Our Week in Instagrams

We had another whirlwind week, but it was full of fun.

Elora is absolutely enjoying her new backyard swing


Our orange tree is doing well and it has hundreds of these baby oranges all over. We actually just picked the last of the (extremely ripe) oranges that were way at the top of the tree and they are really delicious!


The weather was pretty warm and we played outside a lot. Elora and the kitty were trying to be patient while I finished up my chores so I could take them outside for some playtime.


We had a little ice cream treat on Wednesday to help us cope with the afternoon heat :)


Election day is tomorrow here in California, so we've been getting crazy amounts of political junk mail. Fortunately, Elora put it all to great use :)


I can remember doing this to my hair with my grandma's super skinny round brush....I just didn't think Elora would discover this trick until a little later in life. This is no fun to try and sort out!


On Sunday, our little nephew was baptized. After the service, we went to lunch with Corey's family and Elora got to hold her baby cousin. I love moments like this because it makes me excited to see how she might be with her little brother in a couple of months.

This Week's Photos

This last week was sort of a blur. I'm feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and I'm not totally sure why because I'm not completely sure what happened in the past 7 days. We were busy but we had fun and that's what it's all about right? Right...

Well, I've been doing a new schedule/routine around the house and it's working really well for us. Elora and I have a schedule that we stick to pretty strictly and I'm loving it. One of the new things we do every morning at 8am is Table Time, I do my Bible study and Elora colors and listens to me read. Elora is starting to memorize Bible verses so we work on her new verse for the week during Table Time. Last week she memorized Romans 3:23 (check out the cute video here). We're using the alphabet as our guide to which verses to memorize, so this week we moved on to B. I'm making some cute cards to help us get excited about memorizing the verses :)


Elora's grandpa came over Saturday to do some tree trimming and put up a swing in the back yard. Elora was a great helper.


Once Daddy and Grandpa got the tree ready, it was time to test the swing before they hung it :)


After church on Sunday, we grabbed some lunch from the grocery store and headed down to the river for a picnic. Elora loved the water and spend most of the time throwing rocks in the river.


And while grocery shopping this week, I picked up some peonies. They started out a really vibrant hot pink and have faded to a super pale baby pink. Some were almost white when I finally tossed them this morning.


I'm hoping for a slower week this week but I don't see that happening...hopefully I can get some sewing done and do some preparations for this baby that's coming in 12(ish) weeks! I can't believe how little time I have left...I really have done nothing to get ready. Time to do some sorting!

The Week in Photos

We have been enjoying the warm weather this week and have been spending a lot of time outside. One of Elora's favorite activities lately is jumping.




To give her some variety in her jumping games, I drew a hopscotch for her. She loved it!


She's been very diligent in her Big Sister Studies and is just about ready for "our baby boy" (as she calls him) to get here.


Corey has been on jury duty for 2 weeks (and has another 2 or 3 weeks left in the trial), so he gets home about an hour earlier than normal and Elora is loving the extra play time. She set up this sleep over for them a few days ago :)


My second-to-youngest sister graduated high school on Sunday and we celebrated with dinner out and dessert at our Grandma's house. It was during the solar eclipse and I got this neat shot of the light filtering through the trees!


I got some hand me down baby boy clothes from a couple of friends and I got them washed and folded today. So much fun!


And lastly, I am now 27 weeks pregnant and trying to convince myself I am not uncomfortable yet. I still have at least 13 weeks to go and I am resisting the urge to complain.



I hope you all have a great week. I'm hoping to get a lot of sewing done and I'm excited for my baby shower  this weekend!

Last Week's Instagrams

I just got an iPhone and am having a lot of fun with Instagram. It's the easiest way for me to upload photos from my phone to Facebook, so it's probably the most used app on my phone :)

I'd like to share a little summary of each week by sharing my photos here on the blog.



Daddy and Elora playing some ABC games and enjoying a little rest on a Sunday afternoon.



Jam session at church after The Collaboration of the Arts by the Young Musicians Fellowship



I love this one...she had just woke up from her nap and was all cuddled up on the laundry. Pretty cute.



Silly girl :)



On Friday and Saturday I worked at a flower shop for Mother's Day. It was a sea of flowers and in 2 days I worked 21 hours to help get all the lucky mamas their flowers on time :)



After working on Saturday, I stopped at a cute little fabric store called The Tin Thimble. They carry some new stuff, but also a lot of vintage stuff. It was so fun to browse all the unique things they have.



On Sunday, we got to visit Corey's sister and mom for Mother's Day and Elora got to hold her baby cousin again. She did pretty good but totally freaked out when he started crying :) She's doing good with her big sister training though!

KCWC Day 5

On day 5 of the kids clothes week challenge I made Elora this little top. She chose the fabric and I drafted the pattern (the pattern needs a bit of tweaking but it's not too shabby!).

The blue floral print is a light weight cotton that came from my mom's stash and Elora chose this fabric for her baby brother. Not sure what that means, but I thought it was pretty sweet :)

It's a great little spring top and Elora loves it because she chose the fabric.

KCWC Days 3 and 4

I took advantage of Elora and I both being sick to finish up the rompers today. Being sick and having a sick toddler means lots of movies and no chores, right? Of course right. That means mama gets to sew! Here are the finished products!

Hounds tooth and monster reversible romper for Baby Boy

Elora's Paisley and Stripe reversible romper

I love these little dragon fly snaps, they are so fun!

