Eli's second christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday spent with those you love. Eli once again was spoiled! He got some pretty cool things including a rocking horse, clothes, books, ornaments, vtech lap top, little foldable chair and a cute Mickey Mouse table and chairs which he's already taken a liking to! I was cleaning up the kitchen this evening and usually if I'm not paying attention to him, he's wrapped around my leg trying to GET my attention but for once he wasn't and it was really quiet. Uh oh, where's Eli and what's he up to? I go into his bedroom and he was just sitting at his table playing with his blankie. It was the cutest thing :) Here is a pic I snapped of him just chillin' with his markers securely in his fist (you can write on the table with dry erase markers) and his new car steering wheel that plays music, sitting on top:

It dawned on me the night before our family gathering on Saturday that I didn't have a Christmas outfit for him so I frantically went to my craft room to see what I had on hand. I found a blue plain t-shirt hanging in his closet, grabbed the baby legs from his outfit last year to attach to the arms to make it long sleeved and then made Rudolph out of felt to appliqué to the tee. Here it is up close:

To complete the look, I tied jingle bells to his shoes. This served 2 purposes, 1) it got people into the christmas spirit and 2) I always knew where he was :) 

Here he is grooming himself in the mirror, getting ready for the party

 

My little stud all ready for another family gathering

 

On Sunday we went to my dad's side where we got to meet my cousin's son Tae who's the same age as Eli. They were so cute! The minute Eli entered the room Tae walked up to him with open arms ready to give him a hug!  I melted. Here's a pic of the 2 kiddos with a couple of my other cousins:

 

How cute is little Tae??

 

Alrighty, back to the grind tomorrow so I better get myself to bed. Na night all.

 

-Linds

Project reveal…

Ok, thanks for being patient with me as I finished up my latest project. I’m happy to report that it is all done, and hung up . My friend from work Jen guessed it right as being a growth chart. Atta girl! (Thanks to those of you who humored me and played along in the guessing game ) I have thought about wanting to get Eli one of these for a while now, particularly before he turned 1. Like I said, I searched Etsy for personalized ones and they were around $50! So I decided to just tackle it myself. I stuck with his airplane/Mickey themed room but also added a bunch of color to it so it could grow with him and not always look like it belonged in a nursery. I wanted it to easily go into a big boy room when the time comes. (ahhh! I can’t think about that!) I had just bought a bottle of stuff that makes acrylic paint into fabric paint so I decided to use fabric for mine. I could have ordered a vinyl decal one I suppose, but we will be moving into a bigger house as we expand our family (God willing) and I obviously wanted this thing to be able to go with us.
Now the reason I said that I could have jacked it up many times and was surprised I didn’t was because I free handed all the lettering, airplane, and Mickey Mouse. And even though I started by sketching it on the fabric in pencil, being that it IS fabric, I couldn’t erase it. (I tried to in one spot and thank God it was in an area I was able to paint over! It just smears into a into a big ol’ smudge mark, and doesn’t really go away) So I held my breath and jumped in feet first hoping for the best. I worried that I’d get it all sketched out and then mess up painting it or something. (I used to draw cartoons a lot when I was little, especially Garfield and Goofy. I would use a picture as a reference, as I did in this case, and go from there but I hadn’t drawn in yeeeeeears so I felt pretty rusty.)

This was the fuller pic of the teaser I gave you yesterday. I had to crop it more because I realized with his mouth in the pic, it was super obvious who I was drawing. Sneaky, sneaky sir. Ha! I had just outlined Mickey in black marker paint and filled in the black areas with the acrylic paint at this point. (Don’t worry, I went back and outlined that top part of his hand that I missed near his back. Did you even notice it until I pointed it out?)
Then I proceeded to paint the rest:

Bottom of chart

Top of chart

The whole thing. Ta Da!

Eli wasn’t havin’ it.

I started it at 24 inches and it goes up to about 6 foot 5in. My plan is for every birthday, I will measure him against the chart, mark it, and put a birthday picture next to the spot. I tried to leave a lot of “blank” white space so the pictures would fit next to the measurement. I’ve never seen a growth chart like that so who knows if it’ll even work out but it sounded like a cute idea in my head . I don’t know, kids grow quite a bit from year to year right, so I won’t have a cluster of pics all in one spot, will I? Ha ha. We shall see.

And there you have it!

Thanks again Jac for the “blank canvas” that was just itching to be drawn on. (You know me and blank paper, LOVE!)

-Linds