other again and when we have time, we can respond, and hopefully continue to build a strong marriage.

 

 



 

The total package: Notebook, pennies, and a card. We keep it simple around our house.

 

 

Pretty photos of me and my dress.

 

 

My absolute favorite photo:

 

 

 

All we need now is a continued happy life that God will provide us with.