T-shirt Quilt - Project Repat

No compensation was received for this post.

A few years back, one of my friends made a quilt for their child using their old t-shirts. I really liked it. Ever since then, I have been considering making or having someone make one for me. I have quite a collection of t-shirts set aside for the project, but haven't yet pulled the trigger. When I heard about an opportunity to check out the t-shirt quilts made by Project Repat, I jumped at the chance.

Check out this video:

Now, I just need to sort through and narrow down which t-shirts to use. Of course, I will share my finished project with you when I get the quilt back. No compensation was received for this post. I received a credit that can be used towards the purchase of a quilt. All opinions expressed are my own or that of my family.

Camping Out

The other night, as we were sitting at the dinner table, my five year old asked when we were going to get to sleep in the tent. Aside from indoor camp-outs, she has never slept in a tent or gone camping. We made one attempt when she was about 9 months old, in our friend's yard, but the kids and I wound up coming home. She wasn't always sleeping through the night at that point, so I figured that sleeping in a tent would not help her sleep through the night and the others at the camp-out likely would not appreciate the sound of a crying baby at 3 am.

I can remember doing lots of camping as a child. Whether it was sleeping in the pop up camper in the driveway with all of my cousins at a slumber party the night before my brother's birthday party, an annual weekend family camp-out with my dad's family, a weekend camp out for Girl Scouts or even a vacation that we took to a lake and camped, I always loved it. I can remember at the family camp outs that when my cousin and I got older, that we were allowed to share a tent, instead of sleeping in the tent/camper with our families. I loved the hiking, the swimming, the hanging out around the campfire and the waking up in the morning to the sounds of nature.

The campfire brought with it so many stories and lots of delicious food. There is something great about food cooked on the campfire. For some reason, Hot Dogs tasted better when you cooked them on a stick. Marshmallows were so nice and ooey gooey - and sometimes, added to chocolate for S'mores.

But, I think my absolute favorite food from the campfire were the pockets of yumminess we cooked in our pie irons. Somehow, simple bread was transformed when added to a little bit of butter in a hot pie iron and filled with the simplest of ingredients. It became so crispy and held such a delicious treat. We would make a variety of pie irons. When I was younger, I remember them mostly being desserts. We would fill them canned pie filling and sprinkle with powdered sugar. When I was older, I remember making Pizza Pie Irons. These were awesome, filled with some pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella and pepperoni. You had to watch, too much pizza sauce and you were sure to get burned on that first bite when the sauce oozed out. We also got fancy with our desserts and made a lemon meringue pie, using lemon pie filling and marshmallows on the inside.

When my husband and I purchased our first tent and camping gear, with a gift certificate I had received from work, I made sure that we bought marshmallow/hot dog sticks and pie irons. We did some camping in our pre-children years, but it has been a long time since we went camping.

Since my daughter asked, I think that we may have to take a mini-staycation in our backyard soon. We can pitch our tent, pull out our camping supplies and have a little campfire. We may have to borrow a fire pit, or maybe I buy a new one to replace our old one that rusted out, but we will cook our dinner on the fire and sit around telling stories.

I know that the kids would enjoy it and it would be a good trial before making a commitment to a 'real' camping trip where we load up the car and go to a campground or state park for the night. I always enjoyed camping as a kid and I think it would be fun to start our own family tradition of camping out and hope that my kids will have fond memories of camping out too.

What type of stay-cation will you take this year?

No compensation was received for this post. All opinions expressed are mine or those of my family. I am completing this post as a participant in the Hormel Foods Extended Family Blogger program. Hormel Foods provided some of the information for this post.

Tracking the Milestones

One thing that I can tell you is that when your kids are little, time flies by. It seems like just yesterday that I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of my son, only when I look at him, I realize that it was actually 8 years ago that I was pregnant.

When my son was first born, I had a friend that delivered a meal to me through a women's club I was in. She shared with me an idea that I have been using ever since. She shared that each month she had taken a picture of her children with the same stuffed animal. This allowed her to observe how little they were and to visually measure their growth.

