Teacher Appreciation Week

Teacher Appreciation Week is May 2nd-6th and National Teacher Appreciation Day is May 3rd.

What are you doing to tell the teachers in your life "Thanks"?

Personally, I feel quite indebted to the remarkable educators who spend so much time with my daughter each day helping her to reach those milestones and develop into the little smarty pants she has become!

Although she is a little behind other children her age, I see the improvement that they are making almost daily. For instance, today she sang me a little song about her vowels. I didn't know she knew what they were, let alone memorized a cute little ditty about them!

We have several wonderful people on our "team". Of course her classroom teacher is high on my list, but there are other specialists that play a huge role in her education, like the speech-language pathologist, occupational therapist, special education teacher (also called the resource teacher), and the nurse. She also has a very nice and helpful bus attendant and bus driver, since she rides the "special" bus.

Needless to say, I will be giving them all a great big "Thank You" this week! I have something pretty cute in mind for her classroom teacher, which I'll share with you in a few days. But for everyone else, I'll be giving them these adorable Candy Pencil Thank You's!

They are for sale in my ETSY shop for a limited time! So why not click on over there and get some to show appreciation to the educators in your life?!! At only $3.00 a piece, it's a very inexpensive way to say "Thanks"! Plus they're just so dang cute! I had to have a little photo shoot to show off their cuteness!

 

Thanks for stopping by!

EmmaLee Update:

So, I guess it's been a while since I checked in and updated you on EmmaLee's status.

Obviously, she just turned 6. (See Ladybug Party post) And she's in Kindergarten this year, and loving it... i think. She likes the learning, and the reading and writing... but making friends, not so much.  I'm sure she's got a few nice kids that she plays with. But I don't hear about them. She only tells me about the mean ones. It's really hard hearing her tales of the comments kids make and their actions towards her.  She's been hit. But I guess some 5 and 6 year old's still do that anyways right? And that particular time I don't believe it had anything to do with her being different. Sometimes she says no one would play with her at recess.  Is my kid that outcast that everyone runs away from at recess? I remember that kid from when I was in school... it's sad, I really hope she's not.  She has such a sweet and fun personality, why would any kid not play with her because she's red? So what. She's red. Get over it already. But that's hard for kids i guess. They just want to fit in and be accepted. Sometimes I feel like saying "Poor baby, how can I protect you from this?" I feel so powerless when it comes to these situations. The younger kids are quicker to accept her and move on, but the older kids that she sees in the halls, on the bus, etc. They speak before thinking. They're ignorant, and don't care to learn why she's red, it's easier to make fun. Ah, the insecurities of children. When you're pointing at someone else, no one looks at you. Well this post wasn't meant to be all about school and the gripes I have about other kids...

Her hearing has come a long way since this post. She has had only normal hearing screens since then. And her glasses have really helped... Helped so much that she decided her eyes were fixed and didn't have to wear them anymore.    :-)   Of course me being the mom, I still made her wear them. Until... she had an eye exam at school, given by the school nurse, and failed the test wearing her glasses! What the ? "Okay, you don't have to wear them anymore."  Funny thing is, the glasses actually helped her look....normal? Somewhat.  The frames covered her (non-existent) eyebrows. And drew attention away from her lack of eyelashes. Weird how a little hair on your face makes a difference. Her eyelashes have grown out a few times and we always make it a big deal, about how beautiful they are and how pretty she looks. Hmmm, I wonder how that reaction might be affecting her when they fall off....

We haven't had a major infection since this post. But we have had quite a few "almost" infections. It's like when I see that trigger happen, I feel this intense full-body panic. Fight-or-Flight adrenaline type of nerves and anxiety. Right away we usually see signs that it's getting worse, so we do everything we can, praying it doesn't come back. Luckily, they have all gotten better after an exhaustive overuse of ointment. But it's still scary. I don't even want to think of going down that road again. I can't stand to see her hurt like that last time.  Unfortunately, one of the (many) triggers we discovered was urine.  EmmaLee requires more sleep than most children her age because of her disorder.  Her body tries to heal and repair itself during sleep, although it's pointless since her skin doesn't "heal".  Sometimes it seems as if she grows a whole new layer of skin during these sleeping hours.  Anyways, she has been night-time potty trained for a long time, but every once in a while she'll have too much to drink at dinner, or sneak a cup of water at bedtime (which we don't allow) and wake up in the morning soaked in urine.  She just sleeps too heavily to wake up in the night. So the urine just sits on her skin all night and BAM, as soon as she wakes up she's in pain from it. Infection type of pain. We actually have a classification for "infection pain" since it's such a specific type of hurt. We haven't experienced anything that hurts her more than that. So it's back to Pull-Ups at night-time.  But, even when she wets in those we still see a reaction. I feel like the water police at bedtime, hovering over her making sure she doesn't try to suck water off her toothbrush for a drink! It's sad. And mean. But I gotta do it.