Looking forward to starting on some more kid's clothes tomorrow. Now I better pull myself together and figure out what's for dinner! :)

KCWC: What I did on day 2

Yesterday was day 2 of elsie marie's kid's clothes week challenge. It's quite possible that I actually did work for an hour as the challenge suggests, but in my "stiff muscled, didn't sleep enough the night before, pregnant, sick, caring for a sick toddler, and trying to clean the house" state of mind, I didn't get much done. All I did was pin the pieces of my rompers together. I only had 8 pieces of fabric to pin for these two rompers, but I'm pretty sure that used up the whole hour.

The sewing is the easy part, so I'm really hoping I can tackle that today and move on to something new. I'd love to get more than just these rompers completed this week and I'm really hoping my body, mind, and toddler cooperate :) I hope to share this evening what I completed on this, day 3 of the challenge!

KCWC at Elsie Marie- Updated

Update on what I did yesterday: I got some pattern assembly and cutting done yesterday to make overalls/rompers for my two little ones (still can't believe I have TWO kids...yes, one is still waiting to be born, but he'll need clothes once he arrives!). I used this reversible romper pattern from Scientific Seamstress to make a romper for my newest nephew, born earlier this month. And decided that I should make one for my new little guy coming in August and might as well make one for Elora too. So, I assembled the pattern pieces and cut my fabric. 

I love the simplicity of this pattern. It turns out really cute and it's really quick.


Today I plan on sewing them both, but I have a lot of house work plus a sick toddler to take care of, hopefully I can get my one hour of sewing in! 

Original Post:
I decided to join in the fun over at elsie marie for the Kid's Clothes Week Challenge. If you like to sew for your kids, check it out and join the fun! I'm going to get sewing right now and I'll be back later today with a progress report :)

Lemon Ricotta Pancakes- Gluten Free Style

In our backyard we have a huge, beautiful orange tree and a tiny, sad looking lemon "tree". It's more like a bush than a tree and gives us about 20-25 lemons each season. That's plenty of lemons for us and I don't see the bush getting much bigger as it lives under the orange tree and in the shadow of a giant redwood tree. 

The downside of having your own fruit trees is that all of the fruit is ready at roughly the same time so you have like a week or two to use everything. Or, like with the oranges (of which we had over 100lbs), you can bag them up and share them with friends. If you do share them, your friends will thank you for weeks for sharing your delicious produce :)

So, on Saturday, I went out with Elora and we picked all of the lemons left on the bush. This was our bounty

About 15 lemons, super ripe and ready to be used in all kinds of delicious recipes. I was inspired to finally pick all of the lemons when I saw this recipe for lemon ricotta pancakes on Pinterest Saturday morning. 

I normally wouldn't get inspired by something like this recipe because I tend to like pretty plain, unexciting, familiar things. I like plain pancakes, so why would I go putting lemon and ricotta in them? Well, I happened to have some ricotta cheese in the fridge I needed to use up and I knew I had a ton of lemons just begging to be used, I decided to be adventurous.

To make it gluten free, I just subbed the wheat flour for Pamela's GF flour mix. It worked out great! I also used my waffle maker's flat plates for the griddle for the first time which was pretty exciting :)

The batter is pretty thick, next time I might add a little milk because I like my pancakes thin and crispy. But even on the thicker side, they were really delicious. Instead of the apples used in the original recipe for a topping, I used raspberry preserves. So yummy. 

Elora devoured them. 

I hope you check out the recipe and give it a try!

Clothes for E

Since I haven't blogged in a while, I thought I'd do a recap of what I've been making for Elora lately. I've definitely been sewing less the last 3 months since I was dealing with morning (rather, all day) sickness and fatigue, but sewing for me is a great stress reliever so I do try to make time to do it.

My favorite type of sewing is definitely clothes for Elora :)

These are some of my favorites from the last few months, but I've sewn a lot more than this. She's getting difficult to photograph these days so I don't get photos of everything. She can't even be bribed with candy to look at the camera! :)

Can't wait to find out if the new baby is a boy or girl so I can start some baby sewing!!

I'm Back!

It's been quite a while since I've blogged, but I am ready to jump back in!

Life is always busy and it's about to get busier. I'm ready to relaunch my Etsy shop, revamp the blog, and try my hand at growing a human again. That's right, I'm pregnant! Woo hoo! We've been praying for another baby since January of 2011 and the Lord blessed us with a baby due in August. So, through the holidays I was battling nausea and extreme fatigue. But, I'm in my 2nd trimester now, so my energy is back and I'm ready to add a little more to my plate.

Christmas was great for us. I made Elora a "big sister" shirt to announce the pregnancy to our families. Everyone was so excited!

We kept our Christmas morning small because Elora doesn't really need anything and she loves pretty much anything, so it was a very easy holiday. Corey and I didn't buy gifts for one another, we just enjoyed the morning with our little family and felt amazed that next year we'll have TWO little ones to enjoy :)

2012 has been great so far. We're feeling very blessed and very undeserving. The Lord has been so kind to us and we're very excited for what is to come. The other day, Corey gave me a hug and said, "can you believe how good things are?" I said no and we both just thought of all the good things God has given us. Sure, there are daily struggles and seemingly ever present financial concerns, but these things are nothing to be compared to the many daily blessings and eternal joys we are given. What a blessed life!