I had a stuffed bear that he had received as a gift and I selected that to be the "birthday" bear. Each month of his first year, then every three months of his second year, and every year on his birthday since then, we take a picture of him with his "birthday" bear. (Did the same thing for my daughter when she came along!) When I assembled the scrapbook for his first year, I put all twelve pictures on one page. It was a great way to look back and see how he changed over that first year.

In addition, when I was a new mom, I quickly learned that everyone wanted to givhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gife me free or cheap pictures (and why not, if you find a customer that will come back every year for pictures, you can make a lot of money in the long run). So, each month, I took him to a different studio and got a free 8x10 of him. (Again, did the same thing for my daughter.) Sometimes, I would buy a couple of wallets or other pictures to share with family and friends, but most of the time I was able to exercise constraint and only get the free pictures. As with the birthday bear pictures, after doing it monthly the first year, I pared it back the following years to every six months taking them for a photo session. I typically get more pictures to share when we go for their birthday pictures than for the mid-year pictures, but I always get my 8x10. As a result, I have a nice 8x10 album that tracks their growth.

This post shared at Works for Me Wednesday.

What was old is new again

As a mom, I have found that so many things that were popular when I was a child, have either had some staying power or have returned to popularity. That is a bit hard for me to gauge, I didn't shop much in the toy aisle between my childhood and having children.

Remember Cabbage Patch Kids? I can remember wanting one so bad that first year that they were available. I didn't get one that year. I remember hearing tales of people waiting outside of the store for hours upon hearing a rumor that there would be a delivery. I did eventually get one. One thing that always struck me were the names that they gave to those dolls. There weren't any Elizabeth or Kate or Charlie or Nick dolls, no they had unique names. Mine was Fayette Rory. Fayette was certainly a name I had heard before but I didn't know or know of any. Rory at the time I had never even heard of it. These dolls with their signed bottoms are still on store shelves (or back on store shelves). My daughter has my doll, so I haven't gotten close enough to see if they still have unique names or if they have just made so many that they had to start using traditional or popular names.

What about Strawberry Shortcake? I loved my Strawberry Shortcake dolls. I had a few of the figurines, Lemon Meringue, Lime Chiffon, and Lem 'n Ada (they were twins). My dad fashioned two beds for me out of some trim and a thin board. He stained them and gave them to me for my figurines. I still have them. Strawberry is back on shelf again. She has movies and books and one thing that I have noticed is that the figurines have changed - the dolls are larger and softer than those from my childhood.

Remember the Smurfs? I can remember countless Saturday mornings watching the Smurfs. I had a lot of the little collectible figures and even a homemade pillow that was a Smurf. My son enjoys the Smurfs. We check the DVDs out from the library occasionally for them to watch. It brings back a bit of my childhood. I have even seen stuffed toys and Smurf village toys at the store.

What about Rainbow Brite? I have to confess that she was a little after my time. I remember her and I know some of my younger cousins had Rainbow Brite things, but I never actually did. She's back. Again, they have modernized her a bit. I remember this young girl:

You can see the new Rainbow Brite here. As you can see, in the animation, she is taller, thinner and more grown up than the Rainbow Brite of my childhood. You can learn more about the relaunch of Rainbow Brite on the Hallmark official Rainbow Brite website. They have a line of toys for the updated characters that are available at Target and soon will be available at Toys'R Us. I wonder if they will bring back the cartoons or relaunch them to DVD? You can also watch some animation shorts here.

Giveaway!

Thanks to MomSelect and Hallmark, I am able to offer a giveaway for two readers to receive one Rainbow Brite activity CD. These CDs contain games, puzzles, a picture maker, coloring pages, the Rainbow Brite theme song and much more.

Primary Entry:
Which Rainbow Brite doll was your favorite or which do you think that special little girl in your life (daughter, niece, granddaughter, neighbor) would like best? You can find them all here.

Additional Entries:

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Giveaway will remain open until February 24th at 6 pm. One winner will be selected using a random number generator. The winner will be contacted by e-mail (be sure to leave one!) and will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be selected.

I received no compensation for this post. All opinions expressed in this post are mine. I received some interactive CDs from Hallmark and MomSelect to experience for myself and to share with friends, family and readers.