WFMW: The Best Baby Sleep Book Around

Do you feel like you are experiencing déjà vu?  If you've been around for awhile, you will recognize this photo below as Nina's bedroom, pre-big girl bed.  Well, guess what?  This is also Nina's bedroom, today!

Yep, we moved her back to her crib.  Remember how I mentioned in this post that she been having some, ah, nocturnal adventures?  Well, those expanded into climbing onto furniture, falling off furniture, and skipping naps altogether, resulting in about 2-3 hours less sleep per day.  Cranky little girl, cranky mommy.  Bad!

The reason I share this with you is this: there has been a book that I have used religiously since Nina was a newborn.  I read so many sleep books when she was an infant, desperate as I was to find some way to get more sleep for her and for us.  "Sleeping Through the Night," by Jodi Mindell, was my favorite, and I credit it for Nina's status as a "good sleeper" (up until now, at least)!

So of course when we ran into these new developments, I immediately turned to this book.  Unfortunately, she didn't have a ton of info on my particular problem, so I did what any blogger would do.  I Googled her.  I found her email address.  She holds a PhD and teaches at a university in Philadelphia.  I sent her a very polite and (I hope) appreciative email, describing our situation and asking what we should do.

Here's where it gets really good.  She wrote me back.  Within 30 minutes, people.  With a thoughtful and educated response.  I was floored.  And am also about ready to throw her a parade here in Denver.  For those of you who have ever felt unsure of what to do in the world of parenting, or, for that matter, in life itself, you will recognize how valuable and rare it is to have a true expert swoop in and help you right when you are about to lose it.  I am so impressed by this woman!

So I write this post to tell you how wonderful Dr. Jodi Mindell is, how much I love her book, and how peaceful it is to be sitting here during Nina's nap, knowing that she is sleeping well in her crib and that she just was too young, not ready for the switch to the big girl bed.  We will try again in a few months when she is cognitively and behaviorally more ready to deal with lack of boundaries in a bed.

In the meantime, I will be sleeping through the night too!  Works For Me! 

WFMW: A Christmas Card Miracle!

I'm glad you stopped by today to witness this great Christmas miracle.  OK, it's not as amazing as the birth of Jesus, but we can still celebrate!  What am I talking about?  Take a look below:

Those, my friends, are my Christmas cards.  Stamped, stuffed, sealed.  They went out in yesterday's mail.  Why yes, that is a miracle unto itself!  But wait, there's more!  I want to do something that I avoid doing at all costs to share with you the extent of this miracle: Math.

A few months ago, I told you about my love of Scrapblog.  You can see that post here, but basically, I discovered that I could design cute things on this digital scrapbooking site and then save them as .jpeg files.  These files can then be given to any printer to print as a regular photo.

So, my first step was to design my Christmas card on Scrapblog.  Now comes the Math part.  Brace yourself.

Printing of 100 (4x6) cards................$14.49

100 (4x6) envelopes (Walmart!)......$8.88

100 stamps...........................................$42.00

TOTAL.......................................$65.37

Isn't this amazing?  Originally, I went to Kinko's to print my cards, and they were going to charge me $60 just to print, not to mention I would have had to cut each one out myself, and the clarity of the picture wasn't very good.  If I had gone that route, I would have spent over $110 in total and had Lord-knows-how-many paper cuts!  Instead, I just sent my .jpeg file to Kodak online, and a few days later, this lovely package came to my door.  Great clarity, great color, and already pre-cut to the 4x6 size!

If you like to design things like this yourself, I highly recommend Scrapblog and Kodak, or one of the many other online tools like them.  I am so happy!  And here's my finished Christmas card (with our last name blotted out).  Merry Christmas!

See what I mean?  A $65 Christmas miracle!  Works for Me!

WFMW: Christmas-y Hostess Gifts

I feel like I have a Christmas party to go to every weekend this December!  I always try to take a little gift to the hostess when we go to parties.  Whenever we've been the hosts (and I can remember one party in particular which found me, after everyone had gone home, vacuuming the kitchen table because it had gotten so gross from the hors d'oeuvres) I really appreciated the people who thought to bring us a little something.  Parties are hard work!  It stinks to be the one left behind with the clean-up.  But they are so much fun too!

