Day 59 - February 28th

One of my favorite shirts from our tie-dye day, is my "Rainbow Pie with Black" shirt. It takes a brave soul to add a coat of black over their perfectly dyed pie, and I did it! This is a special technique I picked up in Miss T's craft classes in High School, and it adds a little something extra to the shirt. Sometimes (since Lisa has to mix the black dye) if it's not mixed right it turns out green and mucky-yucky. But this time it turned out GREAT! Thanks, Lisa!!!

Day 58 - February 27th

Today was an [akf] kraft korner day at Lisa Hill's house! (see the badge on the side of my blog for a link to our facebook page) We did lots and lots of tie-dye and were gonna play with Lisa's new Yudu screen printing machine. I don't know if they did or not, but I left before they got to it if so. Terri came with me to help with Genesis, and she ended up doing a few shirts for me and herself and her boyfriend Kevin. All of the shirts were super fun to make and we tried a few new techniques this time around. I always dread the 24-hour wait while we let the dye set in. It's so hard not to cheat and peek!

Day 57 - February 26th

Today was the day this week that I did all of my errands. We went to Babies R' Us for a big-boy car seat (long story), JoAnn's for t-shirts to tie-dye, Dollar Tree for some random supplies for tie-dying and Danielle's baby shower, and Kroger for groceries. There was a bonus at Krogers, I FINALLY FOUND A GIRL SCOUT TROUP SELLING GIRL SCOUT COOKIES!!!! YAY!!! I bought a box of peanut butter sandwich cookies, and the peanut butter ones dipped in chocolate. Yum! Anyway, each store we went in, I took Genesis out of his car seat and let him sit up in the cart. He's such a big boy! He'll try to reach stuff on the shelves and throw stuff out of the basket if I put anything up there with him. Every store we went in there was at least two people "gawking" at how adorable he is. I can't take him anywhere! lol! Several times people were mistaking him for a girl because I take my Hello Kitty blanket with us. I'm working on getting him a more boy-ish blanket. I am debating on making him one somehow.

Day 56 - February 25th

Baby Boy loves bathtime!!!

Day 55 - February 24th

WIPE THIEF!!!
He managed to open the wipe tub, get one out, and start chewing on it! I just HAD to take a snapshot of this! He's quite the little character, isn't he? He's getting into everything these days!

Day 54 - February 23rd

I've been wanting to make a diaper cake for a long time now, and I didn't get to do one for my own baby shower, so since I'm playing a big part in my friend Danielle's shower, I just *HAD* to do this for her. I told her I was making her a special surprise, but wouldn't tell her what! Lets just hope she doesn't stumble across my blog! This 'cake' has about 75 (size 1) Luv's diapers, 3 bottles, 4 pacifiers, 1 pair of no-scratch mittens, 7 tie-dye onesies, and a picture frame. I have a few more things I wanna try putting on it to see how it looks, but if it starts getting too busy, I'll just scrap that idea and just give them to her as regular gifts. Only about 3 more weeks til her shower, and she text me today saying she was already having contractions! OH NO!!! Impatient baby!!!

Day 053 - February 22nd

I worked on this in the wee hours of the morning, since I couldn't fall asleep. I knew I had to take my dad to get injections in his spine in the afternoon. The longest part of the back of this shirt was putting the million little tiny rolls of tape on the back of the stencils. The tape is old (from my 1st year of college in 2006) and wouldn't stick to itself. It was very frustrating. But the painting was easy and went a lot faster than I expected. Now I just need to get this bad boy in the mail on it's way to North Carolina!

Day 052 - February 21st

My Little Family <3
Genesis @ 6 months, 2 days

Day 051 - February 20th

I started working on Dani's shirt today. This is the front detail. Done with my good-ol' trusty splatter brush, and the neon paint colors (plus a touch of black) that was in the previous post. The back will be done with the same colors and method, but will have words.

Day 050 - February 19th

I was assigned the task of making Dani a new [akf] shirt, which I'm very excited to do! These are the colors she wants, which I happened to have on hand, as well as the size and style shirt that she wants! Lord knows I won't ever fit in that little fitted shirt ever again! haha! I just have to say that I love this color combination, so much that I did a whole post about it! (not that I have much to say about it, hehe) Her shirt will also have black in it, and it's going to be a splattered stencil design. I'm sure I'll post the results, too.

