Joey and I bought a big tree and had the guys help us put it in the ground.  We are used to little trees from Walmart, so this was pretty exciting to have such a large tree in our yard.

Then we had some fun playing baseball.

The girls loved playing with their uncles all weekend.

Rory has only went to school one day this week.  Monday and Tuesday were scheduled days off, Thursday and Friday were snowed.  Joey hasn’t been able to go to work either.  They forgot to plow our roads yesterday.  While most are returning to work we are stuck at home again.  It was nice yesterday, but we started to get a little stir crazy towards the end of the day.  So today I don’t know how it’s going to go.

But we have been enjoying the sledding.  We have a big hill next to our house with prime sledding.  All these photos were taken the first half of the snowstorm, so it doesn’t show it all.

Joey’s doing something strange at the top of the hill.

With the neighbor kids making a snowman.

And a photo from last month’s snowstorm of Delilah and her cousin Ella.  One of the hills in the background.

This photo was taken towards the end of the storm out my window.  The car parked there was a family sledding.  They were there for like 3 hours.

This snowstorm and being stuck all day in the house has been kind of nice.  It has forced me to get ready for our big trip to Sri Lanka next weekend.  We will be gone 12 days.  The girls are going to stay here with the grandparents tag team watching them.  So I have been getting all that in order.

And hopefully I’ll be able to blog some while we are over there, so you can see what we are up to,

]]> http://amykayparnell.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/snowed-in/feed/ 2 amykayparnell sno1 sno2 sno3 sno4 sno5 sno6 sno7 sno8 sno9 sig http://amykayparnell.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/resolutions-a-feather-necklace/ http://amykayparnell.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/resolutions-a-feather-necklace/#comments Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:20:14 +0000 Amy Parnell http://amykayparnell.wordpress.com/?p=2681 ]]> With the new year, I didn’t make a resolution.  I actually forgot that people did that until Joey asked me if I had one.  I guess I just knew I would fail at keeping whatever it is that I came up with.  But now with the holidays over I do have a sense of freedom of time to do stuff I’ve always wanted.  Maybe that’s why people make resolutions, not just because of the new year- new you thing, but because we have nothing new going on.  There’s time for improvement that we had little of in the two months prior.  Well anyway, my point is, even though I didn’t make a resolution for the new year, I do have some things I want to focus on for the year 2013.

1. Do more crafting.  I got away from this in the year 2012.  Hardly crafting at all.  I enjoy the small creative outlet of crafting.  Not everything has to be large to get the feel-good accomplishment of making something.

2. Produce inventory of items to sell.  I think I could sell some things if I actually had things to sell.  I don’t know how (i.e. online, craft shows, out of my trunk), but I need to have an inventory first before I do anything.

3. Get Delilah more involved with activities.  She does some, but she needs to start doing way more.  I’m thinking regular story times at the library, gymnastics, ballet, soccer, and t-ball.  Just like Rory was exposed to at her age.

4. Crafting with Rory.  The kid loves to craft I need to let her more.  Maybe I will share more crafting with kids posts.  Like “Crafts that Don’t Suck”  kids version.

5.  More dates with the husband.  Maybe this is the year to find a babysitter?

6. Yard makeover!  It is time for this one.

That’s enough of that for now.  I know seeing other people lists is either boring or makes you anxious you aren’t doing enough.  Sometimes just doing the day to day things is plenty.  As the kids are getting older, I feel myself having more free time.  And life is getting easier.  So either I need to start working out more, being more financially productive, or having another kid.  So who knows what I’ll end up doing in the year 2013.

So now that I need to start crafting more.  I turn to my boards on Pinterest.

First up: this awesome painted fabric feather necklace.

Source: Alisa Burke with how-to.

I did mine a little different.  I just cut out feather shapes from canvas fabric.

Painted them white, then painted them feathery looking.  I put a top coat of gold paint.

This was an easy and fast craft.  Rory was very interested in it and wanted to make her own, so we might have a kid’s version on here soon.

What about you guys, do you have any resolutions?  Or things you want to do this year?

Source: Enchantmints

I’m always up for a challenge.  And here’s the result!

It was a quick 2 hour project using whatever wood I had in my garage.  I love the little staircase using a tree that died in our yard.  It was an itty bitty tree.  That’s the trunk.

The greenery is fake greens from Hobby Lobby.  I had to wait for it to go on sale 50% off.  Cause that stuff is pricey yo.

I found the little outdoor seating at a thrift store.  Isn’t it a sweet find for our fairy garden?  The girls think the fairies built the furniture.

Little table and chairs made from some dead tree limbs.

I originally made this for Rory, but ended up giving it to Delilah because she was coming up short on presents.  But it’s more of a joint gift.

It works for their little Lalaloopsys.  Check out the one hanging by her leg from the vine.

