Let's Catch up!

We had a quiet Christmas just the three of us, grandma was sick. Here's a cute picture since I haven't update my blog since then. It felt like Andrew's first Christmas to us :)

Andrew is sitting for longer periods of time now, but he still doesn't catch himself when he falls. We are working on it. The helmet is off! He outgrew it. I don't really see a big difference, which is disappointing. He is just developing very slowly, so he didn't progress much.

We had a few months of bad spitting up and vomiting. His GI put him on Zantac for now and it has really helped. No more vomiting. He's having an upper gi done next week, so we can see if there is anything going on. We also went to a really nice ENT. I'm trying a nasal spray for the congestion he always has. He also has fluid in his ears, we might look into getting tubes.

His surgery for the pin removal from his hip is scheduled for March 9th. I'm nervous and anxious. I hope the recovery is easy and that he isn't in too much pain. I'm mostly afraid of the news they might give us on how his hips are doing. I'm praying for good news.

His first tooth finally broke through this week! At almost 15 months old. Also, thanks to GetPumped, I have enough breastmilk to give Andrew for a few weeks. He also eats a bit of oatmeal in the mornings with pureed fruits and veggies. I also started giving him PediaSmart. He is still not interested in real food.

Mike moved to a cool new office. They have a whole building to themselves. They also grill almost everyday for lunch, so lucky! The bad thing about the new office is having just one car. I drop him off in the morning if I need the car that day. He is also very much into video games lately...oh and politics :S

I finally have more mommy friends and regular playdates, which makes me very happy! I've been having a few Etsy sales lately. I want to introduce prints of my paintings soon. I've also been making flower felt hair clips, but haven't had time to add them to my shop. I recently cut my hair the shortest I've ever had it. I had to buy an iron, because I don't like the way my curls are behaving. 

I will try to update more often so my posts aren't super long. I also need to take more pictures with my "big" camera. Speaking of photos, there are A LOT of mommy photographers around. I would like to take photos of events or parties. I took some of our babywearing anniversary playdate and everyone loved them. Hopefully I'll have the chance to do it more often, maybe for a small fee? 

The Nursery

Almost 10 months since Andrew was born, here is his little nursery. It's small, simple, and colorful.  A blend of Ikea and handmade features.

We are using the Stuva storage system from Ikea as our dresser/changing table.  

The cloud shelf was handmade and given to me as a gift. My mom and I made the felt birds, Andrew LOVES them and always smiles when he sees them move.

The bookshelf is also from Ikea (Expedit) and was also given to me as a gift. The white Gulliver crib from Ikea was also given to us as a gift. My mom made me custom covers for the cubes that go inside the bookshelf.

 My mom also made all of the cross stitch work in the nursery. I bought the little frog pattern on Etsy from The Floss Box.

The little flags were decorations my friend Candice and I made for my baby shower. I painted the little bird house and the two watercolor paintings.

So there you have it, my favorite room in the house. I sleep there every night. What do you think?

5 months

Andrew turned 5 months yesterday. I'm so happy to share with you that things are finally getting better. About 3 weeks ago Andrew just stopped crying! I've been enjoying him so much more now, things are easier when he is not crying most of the day. I'm even able to go alone with him shopping and he is happy in his stroller. I really wanted to be the "baby wearing" kind of mom, but he just doesn't like it! 

We had our first sleep over at his grandmas house this past weekend, it was very nice! Everything went smoothly and he even slept most of the night (but now that we are back home, he is back to his "normal" sleeping schedule, yawn!) My mother in law took over baby duty for one of the nights so I finally slept :) 

I've had a little more time to do "me" things. I started painting again for my etsy shop Sugar Village, so I'll be posting new paintings very soon. I also did 2 paintings for Andrew's room. There is a phone picture on my Sugar Village Facebook page if you want to see them. As soon as I'm done with it, I'll post pictures of his room, I just have a couple more things that I need. I also bought this Kolocraft stroller because the little cheap one I had, broke this past weekend. 

We still don't have a date for Andrew's hip surgery, but we have an appointment with his geneticist tomorrow, so we'll see when she thinks he should have it done, it will still be in the next couple of months though. Another thing for which I can't stop smiling; one of my good friends had her first baby, it was a girl. They had a home birth and everyone is doing great! I'm so proud of her :)

Well, that's about all I have for now, I just wanted to thank everyone who has been praying and thinking of us. I'm glad things are getting better, we still have some bad days, but they are rare now. I hope they don't turn bad again when he has his surgery, I better not think about that right now :( 

Where do I start?

It's been almost 2 months since I last updated my blog, so lets see, where do I even begin?! The weekend of my birthday (Oct. 18th), my step dad was in town for work, so I got to spend some time with him. My friend Paola (she lives in Cancun) also surprised me and showed up at my house later that same week. A week after my step dad left, my mom got here.

