New dress

Yesterday while waiting for the tsunami to hit Hawaii and thinking about family over there, I managed to sew two things - a new dress for Cora out of a thrifted men's t-shirt, and a quilt! Ok, a doll quilt, which is not quite the same thing. I wanted to get some practice in a couple of techniques, and a doll quilt seemed like a good project for that. Cora is such a good mommy to her dolly that I thought it could use another blanket. But it may become a placemat if I decide to make a few more like it.

This is Cora informing me that she bonked her head - she pats her head to let me know whenever that happens.The dress isn't perfect, but it came together really quickly, and I made my own pattern, and I even finished the neck! I will make a couple of adjustments the next time, and I have a couple more thrifted shirts to practice with.Here's the doll quilt.Random video - Ryan was telling me a story about his day, which somehow involved him asking me if I knew the correct way to do a squat. So we were both demonstrating our squatting technique (I know, fun times at our house) and Cora thought it was so funny and she just had to be a part of it. She even had to come and stand next to us facing the same way.

animal noises

Here are a few of the noises that Cora knows - she actually has a few more under her belt now but this is the best video we've gotten so far. *Except, I don't think you can hear the lion noise she makes - it's a pretty low throaty growl she gives, I don't think the camera could pick it up.

chocolate bowls and more

I guess we'll start off this post today with a sad pic. Sorry Cora, you cannot play with Daddy's textbooks.I made Cora some new slippers, kind of imitation Ugg style. Sometimes I like them and sometimes I don't. But I do usually put other clothes on her along with them. They are ridiculously long, but they can be rolled down. The length helps them stay on though, without elastic.

We went to a Valentine's dinner/dance put on by our stake, and brought home a couple of balloons for Cora. She loved them. "ball! ball!"

Spaghetti face!

After church

So CW and his girlfriend Brooke drove up on Valentine's Day to visit, since the next day was President's Day and they were off school. We had a lot of fun, playing Wii and watching Persuasion and some Olympics. Ryan and I cooked them a nice steak dinner and for dessert, we made some chocolate bowls, with chocolate mousse and raspberry whipped cream. (which I way overwhipped, so it was more like raspberry butter.) I saw the instructions for making chocolate bowls a few different places on the internet, and thought it looked pretty easy. Basically you use water balloons, and dip the bottom in chocolate, then gently deflate them when it's dry and you have a chocolate bowl! You use water balloons because big ones would make huge bowls that would probably break. The only thing that no one mentioned is - it's really really hard to blow up water balloons! I have a hard time blowing up regular balloons, so I had Ryan do it. It was pretty hilarious, I got some good videos and had a good time watching him. Anyways, here are some pics of the process.

Here is the final product - sorry it's a terrible picture because it was already dark out, and I'm not a good photographer in the first place. You can't see the mousse inside the bowl.

We made extra bowls, in case some of them had broken, so in addition to heart shaped pancakes, some of us (CW and Ryan) had this for breakfast:

I guess we haven't posted any pics of this yet - Ryan's parent's got us this recliner for Christmas, since we were talking about getting rid of our couch so we could have more room in our tiny living room. We are so grateful for it and we just love it, it's so nice and comfy. Cora loves to sit next to us (not on our lap, but next to us) on it. Here she is with her daddy, just relaxing and flipping though a magazine.
I made this last night for Cora. She's getting better at recognizing animals and even doing some noises - she lifts her arm and says "Weewee" for an elephant noise (which doesn't really sound like an elephant, but neither do the noises Ryan and I do) and sometimes will roar for a lion. If we ask her where something is, she can point to the birdies, the chicken, the fishies and the turtles on our walls, as well as Jesus. She will also go get a toy or something you ask her to get, like Elmo. She says bye and walks around constantly saying "Hi" in a breathy little voice. Anyways, I found a few free patterns for plush animals online and have felt like making them lately for her, even though she already has plenty of stuffed animals. This is my first attempt and I was pretty proud of it. I embroidered the face, and the eyes took me forever - everything I did just looked creepy so finally I cut it all off and just did little sleeping eyes.

snowshoeing

Yesterday Ryan and I and Cora went snow shoeing at Scout mountain. It was a beautiful day to get outside in the snow, not too cold and overcast but bright enough. Our friend Paula let us borrow her snow shoes which was very nice, and we had a really good time. It was a little tiring, and we were envious of the cross-country skiiers that glided past us on the way back down, but it was fun. We want to try the trail again doing cross-country, but we'll probably have to leave Cora behind for that one.

Cora even fell asleep for a while there - didn't seem that relaxing to me but I guess she was tired.Here she is last week drawing on her magna doodle.

new pjs and sledding

I finally got back to my sewing machine after a long break. I decided to try my hand at making some clothes and sewed Cora these jammies from an old pair of pj pants I had and a thrifted tee shirt. It's the first time I attempted to sew sleeves and it turned out pretty well, I think!

So it snowed a lot this weekend and we took advantage of Ryan's free morning to go sledding with Cora! She seemed happy to be able to go play outside in the snow, even though she couldn't move very well in all her gear. Below you can see her going "Hey I can't walk here!"Not quite sure what she's saying with this face.