Love notes from my Wendy

Found on a blue sticky note: "I heart u mom."  -Wendy

This totally made my day. It's the little things.

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

HAPPY day of LOVE! I got to spend mine with my children and some of my best girlfriends, Emily and Sharla. Emily decided to throw together a Valentine's tea. She went all out with hot herbal tea, homemade lemon-poppy seed scones, salad, pastries and heart-shaped finger sandwhiches. The table was decorated with cake pedestals, tea pots, and tea cups in the cutest colors. We all lounged around while the children ran around hyper from the candy they had all stuffed themselves with from their school valentine's parties. It was so nice to get out of my house.

*photos by amelia lyon

As for me and my man, our Valentine's tradition is to keep it special but low key. A card, a treat, some flowers, a yummy restaurant and a movie. Just the way I like it. This year he got to pick the restaurant (sushi) and I got to pick the movie (Life of Pi - I like to see all the Oscar nominated films that aren't rated-r before Oscar Sunday. PLUS I read the book and really liked it). Then we always spend our low key Valentines date dreaming up our anniversary getaway for one month later. For our anniversary every year, we pick a city (preferably one we've never been to before) and explore it. This year we decided on Portland, Oregon. Sounds random, but I'm really excited! Some years we go big, like Paris, France. Some years we go small, like Los Angeles. This year we wanted to go medium. We wanted to have to at least get on an airplane. Neither one of us have ever been there. We're going to stay in a RAD hotel called "The Nines," where Clark Gable worked before becoming an actor. We've mapped out some of the things we want to do, but I'd love any suggestions if you have any!

I can't tell you how much I love this man and exploring new places with him.

Valentine's Crafting

*melted crayon on canvas

*"You Melt My Heart," by Wendy & Mommy

The minute Christmas and New Years was over Wendy wanted to know what the next holiday was. She told me, "Mom, do you know what my most favoritest part about holidays are? Well FIRST it's the presents, but my second most favoritest is decorations!" When we were done taking down Christmas she immediately wanted to get out the "Valentine's Day box of decorations," but it didn't exist. I decided we had a month and a half to womp up some decorations. With the help of pinterest and my mom, we filled our daily "quiet times" (Harvey's nap time) with pink and red crafts. I'm a little sad it's over.

*Wendy learning how to use a crochet loom. I put that girl to WORK! Might just open a sweatshop.

I saw this cute wreath on the front door of my aunt Ruth's house last February and fell in love. This literally took us a month and a half to finish, but it was worth it to let Wendy "help". Our couch was half covered in yarn for the whole month of January. Wendy helped me every step of the way. I even taught her how to use a loom to crochet the bow. (For the bow we used the crochet loom to crochet a very short scarf which we folded over, hot glue gunned down the edges, and wrapped the center with yard to make a bow. Kind of like the tutorial HERE - just with a loom instead of a crochet hook for a more voluminous bow).

I let Wendy decide if she wanted to go to the store and pick out some valentine's cards (most likely would have been Hello Kitty, Brave or Tinkerbell) or pick an idea of my Valentine's pinterest folder. These were the Valentines she chose for her class mates. I explained who cupid was and what the arrow meant (she liked the arrow because the princess on Brave is very into archery... oh how Disney princesses are the basis for so many decisions in our lives). She painstakingly signed all 23 cards herself and even added a heart at the end of her name. I love her 4 year old signature so much!

My mother-in-law saves EV.ER.Y.THING. We all tell her she has a hoarding problem. She's even got a room in her house that she has named "The Hoarder Room," which was Ryan's bedroom throughout his life. It's now full of stuff with a walkway cleared through the middle. She can't part emotionally with anything her children ever made or drew on, so she often sends Ryan's old stuff home with me. I'm talking math tests from 3rd grade that he failed. So I take these things home for her and they go straight into my trash or goodwill pile. Let me correct that, I'm not completely heartless, sometimes I take a picture of the item and then throw it in the trash. But when she sent this one home with me, I decided to keep it to add to our empty box of Valentine's crafts. I think she said Ryan made it when he was 10 years old. I hope I don't catch the hoarding virus because of it. I'm happy that we've started our V-day decoration collection and that we have some stuff we can pull out year after year.