Take A Look....

Okay, I am going to be completely honest with you. As I had mentioned before, things are a little off with the hubby being in Hawaii. I mean, we are all managing fine just I have WAYYYY less free time. Today after tucking the munchkins in bed I looked at the several items I am working on in case I make it to the finale of Project Run and Play and thought "I should work on that" but then I remembered that today Anthropologie launched their new sister store BHLDN, carrying all their bridal wares. Well, the finale outfit went out the window and I have honestly been drooling over the site for a solid hour now... waste of time? Possibly Probably. Tons of inspiration and immediately regret the direction I went with my finale? Totally! Ha!

All I know is: 

I want to make this dress, but somehow make it modest:

The one part of my finale outfit I feel better about is the awesome hat I made, especially after seeing this one:

If I were a super mean bride I would totally put my bridesmaids in this:

(Seriously I think only THAT model can pull that dress off ha!)

I am on the HUNT for some fabric so I can make this dress... with about 6 extra inches on the bottom :)

My lovely friend is a bridesmaid in an upcoming wedding in Oz and the only requirement for her dress is that it be green, I think we found a winner:

Apparently I need to buy myself some pom poms and glue them to some of my boring old pumps:

I am also kicking myself for not stocking up on items from Ban.do before they snagged this big campaign and are now in fact crazy expensive (Totally awesome for them though!) And I will now be adding bows to my newly made bolero :)

So there you have it friends, the sad truth about what I have been doing with my free time. If you were getting married would you consider any of their bridal items? Or do you think they are too over the top? Anywhoo, I hope your evening was more productive, and hopefully as filled with beauty! 

PS If you have a moment take the "what kind of bride are you test". According to this fail-proof four question survey I am:

Hmmm... I would like it if I could refer to my day to day outfits as ensembles, although I do tend to be theatrical at times, much to the dismay of first my parents and now my darling hubby :)

When You Find What Works-- Run With It

Sorry for the delayed post, there has been some craziness the Crawford house, {shocking} I know ha! That just means two posts today woo hoo! I have so many projects going on right now I didn't know which to talk about, but I decided I would talk about one that I believe a lot of busy mommies can relate to, your childrens education. Isn't it hilarious and intruiging to see what traits your children inherited from which parent? I LOVE it. Sawyer absolutely got the Crawford Chatty gene (which is super fun... except when yout teacher gives you a cold prickly daily for talking to much). 

The Murphy's are not talkers in class, we were more "raise your hand and pump it up and down as if you are going to exploders". Now you probably should know my degree is in Early Childhood Development so I might be over the top in some of my child rearing tactics ha! But I am currently on a mission to make sure Sawyer is reading before Kindegarten. Crazy? Probably. Feasible? Totally. I am also really working on his penmanship. While it is absolutely normal for children his age to write some letters up side down or backwards (and the use of a mirror really works wonders) I knew Sawyer would get frustrated and bored unless he found what we were working on incredibly interesting. I thought I would share the two items that have become hits in our house and I think are pretty cool. 

Reading

Here in Timor we are lucky enough to have an amazing Community Liaison officer who really looks out for us families and finds every opportunity to make life here at post easier. One of the many things she does is provides Scholastic book orders for us every few months. This is fantastic because otherwise we would have no access to english books other than those we brought with us. Now don't get me wrong I usually flip tot he back and see which ones are a dollar that month :) but I wanted to get Sawyer a fun set for Christmas and I happened upon Thomas and Friends On Track with Phonics:

While Sawyer has somewhat grown out of his addiction to Thomas he still deep down inside loves them and this set has been AMAZING for us. Having been raised on a rather bizarre program in the Orange County CA school district called write to read, I really wanted Sawyer to have a good foundation to his reading and phonics really has been fantastic. Granted at first I was totally skeptical and thought he was just memorizing the little sentences, the other day in the car he pulled one out we hadn't read together yet and read the entire book out loud! I nearly drove us into the ocean I was so ecstatic. We still have a LONG way to go but if you have a toddler and you are working on reading I would highly recommend finding a phonics series on a topic they love. If you have a Thomas and Friends fan I cannot recommend this set enough and it can even be found HERE for half the price I paid from Scholastic (To bad I didn't find that out until this morning when I looked it up ha!)

Penmanship

Since our cuties will mainly live their lives abroad the hubby and I really try to make sure they have lots of American experiences and really keep that American identity. One area that our cuties will always be at a disadvantage at is video games. They don't play them, we don't play them, they have really hardly ever even seen them. This really hasn't been a conscious thing it just happened that way. So when my friend told me about how much her son loved his Leap Frog Scribble and Write I thought it might be a hit with Sawyer who has never really seen hang held games. 

He and Finn BOTH love it and what I like is they can take it in the car with them and practice writing letters, drawing shapes etc while we drive to and from school. I like that it isn't annoying sounding and 100% educational. Now to be honest I haven't seen a marked improvement in his writing BUT it has only been a week and our drive to school is only 5 minutes ha! Now Finn on the other hand...

