I'd say this project was a hit.

I recently saw this simple, free toilet paper stamp idea on Pinterest and thought it would be perfect to try with my little toddler. We gave it a whirl yesterday, and I'd say it was a hit...

Paint in the hair always indicates a good time, no?

We used an old canvas I already had, with the edges painted green with craft paint.  When the painting dried, I coated it with glossy Mod Podge and let it dry.  Then it was time to hang!

I thought it would give a nice burst of color in our dining room, on the collage wall with other mementos like Luci Belle's name plaque, our engagement and wedding photos, and a photo from her birth.  Love it! 

Got any simple, free craft ideas to share?

Hiking is my love language.

Photo credit: gowaterfalling.comOne of my favorite hikes of all-time is at Fall Creek Falls in Tennessee.  I used to visit several times a year when I lived in Nashville.  Oh, how I miss it.

You hike down winding, steep, rocky pathways and stairways, past cliffs dotted with rock-climbers.  You can hear the falls before you can see them - quietly roaring, its mist fills the fresh, crisp, green mountain air.  Everything smells like moss and earth. 

At first sight, you cannot get there fast enough. At the base of the pool that leads to the falls, you strip off hiking shoes and socks and sweaty shirt and shorts until all that's left is a bathing-suited body that's eager to tiptoe into the frigid water.   Go ahead - wade out onto the boulders, or perhaps just sun yourself on them for awhile.

Photo credit: swimmingholes.orgWhen you're ready, venture out further...waist-deep...shoulder-deep...then let your feet go.  Let them slip from underneath you, and make the commitment.  Neck-deep, you let out a little shriek.  Paddling erratically, then stroking smoothly, you make your way towards the rocks.  Feel the mist on your face, tickling your nose and eyelashes, until you reach the falls and swim under the pounding water as the icyness pours over you.

Goose bumps,

shivering,

refreshed,

ALIVE.

~ ~ ~

What's one of the best places you've ever hiked or swam?

Bangs!

My last experience with bangs was in the early '90s and involved a very large can of Aqua Net.  Remember "the claw?"  I was all over that.

After mulling it over for awhile, I decided to go for it again and get the more sophisticated adult version of bangs.  And last Friday, I did it!  So proud of myself, since I am a girl who does NOT like change.

I love them!  Why did I wait so long to do this?  Bangs, where have you been all my life?  Apparently hiding, hoping never to be the victim of Aqua Net again.  And they won't be.  I promise.

Top 5 Instagrams.

I'm playing along with my friends Marisa and Annie and sharing my Top 5 Instagram photos.  Fun!

I love Instagram for its simplicity. There are no fancy apps, games, or whatever - you can only upload photos, or like or comment on others' photos.  I absolutely love seeing snapshots of my friends' days - especially those who live far away.

So here are five of my favorites...

1.  Joyride.  This is easy - my husband completely in his element, when we took my mom's Jeep for a joyride last August in New Jersey.  Looking at this photo, I can practically feel the breeze on our faces and the freedom we felt that day.

2. Tree.  I pass this tree almost every day, but this day, I looked up.

3.  Daddy+daughter.  A sweet moment between my two loves.  Even better - it was during a massive thunderstorm.

4. Petals.  On one of my normal walking routes in the neighborhood about a month ago, I turned a corner to this exquisite sight.

5. Lips.  This photo makes me smile every single time.  Taken on a cool, cloudy day visiting friends on a farm in Athens, TX.

As for my favorite Instagram filters, I tend to use "Rise" and "Sierra" the most.

~ ~ ~

YOUR TURN!

Link to your favorite Instagram picture [of your own or someone else's if you don't have Instagram]. Or write a post today on your own blog with five of your favorite Instagrams and link us to that! 

What is your favorite filter to use?

So I can remember this time...

To my sweet daughter,

I'm not gonna lie, the time from you turning 18-months-old until now (22 months) has been the most challenging for me since you were a newborn.  Tantrums?  Check.  Messes upon messes?  Check.  Sleepless nights from teething?  Check.  You sure keep me on my toes!  But I still love being your mom and consider it one of the greatest gifts in life to mother you and help you grow.

You make me belly-laugh every single day.  You astonish me with the things you learn by observation.  You warm my heart with your sensitivity to others.  Time goes so quickly, and I don't want to forget.

So here are some of the things I want to remember about this stage and hopefully one day share with you...