Anyway, back to the gifts.  Below are a few ideas of things to bring to a party this season.  I usually keep most of this stuff in the house, and I buy them when they go on sale so that I am not panicking at the last minute.

First, your average bottle of wine, perked up with a ribbon and a cute little spreader for dips and such:

Here's a close-up because I thought the spreader was so cute!

I usually have a stash of this type of stuff below around the house.  Teas, coffees, hot chocolate, and boxes of individually-wrapped biscotti.  I keep another stash of those clear cellophane bags (found at Michaels or similar).  Just put a few of these little goodies in a bag, throw in some tissue paper, tie it with a pretty bow, and tell the hostess that this gift is for tomorrow morning when she is too tired to make breakfast.  :)

How about buying cute kitchen towels when you see them on sale?  Then just tie one with a pretty bow and you have an adorable little gift that the hostess can use to hang for decoration...or to do the dishes when the guests go home!

Here's another twist on the wine theme.  (Can you tell I love wine when I am not pregnant?)  I bought a few generic vases when they went on sale at the end of the summer, and just added a vinyl letter and a cute ribbon.  This is a unique gift that the hostess can use at future parties to keep the opened bottles of wine from dripping all over her table.  (And yes, this photo was taken last month, so the pumpkins are giving me away!)

But don't you love the little button detail?  

Hopefully if you have a few of these items in a closet somewhere, it will be a little easier to get out the door to the next Christmas party.  Works For Me!

WFMW: Last Minute Cards for Gifts

Today's Works-For-Me-Wednesday tip is one that has saved me countless times.  I don't know about you, but I always seem to be scrambling at the last minute to get gifts for people.  And cards for those gifts are even harder to remember.  So a few years ago, I got smart and started a stationery collection (all photos have been "doctored" to protect our last name...I hope you can still get the gist of it!).

This first one is a simple card with my daughter's name on it.  Whenever she brings a gift to a little friend's birthday party, we whip these out to use as the birthday card:

Next is a little gift card that has our last name on it.  It reads "The Smiths" (obviously not our real last name)!  These have come in handy for weddings and other occasions when the gift is from the whole family:

These last ones are my favorite.  They are gift tags specifically designed to fit over a bottle of wine!  How many times have you been on the way to a friend's house for dinner and haphazardly grabbed a bottle of wine from your own cupboard to give as a hostess gift?  I totally do that too!  These little cards just make the wine look a little more "finished" and not like you grabbed it on the way out the door (which you totally did):

When I factor in how much money I spend on cards at the grocery store or Target (if I remember to buy them!), it really adds up.  I buy these cards in bulk (anywhere from 25-100 at a time) and it ends up to be about $1-$1.50 each (and I don't know about you, but I easily spend double that per card if I buy them at the last minute).  Personally, I have someone locally who sells these to me, but I have also seen similar cards online at places like Tiny Prints or Doodlebug Dezigns.

This is the perfect little time-and stress-saving trick to keep in my back pocket.  Works for me!

WFMW: A Toy Worth Buying (For Babies)!

Today's Works-For-Me-Wednesday is a themed one: the Toys Worth Buying edition!  It just so happens that I went to a baby shower over the weekend and used this idea, but it would work just as well as a Christmas gift.  In my case, the mom-to-be is having twins, one boy and one girl.  A few friends and I wanted to get something that she could use for both babies, regardless of gender.  Look what we came up with!

We bought a simple basket from Michael's, added some green grosgrain ribbon (green is nice and gender neutral, you know!), and then splurged on a ton of board books to fill the basket.  I remembered that, before I had my daughter, I always wondered how people collected such extensive libraries for their kids.  I knew I wanted to teach my daughter the love of reading, but seriously, who has the money to buy stacks of books when there are cribs and strollers to buy?