]]> http://amykayparnell.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/tree-stump-fairy-house/feed/ 7 amykayparnell fairy8 fairy2 fairy3 fairy9 fairy5 fairy6 fairy10 fairy1 fairy4 fairy7 sig http://amykayparnell.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/beer-carrier/ http://amykayparnell.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/beer-carrier/#comments Wed, 02 Jan 2013 12:38:20 +0000 Amy Parnell http://amykayparnell.wordpress.com/?p=2559 ]]> I’ve been seeing some beer carriers on Etsy and Pinterest.  I thought it would be a great gift for Joey if I could make one.  You know, so he could take his beers with him in style.

But after making it, I wasn’t very pleased with the outcome.  I thought I could salvage it for a planter or something.  But after all the presents were opened Christmas morning, I thought ‘what the hay’, and I gave it to him. I would have filled it with beer.  It would have been way more awesome given with beer in it.  But he liked it anyway.  I would probably have picked out some lame beer anyway.

One thing Joey did want for Christmas was a bottle opener.  He wanted me to mount one to the wall.  I was all like “ummm yea that ain’t gonna happen.”  But I had already known I was going to be mounting one on his beer carrier.  So I saved my sorry walls from looking even more redneck.

So it turned out okay in the end.  And he does look super fly carrying his beer around in it.

The girls and Rudy watching a movie on our bed.  (I was washing the sheets.)

Writing a last minute letter to Santa.

Joey’s work Christmas party.

Seeing Santa at Illuminations at Botanica.

Christmas morning.

Rory got a greenhouse from Santa.  Uncle Alan assisted in planting.

And these last two days we’ve gotten some snow, and we have been taking full advantage of it.

Hope everyone had a great break if they had one.  And Happy New Year to all!

All of our yearly family photo shoots consist of me putting my camera on a tripod then activating the self timer or using my wireless remote.  So it can get very tricky at times.

This one is good, but Rory’s eyes aren’t open.  These things I won’t really know until we get home and I load them onto my computer.

Every year we get at least one of my running to get into the shot.  I find these to be hilarious.  I really wanted to make this our Christmas card picture.

This one was kind of cute, and kind of weird.  Delilah is just a torso.

Oh and behind us over the hill is a homeless man sleeping.  I just positioned us so he is not visible.

This one of just Joey and I is nice, but it wouldn’t work for the card. People will wonder what we did with our children.

Ah, this one will work nicely for our Christmas card!

So I added it to a card I whipped up in Photoshop.

Yeah, I drew those snowflakes by hand.  I was going for a chalkboard look.  The Merry & Bright was a font, I did not draw that.

And some more pictures from the photo shoot.

We took all these pictures at the World War II Memorial downtown on the river.  So we looked for Joey’s grandpa’s brick.

Aurora pointing to her Great-Grandfather’s World War II Memorial brick.  

And lastly, the girl just wants to dance.

That was our adventures of our Christmas card photo shoot.

]]> http://amykayparnell.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/fallwinter-family-photoshoot/feed/ 4 amykayparnell IMG_3421 IMG_3422 IMG_3442 IMG_3426 IMG_3467 xmascard2012 IMG_3532 fall1 IMG_3503 must IMG_3545 rorypopo IMG_3594 IMG_3618 falldance http://amykayparnell.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/delilah-is-three/ http://amykayparnell.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/delilah-is-three/#comments Sun, 11 Nov 2012 22:39:07 +0000 Amy Parnell http://amykayparnell.wordpress.com/?p=2434 ]]>

My baby girl turned 3 years old today.

We had a party for her yesterday.

Helping put cupcake wrappers in the pan. 

Waiting for her guests to arrive.

Her party was Lalaloopsy themed.  I made the decorations out of 1/4″ MDF.  I cut the shapes out with my jig saw then hand painted them.

Mushroom in the front yard flower bed.

Lalaloopsy girl, Jewel Sparkle, and animal friends.

Rory and her friend, Elizabeth, had a tattoo stand.  They used Delilah’s lemonade stand that I made for her 2nd birthday.

Over-sized buttons for various games.

Dressed as Sugar Crumb Cookie.

And one last cupcake for today for her actual birthday.

She’s the princess from Brave.

She’s going to be a very popular Halloween costume this year.  And how could Rory not get in on all that hype?

But she couldn’t just show up in a store bought costume, not that there’s anything wrong with that.  My mother was visiting last week for a few days.  And I took full advantage of her sewing skills.  I can sew a straight line, but this was going to take a professional to pull off this costume.  So it was a joint effort, but without my mom it would look like a bag of trash.  So we do owe this all to her.  And Rory’s bow hunting skills…

What do you think?  Do you think Disneyland would hire her as a junior Merida?

Using wood (1×8), I cut out a simple pumpkin shape with my jig saw.  Then scored some pumpkiny lines with my dremel.

Delilah had her cousin Ella over to craft with her.

After the paint dried, I sanded them down slightly.  I cut out shapes from black construction paper.  The girls picked out their own shapes to make faces.  They ended up wanting their pumpkins to look the same.

I cut out leaf shapes from felt and tied them up with rope.

And after Halloween is over, you can just turn them around till Thanksgiving.

Cute eh?  And so simple!