Giveaway Winner!

Been waiting on pins and needles, is it?

Using the best detective skills I can muster, my guess is y'all forgot all about this little contest. (but it's ok! My feelings aren't hurt. You came back and are reading now!) 

...given the fact that no one ever asked me, "Sharon. Who the heck won that giveaway!?!"
...also given the way holidays go around here, I imagine yours are like ours...

And in your holiday ways you've had the likes of some doozies the last few weeks like:
(American) Thanksgiving
Christmas
New Year's

And as we all know, that lovely Trifecta of year-end merry making has smatterings of parties, food, events, bonfires and more food to keep you well occupied beyond the likes of this blog.

Just after making you all sign up for the giveaway, we had Thanksgiving (on the Sunday after Thanksgiving Day).  As it goes, at an international school where only like 4 or 5 kids are American, there wasn't enough heft in the student body to declare a day off from school.

And you'd think this video would be enough to make our kids question why they had to go to school that day. But no such luck. Off they went and I'm pretty sure I had rice and curry and/or peanut butter and jelly that day.

Probably the REAL reason our kids didn't notice it going by is because Grandma came to visit and we had our Thanksgiving dinner the day she arrived.

Yes, you're correct if you think I just pulled the Grandma-excuse card for my lack of blogging. There is no trump.

Though this giveaway does not rank among the "dozens" of entries of some blogs, nor did it have the best "reveal" time, it DID prove that I have at least twice as many readers as I thought making the total around 12. (baby steps y'all) Which even a math dodo like myself can figure, you're odds of winning were much better because of it! Who can complain?

So. Without a moment's more delay....

The lovely Nicole D. is the winner!

Isaiah drew your name out of the back of a Lego Duplo Cement mixer. Quite dramatically.

Ok, maybe not dramatically.

Ok, maybe I had to tear him away from Disney Jr. for like half-a-second, force his hand into the cement mixer tub, and maybe he didn't even look at me when he handed me the paper.

That's neither here nor there.

The point is little Mr. Harrison (and any more siblings that follow him) is getting a toothmonster pillow! Even if I'm the only one around here excited about it! He's just now getting his teeth, but in a few years, it'll be quite handy dandy indeed.

As per Nicole's request, it's "gender neutral."  (Hope it's ok Nicole!)

AND since Nicole is my friend, I'm also sending her a Christmas Card from our family AND a Malaysia magnet to hold it onto her fridge with.

Congratulations Nicole!

Crafty Schmafty- Tooth Monster Pillows (and a giveaway!)

Remember last week when my first-born lost his first tooth?

Luckily it happened on a school holiday AND in the morning. I can do crafty, but rarely does it turn out to be a "short" project no matter how hard I try.

All those pinterest tutorials, "20 minute pillow cover!" and the like.
Sure there flap jack. I got 4 reasons, and they all start with the letter "i," that say otherwise to your 20 minute time frame.

Small child interruptions, laundry, and meal times excluded...these pillows took me about 45 minutes to make for each one. I started Isaac's around 11am and finished around 8pm. That's real time! HA! With juuuuust time enough for Isaac to slide that little Chiclet into the monster's mouth as he hit the hay.

He was so excited. The next morning he told us approximately 140 times before he left for school that he, "...got a paper mummy AND TWOOOO more mummys! Look at my coins!"

I was pleased at the outcome.  So then, because I like arbitrary goals. I decided I had to go ahead and make 3 more for the other kiddos right away. They emerged adorable from felt, scraps, 2 old shirts, and an old bathing suit of Anthony's.

Does it matter that the youngest doesn't have any teeth yet? No. Because tomorrow she'll be losing her first tooth and I won't have had anymore time to make a Tooth Monster Pillow for her than I did this week.

Speaking of. Would one of you 4 or 5 who read this blog like a Tooth Monster Pillow?* They really are easy to make and I've had fun doing so.  I totally ganked the style from Pinterest. I didn't follow a particular pattern, but they look like a lot of what I perused.

Since y'all come here and take time out of your day to look at pics of my adorable kids (who currently have sidewalk chalk war paint on their faces because I had to leave them "unattended" as I wrote this blogpost...the boys colored Immanuelle's face for her. Amazing, really, how well sidewalk chalk writes on faces.) and love on our family from afar, I thought someone else might want one?  For your kids? (we all shared a tooth pillow growing up) To give as a gift to the grands? Carry with you in your purse to hold your coin mummys? 

So. A Giveaway. Never done one before. Are there rules? Maybe. Lets try it this way.

To get your name thrown in the hat, there's 2 ways. Max 2 entries per person.
1. Leave a comment - Got a funny tooth story? Tell me! Include your email address so I can contact you if you win (I have to approve all comments, so I will make note, edit, and will NOT post your email address)
or
2. "Share" this post on facebook.