Everyone at the shower commented on the basket, and we felt very virtuous because we have contributed to the babies' literary education.  Plus, just look how stinkin' cute the basket is!

An easy, gender-neutral and charming gift for babies (and new parents!).  Works For Me!

WFMW: Easy Vintage Artwork

Day Three of my front room makeover is here!  It is also a great excuse to share a "Works For Me Wednesday" tip that I recently discovered.  

I needed some new artwork for my front room.  But I am not one to go out and spend a ton of money on art pieces, as much as I would like to.  Luckily, a few weeks ago, I found three gorgeous frames, all matching, at Goodwill for $4 each.  

These frames also came with mats, so I didn't even have to buy those.  I just needed to come up with something cool to put in the frames.  Enter Vintage Printables!  It's this wonderful website I heard about recently (I can't remember where, but if you blogged about it, please tell me so I can credit you!).  It has lots of beautiful sketches and vintage drawings, all free to use, as far as I can tell.  Check out what I ended up with!

Don't you love my vintage birds?  The colors are gorgeous, and they match my new room perfectly.  The best part is that I printed them in my husband's home office on the backs of manila file folders which, when cut to the right size, made the perfect "canvases" for these little birds.  I didn't spend a dime on the prints, and I got gorgeous artwork that looks fantastic in my new front room.

Oh, and did you want to see what the frames looked like when I started?  Nice, but just not the style I was going for.

So there you go!  Free, original artwork at Vintage Printables.  Works For Me!

WFMW: Easy Lampshade Rehab

This project "works-for-me" so well, I can't believe it took me this long to try it.  I wanted to add a night light in my downstairs powder room, and I found those lampshades at Joann's (or Michael's or wherever) that have a sticky exterior for easy fabric attachment.  I bought some cute fabric, grosgrain ribbon and a little dangly fringe.  Just smooth the fabric over the sticky side of the lampshade, trim it to fit, and use a glue gun to seal the edges.  Then use the glue gun again to attach the ribbon and fringe.  Easy!

It was so easy, in fact, that I decided to make one for my daughter's bathroom upstairs.  Same process...and about 15 minutes of work.  So rewarding!  Instant gratification!

Finally, I had this lampshade in our upstairs hallway, and I figured, Why not?  This time I bought some spray glue to use on the lampshade, then attached the fabric.  In the case of a lampshade, I also needed to fold one edge over to create a pretty seam, and then I used the glue gun to seal it up.  The rest of the process was the same as with the night lights.  A little fringe, and voila!

Now my only problem is overkill.  One day my husband is going to turn around and the light in the garage is going to be all covered with fabric and fringe.  I'm sure he will love that!

P.S. All these lampshades were bought at Joann Fabrics.  The night lights and shades came as a set, but the lampshade for the little lamp above was sold separately.  Just FYI!

Works for me!

WFMW: Scrapblog is My New Best Friend!

**Updated to add: Remember that I am answering questions (with my very limited knowledge) in the comments section, so head over there to see what has come up!

I could not be more excited about this discovery!  Last week I heard about Scrapblog, an online scrapbook design website.  Totally free to use!  Well, this past weekend found me sick on the couch, so I had some time to play around.  It is so much fun, and so easy!  

See my new blog header up there?  I designed it myself on Scrapblog.  It is addicting to choose the backgrounds, fonts, stickers and borders.  They have so much to choose from.  Then I had the brilliant idea to try and make our Christmas cards on Scrapblog.  I fiddled around for a bit, and look what I came up with!

This is just a rough draft, but I am so excited about the possibilities!  I think I'll make our baby announcements on Scrapblog too, one for a boy and one for a girl, since I don't know what I am having!  

So here's my tip on using Scrapblog for your blog or to make something that you eventually want to print out.  After you create your page, save it and publish it.  This just means it is available for viewing on Scrapblog.  Then go to the File menu and choose Export as JPEG.  It will save it for you in JPEG, a format that Blogger or the nearest Kinko's will understand.

