It seems to be school auction season.  I love this time of year because it means that I get to meet a new group of families.

This year I was crazy enough to take on an even bigger ‘give’.  I was given the opportunity to put something in goody bags that are being given out to all attendees at one particular auction.  I gave this a ton of thought and what I realized, quickly, was that whatever I put in those bags needed to be more than a card.  How often have you gone to an event and gotten a goody bag filled with card?  Did you look at any of them?  I don’t!  Usually they go right into the recycle bin.  So I knew I needed to actually give the folks a reason to take a second glance at my name.  I also needed to come up with a cost effective way to get 250 of ‘something’ that could advertise for me.

So what is a girl to do?  Check out Pinterest of course!  What I found was a great tutorial on how to make key fob key chains.**  So I ordered the webbing and hardware,  purchased some fabric that matched my logo, and I also found a place that makes custom grosgrain ribbon.  It definitely took some time, but I enjoyed the process and here is what I came up with.  (Please excuse the crappy iphone pictures as I only had a bit of time to take these shots before I delivered everything to the school!)  And to make them extra cool I printed up Moo cards with pictures of families that go to the school on one side and my logo on the other.

I’m hoping these keychains say that I am fun, happy, slightly quirky and higher end than the folks who just give a card!  I’m hoping that these little keychains will keep my name handy for all these families when they need some fun, happy, slightly quirky and higher end pictures taken of their little darlings!

**The one thing I recommend changing was I would order the key fob tool from etsy. Much easier than a hammer!  To make these en masse I found it better to sew long lengths of fabric to the webbing and then cutting them to the right lengths later.  I like efficiency.  I purchased the webbing, took and hardware from this gal: EverythingRibbons.  The grosgrain ribbon from these folks: PrintMyRibbon.  The the cute little cards from these guys:  Moo

“Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.”

That is a quote from Ellie’s alter ego.  She is a HUGE Luna Lovegood fan.  She even picked her birthday outfit because she thought this was the kind of skirt Luna would wear!

We had a fun time trying to emulate a poster that Ellie has of this image:

Yes, we know that Ellie is reading the Quibbler upside down.  That is how Luna reads it in the movies too!

Finally, while we were scouting locations we came across this statue which we thought looked amazingly like a Thestral.  Don’t worry if you’ve never seen one, only certain magical people, like Luna, can see them!

You won’t be seeing any birthday party pictures for Ellie anytime soon because we are planning a joint birthday party with Kate that is happening in March.  The theme?  Harry Potter of course!

Today is my dearest Ellie’s birthday.  Normally I don’t do blog posts on weekends but she specifically REQUESTED that her birthday pictures go on her birthday.  We had a fun time running around our town looking for interesting spots for our photo shoot.  Stay tuned tomorrow to see her alter ego pictures.

Miss Ellie has grown up so much this year.  Mr. Fun and I are so proud to see what strides she has made academically.  This kid was not a reader last year and this year we can’t keep enough books in the house.  It has almost killed her that she got a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble last month (thanks Tim!) and I made her save it for winter break which starts tomorrow.  Turns out that Ellie is in a class with a lot of ‘challenging’ (read that as disruptive) kids this year but she has really figured out how to put her head down and focus.  That skill will be handy when she goes off to middle school next year!

Ellie has enjoyed choir this year and she is still very much into art.  She even designed and illustrated the program for her 5th grade musical!  Ellie also loves soccer and hanging out with her best friends.  Imagine how convenient it is that she can combine both of those passions since they all play on the same team!  This year she has also taken a huge step in motivation.  Ellie used to do exactly what was needed to get by passably so she could move on to whatever fun thing was around the corner.  (She did this in homework, chores, etc.)  Never going above and beyond.  This year I’ve had to make sure she isn’t catching my mouth hitting the floor when she is gnashing her teeth to get all of her math problems done perfectly, or she is emptying the WHOLE dishwasher instead of just her part.  Be still my heart, this kid has found motivation and responsibility this year!

Here are my favorite pictures from our photo shoot…

And because I am modeling good responsible behavior I am going to follow through on the threat I gave her during our session.  ’If you make a funny face it will end up on the blog!’  I warned her…

Doesn’t it look like Mr. Fun thinks he is going to get lucky because we were dressed up in our auction finery?  Well we DID get lucky!  Lucky enough to ‘win’ a set of glassy baby candles and lucky enough to help raise more than $50,000 for the science, art and music programs at our elementary school.  Whew!  We’ve been working on this auction since last summer and it turned out even better than we’d hoped.  (I have a new appreciation for all the other auctions I’ve attended, though, because it is a lot of work to put on events like that!)