Day 049 - February 18th

Today I worked on my Mom's 50th birthday present :) Her birthday isn't until April 6th, but I was TOO excited to wait to do it! The design on the cup is a rub-on decal, and I put one on each side of the mug. The mug is GIGANTIC, if you couldn't tell! Seriously, it's HUGE. I filled it with York Peppermint Patties, Reese Cups, and Hershey Kisses. I figured it would be a good idea to do it early since we're going on vacation the week before her birthday, and knowing me, I'd lose track of time and it'd get pushed aside and forgotten about, so I figured WHY NOT? It turned out really great. I hope she likes it.

Day 048 - February 17th

My friends Terri & Kevin came to visit us and this was a priceless moment I had to capture! Genesis LOVES hats, and i think this big floppy hat looks adorable on him. :)

Day 047 - February 16th

Here's my picture of ME for February. I had a doctors appointment today, so my Mom came over and watched Genesis for me. I love the way he gets that lil' "crooked lip" as I like to call it. I had to take about 10 shots just to get a good one (and he's still not even really looking at the camera, but in the mirror instead!). A couple more days and he will be 6 months already! Where does the time gooooo?!?!?!?!

Side Note:: I've found myself posting more pictures of Him than anything else! While he IS the biggest and most important part of my day, he has his own blog that I should be posting pictures to, but haven't been since there's been so many on here. :) That's my next goal: to pick back up production at: babyhendrixisawesome

p.s. Happy Birthday to my Dear Friend MANDA DORGER! I miss you!

Day 046 - February 15th

I made a late night run to Kroger, knowing there was YET ANOTHER blast of snow headed our way. I picked Genesis up a pack of these little biscuit cracker things for him to chew on. He didn't know WHAT to think of it! He got really excited, though. I caught him trying to suck on it a few times, but he mainly just gnawed on it. :)

Day 045 - February 14th

I hope that everyone had a fantastic Valentine's Day!!! This year was far better than last, that's for sure! February 14th also happens to be Kevin's sister Tamica's birthday, and the family went out to IHOP for breakfast to celebrate. This was Genesis' first Valentine's Day (hence the bright red bib). He tried a little bit of the gravy from my Biscuits and Gravy, and he also tried some of the blueberry sauce from Kevin's pancakes. He enjoyed both!

Side Note:: Although I didn't get any flowers, a card or even a "Happy Valentine's Day, Babe" (and Kevin spent the majority of the day in the garage working on his car), I still enjoyed the day and we didn't fight or argue at all!!! At least we had some bonding time while we played our game on the Xbox 360 (Resident Evil 5).

Day 044 - February 13th

This is what it's like if we get take-out; I want one thing, Kevin wants another. Luckily the Wendy's was right next door to Gold Star Chili and I didn't have to go too far out of my way to get my food. With me being a picky eater, and Kevin making sure he gets what he wants [hey, he's passionate about his food, what can I say?] dinner isn't always easy. Oh, and He's anti-Skyline, pro-Gold Star. I don't like either one, but I've worked at the Skyline Chili parlor in Goshen, Ohio. Not the best days of my life, I must admit! I am a huge fan of Wendy's because you can get CHEESE to dip your fries in!!! And you can't beat their Crispy Chicken Sandwiches and their Chicken Nuggets!!!

Day 043 - February 12th

I made my first Scrapbooking page *EVER* today! I was so excited to have Erica, Tyyy Baby, Aunt Jen and Aunt Audra over for a little Crafty Kraft time, but I spent too much time making a clay Sphynx for Aunt Jen's son Cole (who needed it done for his 6th grade class) and setting up my wireless printer that I didn't get to Scrapbook with Erica. She made a few pages for her Mary Kay book, though. This is the Cover Sheet for the Scrapbook I'm making for/about Genesis. I'm going to include maternity pictures and photos from the hospital when he was born. Then we'll see how much room is left in the book to see what else I can include. With as many stickers as I have, I'll be lucky to be able to close the book when all is said and done! The polka dots on the left of the page is what the album looks like on the outside.

