The holidays are gone and I’m finally getting around to posting the results of our holiday party! I can’t believe I didn’t get many pictures of my little reindeer family! We had so much fun dressing up though, and the party was lots of fun! I did my best with the makeup! Some thought we looked like little mice but definitely very cute little mice! The girls loved the reindeer ears and wore them throughout the holiday! We definitely celebrated the holidays for the entire month of December. Between 5 birthdays, Chanukah and Christmas by the time January came we were pooped and ready to start a new year!
Author Archives: myhappyspace
Recycled Reindeer Tags
We are invited to a holiday party at my sisters house and were asked to dress up for the occasion. Our family is going as santa’s reindeer. To keep things at a low cost, I bought the kids these cute pajamas from kohls instead of buying costumes.
and these cute antlers from Oriental Trading. They came in a pack of 12 which was cheaper than buying them separately. I keep the extras in a basket and whoever comes during the holiday season can wear them! I even brought one to my dads. He wore it for the entire evening! So cute!
To complete the reindeer outfits I made these tags from the extra cardboard sitting in our garage. I used permanent markers to write the name of each reindeer and used glue and glitter to embellish the tags. I bought the cute little bells from the dollar store and hot glued them at the bottom. Then I hot glued some thick string I found in my craft box and ta da! Reindeer Tags!!! Now everyone will know who is who! I cannot wait to see my little reindeer all dressed up!
Tis the season for boxes!
This year I did a lot of my holiday shopping online and because of that we have so many boxes in our garage! I always like creating stuff from our empty boxes. We’ve made tons of treasure boxes, spaceships, beds for dolls and puppy dogs but I have never made a house! I guess since we have a huge doll house I never thought of making one until I stumbled upon one here. I thought it was so cute and thought it would be so fun to make one with my little Lia. Ruby from mycakies has specific instructions you can follow. I kinda winged it with mine so it’s not as fancy as hers but we definitely had so much fun creating it and theres still more decorating we’d like to do. I’m proud to say that I let Lia do a lot of the decorating herself without trying to take over the entire project! This was a great way for the two of us to spend time together.
So thankful!
Isabel created this little sign that I hung on our sliding glass door.
Melina made this cute little turkey at school. Kindergarten November 2014
Created by Isabel
Lia created this one and the letters to the right are supposed to say Happy Thanksgiving!
I am so thankful for this incredible life, my husband, my family and these amazing little girls who are forever creating something!!!! I could not ask for anything more! This life is my heaven on earth!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Girls just wanna have fun!
These little girls just love to have fun! From the minute they wake up until their very last minute before bedtime, these girls are just loving life and Im just so lucky to be witnessing it. They live in a world of fun. Sometimes I feel like we live in a children’s museum where the fun never ends. Every single one of them adds such joy and life into my life. I love how they dress up and play pretend. How they head over to the playroom in the morning and start writing on their white board pretending to be teachers. How they collect every book in the house and set up a bookstore. How they take clothes from their closets and make little price tags and pretend to have a boutique. How they create little menus and play restaurant. How they go into my closet and put on my high heels. How they take anything in my house and turn it into something fun. Yes, EVERYTHING they do causes a HUGE mess, and yes sometimes I have to yell and scream for them to clean it up but they are making so many memories together and I’m so happy to be their mom. I’m so happy to be the mom that cleans up after them. That I’m the one who gets to clean up after another incredible memory that they have made. I love you girls!
