Together in Paris

We did something really exciting the other day. Okay, maybe it isn’t actually that exciting except for someone like me. So here’s the scoop, we just moved in so the number of walls that need attention are astronomical. That might be too strong a word, but there are lots of bare walls. Like this guy in the kitchen:

So sad, so boring, so in need of a little something. So, we scrounged in our box of prints and paintings and found two pictures that have been dying to be put into frames since I bought them as a junior studying abroad in Italy in college. But they are hiding in storage no longer!

I bought these during a short trip to Paris. Some side vendor was selling these. I loved the colors of the paintings and up close you can see all the brush strokes he used. I’ve wanted to frame them and put them up since I bought them, but first I didn’t have frames, and then there never seemed to be a good place to hang them. Now, however, they’re enjoying their home in the kitchen. Let’s zoom in a minute and get little closer, shall we?

Isn’t it lovely? It goes great with the soft grey walls and wood cupboards. We found the frames on sale at Target for $13 and immediately snatched two up. Not a bad display for having only spent $26 right? They’re prett big paintings so even at Ikea we were worried we would have to spend upwards of 30 to 40 beans on frames. I didn’t even want to think about custom framing. Custom framing hurts our wallets.

Sophie loves to point at them and talk about the princesses that must live in the “castles” in the paintings. I’ve tried several times to tell her what the monuments in the photos actually are, but with no success. She still says the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral are the homes of Belle and Anastasia. Gotta love her!

We love them. Makes me want to take a trip really badly… someday. I’m just happy these two have a home now. A home that doesn’t consist of being hidden in a box. Big win. They also make our kitchen look a little bit more put together. One thing down, a million and one things to go. Happy Wednesday friends!

A Big 2-7

June fourth was my leading man’s birthday. He turned 27! Gasp.

Since he had to work on his actual birthday (super bummertown) we celebrated on Saturday. Along with having a wonderful barbecue with friends, Tim got to do something really unique for his 27th birthday:

Yep, he got a chance to fly a plane! For Christmas I bought him a pass to a flight school and he redeemed it for his birthday. It was a GORG-eous day outside which was an added bonus. He was also able to bring a guest so yours truly was able to sit in the back seat of the plane and catch all the action with the camera.

This was my view  from where I was sitting.

And here’s my myspace-style photo op displaying how exactly I felt in that little puddle-jumper with my husband at the wheel.

Just kidding. Except that’s actually kind of how I felt. But no worries because I had a handsome man at the wheel, taking charge and learning to fly.

Isn’t he handsome? It was really amazing to be up in the air like that. I even got to have a little headset all to myself and listen to all the bravo-charlies going on. I have no idea what any of that meant but I am thinking about looking it up via google later on today. Just so you know.

Here’s a fun shot I took of the ground below:

Look at all the tiny trees (spoken in a Vector voice from Dispicable Me)! We were up in the air for about 30 minutes and it was 30 minutes of awesomeness!

So that’s how we spent Tim’s birthday celebration. It’ll be hard to top that in 2013 when he turn 28 (two more years and it’s 30! Bah!).

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Cheers!

So I’ve Been Keeping A Secret…

A couple weeks ago, kind of on a whim, I applied to the summer No Coast Craft-O-Rama.

This is the 2009 No Coast Craft-O-Rama logo

The craziest thing? I got in! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this summer, The Bean House Shop will be part of the first (EVER) Summer No Coast! I’ll give you all more details as they come in!

Daily Dose of Cuteness: Sisters

I told you I would be back with an update on our first bike trip of the season! There’s a great bike shop a couple blocks away from where we live that just opened, so we took the opportunity to give a local business some revenue and sent in both Tim’s and my bike to get a tune-up (and a tire fixed replaced and possibly some broken brakes a little love-and-tender-care). Honestly, I’ve had my bike since I was sixteen, and I don’t think it’s been in for a tune-up since then (!). I know all you bike enthusiasts are shaking your heads at me. I’m sorry I let you down. Oh yea, and the breaks? They’ve been broken for at least two years. Seriously. I’m hanging my head in shame.

BUT they are working wonderfully thanks to the nice guys at the charming bike shop and we hooked up our burley to the back of Tim’s bike and went for a fun family ride! The girls? They were P.U.M.P.E.D.