And just to ensure that Jill was lucky enough to get the most flattering shot of us possible I gave her a little help.  What can I say?  I’m vain!

One of the songs Jill picked for her birthday playlist is a song called Anthem by Superchick.  The music is a bit hard rockin’ for my taste but the words are so great.  I love that she picked this song because of the message and I love that my girls are growing up in an era where it is natural to think this way.

Here are the lyrics for your viewing pleasure…

PS – This picture has nothing to do with the song but Jill really likes it so I thought I’d share!

We seem to be making it a tradition that we steal our nephews for a morning to celebrate. We all have such a good time having Jack all to ourselves. (We will start with Henry this year too when he turns 3 in July.).

This year we started the fun with a little photo shoot in Old Bellevue to get his four year old pictures. Mr. Fun, my trusty assistant, is always good for a laugh so the three of us wandered up and down the street taking pictures while the other girls got to hang out with Joelle and Henry at the toy store. Then it was off to Build A Bear to make a new friend, Tabby Cat. Finally we ended our fun with lunch around the corner at McDonalds.

Here are some shots from our day. We can hardly wait until July!

Hugs for cousins…

Not a fan of noisy machinery…

A successful trip!

Right now I am in a good parenting place for my self esteem.  What started out as a joke seems to be sticking around!

I like to surprise my kids with the occasional treat so when we were on our way to Orlando I pulled out some ‘movie snacks’ for the girls on the plane.  They loved them and for some reason one of them ask ‘Why did you bring these?’  Why? ‘Because I ROCK!’  I couldn’t resist giving them that answer.

Well ever since then, if I do something that surprises them or pleases them it is always because…’I Rock!’

Example A:

Ellie needed to put together a hand drawing with some printed text to make a program for her class musical.  I concocted a way to do it using our printer and copier and apparently it seemed like magic to her.  She looked at me with awe and said ‘How did you do that?’  Then Jill answered for her.  ’Because she ROCKS!’

Example B:

It was raining cats and dogs when I went to pick up the girls.  The girls always ask where I park the car and it is usually in the same place but on this day I managed to get a closer spot.  ’Way to go Mom.  You ROCK!’

Example C:

Sometimes they need a bit of prompting.  Jill really wanted to wear a shirt that was in the laundry so I did a load for her.  When I told her that her stuff was in the dryer  she thanked me.  I asked her ‘Do you know why I did that laundry?’ and  she jumped to attention and said ‘Oh!  Because you ROCK!’

Exactly!

(I’m just writing about this because I know that it won’t be long before ‘You Suck’ is all I will hear and I’d like to have something nice to refer back to!)

Snowmageddon.  Our snowstorms get the most ridiculous names because our news folks tend to over-dramatize our weather.  Normally they tell us we are getting snow and we clear the shelves at the grocery store, batten down the hatches and wait in vain for the snow that never comes.  (School has even been cancelled just on the THREAT of snow.)

This time they were actually right.  When we got off the plane from Florida there were three inches of snow on the ground at our house.  (Good thing we weren’t wearing our flip flops!)  Over the next couple of days we got up to nine inches of snow which is not good considering all the hills around here.  Just when we thought we were past the worst of it the freezing rain set in.  Instead of rain melting away the snow, it froze to every surface it touched breaking branches, taking down power lines and making the roads treacherous.  We were only out of power for about 12 hours but we have good friends who were out for days.  Ugh!

With four days off school there was plenty of time for sledding and fun with the neighbor kids.  Here is just a slice of the fun we had.

And Cooper had a great time in the snow too!

I was so happy to have Miss Georgia as my first photo shoot for 2012.  I enjoyed taking her family pictures last year when we celebrated 100 days post bone marrow transplant.  This time we got to celebrate stellar news that came from another round of tests to see how her body was doing.  All good news!

Taking these pictures in the sun made me so happy.  (It was supposed to rain.)  Taking pictures of these cute boots and tutu made me so happy.  Seeing Georgia’s sweet smile and cute curls made me so happy.

I am so happy to share my favorites with you…