Love This Little Lady
Will this little lady ever know how much I love her? This is Isabel, my beautiful, smart, caring, compassionate 7 year old. She is the oldest of my three beautiful daughters. She is funny, fierce and sometimes sassy. She is a thinker, she is an observer. She is the one who gets to make me a cup of coffee. She is the one that dad asks for help when he needs to measure something. She is the one who walks her sisters to the bathroom when they are too scared to go by themselves. She is the one who has learned to do homework while her younger sisters sing and scream and cause chaos. She is the one who has had to wait for my attention because I was busy changing or feeding or cleaning up someone or something. She is also my little helper and the one who sometimes gets blamed for the things her little sisters do. The one who has had to deal with her stuff getting ruined by a three year old. The one who has lost story time because her toddler sibling wasn’t cooperating. The one who doesn’t remember that before her sisters came we would sit and lay with her for hours. We played and read books. Went for walks and long car rides. We sat and played with playdough and painted and sang songs, collected leaves and sat outside on a blanket just looking at the sky. I’d hold her in my arms for hours. If she didn’t want to walk, I’d carry her. I Carried her around while she would rest her leg over my 9 month pregnant belly when I was pregnant with my second child. Does she remember that I carried her even if my back was killing me just so she felt safe? Does she remember us making a big fuss over every little thing she learned? I notice now that when we make a big deal about her little sisters learning to read or skip or snap their fingers that she doesn’t realize we also made a big deal about her little and big accomplishments. Does she remember that she too got away with a lot of the same stuff her younger sisters get away with. As the older child she will remember less about her earlier years and more about her life with two sisters. Her sisters are her best friends. I know there are times she would love to have me all to herself, but my God she misses her sisters when they are not around. Having three children so close in age makes it more challenging to have special time with each one but I do make sure everyday to kiss and hug them, read and play with them and make sure they know how much I love them! Each and everyone of them!
A Little Vintage. A lot of Fun.
This past weekend, my girls along with my husband and I enjoyed an afternoon of visiting local antique shops. Our favorite place is the Barntique Village in Moriches. With over 18 shops on a historic 19th century farm, you can spend a whole day in and out of each one looking at all different types of treasures and trinkets. While my husband was looking through old tools and furniture the girls and I were having a blast trying on old vintage hats and clothes. The girls went crazy over the shoes, hats and purses at this one shop. When they were done trying everything on I told the woman behind the counter she should host little girls birthday parties as they would definitely have a timeless time! So many great photo opportunities missed because I forgot my camera and my phone takes awful pictures. But I did manage to get these!
What Nature Creates
Here is the butterfly that emerged from our cocoon several weeks ago. I believe it’s called a Black Swallowtail. We have never raised this type of butterfly, so it was very exciting to all of us when we peeked into our butterfly house and discovered that the enormous caterpillar we found in our garden turned into this beautiful creature!
Caterpillar to Butterfly
When my daughter Isabel turned four she received a lovely butterfly house from one of our friends. Every year since, we have been experiencing the beauty of raising a butterfly from a little tiny caterpillar (this year it was two huge caterpillars). Watching a caterpillar change into a chrysalis and than into a beautiful butterfly is a great way to experience insect metamorphosis. All you need is a caterpillar (in the years past we have ordered our caterpillars from www.insectlore.com, but this year we found our very own right in our vegetable garden), add some of its favorite food such as leaves and flowers and drops of water, and a suitable container, or store bought butterfly house. You can find caterpillars on most plants during the spring and early summer. Put the caterpillar and a few fresh leaves in a wide mouth jar or plastic shoebox. Cover the jar mouth with netting or a piece of nylon. Every day change the leaves and provide dry paper towels to help prevent mold. You can put in little twigs upon which the caterpillar can attach its chrysalis or silken coc oon (with the pupa inside). The insect will hatch in 10-14 days. Don’t forget to take pictures of each beautiful stage.
Can you see the chrysalis through the plastic?
This picture is from our first year raising butterflies about 3 years ago!
We are still waiting for our Butterflies to hatch, in the meantime we’ve enjoyed reading this lovely story titled Butterfly House written by Eve Bunting.
Summer Brings
A tight sister squeeze, strawberry picking in a light warm breeze, a little teeter tottering, a secret hiding space for a sweet little darling, an outdoor bake, followed by a yummy Nutella cake and a little outdoor sprinkle under a sun settings twinkle.