• If you think someone got a "boo-boo," you go to kiss it and pat their back and say, "It's okay..."
• You ask to go "ow-side" all the time and love our nature walks in the woods.
• Favorite game?  I pour everything out of your owl bank, and you sit on the floor playing "monies" for a good hour.
• You love it when we get to spread a blanket on the floor of the livingroom and have a "pic-pic."
• You love to sit in the front or back yard and eat a "pop-co" (popsicle) made from coconut milk.
• At bedtime, you run down the hall yelling, "MomMEE!  DadDEE!  C'mon!" and want us to come into your room and help you go to sleep.
• You are definitely your Daddy's child!  You love to share food with people and try to put some in their mouth and say, "Bite?" 
• You also love to put the oven mitt on your hand and say, "I cook."
• You're obsessed with "kee-kats" (kitty cats) and ask me to draw them for you all the time on the sidewalk with chalk.  You stalk the kittens on our neighbor's porch and squeal in delight when one of them comes near you.  And your favorite book right now is One Kitten For Kim.
• You know the colors blue, red, and pink and can count to two.
• When I ask you, "Do you want some ice cream?" you reply, "OH BOY!"
• You give air kisses to every person and animal that you see!

You are such a delight.  I love you and am so very thankful for your life,

Mommy

How to fly with a toddler...and survive!

I was nervous about it, for sure.  I was going to fly from Dallas to Atlanta to visit my old roommate, Amy, with a 22-month-old toddler in tow.  There aren't any direct flights between those locales on Southwest, so we were going to have to connect in Houston = almost 4 hours total flying time.  This was going to be interesting.

The last time we flew together, Luci Belle was 13-months-old and not yet walking {translation: a lot easier to control}, it was a direct flight, and we had Daddy there as our "clutch."

This time?  Just mom and toddler.  Mom, solo.  S-O-L-O.  And we've been dealing with some temper tantrums lately.  Thankfully, Luci Belle is very sweet and well-behaved most of the time, but a toddler is a toddler.  And second to love, they want freeeeedom!

I really wanted to see Amy though, and figured I had to venture out there and go for it.  So I packed up the carseat, suitcase, Bob stroller, and diaper bag, strapped Luci Belle in my Boba carrier, and set forth on this adventure.

"Not so sure about this, mama!"We quickly secured a window seat on the plane, hoping and praying the flight wasn't full and that a sweet grandmotherly type - rather than a huge, stinky man - sat next to us.   Luci Belle entertained herself by pulling the window shade up and down for about a minute-and-a-half and then started getting antsy.

Before the wheels even left the tarmac, it was time.

Time to pull out my secret weapon - The Airplane Busy Bag.

{Yes, I actually wrote "Airplane Busy Bag" on it in Sharpie.  Such a nerd.}

I got the idea for the Busy Bag from this pin on Pinterest and used several of this site's ideas on what to include in my gallon Ziploc. 

Here's what my Busy Bag included...

• Stickers.   Especially fuzzy angels, shiny pigs, hearts, stars, and smiley faces.  I tried to choose stickers of words she knew, so we could also practice saying the words.
• A small notebook of blank lined paper.  She likes to draw a scribble on one page, immediately flip to the next page, etc.  And the ringed notebook would keep it all together.
• Pad of blue ocean-themed note paper.  However there were no rings, so the pages went everywhere.  Hmm, not the best idea.
  
• Smaller baggie full of crayons, a ballpoint pen, and a highlighter.  Again, I included some colors she can say.  I figured when she was worn out of the crayons, we could move on to more tantalizing items such as ink pens.
• Thomas the Tank Engine. 
  
• Ribbon with clothespins attached.  Idea from the above website.
  
• Burt's Bees Lip Balm.  Again, from the site mentioned above. She loves pretending to put on lip balm, so I thought this was a genius idea.  And at least this was clear and non-toxic.
  
• My Kindle.  Just in case she got completely bored and wanted to practice "typing" - and for when she {hopefully} fell asleep so I would have something to read that I could hold with a few spare fingers.