Maybe that’s too strong a word… once we got going, they both loved it. It just took some persuasion. They are pretty darling, all smooshed in there. However, we were on an important mission. Not only was it gorgeous outside, but we couldn’t wait to get our mits on these guys:

Cinnamon Rolls from Isles Bun and Coffee in Minneapolis. Stop it. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. They also had a pretty bomb raspberry ice tea that I tried and might have to go back for. The whole meal was really tasty. One might believe that we rewarded ourselves by getting these last, after a long, gruelling bike excursion. Nope. We went here first and then proceeded to “bike off” all the delicious calories we had just consumed. Not sure if it worked, but it was a great maiden voyage of the 2012 bike season.

Cheers!

Jen

Update: For those wondering, we love our burley. In the picture it looks like there is no room, but it’s because it was a tad on the chilly side that day so we crammed about four blankets in there with the girls to keep them warm. On a regular day, there’s lots of room for both of them to be in there. If you’re contemplating a burley, contemplate no more. Just do it.

Happy Easter

We here at the Bean House hope that you all had a wonderful Easter holiday! We had a wonderful time collecting eggs that the Easter bunny hid for us (seriously, why does the Easter bunny hide eggs? Shouldn’t it be carrots or something?) and eating a lot of wonderfully, unhealthy, delicious food, and visiting with all of our friends and family. Sophie had a great time eating all the chocolate, candy, and rainbow-colored goldfish that the Easter bunny dished out for her. Plus, she couldn’t even handle herself when it came to egg hunting. The girl loves a good egg-hunt. No joke.

But first things first. Here’s what our little Beanette’s wore to celebrate!

And if some of you are wondering, “That’s it? That’s the best photo you could get?” The answer is yes, yes it is. Sometimes (read: always) the girls don’t cooperate when it comes to taking pictures. Although, if I can state an opinion, at least they weren’t nearly as bad as the Thanksgiving fail this year. At least Charlotte looks happy!

So, in our family, we separate family holiday’s like such… Christmas Eve is with Tim’s parents, Christmas day is with my family, Thanksgiving is with Tim’s family and Easter is with my family. All the other holidays we just kind of bounce around because they are what we consider, minor holidays. But Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving tend to be pretty big deals in both our family’s, so we knew even before we got married, that we would have to have a game plan for how to split them up so that we could make the rounds sufficiently. And although things don’t always go according to plan, we try to stick to this schedule as best we can. Wondering why you never got a Christmas post? Well, that’s one of those “didn’t go according to plan” moments that we just decided to use as a teachable moment for us. We’ve got a whole new game plan for next year. But I digress…

So this year for Easter we were at my Mom’s house. Actually, we were able to do a pre-Easter celebration with Tim’s family on Saturday. Sophia, Charlotte, Tim and I went down to Tim’s parent’s house for brunch. Then, on Sunday we were at my mother’s. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon there, hanging out with my mother’s side of the family. When my family gets together, it’s a major lounge-fest. We don’t really do anything but talk, vedge, eat and have a good time. It’s probably not the most thrilling of traditions, but nothing feels more like home to me.

Once everyone else had gone home, Tim, myself, Charlotte, Sophie, my mom, sister and Tom all rode our bike to Lake Calhoun and did a little Easter egg hunt there. Charlotte slept the whole time, but Sophie was pretty thrilled:

She had so much fun that she didn’t believe us when we told her she had found all of them. She kept wondering around saying, “Go get some more!” Oh, and if you’re wondering why the eggs are such a funny color, the reason is that we tried the whole natural-egg-dying thing this year… but we did it with out really reading anything about it before hand. So in the end all of our eggs ended up coming out some off-shade of vomit. Except the ones that were in the cabbage! Those ones turned out a really pretty blue. All the others were weird shades of brown and yellow. Guess we know now that we should probably do our research before just diving head-first into something new.

Whelp, I hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend! I’ll be posting pictures later of Charlotte’s maiden voyage on the burley. The two girls look pretty funny all smooshed into the burley, covered in blankets and hats. We’re really happy we got it though, it’s been wonderful taking them for bike rides now that the weather is nice!

Cheers friends!

Jen

Dresses for Girls

One of my favorite blogs to read (and get amazing dress ideas from) is Craftiness is Not Optional and yesterday she had a post all about some pillowcase dresses she made for a woman who is trying to get 50 dresses to send to little girls all over the world, little girls who barely have any clothes at all!

Her name is Margaret Andrade and she has enlisted the help of a local sewing class and some friends of hers, as well as some sewing blogs (like Craftiness), to help make and donate the dresses. They’re for girls who have almost no clothing at all, let alone a little dress. Once I read all about it, I knew I wanted to lend a hand. So I emailed Margaret and she told me the down-low. Then I rushed off to my favorite fabric shop and bought a one yard remnant (for $3.50) and two yards of ribbon (for $1) and made two of these dresses in less than an hour.