Side Note:: Those green letters that spell out his name were cut out using a Cricut Machine!!! They were hard to get to stick down evenly, but I broke out the old trusty Glue Stick and got them down! A font that isn't as skinny would probably be easier to scrapbook with. :) And the two photos were from the "Our365" pictures they take at the hospital when they're born.

Day 042 - February 11th

The other day, it was "Like Father, Like Son" well today it's "Like Mother, Like Son." He wanted to play with this box so bad! I can just hearing him say "Mommy, I want a Mac!"

Day 041 - February 10th

Now that the Snow was somewhat manageable to drive in, I braved the elements and went to pick up my Hard Drive, and wound up stopping at the Apple Store @ Kenwood Towne Centre Mall and bought a new 13" MacBook Pro! It is AH-MAZINGGGG!!! I absolutely LOVE it!!! I also got a case, a DVI adapter, the iWork bundle of programs, the 3-year AppleCare warranty and a wireless HP printer (which is only gonna cost me $30 after the $100 mail-in rebate) all for less than the cost of what I paid for my old machine 5 years ago. It runs on a completely different operating system, so it's going to take some getting used to, but the machine is absolutely PRISTINE and I am utterly in LOVE with the thing. I've yet to transfer my old files over, but I'm going to take it down to computerDNA and let them handle that. The people there are a HUGE help. If you ever have problems with data loss, I highly recommend their services. It cost me $80 to recover my data and they took my internal hard drive out for me and copied everything to my external hard drive. I don't know what I'm going to do with my carcas of a laptop that's just sitting there destroyed... it's pretty much a worthless hunk of metal. I'm glad I captured the moment of opening the box with this photo! It's PRICELESS!!! If you've ever bought a Mac, I'm sure you can relate!!!

Day 040 - February 9th

Tuesday was a day I was finally able to do something Crafty for the week!!! I was holding on to Genesis' little Santa Suit from Christmas, knowing I wanted to do something special with it. I'm glad I waited around, because I got this shadowbox on sale at Michael's plus had an additional 15% off coupon, so it was around $15 or so. I put it in there with his little Christmas slippers that my Mom got him (they say My First Christmas) and a 5x7" print of his Portraits from Olan Mills, a green bow, the "H" ornament from Kevin's Mom ("H" for Hendrix) and a little folded dollar bill in the shape of a heart, also given to him from Kevin's Mom. I found a little yellow foam star and wrote "Christmas 2009" and put it at the top. I wanted to put silver tinsel around the border but I must've left that out at my Moms or something. I'm kinda glad I didn't try to put that in there, cuz this stuff ended up filling it up rather well. I'm not too sure about hanging a shadowbox on the walls of the apartment, as they are rather heavy, but hopefully I can find a good place for it eventually.

Side Note:: I'm also debating on doing one with his little halloween costume, pictures from trick-or-treating, and cutting the face off of his little pumpkin bucket we used for candy. Not sure about whether I'm going to do it or not. I'll hold off for the time being, but if I do it later on down the road, I'm sure I'll post pictures!!!

Day 039 - February 8th

Today was the first time that Genesis pulled himself up to a standing position. He was sitting behind me on the couch and pulled up on my arm and stood himself up! Yet another milestone he's hitting faster than I could've ever imagined! It really made me start thinking about him crawling and then walking, so I made him suffer through some "tummy-time" so he can start building up his strength to start crawling soon. I'll be glad when he can walk himself around and I don't have to strain my back carrying him everywhere haha! (of course, I say that now, but by the time this 365blog is over, I'm sure I'll be retracting that statement out of pure exhaustion from chasing him around everywhere!)

Side Note:: upon further examination of the photo in this post, I noticed a piece of my hair stuck in the side of his pacifier! Oops! Guess he picked it up off the blanket I had him on :)

Day 038 - February 7th

Like Father Like Son; that's all I gotta say. :)

Day 037 - February 6th

Another paper craft I found a tutorial for while blog-surfing. I spent a few hours making this thing happen, and it turned out a little bigger and slightly more imperfect than I had imagined, but it isn't too bad looking. Just the awkwardness of the shape made it hard to photograph. Plus, it was late and I had almost forgotten to take any picture for this day. We spent the entire day cleaning and organizing the apartment. We actually hung Genesis' portraits on the wall! (Of course, only a few short months before our lease is up, but hey! at least they're up for the time-being!!!)