During the night all that skin repairing underneath causes the top to get really dry. Which is why her bath must come first in the mornings. Before food or playing. Mostly because when she awakes she is extremely uncomfortable and dry. The skin on her face becomes so dry and tight that it cracks if she talks or smiles, and opening her mouth to eat is out of the question. Well you can imagine that poses a small problem concerning breakfast and having time to eat before going to school since the bath takes over an hour.  So, she drinks her breakfast. Through a straw. Nothing gross, not like pureed food or anything, haha! Just Pediasure in a can, we still call it her "formula". She gets up to 4 formula cans a day if she wants. She drinks two in the bath, has one at school, and the other is optional once she gets home from school, but we usually just eat a snack when she gets home. 

So the other day EmmaLee tells me right before we are about to walk out the door to get on the bus that she's hungry. Well there's no time by that point to do anything about it so I said "Sorry, but you're gonna have to wait until snack time at school". She whined again that she was hungry and decided she could just ask her teacher at school for some peanut butter crackers. I told her "No EmmaLee, you need to wait until everyone has snack. It's not fair if you get to eat an extra snack and no one else gets to." So she gets to school, and what does she do. She asks her teacher anyway.

Then I got a call from her teacher. Apparently EmmaLee has been "hungry" several times in the mornings and "Is she eating breakfast at home?". "Yes, she drinks two cans of Pediasure for breakfast while she's in the bath and occasionally eats some peaches or pears, but there's not really time for anything else because her bath takes so long." The teacher suggests that maybe we need to wake up even earlier to make time for breakfast because she might be going through a growth spurt right now and needs more than the formula. Hmmm, I think it's more likely that she just wants to eat a snack but who knows. Drinking two cans of formula fills her up and sometimes she can't finish the second one because her tummy hurts from drinking so much so fast. But it is liquid and maybe it doesn't leave her full for very long and it's not like I'm going to deny her food. The teacher was very nice on the phone, but I really felt like I got scolded. Like I was an inexperienced mother who needed to be told that children need to eat. I'm sure it wasn't meant that way, but I totally started bawling when we hung up. I'm pretty emotional sometimes. I know I'm not a perfect mom, but I hate feeling like I'm a bad mom.

I bought some Eggo Waffles and now she's eating breakfast everyday, and although I was giving her food before, i guess eating fruit in the bath a couple days a week wasn't enough since she obviously didn't consider it her breakfast. Now we sit at the table to eat, sometimes all decked out in her snow gear so when the bus pulls up she'll be ready. There's not always time to finish, but at least I tried. Waking up earlier really isn't an option for us. She needs that sleep... and let's face it, I can't drag my butt out of bed any earlier. I hope she's not still trying to get a snack when she gets to school....

Other than that, she a super happy little girl. She misses her brother while she's at school all day, which of course means there's total pandemonium in my house when she gets home and the two of them reunite. They start rough-housing and jumping off the furniture....crazy kids! Lol! She gets to go on a field trip with her class tomorrow. She's really excited for that. That's pretty much it.

Wow! She's growing up so fast!

LadyBug Birthday Party

Let me start by saying, even though I put a lot of time and effort into this party I still didn't get even half of the things I wanted done for it in time........ I ended up scrapping a bunch of ideas, one of which was the adorable Happy Birthday banner than was halfway finished.  Sad.  :-(      I guess I really need to work on my time management skills if I want to make this into a business......   Anyway, here we go............

When I decided to do a Ladybug theme I had a brilliant idea to make the invitation into a Ladybug......... apparently I am not the only person to have this idea since there are about 15 other ladybug invites I found online. I scraplifted some ideas from different ones that I liked, then threw in some of my own ideas, and ended up with this.

***Edited to add: These LadyBug Invitations 

are now for sale in my ETSY shop!!***

I wanted the invitation to be square, not ladybug shaped, but just sticking the ladybug onto paper didn't appeal to me, so I added a cute punched border. The wings are hinged with brads to open and close. They are embossed with a raised swirl design and I made the black dots with black embossing powder on cardstock cut into circles so they are really shiny and plastic-y.  I don't think that's a word....lol!

I found the clever wording somewhere and thought it was adorable so I just customized it to fit our party. If you click on the picture it will take you to the pic where you can see it larger.

Had to have googly eyes of course, and I added the beaded antennae strung onto wire so they are moveable. The invites were just so fun and interactive that several of the little girls loved playing with it!

This is just too cute not to share, my friend wrote this to me......

"Sophie and I will be at the party for sure. She can't wait. She was showing Claire (1 month old baby) the invitation telling her that she gets to go to a party and Claire was following the invitation with her eyes. I guess she likes the black and red and white. Anyways, now whenever Claire cries, Sophie runs to get the invitation to make her stop crying. It's pretty cute!"

So Sweet! Moving on.........

*WARNING!* Like all my other party posts, this one has over 30 pictures....heehee.

I made little tutus, wings, and headband antennae for all the children to wear. It was soooo cute!

Once again, I didn't have a photographer.... so this picture was taken after most the kids had already arrived. When you walk into the house, I had the tutus lined up on the edge of a table with the wings and headbands lined up on top. I made 12 sets of wings, 8 tutus (for only the girls), and 15 headbands. As the kids arrived I dressed them all up by the door and they went off to run around with the other ladybugs. If anyone is interested, here's the links for instructions to make the tutus and wings.

