Lil' Vintage Story Books #10

Welcome again to Lil' Vintage Story Books, where we share our favorite vintage children's books!

 

 I love this little book today!  It's a Whitman Fuzzy Wuzzy Book called Fuzzy Wuzzy Ducklings, by Louise Rowe, published in 1945.

 It's a sweet counting story, adding a new duckling on each page.

 Several pages feature flocking on some of the ducklings.

 I love the right hand page where they're all lined up!

 Look at that dapper little fellow!

 I wish the book featured a hard cover- I am wary about letting the kids handle this one, since it's so fragile!

 I adore the back "cover"- it would be so adorable framed in a little girl's room.  Hmmm, may have to consider that!

Thanks for stopping by! If you'd like to join in, grab a button to the right and link up below!

Some Favorite December Pics

Hi Everyone!  I hope you're all recovering from the craziness of the holiday!  We're doing well here-  the first few days after Christmas and birthdays are always nice because the kids have so many (TOO many!!) new toys to play with!

I'm entering Paper Mama's photo challenge for our favorite photo of December, and I've had such a hard time deciding on my favorite!  Anyway, I decided I'd post several here.  It's been a fun month, so I got lots of cute photos!

 These two had fun posing when we fixed their hair in "mohawks" for the day!

 

 Fun on the swings!

 And look who decided to start drawing faces for me!

In mid-December, we took a little overnight trip to Hilton Head. When we got there, I realized it was the same hotel where we vacationed last year, when I took the photo I used on this piece of art.  I had the kids go out onto the balcony, and took their photos again. Amazingly, they posed almost identically! It's so fun to see the photos next to each other!!

 

 Fun photos from the beach...

 Here's the one that I think is my favorite!

 The obligitory Christmas morning photo...!

And finally, a Christmas night photo-  Avery sleeping with the two light-up angel ornaments she got!

Again, hope you're all enjoying a nice, peaceful week before the new year.  I should be back on Friday with another Lil' Vintage Storybooks installment!

Merry Christmas!!

Just for fun, I thought I'd take a look back at all our Santa photos.  I've shown some here on the blog before, but it's fun (for me at least) to see them all in one place here!  I guess I should frame them at some point-I'm not sure why I haven't done that before... 

Anyway, here we go!

 2005

(how sweet is this photo?  love that Santa did this pose!)

 2006 

(still doing well here!)

 2007 

(aaaand the trouble starts!)

 2008 

(how happy do you think Santa was here?)

 2009 

(oh, getting better- just barely a few tears from Noah!)

2010 

(yay! the boys do well, but now Avery starts!)

2011 

(hurray!  no tears, finally!  Avery's a little wary, but overall, a great photo!)

Thanks for coming along with me on my little trip down memory lane!

And thanks for reading my blog!  I appreciate you all!  I hope that you all have a wonderful holiday!!!

Little Vintage Style- Rainbow Edition!

 My mother recently brought me three crocheted jumpers she'd made for my sisters and me when we were kids.  Above I'm wearing mine to see Santa in probably 1976.  I question how short it is, but hey, it was the 70's!

And above here, you can see me in mine on the right, and my sister in hers on the left.

Well, we decided to see how they fit Miss Avery!  Turns out the middle-sized one fit her (too bad we missed out on the littlest one when she was a baby!).

 She had great fun modeling the jumper at the park!

 She's also wearing a turtleneck from Walmart, thrifted tights, and Angel brand shoes.

 Looks like it's a little short on her, too!  Well, what can you expect when you're trying to climb a jungle gym?

 The bright rainbow colors matched the slide perfectly-Mommy likes that for photos!

Love her hair blowing in the wind on this one!

 Here, she's telling me that she's going to slide down, and motioning for me to go around and take her picture- that's my girl!

I'm linking up here, here, and here this week!  Go check out all the other cutie-pies!

Pencil Toppers

I just thought I'd show you a fun little project we did for teacher gifts this year.  I got the idea here, and adapted it for Christmas characters.

Sorry, no tutorial, but if you look at the photos, you could probably figure out how to make them...

The kids enjoyed making them (or helping Mom make them, since they are actually pretty detailed), and the teachers thought they were really cute!

So if you need some last-minute crafty gifts, give them a try!

What Mom Does While the Kids are Busy...

You may have noticed that I have a new photo over there under my "About Me" heading.  I've been meaning to take some new self-portraits for a while, as the photo I was previously using was from two years ago, and cropped out of a family shot!  Isn't it funny how there are never any photos of ourselves in our albums?  I try to make a point of having my husband take photos every so often, so I am in some of them, but even then, they usually are photos of me holding one of the kids, and not just of me by myself...

So anyway, long story short, I decided to take some new photos a couple weeks ago while the kids were occupied (I think Avery was napping, and the other two were playing).  I had straightened my hair that morning (it usually looks best that way), and was dressed nicely, so the timing was right!

The first round was done by setting my camera up on a few pillows of the right height, and setting the auto-timer.  I wanted to have some of my artwork in the background, so I sat on the couch.  I took about 50 photos (no joke!), but wasn't terribly happy about any of them!!  These two were my best though.

But by then, I was really determined to get something I liked!  So I changed my tactics and set up in front of the bathroom mirror!

 

A slight outfit change, and a vintage sheet draped over the shower curtain, and time for a reshoot!  This time, since I was able to check the photos immediately after taking them, I was able to adjust my poses, etc. much more easily.

It took a while to figure out the angles while holding the camera, but that actually led to some pretty interesting shots in itself!

   

After some editing on Picnik, I'm very pleased with the results! I think these photos will work for another two years, if it takes me that long again to do new ones!