Splendid Design: 2012

December 11, 2012

Elf on the Shelf Tradition

We started the Elf on the Shelf tradition in 2010 when my daughter was only 1 years old. If you are not familiar with elf on the shelf please read here. In short the concept is that elf comes every year sometime after Thanksgiving and is there to watch the kid(s) during the day and fly off to the North Pole at night to report to Santa. Every morning the kids find Elf in a different spot. The rule is, the kids cannot touch the elf.

Anyways for the past two years my daughter was not very into it. She would ask about elf but not really understand the concept. The first year his name was Buddy, last year he had a name change and became Chippy. This year is so different. She loves that little elf and looks for him every morning. So far has been pretty easy with coming up with ideas but then again if you were to search the internet you will find tons of great ideas.

I am having a lot of fun with setting Chippy up around the house, even almost got caught once. One thing I need to remember is to use my DSLR to take better photos to document the adventures of Chippy. I would love to make a small 5x5 book in the end of each year that we do that.

Day 1

Using balloons to fly in. Chippy is using purple balloons. My daughter’s favorite color

Day 2

Chippy decided that he should have his own Christmas tree, so he decorated one

Day 3

Working on a hidden puzzle that’s inside my daughter’s magazine

Day 4

Playing the piano

Day 5

Drinking hot chocolate

Day 6

Looking in

Day 7

Left my daughter a note with all the ingredients for making chocolate chip pumpkin cookies

Day 8

Painting

Day 9

Hiding in the baby doll house

Day 10

Riding on a sleigh

Day 11

Hiding in the rain boots

These are all photos from Instagram. You can follow me on there if you would like to see daily updates.

Do you have a little elf on the shelf?

October 28, 2012

Sunday News

I fell like I can finally share the news why I haven’t been present on the blog for a very long time.

A little pumpkin is growing….

aka baby#2

The past month and a half has been brutal for me. The constant nausea and sickness while dealing with a 100 degree weather and trying to entertain my three year old. My husband and I along with our daughter are thrilled to be expecting this bundle of joy. What’s even more special, it’s that the baby is due three days before my birthday!

September 13, 2012

A Tangled Party

Warming: photo overload.

I posted last week on Facebook a sneak peak of my daughter’s birthday party. My daughter is very much into the princess. Her favorite of the day always changes but the all time favorites are: Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Ariel. So I wasn’t surprises when asked she wanted a Rapunzel party. As soon as she said that I went on a hunt for everything “Tangled”.

After weeks of preparations, we celebrated Madison’s birthday with a “Tangled” Party. There are so many great ideas out there for a “Tangled” party but due to budget restrain and location we had to keep it simple. Of course it’s all about DIY when it came to the party and believe it or not everything that I had planned didn’t make it into the party due to time restrain.

We had one very special guest come to the party:

Rapunzel.

She read the kids a story.

She sang them songs.

She did face painting.

She played games with them.

She took photos with the kids.

She sang “Happy Birthday” to Madison.

She was fantastic.

I think that sums it all up. I know that you are probably burning up with more details about the party so here it is:

* The banners were done by me. Very easy to do but very time consuming. I used construction paper instead of printing a template from my computer. I love how they turned out.

* My husband built the wooden boxes. They were so easy to do and we had four of them done in two days, that’s including the staining and sealing. The flowers on top are made from paper napkins.

* Since the party was later in the day, I made sure that I had plenty of healthy food to eat (not photographed) and kept the dessert table to a minimum.

* Since I knew that Rapunzel was coming to the party (a huge hit with the kids by the way), I kept the party favors to a minimum as well: a bucket filled with crayons in a cute packaging, a diy coloring/activity book, an artist palette cookie.

It definitely was “The Best Day Ever”

September 5, 2012

Kids Display artwork

My daughter started preschool yesterday. At first she did great but by the time I can back (an hour later) she was frantically crying in the play yard by herself with no teacher to sooth her. Poor girl was running frantic calling for me so hard, it makes me cry even thinking about now. There was something about her teachers that rubbed me the wrong way so I made the rational decision and right then and there I pulled her out of the school. That’s one decision that I am not regretting at all.

Since I pulled her out of the preschool, and while trying to find a different preschool, I enrolled my daughter into a few activities that I know that she would love. One of them is her favorite: painting. Every week we will paint something new and I would love to be able to showcase it. After all she is my little artist, right!

While I figure out the best way to showcase her artwork at our house I wanted to see what other people in bloggy world have set up for their kids. It’s amazing all the different ways that it can be done! I really love where you can easily interchange them and of course frame the favorite ones.

One tip I would give any parent is scan or take a photo of the kids artwork and recycle it after a certain period of time. Keep the ones that you truly love in a binder to show the kids later in the years. With the ones you had taken a photo of you can print them in a photo book for them to flip through.