Wings, Tutus, Ribbon, Cutting Tulle

I only had one game for them planned, it worked out since they were going to have dinner there wasn't a lot of time for games. We had two Elefun games going at the same time. The Elephant blows a puff of air and some little butterfly thingy's fly out of this long plastic trunk. Then the kids run around catching them in their nets. It was chaotic, but fun.

Of course you also have to pick them up and put them back in the elephant to keep the game going lol!
There was also a bunch of toys around the kids played with.

At the beginning of the party this part of the ceiling was COVERED in ballons. But, the kids were having a great time trying to get them down, so it looked like this by the time I got a picture of it.

For dinner we made Spaghetti and Meatballs with Garlic Bread for everyone, kids and parents too! I figured at least if they got messy it wouldn't show on their red and black clothes! Lol! :-) I put some black spots (made with vinyl) on the glass pitcher that had red Kool-Aid in it and on all the children's cups.

By the way, my husband cooked the dinner! He was such a big help doing that for me!!

There wasn't a lot of candy or treats, since most of the kids were under 3 and I figured with dinner and cake and ice cream we didn't need a lot of sweets. So there was cake, cupcakes, and cookies. That's it.

I tried my hand at making a ladybug shaped cake. Not too bad I think... Nothing glamorous or anything, but turned out cute.

Ethan was so sweet helping EmmaLee blow out the candles and clapping for her! Then chowing down on some cake!

EmmaLee got cold in her short sleeve shirt so we borrowed a sweater (which kills me that it doesn't match) while she was opening some presents. Plus it was sad that it covered up the shirt I made for her in all these photos.

Oh yeah, I made her a "6" shirt. I used a scrap of the shiny red fabric I used for the wing elastics and table cover. I just printed out a 6 from my computer (reversed) and glued it to the back of some fusible heat and bond. Then ironed the heat and bond to the back of the red fabric. Cut out the number, peeled off the backing of the heat and bond, then ironed it onto the shirt. I wanted to sew around the number so it didn't start to peel off while she wore it but since the shirt was cotton I was afraid it would stretch weird in my sewing machine. I just ironed some interfacing to the inside of the shirt before sewing and it worked perfectly!

I asked my artistic friend Carolyn (black and pink baby shower) to make a cardboard mushroom for me to use as a prop and portrait background. She did an amazing job!

I had Tyson attach some boards to it so it would stand up on its own, but I made sure to crop the boards out of most the photos. The grassy background is a roll of paper I bought at Michaels. Who knew they had stuff like that there!!?

You can see the roll of paper in the photo below.

And, lastly here are some of the cute portraits I got. I'm no photographer.... so if you know of someone who will do it for me for a future event (cheap), I would love to hear! But... I can't afford  $50 for someone to take pictures for 30 minutes.... That's like paying $100/ hour!  It seems that's the going rate right now for an amateur photographer. Which is a killer deal for family portraits, or baby photos, or whatever.... but a little over my current party budget. :-( Maybe once I get an actual paying gig........ Did I just say "gig"?!!! HaHa!

Sadly, I didn't have time to make my signature "matching shirt", which is something I want to do so I will coordinate with my party's theme. So I'm in red and black.

Thanks for looking! Hope you liked my party! Pass along my info if you know someone who wants help throwing a party!! I really need some clients! Lol!

Linking Up Here:

Preview

So EmmaLee's LadyBug birthday party was yesterday and we got some AMAZING photos! I can't wait to show you! But I need to go through and edit them first, so here's a preview of the cute little birthday girl.

Life is a Beach - Surf's Up Baby Shower

Okay- I can't believe it's taken me this long to finally get these photos edited to put on here!!!  I was really upset that I didn't get any pictures before or during the party, the only ones we snapped were after it was over and we had already cleaned up all the food and the lovely table display!    :-(     Well, here's Melissa's Baby Shower...

You probably already saw the Surfboard Sugar Cookies in a previous post because I was just so proud of them I couldn't get enough pictures!! Sorry about the repeats.

I made a life-size surfboard prop out of foam-core board. Well, not exactly life size, but it was big...  :-)

Here's some of the decorations... I thought it would look super "beachy" if we draped towels along the banister like you would see at the dock... Unfortunately someone said that their first impression was that we forgot to put the laundry away LOL!

I made the Surf's Up sign on my Cricut and made it huge using Design Studio, but I had to 

piece it together in like 5 separate parts.

I loved the banner that I made!! It was made with the Life Is A Beach cartridge. I embellished it with ribbon on the bikini and flip flops, jewels, and lots of glitter.

Instead of games I planned a baby shower craft, painting onesies with freezer paper stencils  I cut out beforehand. I love how cute they look hanging on the clothesline!!

I just had to throw this one in here!! :-)
EmmaLee pretending to Surf!! 

Last of all, I am so excited to show you how Melissa used all the baby shower decorations in Calvin's Nursery!! So Cute!!!

Did you notice the pineapples??  :-)

Here's the links to the previous posts about Melissa's baby shower.

Surfboard Cookies

Invitations & Pineapples