The Claire Project

If we are friends on Facebook, if you follow me on flickr, or you ever click on the top bar of my blog, you might be familiar with our weekly photos of Claire.

Now, I can't take credit for this fabulous fabric idea, which I borrowed from Young House Love's Clara Project (right down to a similar name for our baby girl!), but I will take the credit for wrangling our wiggly baby weekly and getting some ok shots along the way.

Each week (Thursday mornings for the first 14 weeks and now Saturday mornings since I have been back to work), I dress Claire in a short-sleeve white onesie, lay some fabric out and get to work. I try to do this in the morning so that the sun is coming through our windows just right. For a while, I laid the fabric on the couch cushion, but now that she is bigger I lay it on the floor over our area rug. Also, I highly recommend doing this after a feeding. In my experience, full belly = happy baby.

Most weeks I use one yard of fabric, usually bought on-sale from JoAnn, but sometimes I throw in a pretty printed sheet, baby blanket or other type of fabric object I find around the house. Basically, if you are handy with a camera and with Photoshop, you can achieve the same thing by following this handy YHL tutorial.

So here are the results this far:

And here are close-ups of a few milestone weeks along the way...

Week One:


Week Six:


Week Twelve:


And today, Week Seventeen:

It's really fun to click back and forth through the photos so far to see how much Claire has changed, especially from the first to the last.

At the year's end, I plan to do a few things.

1. Make a blurb book documenting Claire's first year.

2. Print all 52 images and display them at her 1st birthday party. Maybe like this:

3. Also, I plan to either learn to sew, or commission my sewing sisters, to create a few things out of the fabric, such as this pillow I found on pinterest:

Or maybe even a quilt, like Sherry made from YHL:

35 weeks to go! Only time will tell how our Claire Project project ends up for us.

Happy Birthday, Dave!

Happy Birthday to a great husband and a terrific father!

Happy 4th of July!

Happy Independence Day, from our little sparkler!

Hand-Painted Onesies: Erin Lynn Designs

Recently I was the lucky winner of two hand-painted, custom-made onesies from Erin Lynn Designs.

Erin's business is new to Facebook; thus, she offered a giveaway drawing for 2 free stenciled baby bodysuits once she hit 100 "likes" and I was the randomly picked winner...woo hoo!

Here is what she created for our Claire Bear:

And this one was part of our Father's Day gift to my CPA husband, "Daddy's lil Tax Deduction":

I think they turned out great and are an unique addition to Claire's growing wardrobe. By the way, she also creates some beautiful baby blankets if you are in the market for a gift.

Last but not least, is some good news for you: Erin Lynn Designs is offering up another giveaway when she hits 200 "likes" so head over to her Facebook page and like it today for a chance to win!

I blame this dress...

...for inspiring a crazy woman to start cataloging ideas for Claire's 1st Birthday already.

And yes, if you are keeping track, she turns just 3 months old this week :-)

And yes, the crazy woman is me.

Isn't it adorable though? It was a great deal today on zulily.

For the record, I do not want this year to rush by whatsoever. In fact, I wish I could press pause and freeze time with her with each passing day, but you never know when & where inspiration will strike and today there was no denying it. The colors, patterns and textures from the dress are perfect for a future Claire Celebration.

So if you are interested in my proactive party-planning ideas, check them out on this pinterest board. And if you have any ideas that fit the vibe, please share! I have nothing but 9 more months of time.

First Father's Day

Happy First Father's Day to the best new daddy I know.

Claire is a very lucky little girl.

Drink Your Vegetables

I really needed a way to pack in some more nutrients to my maternity leave diet. Most of my daytime meals are whatever I can fix in a flash, often microwave leftovers or quick snacks with a few too many boxes of mac n cheese making an appearance. Veggies are usually for dinner only...if we're lucky.

Since I had been hearing a lot about Green Smoothies (smoothies including fresh greens such as spinach or kale), I decided to give one a try for breakfast today and I really just winged it.

First, I threw some blueberries in the freezer overnight to chill the smoothie and act as my "ice", but in the future I will likely get frozen fruit to skip this step. If I'm going to freeze it anyway, frozen fruit is cheaper and less perishable.

Next, I layered the following ingredients in my blender:

• 1 large handful of frozen fresh blueberries
• 6 fresh strawberries
• 2+ handfuls of fresh baby spinach
• 1 whole banana
• enough skim milk to cover the blueberries below

I gave it a few pulses, stirred it with a spoon to get the spinach to sink down, and proceeded to blend. This was the result:





My only trouble is I woke a sleeping baby with the blender...oops:



Here it is ready to drink, and wow was it delicious! I like spinach, but even if you are a greens hater this is a great way to hide them from yourself, or your family, because you really can't taste them!

Moral of the story: Do not fear the green smoothie (which is actually purple). I think I'll add even more spinach next time!