Note:: This one was found on the blog "HELLOmynameisHeather" and it is really time consuming if you don't have ink in your printer to print out the template (or have a circle punch to make the circles for you).

Day 036 - February 5th

The tie-dyes that I made Wednesday night actually turned out really great, even though a few of them faded in the wash a bit. Next time they'll just need a little more pigment when the colors get mixed. Nothing major. This photo was my effort to try and find a way to showcase all [or as many] of the 17 onesies that I did. It wasn't easy, let me tell ya! I knew rolling them up wouldn't really do the individual designs justice, but you at least get the feel of the colors available and whatnot. I made 10 for Genesis and 7 for my friend Danielle who is due to have a boy this May. I cannot wait to make some adult sizes for MYSELF!!!! i love tie dye!!!

Side Note:: Check out the full results of each individual onesie on my personal blog at http://genevaisawesome.blogspot.com

Day 035 - February 4th

Something I always wondered about as a kid was how on earth did those colorful, shiny gift bows get their shape?! Was it one big long piece of material all twisted and looped together? HOW DO THEY DO THAT?! Needless to say, when I found a tutorial on how to DIY, I was nothing less than ecstatic!!! They showed how to do it using magazine pages, city maps, or phone book pages. I took a page out of Kevin's GameInformer magazine and gave it a shot! So, here is my first DIY gift bow: "Halo Bow." I had to add one extra piece because the middle was too open, but I know what to do next time to make it better.

Day 034 - February 3rd

Wednesday was a Craft Night with the Girls! Stacy, Karla, Lisa, Sarah, Cheryl&Eric and I gathered at Stacy's place to TieDye and Scrapbook. I had 17 baby onesies to do; some for Genesis and some for my good friend Danielle who is having a baby boy in May. The two shown here are sized Newborn, and are for Danielle [or should I say Baby Micheal!]. They weren't tied up and rubber-banded like all of the other ones that I did, and I think that these turned out the best! I love the colors!!! It was a fairly long and messy process, since Lisa had to mix the colored dyes herself. I'm glad she knew what she was doing because I sure had no idea! We bagged each shirt up in a grocery bag to take home and let them set, but all of my bags were leaking by the time I got home. Thank Goodness I checked them as I was laying them out flat. I was going to just lay them out on some wax paper, but thought they were supposed to stay moist, so I put them each in individual ziploc baggies to keep them safe overnight. I'm excited to see the finished products! Stay tuned, as I'm sure that'll be my next post!!!

p.s. I didn't get to scrapbook anything while I was there, but I did get to see Stacy's Cricut Machine in action, and lemme tell ya, it was SO COOL! She cut me the letters for "Genesis Rayne" for me to do the title page for his scrapbook. But I would say that only a serious Scrapper would really have the need to invest in a $300 die-cutting machine. :)

Day 033 - February 2nd

I went shopping at Micheal's [again] and bought a bunch of stickers to begin scrapbooking with. They're all Baby-themed stickers. Jolee's and Sticko stickers are AWESOME, if I do say so myelf. They are 30% off right now, so I stocked up!!! I also bought a bunch more other things, but nothing as significant as these stickers! And I bought a ridiculous amount of them... just sayin'...

Day 032 - February 1st

So, February is here already!!! I don't know about everyone else in the world, but I am most assuredly READY for SPRING!!! Aside from the $141.59 Duke Electric bill, I am ready to pack my coat away and not look at it again for a LONG time! I'm ready for shorts and tank tops! But, on another note, Genesis surprisingly doesn't mind to wear his little hats. He kept this thing on for about 4-5 hours. And he wears it WELL! Isn't he adorable??? I realize I am slightly bias here, but how can you deny that face the notion of being ADORABLE!?!?

Day 031 - January 31st

There won't be a photo with January 31st's post yet; My computer was destroyed and I had the hard drive sent out to have the photos/data recovered by the wonderful people at computerDNA in Blue Ash, Ohio. When I pick up the data, I will revise this post and add the photograph.