little things i love

Recent Posts

    • halloween crafting

      My very crafty partner in crime Stacy and I have been loving the Halloween banners we made this year. Some great chipboard pennants and circles from Paper Accents made the project so easy. We found a wonderful new collection of papers from Authentique, cut them to size and “Modge Podged” them on. We cut the letters out of a piece of black glitter paper and added some amazing orange and black ribbon. Voila: an awesome banner to spook up our mantels!

      I love Halloween. Since I was a little girl I can remember almost every year. I carry with me all the memories of every costume my mom ever made me. Halloween was embraced by my parents, and the selection and production of the costumes was always such a big deal. My mom poured her heart into sewing us the best outfits. I will never forget the perfection of my Wonder Woman, or 50’s Girl, or Dorothy … I loved watching her work at the machine and seeing our vision become a reality. It was such a wonderful way of embracing our little dreams. While I could never compete with my mom at the sewing machine, I do try hard to carry on the tradition of making Halloween a real occasion in our house, of listening to my girls’ ideas of the perfect costume and helping to realize them. It’s a family tradition that makes me smile.

    • playing tourist

      For the very last day of summer vacation, I wanted to do something special – something to mark the occasion. Now that my girlies are older, I treasure the summer months when I get to have them home all day with me and we can just let the day flow, taking us where it wants to, without caring where we end up. I love wearing our pjs until 11:00 and staying up reading at night ’til our eyes hurt. I love it when we spend the entire day dressing up the American Girls for a major fashion show, or playing Harry Potter wizard school in the playhouse. I love that when the ice cream truck drives by my girls shriek and are already running to the door, because in the summer we never say no to ice cream, or cookies, or cupcakes…

      To really remember the last day of summer, I had decided that I wanted us to take a little family trip. Since our actual summer vacation had been at the beginning of July, I thought that one last little getaway would be a fun memory to hold onto as the summer was fading away. Since we only had the day, we took a vacation playing tourist right here in our own city: Seattle. We’ve lived her for 7 years and have definitely made the rounds taking everyone who visits us to see the important local landmarks. But it’s been awhile since that’s happened, and it was really nice to fall in love with our city again. We made our way downtown to Pike’s Place Market with a stop for coffee and pastries at Le Panier, a “Very French Bakery” that we adore. We drank our hot chocolates and Cafe au Laits. We ate our pain au chocolats, croissants, macaroons and palmier cookies. We soaked up the fabulous French atmosphere and loved every minute of it.

      Then we headed into the market to buy fruit and check out all the beautiful flowers. We made a stop in Beecher’s Cheese shop – their Flagship is the BEST cheese – and then wandered over to the famous gum wall and groaned over how gross it looked – always fun!

      Later we drove to Madison Park, another part of the city we love. The girls think the playground there is the best (their zipline is pretty fantastic!). We found Bing’s, a fun new spot for lunch, and sat in the sun for awhile. Ahhh….

      Then it was home to pack up the backpacks and choose our first day of school outfits. Teeth brushed, quick bedtime story read and lights out. The day had flown by, but we’d made the most of it and accomplished my mission, created one last amazing summer memory before our everyday back to school life takes over. When you only have one day, it’s important to make it count.