If you win I'll let you pick if you want a "girl" or "boy" monster if you have a preference...but that's all for choice, mkay? I'll choose the fabric and the buttons and what not and it'll be a fun surprise to open the package and see what turned out! Plus...a package alllll the way from **Malaysia?!? Sweet deal!

{GIVEAWAY SIGN-UP CLOSED! ANNOUNCING WINNER SOON!}
*I'm nervous because what if no one cares?
Y'all care, right?!
**Malaysia is far from America. There's no way to guarantee delivery date. If you win and you're from America and/or you live in a country that has less reliable postal systems, I apologize in advance for a) it taking forever for your package to get to you...usually around 3 weeks to America or b) never making it at all.  So far that's never happened. Fingers crossed! 

From Before to After: Master Bedroom

Y'all haven't missed anything.

We haven't moved.
Same house. 2 years.

It's just that I'm just now getting around to putting up "real" curtains in our bedroom. (blogworthy right?)

Are y'all disappointed about something? Anxiously waiting for a different sort of blogpost? Maybe of something on a smaller, sweeter, and 7 pounds-ish scale?

I get it. I'm 38 weeks pregnant. Full-term. Ready to pop and all. Y'all were hoping for newborn pics, weren't you?

The short version is, my womb laughs at due dates. 

Scoffs, even.  

Watches them come and go, leaving labor wards empty. (i4 Sweety, you have permission to make Mama eat her words)

September 30th is the due date. The 2-week blog forecast is 99% chance of scattered nesting/decorating/i1-i2-i3/waiting-for-baby blogposts. Isaac the First was a c-section so it's not safe to induce. We wait. I paint stuff. I make to-do lists. I sew. I freeze meals. I clean things. Grandparents arrive. We wait some more.

Now that everyone is on the same wavelength (with less sciatic nerve pain, I hope,  for your sake) lets take things back circa 2011 for the "BEFORE" pictures...

June 2011. Let's call this one, "High Hopes."

Then... so you can see the step-by-step, non-haphazard way we added a bed frame, painted over the orange-water spotted walls, and got around to covering up all the storage-ness, here's some DURING or, for the forward thinking, PROGRESSION pictures... 

There's so much to love. No duvet cover, wires exposed (no that one isn't going into his diaper, though it looks like it!), a sleeping Zayah.  Who needs a bed frame for a nap?!  No way THIS room is getting confused for a Master Bedroom.  Nuh-uh.

 We'll call this one, "Laundry Day" because it sure as heck wasn't "Decorating Day." Taken by a toddler-Isaac somewhere around January 2012 or before, given the size of Immanuelle who stopped sleeping in our room around then.

Another moment captured successfully by Toddler-Isaac. SO glad he got the beige-and-green curtain fantasy in the frame.  There are just some things that need to be remembered.

October-ish 2012.  It was tough but I think, "Lazy and Not Decorating Bedroom" would be pretty on-target for this caption.

"Storage Glory" ... August 2013....and the crib is BACK in our room! The blue part of the walls was painted by this point as well as pallet-mirrors made for dressers. However, given the state of things that's just a desperate way of saying "PLEASE don't look at those awful curtains and ignore the craploads of exposed storage."

"The Last Stand"
August-September 2013. The state of things for over a week. Approximately 45 seconds after the storage boxes were opened to be whittled down to as close to empty as possible (so long extra crap!) Isaac cry-yells from the bathroom, "MAMA! I JUST THREW UP!"  Have mercy. We persevered. Boys started school, bottoms got sewn onto the curtains, my hero of a husband figured out how to rig up the curtain rods and we declared it "PRETTY MUCH DONE!"

I won't keep the AFTER shots from you any longer...

Morning Light
There are now black-outs behind the curtains, but I love morning light all the same. Helps me roll (literally) out of bed.

Beige lampshades that look oh-so gold in photos. Meh.

Nighttime with Lights On
And now the pillows look green?! {shoulder shrug}

Still a few things to add, no? Rugs. Rugs and Photos missing. And Artwork... And I can tell what y'all are thinking and you're right; actually, there WAS a full-length mirror on the blue wall by the wardrobe. It crashed (and I tried to re-purpose the wood!) but it has not been replaced. Yet.

One last one. Because looking at the same room at different times of day really IS interesting and it  DOES give you a glimpse of my life as we wait for i4...

Lamplight

And maybe rugs and artwork aren't what's missing...it's more like baby spit-up... and a diaper that didn't make it to the trashcan as soon as it was changed. Oo-oo! AND a passed out Mama holding a baby who both fell asleep at the midnight feeding. THAT is what will make it complete! (rather, it's what's sure to make it in the room before any new rug or piece of artwork!)