He is going to be the hard one. He is the most happy go lucky little boy (he TOTALLY takes after his dad) He is not obsessed with anything and thus nothing is particularly valuable to him. It has been much more of a challenge disciplining him for this same reason. If you take something away, no big deal I'll play with something else. If you put him in time out, thats fine to he probably wanted some alone time. The other night while doing homework he turned to me and said "I'll do the rest 'momorrow uh'cause it's too tricky"... he had colored one grape. I am thinking he is a lot like me in the "will work for rewards" aspect and we may just have to run with that idea. I just wanted to share somethings we have been loving in our house (plus both items for under 35 bucks? Thats pretty good). I always love hearing tricks and things that are working with other peoples children. If nothing else it inspires me to shake things up and get creative with my approach. Now off to read to Finn before nap time!

Take A Look Tuesday: Extreme Boys Room Makeover-- or at least a little bit of a make over

Today is our one year anniversary of living in Timor!!!! I cannot believe how fast the time has gone. I still feel brand new to the island. In spirit of that, I thought I would let you in on a side project I have been working on, but first a little background. One of the great yet simultaneously yucky things about the Foreign Service is that the homes you live in are furnished. You can bring some of your own furniture but there is a weight limit so you have to decide what is most important to you. This was great for us since before this we were poor college students so we found this arrangement was totally to our benefit :). The only problem with this is that it is a bit hard to feel like you are "home" when all the furniture is chosen by someone else and chosen with being palatable to several different families that will pass through that house in mind. We are VERY lucky here in Dili and have gorgeous Ethan Allen and Drexel Heritage furniture. I don't know who picked it out but they deserve a pat on the back. The bummer part about it though is all we really brought with us are the crazy amount of pictures I have and since our walls are made of metal (have a I mentioned that before? It is raining right now and with a metal roof and walls it sounds like the world is coming to an end, you totally wouldn't know it when you look at them though, thankfully) there is nothing for nails to grip into thus it is really hard to hang anything. We have been experimenting with different 3M hooks to see what weight they can hold etc. Having said all this I am currently on a quest to make our house feel more like our "home"... because um, we have lived her a year now and I still kinda feel like I am in an extended stay. I am starting with the boys room. While they are still young enough to not SUPER care what their room looks like I am taking over! (Funny side note, as I was typing this Sawyer came out and informed me that he would like the Buzz Lightyear bed that has wings on the back for his birthday, ha! The irony) I have been using Pintrest, which I adore and you can follow mine if you like by clicking on the link to the right, to put together a color board of sorts for what I am goin' for.

I already have the two chevron fabrics pictures above and am planning on making new duvets this weekend. We also received the cool leather shag rug this week (which is super duper stinky). I received the boys personalized Elk prints yesterday and love how they turned out. I have already made the Anthropologie starfish in a bottle knockoff (it can be seen on the table in THIS post). I actually went back and did it a little better the second time around, the starfish...not the table, that challenge was a bear ha! I am really excited to prepare tutorials for the square sitting pillows with handles from Restoration Hardware.  There are a plethora of tutorials out there to make fabric covered pin boards and in the end I don't know if we will have the wall space. The boys room has huge built in wardrobes that span an entire wall (and are made from an orangey wood -ick) We are one of those odd sets of parents who give the master bedroom to their kids. We just figure since we don't have a toy room anymore it is just better for everyone if they have the larger room and thus can keep ALL their toys in there and not scattered all over the house. (Plus the second largest bedroom has a large walk in closet unlike the master- odd right?)
Anyway, I was hmming and hawing about what to do for a play table. I love the one pictured above and thought about having it duplicated. In the end though I really want to support Sawyers LOVE of drawing and creating so I designed a trestle table for them that has little shelves to store baskets containing paper, pens, crayons etc. I took my drawings to a local woodworker and they went to work making it out of gorgeous teak. I was able to pick it up today and am thrilled at how it turned out!

It looked even better once it was all dusted off, there was wood dust flying in that place!

It was fun watching the guys work their magic on different pieces. I totally spotted an Ikea bench being duplicated and another trip trap chair (all of us moms had them made from our friend Jeanne's original, a mere $40 dollars as opposed to $250 ha!) This fellow in particular was an amazing widdler.

When I ordered the table I also brought in one of my large prints from WHCC (if you are a budding photographer this site is the BEST!) and had them make a frame for it. There is no way a frame would make it all the way to Timor in one piece so I thought this was really my only option. They did a beautiful job

(Finn asked me to paint his face like a chipmunk while his friend Roman was over today. I obliged but then later he fell down the slide and cried most of it off. The locals got a kick out of what was left and kept taking pictures with him with their phones)

They were the nicest people! I am really excited to go back Friday and pick up the two stools made to go with the trestle table. I will absolutely be going back to them to have them make the wooden toy bin on castors pictured above. It has been fun supporting a local business and having one of a kind pieces made. I am planning on posting some before pictures together with the big reveal, but I am still waiting on my staple gun to pounce on the fabric head boards ha! So that is what I am working on in my spare time--- yes, this is why it has taken months to get this far ha!