MATERIALS/SUPPLIES
Package of Flannel Receiving Blankets
Crochet Thread
Crochet Hook size 4/2.00mm
Grip Handle. My MIL uses this comfort cushion. I haven't found it out here where I am but found it online.

To start off this year's 49Fifty project I wanted to share a few of the fun receiving blankets that my mother-in-law gave us when Little Miss E. joined our family last spring.

These are the perfect blanket for a spring or summer baby. The cute little crocheted edge gives it some personality without being too over baring. You can wrap up your little one without worrying that they'll get too hot as they are swaddled. These little blankets don't take up your whole diaper bag and are great for travel. We know because we drove from Connecticut to Utah last spring. These blankets were great for placing over the baby in her car seat or to wrap her up when we needed to get out at rest stops and stretch our legs.

These flannel blankets work great. They are the right size and already finished with a serged edge.

INSTRUCTIONS
Place the grip on your hook, if you are going to use one.

Use the hook to first poke holes around the blanket, just inside the surge stitch, about 1/4" apart. It does not need to be perfect but I do like to keep a ruler out in front of me so that I have a visual reference to look at every once in a while. You might also use the ruler and a quilting marker to mark every 1/4" and stay perfectly spaced.

Row one: SC* in hole you choose to start at. CH 3-5**, repeat until you have gone all the way around. SLST to connect. CH 2

Rowtwo: 4DC*** in space created from CH's in previous row.

*I start at a spot about 1/3 of the way down one side, that way its not centered or on a corner where it will be noticeable but it is easier to blend in.
**The number of ST needed for the chain will depend on how far apart you spaced your holes around the edge of the blanket.
***As a rule I use as many DC's in Row two as I used CH's in Row one. But this is where you can add variation and fun. The more DC's added to each CH section, the trim will have a ruffle look. You can do a scalloped edge with a pattern something like {Remove 2 CH from end of Row one. Round two: in Previous row CH section add SC, DC, TR, DC, SC, SLST in top of SC from previous row, repeat. SLST to connect at end}.

Are you ever overwhelmed by a situation, thinking you wish you could scream from the roof and all you really need is a hug? I was feeling it over the past little while, especially with the holiday season. 

There's no need for details but there were quite a few who have been an answer to our prayers. I couldn't just go one without saying "Hello, I saw what you did there, and we appreciate it ... A LOT!" So we did cards in bulk.

Remember, not everything has to be over the top and out do the next one. A simple handwritten note, sent in the mail can be just the ticket.

This year got super crazy as soon as little Miss E. arrived in April. We spent the summer bouncing around in Utah and then ended up in Kentucky where Paul is teaching at a University. Graduation, a summer spent moving around with a toddler and newborn while we were praying that Paul would be able to find work.

Lately it seems our trend is to move in August with the school year. With Lady A's birthday in October it is a great chance to invite little friends and their family's over so that we can get to know them and they can get to know us. Most of my supplies are still in boxes so we went the route of a digital invitation. This way we can also be able to share it with our family back home. 

Our theme was Princess Sophia and I am ok with that I really enjoy Princess Sophia, she is a Disney princess closer to my daughters age going dealing with more similar issues, ya know than the traditional damsel who is just looking for her prince/knight in shining armor.

I found these great vector images here to place on the card. 

Here is another card from my dig thru memory lane. This is from a group of people I used to work with at Creating Keepsakes Magazine. That was my first real job after getting my Associates Degree and I loved it. This group of ladies are fantasticly wonderful and kind and going to work with them was like working in the middle of a creative bomb. Always fun stuff going on.

It's so simple, not over done, but she still has great detail to it. The stitching around the edge. She cut the square with our names right from our invitation too!

Have I ever mentioned how much I loved this job and everyone I worked with?! All the accents on the inside were hand drawn.

Check out the fun little details added. I love how she double traced the accents as well as the text on the left page. Simple and yet oozing with fun.

You know Joannie wouldn't leave anything undone! A simple little accent on the back with ribbon and square brads.

Packing up and moving in the Spring happend fast with everything else we had going on. One of my goals was to go through all of our boxes and get rid of things we didn't need/want and make sure we were not wasting space by packing a bunch of air. After moving so many times I stopped worrying about trying to open every box when we moved in some place new, it was also hard because we seemed to keep moving into places that were smaller than the last.

Well we moved into the biggest place we have ever been in, a cute little farm house a couple miles away from the University where Paul is teaching. The goal was to open every box and make sure we weren't holding onto un-needed items.

