Bread Crumbs

Merry Christmas! I hope you all had a wonderful day and got to spend lots of time with your family! Christmas has taken on a whole new meaning at our house now that Lexi is getting older. She still doesn't understand the whole Santa thing yet but was super excited for all her new gifts. The last two days have been really relaxed and casual for us. Christmas Eve I finished wrapping a few gifts. We listened to Christmas music and went to a wonderful Christmas Eve mass. After mass we had a nice dinner, which Lexi loved the steak and corn part of. After dinner we give Lexi her gift from us, which was Christmas pajamas and a book.  She had so much fun opening the box up and looking at her new stuff. After bath time Lexi was treated to cookies that John made for Santa. While snacking on the cookies we watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas then we read Lexi her new book called Santa Comes to Ohio (Thanks Aunt Lauren for the recommendation). We got to Skype with Grandma Dia...

My sweet little girl turned one on December 12th. I still can't believe it has been a year. I thought my pregnancy went by fast but this first year went even faster. On December 7th we celebrated Lexi birthday with our immediate family with a Pretty in Pink birthday celebration. My idea behind it was that I didn't want to spend a crazy amount on her party since she won't remember any of it. Everyone told me that the first birthday is more for the parents and family anyways. I totally agree and after looking at various themes I liked the idea of Pretty in Pink.  Decorations My decoration ideas came from Pinterest and were simple and inexpensive. I got all of the supplies at the Dollar Tree and I had the scrap booking paper on hand already.  Her birthday banner I made using scrap booking paper and the computer. My husband printed out the letters and we cut them out and pasted them to the circles I cut out. I used the food processor canister for the size of the circl...

Well I've been terrible at updating the blog this month. I had a feeling December was going to be crazy but it was even worse then I thought. We have been constantly busy every week with all kinds of activities. Lexi turned one this month so we had her birthday party the first Saturday of the month (more to come on that), my monthly book club meeting happened, we had a few play dates, and we also had a few weeks of sickness. On top of that my holiday job has been working me crazy hours. I just wanted to give everyone who keeps up with me a little update. I am working a few posts that I am hoping to get out soon. Manda

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and enjoyed time with their family and friends. I have finally found time to sit down and write a little after the long holiday weekend as well as having a very cranky, teething baby. The journal prompt from   Creative with Kids  is gifts. This is something that I found really appropriate to talk about because of the holiday season.  What is the best gift you've ever received? The best gift I've ever received is my daughter. I know she is technical not a gift but to me she is. I never knew the kind of love I could feel for someone else until the doctors placed her on my chest and after nine long months finally got to hold her. It also helps that her birthday is December 12th so we always called her our little Christmas gift. She truly has changed my world in a way I could never imagine and even on the bad days being her mom is still the only thing I want to do.  What is your "gift giving philosophy?" What sort of g...

Creative with Kids offers this awesome weekly journal prompt e-mail that I've signed up for just recently. I figured this would broaden my horizon on topics to write about as well as make me do it more frequently. It gets sent over the weekend and last weekends were really interesting to me. The topic was home and you can write, draw, or art journal about it. The blogger art journal and her son drew his dream tree house. Here is the link for her blog post about home . How would you like your home to feel? Make a list of words that come to mind. I would like my home to feel comfortable, loving, and fun most of all. I want people to be able to come to home and feel comfortable right away. I also want my house to be full of love and fun. I love nothing more than hearing my daughter laughing and playing in the house.  What are the people, things or places that say "Home" to you? With the holidays fast approaching I think this is a very special time ...

This week has just been awful at our house. It started out with a sick baby, then a sick mommy, and finally a sick dog. Baby and mommy are doing much better but after about 48 hours of the dog being sick we had to make the tough decision to put him down. Surgery was just going to be too rough and hard on his body. I also did not feel like it was right to put him through such a difficult surgery and then have to deal with a long recovery process.  I know for my husband this was the hardest decision we had to make. He was so attach to the dog and was heart-broken. I was sad but more worried about how the husband and baby were going to be. Luckily I don't think Lexi really understands that he's not here or she doesn't seem to notice him missing so that is good because I have no clue how to explain to an almost 11 month old that the dog isn't coming back. My husband has been really shooken up since it happened and just told me he is just really sad. I know that he is also...

Ok, so I'm a day late to do a wrap up, but we had a play date yesterday and then I had to work a little in the evening. So I am just going to say that I was terrible at writing for 31 days straight. Even though my plan was to leave the topic vague I think my downfall is that I left it too vague. Next year I need to not choose something so vague but a more cohesive topic. I did like the topic I wrote about this year, but I got stuck often because I didn't know where else to head. I learned a lot about myself and what I need to do to make myself happier. I also like that I put things I want to do on a list so that way I can keep going back to add more things. It also will allow me to give everyone more details on when I do get to do the things on my bucket list. This whole experience has been wonderful and I am so grateful for those that have been following me along this journal. This whole process has invigorated my interest in blogging. I am hopefully that this ti...

Well my final post is going to be about something that I think can make anybody but especially me a better person. Sleep. I know everyone has been told a million times that sleep is the key to making you look and feel better but boy I didn't believe that until I became a mother. Let me tell you know I dream of a good night’s sleep especially early on or in my case when my daughter is a terribly sleeper. This week alone we've probably only sleep about 6 hours total maybe a little more but not much. Last night I was really feeling worn out and frustrated so I was hoping for at least a solid 4 hours of sleep. Nope it was more like 2 again. I'm going to stop complaining now and just talk about how I really truly believe that a good night’s sleep can make everything better. So the reasons I know this stuff is because I read - a lot. I read books as well as various articles about anything and everything. I like to learn about pretty much anything especially health related...