My mom and I started to get crafty so we wouldn't get anxious waiting for baby to make an appearance. She helped me make some felt birds to hang in the nursery. We even made some felt ornaments for my etsy shop :) Once we were on a roll, we also made Christmas bird ornaments, they have cute little Santa hats on.

Weeks went by, I still felt great and even though it was almost my due date, I didn't feel any differently or like the little one wanted to come out anytime soon. Here's a picture of me and my friend Paola, I was 39 weeks I think, ready to pop!

I had two OB appointments once I was 40 weeks, one on a Monday called a biophysical profile, where they just listened to the babys heartbeat for 20 minutes, to make sure he was still doing alright, which he was. Later that same week on Friday they did the non stress test, which was an ultrasound to see how the baby was doing. Turns out I had low amniotic fluid.

I still think it's funny how the ultrasound technician said "looks like you might have your baby today", to which I responded: "I don't think so, I'm going to Ikea tomorrow". So after talking to my OB, she said that we had to induce. Mike and I were pretty much in shock, we just didn't expect things to happen this way.

To be continued...

Thursday

Not much going on this week. I did however, start having camera problems. I'm getting an error that says the contacts are dirty, but they are not, then it doesn't let me take photos at certain apertures. I contacted Canon and they said to mail in the camera for service. I also contacted Tamron and they said the same thing. Now I'm just trying to figure out which one to send out first to save on shipping.

I posted two new paintings on my Etsy store today that I made using gouache. It was fun experimenting with a different medium, but I think I'll stick to watercolors for now. After coming back from supervising Mike at the pool (yes, he's still at it), I came home to some lovely sales! I was so excited! I sold 3 paintings. I'm trying to save money for when I go to Mexico in a few months. Well, that's it for now, have a good weekend.

So sweet!

My work was featured at Vink Design's Blog. It means so much to me when I see my work featured by people that don't even know me... it's like, wow! someone really likes my work! I should continue making it :)

Go check out the sweet words she says about Sugar Village and while you're at it, check out her work as well, if you like my style, you'll LOVE hers.

A little Valentine for you

So, I didn't win the card contest :( but the good news is, I'm sharing them with you! Just click on each image to view it larger, then right click on it and save it to your computer. You can have the little ones (or yourself, hee hee) color in your own valentine's day cards or you can just print, cut and hand out. Here's the card designs that won. Have fun!

Contest

Cool Mom Picks had a Valentine's day card contest. Today was the last day to enter, I finished up my designs yesterday with lot's of technical help from my friendly friend Candice. The designs are so kids color them in themselves. Here's my two entries:

Wish me luck!

New Paintings

Just a little sneak peak of one of my new paintings. This and other new watercolor paintings now available in my little shop. Have a good week!

I still like birds...

I purchased this little birdie on Etsy from Holly Craft and made him into a pin for my blue cardigan... I think it looks cute :)

I got a haircut the other day. I'm still enjoying this short style, so I'm sticking to it for a while. It's very comfortable and easy to style, it just takes me a few minutes to dry it with the diffuser and I'm ready to go.

Mike has been off work these past two days, so he's been around. I also took down all the Christmas decorations, now there's just a pile of boxes in my dining room ready to go up in the attic.

I sold a painting today and I also got an email from a past customer asking for a painting, so my Etsy shop has been good :) Oh, I made a few changes to my blog, I felt like it was too cluttered so it's back to two columns and I also made a new header.

Well, it's time to make dinner, have a great weekend! It's supposed to snow a little bit tomorrow, we shall see about that...

Today has been a good day!

• I started my day off with an email from someone wanting a custom set of my hand painted Christmas ornaments. I can't wait to get started on them.

• I had a very silly portrait taken by famous rock star photographer Brook Pifer, at her studio earlier today. Even my friend Isabelle was there.

• On my way back home, I stopped at Whole Foods to get some grass fed beef and I noticed that my favorite cookie dough was buy one get one free, score!

• I came home to find an amazing Christmas present under my tree and also some more awesomeness in my bank account. We are truly loved around here. It's been a wonderful holiday season this year!

December

I'm running kind of late in my December blogging, oops! Not much to report though. I tried looking back in my blog posts to see what was going on around this time last year and I didn't even talk about Christmas! I guess I just wasn't in the mood for it. We didn't even put up a tree last year, so that explains a bit.

Mike came home from work with our tree on Monday and it's all set up and decorated :) We still have the same ornaments we bought a few years ago... I hope next year we can have a different color scheme, something more colorful. Right now it's gold and red hues, I mean it's nice and elegant looking, but we can't have the same every single year now can we?

I'm also excited about Christmas because we are hosting it at our place. I mean it's only Mike, his mom and me, but still. It'll be the first time we do it. We're thinking about making a prime rib roast, scalloped potatoes, a fancy salad and for dessert, individual chocolate molten lava cakes. I haven't had pumpkin pie since thanksgiving but I had pumpkin pie ice cream from Jeremiah's... it was SO good! I might make a pumpkin pie as well, I haven't had enough this year.

