Thanksgiving

She's ALL girl!

I had every intention to write a great post about the things I'm thankful for, but it just didn't happen in time. We leave town in the morning and I won't have access to a computer all weekend.
I hope you all have a fabulous Thanksgiving!!

The Best Weekend Ever!!

Wow! We had such a great weekend- I didn't want it to end! We have been so busy with painting the house (that's still not completely done), that we haven't had a weekend to just relax in a long time. We decided to leave the paintbrushes in the garage and just relax for 2 days.
Saturday morning I went with Mom and Shannel to Holiday Happening. It was fun to look through all the cute things and eat lunch together. I really appreciate Matt taking Kate for the morning. I got to take a nap that afternoon and it was great! Saturday night we dropped Kate off at Mom and Dad's for the night and went on a date!! We went to Shogun for dinner and then saw Couples Retreat. It was a really funny movie! It was wonderful to be able to sleep in a little on Sunday morning and sit through church without keeping Kate quite and still. And we went to Carino's for lunch, which is hard to do when we have Kate and she needs to get home for a nap. I also got caught up on Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice. I had 5 episodes to watch between the 2 shows.
My house looks like it exploded because I didn't do anything over the weekend, so I'm busy cleaning and doing laundry for our trip in a couple of days.

Happy Birthday!

Today is Mike's birthday. We can't wait until Saturday to see him and the rest of the Pittman clan. We hope you have a great birthday!

FYI

There's been a lot going on here the last couple of weeks and I have some exciting things to share with you.
-Be on the lookout for post about a Cookie Party that I'm hosting. I was picked to host a party for Betty Crocker and just got my box in the mail. I'm so excited to share all about it in the next couple of weeks.
-I actually won a couple of giveaways this last week!! I won a coupon for a free box of Little Debbie Chocolate Cupcakes and a bag of Rockin' Green Laundry Detergent (more info. below)!! I'm very excited and can't wait to get my goodies.
-There are a couple of great giveaways going on right now:
*Head over to Monkey Tails to enter to win a bag of Rockin' Green laundry detergent. I love this stuff! You pick your scent- we love vanilla butter cream and cherry almond. I use it on Kate's cloth diapers and our clothes and it works great. The giveaway ends December 18th.
*Over at the Cloth Diaper Blog they are giving away a HUGE bundle of cloth diapers worth $245! If you've ever wanted to try cloth, but have been afraid of the investment, please enter to win. If you don't have a baby in diapers, you could enter the giveaway and give me the diapers when you win :) This giveaway ends December 4th.
*The Cloth Diaper Whisperer is also giving away a HUGE prize- cloth diapers and a Flip video camcorder! Yet again, this is a great way to try cloth or you can give it all to me if you win! This giveaway ends Thanksgiving day at 7pm.
-I placed my order for Kate's birthday invitations today and I'm ordering our Christmas cards this weekend- all for free. 50 photo invitations. 50 photo Christmas cards. Free. Including shipping. Here's what you need to do:
*Head over to Freebies4mom for all the details for getting 50 4x8 photo cards from SeeHere.com by FujiFilm.
*Create an account before you start creating your cards. (When you create a new account you also get 100 free prints, but you will have to do this separately from the free cards.)
*Save your card. Checkout using the code from Freebies4mom. Once those are ordered, log back in and order another set of 50 using the code newbaby.
This deal ends November 30th so hurry!!
(I am impressed with SeeHere!! I placed my order yesterday at 3pm and they had shipped before I went to bed. My sister has already received her cards and they look great!!)

My New Baby

I'm. in. love.
I finished my apron last night at 1:30am. I'm exhausted today, but it was worth it.
It's funky, crazy, and totally me. I learned to sew ruffles and now want them on everything. After seeing how easy and cute they were, I went back and added a small ruffle to the top of the bib (which I would make a little bigger and not so square-ish). It's not prefect and I ran into a few small problems because I didn't have the right lengths of fabric (and I am a little ADD when it comes to sewing), but you can't really tell unless you get up close.
Here's the link for the apron if you want to make one too. (Talk to me before you start, because some of the directions are weird and I can save you some heartache.)
With a little more practice, I might just have to go into business!

11 Months

I know I say this every month, but I can't believe Kate is already 11 months old. She is understanding more everyday. This has been such a fun age.

-Kate has taken up to 7 steps at a time (several times), but still isn't "walking". You can see her thinking about it and trying, then she remembers that she can get to her destination a lot quicker by crawling.
-She can show you where her hair (all the time) and nose (sometimes) are when asked. She can follow simple commands. Example: When you ask her to feed her baby, she'll go get the baby from across the room, find the baby's bottle and feed the baby. She can go and get pretty much any of her favorite toys, She will go to her room, the kitchen, and the bathroom when asked.
-She can sign "more" and does it often when she's eating.
-She shakes her head no when I make her mad and won't let her have what she wants.
-Kate is pretty much done with pureed food. She still has cereal for breakfast, but most days for lunch and dinner she feeds herself finger foods. It's nice to be able to all eat at the same time, but it sure is messy. If we're going somewhere I'll still feed her the purees because I need her to stay clean. She loves black beans and would eat them every meal if I let her.
-She did great with the time change and was back to sleeping from 7pm-7am within a couple of days.
-Kate loves playing in the bathroom, especially with the toilet. Instead of telling her "no" all the time, we got her a potty seat. She has sat on it a handful of times, but hasn't done anything yet. We're not training her, just trying to get her used to it. So far she loves it!
-We also started brushing her "teeth" last week. Even though she doesn't have teeth yet, her breath was starting to stink. We brush her gums with a tiny bit of baby toothpaste everyday.

What I should be doing...

-cleaning house for the company coming to dinner tonight.
-taking video of Kate walking and posting it for all the proud grandparents to see.
-hanging up the clean laundry that's been on the guest bed for days.
-washing Kate's sippy cups so she can have something to drink out of for lunch.
-getting Kate's 11 month pictures and post ready for tomorrow.
-ironing Matt's pants for work. He asked me to do it last week and it's still not done.
-painting the windows so we can be done with the house.
-take a shower, brush my teeth, put on clothes. You know, the basics.

Instead I'm in love with my current sewing project and can't. stop. working. on. it.

Remember me talking about the scarf sew along?

Well, I ordered some fabric online.

Then Matt got upset because "you never wear scarves! What are you going to do with 8 of them?!?!"

So I started thinking about what else I could make with 9 fat quarters.

And I found an apron that I fell in love with online. So I'm in the middle of making an apron. One that calls for 6 different fabrics that are longer than what I've got. So I'm adjusting and piecing together my 9 (actually 8- I didn't really like the birdcage one) fat quarters and making it work.

I'm hoping to finish it tomorrow. I'll post pictures.

Did I mention that I'm in love?

Happy Monday!

Kate has been walking like crazy this morning! She'll take 7-8 steps, get what she wants and then so it all over again. I'll try to catch it on video tonight and get it up tomorrow. Hope you have a great Monday!