In doing so I came across this cute little card full of thoughts and advice from the family and friends at my baby shower for Lady A {there are some cute ones for Miss E as well but I put those in a safe spot, you know, so they won't get lost or ruined, and now I just need to remember where that was. Am I the only one that does that?}. 

Even since I did not make it I thought I would try to put together a list of supplies and tools needed to create this.

MATERIALS/SUPPLIES
Solid and Patterened Card Stock
4"x6" Picture sleeves like the ones here or click the link for different sizes.
Decorative Brads
Decorative Embelishments
Archival pens like these ones

TOOLS
Paper cuter {this is the one I use. It travels well and is great for projects that require simple straight cuts}
Small Hole punch/needle {pretty much anything that will help puncture the layers of paper and page sleeves so the brads can be placed}
Glue/Double Sided Tape

Now that it is finally starting to feel like Spring up here in Connecticut, I had this grand idea that I would put together a printable for a Spring Cleaning Schedule for you all, then I sat down to try and do it....every time I sit down at the computer {especially around the afternoon or evening time} my body shuts down and I end up falling asleep.

This pregnancy has been so different on my body than the first one! Any day now I will be changing diapers and not sleeping at night because I need to feed the little one, but right now, that sounds like heaven.

Instead of creating a printout, because my body does not have the attention span right now, and because I am moving so my 'Spring Cleaning' will be different than what I would normally do ~ I have decided to share with you what I have found from others. I narrowed it down to the ones I that I liked the most and that I could actually see myself using. No one has time to search through the top 101 {or even 20} cleaning check lists.

This list from I Dream Of Clean is crazy intense. If you want to get into all the little corners and make sure nothing is left unturned, organized and cleaned...this is the list for you.

At Living Well Spending Less she has a unique approach to her five steps or areas to clean. It is a simple ans sweet one page check list to help you get on top of your Spring cleaning.

Over at Oprah.com they have a Spring Cleaning schedule that should only take 8 hours from start to finish. It is a simple list and gives great direction on how to use your time wisely.

Imperfect Homemaking has a great list and printable. This will help get you home ready for the summer activities but doesn't seem too daunting.

I also had to include Clean Mama. She has some wonderful printable checklists for Cleaning anytime of the year.

Whatever fits your schedule and how intense you want to get, there is a list out there for you to help keep you on track and even get you thinking of stuff you might have over looked.

Happy Spring Cleaning!!

The ladies at church threw me a baby shower a couple weekends ago and they did such a great job. The colors for Lady #2 are yellow, grey and purple, I also decided to go with an elephant theme. I posted about the invitations here and check out these cute little party favors. That night I didn't have my camera and honestly, even if I did, there probably still would not be any photos {moving around, up and down, oh that sounds so miserable}.

At the end of the night I even took home some of the balloons for Lady A. When she came down the next morning she had such a look of excitement on face. We haven't really done balloons too much before and now she had these ones all to herself.

While l am trying to stay on top of my 49Fifty projects, it is getting harder and harder to keep up with writing about them all. It seems every time I sit down, in just a matter of minutes l am asleep. I can not wait to meet Lady #2, but I am also excited to able to sleep in my bed, get on the floor and play with my girls, all those wonderful things I used to be able to do before my body went wonky from this pregnancy.

Now it is time to make Thank You cards for all these wonderful ladies. Have I ever mentioned how much I love having my own personal cutting machine. Normally I like to create my own designs but right now l am looking for easy and fast. There is too much going on right now: Baby, packing, moving and an extremely sore body from the pregnancy. I found the best shape from the Silhouette online store, then took it into the Studio program and changed it a little to create my card shape.

I have a bunch of envelopes already so the only thing I really had to keep track of was making sure to size the cards to fit them.

Do you ever have those projects that while you are working on them you wonder the whole time if they will actually turn out. Then when you are done you could not be more pleased with them?

This was one of those for me. I love how they turned out and am so excited to give them to all those who have helped us get ready for Lady #2.

Today you will find me on the kitchen floor. The other day while Paul was out of town I was trying to get dinner ready and Lady A decided to get her stickers out. They are all over the kitchen floor now. Being as sore and as pregnant as I am ~ I decided to let her and just clean them up later, that was not a battle I wanted to fight at the time. Today I decided to figure out how hard it is going to be clean them all up so I sat down with some of my favorite cleaning friends and went to town.

There were two types of stickers 1: paper ones that left paper after trying to peal them up and 2: plastic ones where the entire sticker came up but left all of the sticky residue behind.