I would also recommend watching the Quick Tour video on Scrapblog if you are new to the website.  It helped me to see what it was capable of.

If you have any questions, go ahead and leave them in the comments section and I will try to respond in the comments section as well.  I am self-taught, so I don't know how helpful I can be, but I will try!

Works For Me: An Easy and Unique Gift!

It always seems like friends' birthdays creep up on me.  I have the best of intentions to buy them a perfect and thoughtful gift.  Then, life (and very often, the budget) gets in the way and I end up scrambling at the last minute, which I hate! 

Here's a good idea that has really worked for me: When I am out at thrift shops or garage sales, I buy little flower pots.  They are everywhere this time of year!  It helps if they are cute "as is," but ugly pots work too, if you have the time to spray paint them.  Then when I need a gift, I use my rub-on letters (I know, I know, me with the rub-on letters again.  I should get paid for this!) to put the person's monogram on the pot.  Vinyl letters work well too.  A little Mod Podge on top makes the pot look really "finished," and then I just stick some flowers from the grocery store in there to complete it.

Check out this pot that I just did for my sister's 1st wedding anniversary (with her and her husband's joint monogram):

  
As you've heard me say many times, I just love monogramming!  Adding a little personal touch turns a bland gift into something utterly unique.  I would be so happy to get a little pot like this for my birthday, wouldn't you?  :)

Works For Me Wednesday: Organizing Recipes

Today's "Works For Me Wednesday" post is something that has really changed the way that I cook.  For a few years, I have been a monthly subscriber to Cooking Light magazine.  I would faithfully read each issue and dog-ear the pages for things that sounded good.  However, pretty soon, I started a nice little collection of magazines like this:

The clutter was bad enough, but the most annoying part is that I never even used any of the recipes that sounded so good.  It was daunting when I was looking for a new recipe to try that night to even glance at that huge stack of magazines!  Then one day I got all fancy-schmancy and decided to get organized:

I tore out the recipes I had been tagging for years, found a notebook and some plastic sleeves, and arranged the pages according to appetizers, main dishes, vegetables, desserts, etc.

I know it seems like a very basic idea.  (Hey!  Look at me!  I put recipes in a binder!)  But it has made a huge difference in our family's cooking.  I actually use the recipes in the book now and it takes me just a few minutes to glance through and find something I want.  In the old days, I may have spent 20 minutes paging through magazine after magazine (if I even cracked them open), with my toddler pulling on my leg the whole time.  And you all know how much fun that can be!

This works so well for me that I am planning to put together a similar book for all my decorating ideas, torn out of various magazines and catalogs.  Can you imagine having a huge binder with ideas for every room in your house, seasons, holidays, and craft projects, to pull out whenever you are looking for something new?  I am such a design geek that that I am really whooped up by this!  

This definitely works for me!

Unique Wedding Gift Idea

Wedding gifts can be fun but can also be, well, a pain.  Mostly because I usually wait until the last minute.  Sometimes I buy off people's registries, which is of course always a good idea because you know they will like the gift.  As a rule I don't buy anything that the couple didn't register for, because the last thing they need is to be saddled with some lame gift that I might love but they might hate!

However, there is one exception to my rule and here it is: get the couple's wedding invitation framed.  Hey, you know they like the invitation.  I mean, they picked it out.  So go out and get something tasteful and simple that matches their invitation, and voila!  Such a unique gift.

Below you can see an example of a friend's wedding invitation that I recently had framed.  And here's another bonus: frequently you can find really cool frames on sale, stash them away, and then pull them out when you need a gift.  I don't give these gifts because I want to save money, but it is a nice bonus sometimes!  This one below was $10 for the frame and $19 for the custom mat.  Not bad.

This idea came to me when one of my great-aunts framed my wedding invitation for me (see below).  I have since learned that she pretty much does this for all my cousins and everyone else in the family.  It has honestly been one of my all-time favorite gifts, because it is so personal, and not something that I would take the time to buy for myself.

Works for me!  (And hopefully for the other couples I buy for!)