And then on my trusty iPhone, I had 4 movies:

• 101 Dalmations - you can never go wrong with doggies
• Horton Hears A Who
• Finding Nemo
• Ratatouille

Finally, some snacks:

• Apple
• Banana
• Hail Merry Chocolate Macaroons
• Pumpkin Seeds
• GoRaw Chocolate Sesame Seed Cookies - for me to pop in my mouth at the first sign of stress
• Corn chips
• A cup of ice ordered from the flight attendant

As for the activities, the biggest hits were clearly the lip balm, which she gouged out and spread all over her face, hands, and the leg of the lady next to us, and the stickers, which she handed one-by-one for a good twenty minutes to a 7-year-old girl sitting behind us named Hattie.  Hattie was on her way to Disney World.  When Hattie exited the plane, there were smiley face stickers {some wearing bowties} all over her shirt. 

Unfortunately the ribbon/clothespin idea was a fail.  I thought she would enjoy clipping and unclipping the clothespins, drawing on them, etc, but she just took it out of the bag and immediately threw it on the floor as if to say, "What is THIS doing in here?"

The corn chips and ice-crunching occupied another good 30-45 minutes, so I'd also consider those a huge hit.

Midway through the flight, I managed to capture this photo...  

{Toddler chowing down on apple and potentially trying to pick her nose at the same time.  Tired mom with frizzy hair, trying to hold it together.}

After this, she thankfully nursed and fell asleep for about 45 minutes, and I was too tired to read, so I just played word games on my Kindle.

Flying with an almost-2-year-old on your lap is comical, but it can be done successfully.  Sure, it's challenging attempting to color, play with stickers, and have snacks and drinks off a tray table that's tilted 45 degrees downward.  But overall, I was so proud of my adventurous, curious little girl, who mostly did not try to slither off my lap and never stopped saying and waving "hi" to the other passengers and flight crew.  Although we got close a few times, there were no tantrums.  I think Hattie had quite a bit to do with that.

Final assessment at the end of the flight?  Spilled ice water, wet seat, chewed emergency instruction manual, scribbles and stickers "decorating" the tray table, and my Kindle had somehow flown two rows back under some lady's legs. 

But we survived!  And Amy was waiting for us on the other side, ready to usher us on to our next adventure: Atlanta.

Cousin love.

One day, if you're lucky, your first cousin {who feels and looks more like a sister} will travel all the way from New Jersey to visit you.

You'll breathe the warm middle-of-spring air and feel the morning sunshine on your olive-skinned faces while sitting on the cushy grass at one of your favorite places, the SMU campus.

While there, you'll get to witness the antics of a toddler who unabashedly soaks up life with all of her 22-month-old naïveté. 

You'll get to play in the cushy grass and twirl and smile stronger than you have in awhile.

For a snack, you'll savor the sweet, sticky juices of a white Texas peach, fresh from the farm.  You'll both be such lovers of food that you'll have no problem slurping peach juices loudly in an industrial parking lot outside the Farmer's Market, with the car still running.

Later that afternoon, you might have the opportunity to pretend you're 5-years-old again and drink the perfect green smoothie through color-change straws while sitting on the floor in the living room.  

You might then convert your cousin into a green smoothie-lover and gift her with her own pack of straws to take home.

Later that evening, your husbands might join you to share an incredible meal together at a local restaurant that is kinda like Houston's but way better.

Under the dim lights and over the din of many other voices gathering on Friday night, you might play clapping games while you wait for your table, to entertain the toddler of course. 

You might then be so enamored with the beautifully-piped deviled eggs topped with salmon and crunchy coated meatballs on a stick and house-made tagliatelle and tall, thin, chilled glasses of Prosecco that you'll act like a tourist in your own city and take lots of photos.

And then, if you're really really lucky, you'll cap off the weekend with a spa-like afternoon at your cousin's hotel downtown.  Because it's not often you get to stay at a fancy Sheraton, especially in your own city.

On a warm, breezy day with a few clouds, after bouncing around the pool for an hour with a toddler clinging to your back, you'll lounge on one of the ultra-relaxing queen-size rooftop pool cabanas and dry off in the sun.

For a split second, you'll wonder where everyone else is on this particular lovely Sunday afternoon, but wherever they are, you'll be grateful they're not taking up space at this very pool, so you can have it all to your tired mama self. 

You'll be overjoyed that your toddler has quickly warmed up to her second cousin, who she doesn't get to see often.

Yes, just when you need it most, your cousin will come to town to brighten your entire weekend, and you'll be thankful she understands all the sides of you - believer in God, artist, mother, wife. 

You'll be reminded that family who are like friends are a double bonus. 

And you'll be counting down the days until August, when you can see her again.