First peal up the stickers and get as much off as you can.
Then sprinkle some baking soda over the left behind gunk.
Dip your scrubber sponge in the hot water and ring it out then start scrubbing.

This took very little effort, I was so happy. It also got these apartment floors cleaner than I have ever seen them. Now I'll have to figure out a way to get the rest of the floor to clean up that nicely {hopefully without having to sit on the floor with a box of baking soda and a small scrubber sponge}. I'll leave that for another day, one where I am not 38 weeks pregnant and can't bend or move.

The reason I think this worked is because the baking soda acts as a scrubbing agent to get the rest of the paper residue that is left behind. It also seemed like it helped to lift the sticky residue because it would ball up and wipe away.

Tip: There were stickers under my bucket of hot water as well. Once I moved the bucket after taking the photo the stickers under it were damp from the humidity and steam coming from the bottom of the bucket. When I pealed those stickers up most of the paper and sticky backing came up on the first swipe of my thumb nail. If you have a steam mop I would suggest trying that first.

This week I have been thinking a lot about my Grandpa or Grandpa Great as we affectionately call him. His wife passed away just over a month after we first moved to the East Coast. They had been married almost 20 years, for my younger brothers she was the only grandma they remember. He still has his own place but my parents have given him a room at their place as well so he can be closer to family. My dad also built a huge chicken coup because my grandpa was not leaving his 'ladies'. All the great grand-kids have loved being able to watch and feed the ladies. It has been over two years and the little ones still get excited about going out in the morning to collect the eggs.

I thought it would be a fun idea to send him a card letting him know we are thinking of him this Easter season.

You can find the chicken here. The 'chicken wire' fence is one I designed so that it would be sure to fit the front of the card {a letter size piece of cardstock cut in half then folded}.

We all get them....Clogged sinks!!

I do not know about you but it drives me crazy when I got to wash my face and see the sink start to fill up when I turn the water on but the pug is not in the sink. Blah!

Many different things can contribute to a clogged sink: whiskers, soap, toothpaste, the list goes on. I have also noticed, now that our little one is really into brushing her teeth, that the bathroom sink clogs a lot more often. My guess is that it is all that extra toothpaste going down the drain. Once again it is time to clean them out. There are a couple of different remedies you can try that will not cost you nearly as much as calling someone into your home or using harsh chemicals around  your house. We all know right now I am all about no chemical cleaning while I am pregnant.

Sorry, there are no photos. This was a hard one to photograph but I figured there were plenty of people out there looking for home remedies for clogged drains so I am posting it without photos.

Method one:
If you have ever gone to a Science Fair you have seen the exploding volcano that so many kids like to do. Well, that same science can go into unclogging your drain. Pour 1/2 cup of dry baking soda down the drain followed by 1/2 cup of white vinegar. I cover mine so that the reaction works faster instead of letting the air escape. If you do that it should just take a few minutes, otherwise let the baking soda and vinegar sit for about a half hour. Then pour boiling water down the drain to help 'wash' away the gunk.

It is no secret that baking soda and vinegar have been my new best friends on this cleaning crusade of mine so this is the one that I went with and it worked great.

Note: if you have plastic pipes just use tap water at its hottest setting. Using boiling water could melt the plastic pipes.

Method two:
I am not a Coke or Pepsi drinker and after reading what some have said about how well they can be used for cleaning, I do not think I will ever drink these. BUT....They can be used on clogs, lime scale and other hard to clean build up spots.

Get a two liter of coke and let it sit out until it reaches room temperature. Pour it down the drain and let the corrosive abilities do their thing. After about an hour or two run hot water to wash out the pipes. The acid and fizz of the soda work to break down the buildup.
Source

Method three:
Plunger. That's right, your trusty plunger that is sitting next to your toilet. I know, the thought of putting that in my sink grosses me out too, but it can work. There are also smaller plungers out there made more specifically for sinks and tubs. There are a couple of tricks to using a plunger. First, make sure there is water in your sink or tub. Second, make sure there is water in the bulb of the plunger. This way all your energy will go straight to the clog when you use it. If it is full of air you won't be getting the full force of the plunger on the clog.

Note: Be warned, this one can get messy.

Method four:
Your trusty wire hanger. Yep, just untwist it and put the hook part down the drain. This will work if the clog is towards the front of the pipes before the goose neck {'U' shape} part of the pipes, the part you see right under your sink.

If the clog is too much for any or all of these by all means call a professional.