I made another set of ornaments for the shop, so go check them out, there's still time to get them before Christmas. I also have my Christmas cards sealed, stamped and ready to mail. We still have some shopping to do, but hopefully we'll get it done this weekend. Anyway, my shop needs new illustrations, so I'm off to keep cutting paper and sketch. Good luck with all your holiday preparations.

Cute Ornaments

I made these three Christmas ornaments for my Etsy shop. They were pretty fun to make, even though they took longer than I expected. They are painted on wooden ornaments that I found at the craft store. What do you think? Are you ready for the holidays? We haven't even started thinking about Christmas shopping yet, I'll start thinking about it after Thanksgiving.

(Click on the image to go to Sugar Village)

November

And it's still hot around here... Sorry for the lack of posts, but I started to work for the US Census again, this time as a Recruiter Assistant. I have to find people in my area to apply for Census jobs, find locations where I can administer the test required to be hired and administer the test myself.

I was really freaking out last week, we only had 3 days of training, the rest of the days I kind of helped and listened to other recruiters administer the test. I was at the main office last week, so it wasn't that bad, this week I really need to go recruit and find locations. I also get to administer my first test tomorrow all by myself *gulp*

Other than that, I sold 3 paintings from Sugar Village the other day, that was cool! They were some of my personal favorites too. I don't know when I'll have time to work on new ones now, which sucks! I did however, purchase a set of pens that I use on my paintings, my very first Ebay purchase.

Another thing that I'm a bit embarrassed in sharing is that, I am slightly obsessed with the Twilight books. Yes, I used to make fun of them, until I saw the first book at the library and decided to give it a try. Omg, now I can not stop reading them! I'm on the second book now. How did this happen?! Ok, you can stop laughing at me now...

Well, I guess I better go get my clothes and lunch ready for work and also organize some paper work for the tomorrows test... who am I kidding, I'm just going to go read New Moon, muahahaha!

One Year Ago...

I listed my first little painting on my Etsy shop Sugar Village. So to celebrate, I have free shipping on all my paintings today, even the ones on sale! Now go on share the news!

Ice Cream!

Here's one of my latest Sugar Village paintings. I have another one of dinosaurs in the shop if you want to take a looksie. By the way, it's October! Which seems to have brought along some beautiful weather to Orlando... That makes me very happy :)

Friday

Tonight I'm going to an art show/art supply drive for the SHO Foundation in Winter Park, my friend Isabelle will be showing some photos among other artists.

Two of my Sugar Village paintings are in this amazing online magazine called Modern Handmade Child, I'm on page 17, check it out and share it with anyone that has kids or babies.

Here's a picture of some "free" moo cards I received in the mail last week, I really like the feel and look, now I understand what all the fuss is about moo cards. Oh, and that flower? It's a hair clip I made out of a flower I bought at Ikea for 50¢!

Have a good weekend!

Sugar Village

Hello! I realized I haven't blogged about my Etsy shop lately. There's new paintings, invitations and note cards. Go to Sugar Village to see all the new items. Also, if you use Facebook and would like to receive updates from my shop, please become a fan, thanks!

Rainy days

Mike has been on vacation since last Thursday. We've been staying home, being lazy, cooking and watching mostly bad and corny movies. Mike has been having trouble with his back lately, so today he finally went to the doctor. He needs to go get blood work done (and so do I), get an x-ray of his back and also go to physical therapy. I really hope he gets better soon. We'll probably do all that this week and see what happens from there.

I was working on 3 new paintings for Sugar Village, I finished 2 of them but messed up TWICE on the third, I was so upset I left it alone for a while. Instead, I started editing some of the paintings on the computer to have more note cards made. I even designed invitations with the elephant and cupcake design on them. I'm so excited about them! Can't wait to get them printed. I also think I'm going to get cards made with my "big" painting design on them, which is the one I'm showing below.

PS. I forgot to mention that we also bought a new washer this weekend, something happened to the transmission of our old one. First the AC, then the water heater now this...it sucks.

Star Trek and Cookies

Hello! Mike and I are going to go watch the Star Trek movie later tonight. How did a girl like me get into this Star Trek mess you may ask, well let me explain. I made Mike watch the whole series of Friends and Sex and the City with me and in exchange, I would watch Star Trek with him, well let me tell you, there are enough Star Trek episodes for the next 100 years! I must find another girly series for him to watch with me.

We made peanut butter cookies last night. Although I really wanted crunchy oatmeal cookies, like the ones from Panera Bread, but we made those instead. I'm attempting to make a coconut cream pie today for my mother in law, that's the dessert she requested for tomorrow. I can blame Mike if it doesn't come out well, I'm doing it how he told me to.

I finally started working on new paintings for Sugar Village, it's going to be 3 pieces with an A, B and C. I'll show you when I'm finished with them. I want to start making paintings for any age group, because right now, they appeal mostly to people with babies. But every time I try to, it transforms into something cute, I just can't help it. Maybe one day...