Homemade

Slowly but surely I'm starting to get more confident at this homemaking and homemade stuff. I'm realizing that this project took a while, as my first picture doesn't have any snow on it...

I stained this boards so that they could get put up being the stove and make a backdrop and a shelf for the cast iron pans that seem to always be on the stove. Which was driving me a little crazy.

Before:

After:

Thanks to Dad for hanging it up for me, it ending up being a little trickier then I had thought to hang it up...

After it was up for a few weeks, I got brave enough to try and paint a saying on it. Using the printed letters a guide it turned out much better then I expected.

Finished! Homemade and made with love! 💕

New Sounds and Songs

Pictures are great, but they don't share sounds...Hazel has been learning a few more sounds and starting to babble while playing. She is babbling away in the video below, but it is quiet so you might need to turn up the volume.

Hazel also "sings" a little bit. Hazel version of singing so far would be making louder noises when there is music playing...

Jared and I started playing some psalms on Sunday evening. I'm on the flute, Jared is play the guitar, Hazel is the "soloist".  Here is Psalm 5 (Recording below)

 And Psalm 9 (Recording below)

Jared discovered that Hazel has a vibrato button...(Video below)

Hazel is getting closer and closer to crawling, but not yet... she gets kind of frustrated at the end and does her typical "pick me up" pose and sounds. (Video below)

Note: Videos do not show up on the blog emails, you so will have to click on the blog link above to see them! Enjoy 😊

Winter and Winter Decorations

If you call them winter decorations they get to go up early and stay up longer, right?

Nicole came over and helped decorate or I guess you could say Nicole decorated and I helped... but it was super fun and easy with Nicole's natural decorating skill. I love how it turned out! It feels so much more like home with some more decorations up and Christmas Decorations always feel cozy.

I really like having the lights up, the sun is setting earlier and earlier, and having the lights on inside make it so happy that I hardly notice!

Not sure why these pictures decided to turn out green... but we made good use of our wedding lights, they go all the way around the house...

across to the wood shed...

and along the front of the bigger shop!

Blue skies, sunshine and sparkly snow! 

It is really neat to see proof of how much Nova runs around... 😄

And of course with snow comes snow removal...but the Massey is so far making the job a little easier for Jared.

Rookie of the Year

 

A well earned reward for Jared's dedication to the fire hall so far. Jared tries his best to make it to all the calls possible and has been the on the top 2-4 volunteers that make it to the calls for the last few months. The Pine View Firehall training evenings have been a highlight of Jared's week for several months now, PVFD has put a real effort into to making all of these guys into a team and making the training effective and fun. Though it is really hard to give up my time with Jared for the calls it has been really neat seeing how much he throws himself into everything that comes up. Super proud of him for all the effort that he has put in and continually surprised by just how much information he can keep taking in with all the training!

A Little Snow Angel

 A little 7 month old snow angel! Hazel weighed in at 16 pounds and 5 ounces and measured 68cm long/tall last week. She also got 2 teeth in the last few weeks as well!

I think this one is my favorite, with her face framed with the white fur and her dark eye lashes! 💖

Such big blue eyes!

It's quite hard to sit in a snow suit...

But funny to fall back into the snow!

OH! The snow is cold when it lands on my face!!!

As for those teeth we were taking about...

These are partially tricky pictures to get...Hazel bottom teeth are just poking through so they are not super easy to see on camera...and most of the time her tongue is in the way, or she moved and her teeth are blurry or she grabs the phone while I'm try to take a close up picture.... so here are the few the survived the editing 😅

Little Friends

I was babysitting for church last Sunday and just had to take these pictures! These three cuties are all about 3 months apart! Sophia with the black bow in the oldest, Hazel is next in the pink, and then Fern who is the car seat. It is so neat to see the different stages all at once. 

There is also a baby girl that was born in November and another baby due in December! So there should be no shortage of friends and playmates!

We went to Thomas and Rachelle's (Sophia's parents) after church, after they both had their naps  Sophia and Hazel got to play together a bit more. 

Guess who got the block most of the time! 😄

 

Living Room Projects

 So the living room has been my project room lately. A few weeks ago we put gates up around the fireplace as Hazel is getting closer and closer to crawling! 

I found these gates on Amazon and so far I am super happy with them!

Open:

Closed:

Over the last few months multiple people in our church have moved to different houses. When I have gone to visit I noticed how nice they had decorated their houses! I thought to myself that I didn't have very many nice decorations...so Nicole and I went through them the other day. We discovered that I have lots of nice decorations, but they have to sit on shelves....which I didn't have. So I started to plan some shelves!

I remembered a few minutes to late to take a before picture, so this one had one lonely bracket in it.

Shelf "1" done!

I remembered to take a picture before I started hanging brackets this time!

Shelf "2" done!

As you may have seen on previous pictures we got some new couch pillows. Mom and I found them on one of our Value Village runs when they came to visit. I am super happy with them, especially the shiny one! Jared has different opinions....

We were not able to find a little pillow case to fit on one of my smaller pillows so Mom found some fabric to match saying that I could just make a pillow case for it, but I couldn't just make a simple pillow case because that would be too boring....so a pleated pillow it was...

Nicole let me borrow her sewing machine for a few days which was VERY handy!

It looked a lot better after it got ironed!

I must say it turned out a lot better then I expected it to, especially since I just winged it...

This is a close up of the macramé pot holder that I made with Nicole. We followed a YouTube video and both did our own, it was actually a lot easier then it looked. 

The whole picture!

New shelves, new pillows, a home made craft, and it's actually tidy! Just in time to start decorating for Christmas!