Sophie was sad when she found out they weren’t for her, but once I explained (as best I could to a 22 month-old) she kept say, “Mommy, they for a little friend. She going to be pretty too.” Seriously? Be still my heart. I hope the little girls that get them love them! It was nice to sew something for a cause! It’s a great way to lend a hand.

If you’d like to get involved, you can contact her at:

margaretandrade@hotmail.com

I know she would love all the help! Cheers friends!

 

For all my immediate friends and family with mad sewing skills, I’m planning on sending my dresses out next weekend so let me know if you’re interested in helping out and sending some more along with the ones I’m doing. I’ll pay for all the shipping to get them to Margaret. These dresses are ridiculously easy to make, there are approximately a million tutorials on different ways to make them. I made two dresses for under five dollars, and sewing for something like this is sure to put a smile on your face!

Setting Up Shop

I don’t know if it’s me just getting antsy, or if my husbands entrepreneurial mindset has finally begun to make an impression on me, but I’ve decided to start my own shop!

Super exciting? Yes!

Super scary? Never been more terrified!

But I’m also really excited, giddy, thrilled and all manner of synonyms. So stay tuned for the big “grand” opening of the Bean House Shop. I’ll be selling lots of cute little things for the little ones in your life (catchy, right?), which is exactly what I love to do already. I might not sell anything but it’s exciting to think there’s always a possibility. As always, I ‘ll keep you all posted on my progress! Cheers!

Thanksgiving Fail

I’m not going to lie, I kind of chuckle to myself when people tell me how lucky I am that my children sit for pictures. I’m here to dispel the rumors… my kids don’t.

My kids, just like everyone else’s kids don’t sit for pictures very well. Sophie will say, “Cheese!” really loudly while looking the other direction at something else. Charlotte? Well Charlotte is two and half months old (I know! Picture coming soon, I promise!) and just sort of slumps there… looking at nothing in particular. Thanksgiving was such a good example of this that I had to share.

As I mentioned (and shamelessly bragged about) here, I made Charlotte and Sophie matching Thanksgiving outfits because, let’s face it, I have a few precious holidays before the two of them will refuse to wear anything remotely matching or similar to each other, especially if it’s something I made. Gotta take advantage of it now. The dresses themselves turned out really well, I love the fabric and I love that they are so comfy and casual. Charlotte has already outgrown hers but Sophie’s got some time before hers won’t fit anymore.

Anyway, on Thanksgiving Day we didn’t have to be anywhere until later on in the afternoon so we put Sophie down for her nap at her usual time and Charlotte faded in and out of consciousness that whole time. Well our Bean decided that Thanksgiving was going to be the day that she took an EXTRA long nap so we ended up having to wake her up in a hurry so we wouldn’t be late. I wanted to take a few quick shots of the girls in their little dresses, but we were in such a rush to get to our family’s celebration that I ended up only being able to take about a dozen shots. The result? These are the best four:

I call this one “Dazed and Confused”

“The Great Escape” and “The Young and Slightly Restless and Lumpy”

“The Armpit Disaster”

And the “You Distract Mom While I Make For the Cookie Jar”

Yep. Seriously, these were the four best photos. Mostly because they also the worst which made them funny. Sigh. Now I know that nap + fast photo attempt = mega fail. The good news is that despite their inability to cooperate, they both looked really cute and that’s all I could ask for. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving  spending time with our family and so even though the photos will always be awkward and weird, the memories will always be sweet. Can I get an “awwww”?

I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving! Get excited for Christmas… it’s coming up soon!!!

Psst- Anyone else notice that weird design in the blanket in the second photo? Anyone? Kind of creeps me out. It’s like when that kid in the Sixth Sense says “I see dead people” except it’s “I see weird, Celtic-Looking-ghost-designs”. Cue haunted music…

Expecting Baby Peaches

For those of you who read this and thought, “Oh God, she’s pregnant again.” Psych!

Actually, we’re really excited about my cousins little Bean-to-Be, who has been lovingly named “Peaches” until the true reveal of her name (when she is born). We’re all about code names. Sophie was “Bean” up until her birthday too. Gives you a little time to think of names you love, and if you’re not telling people the name you’re thinking about, nobody has a chance to get attached to an option and then get mad when you deviate. Personal experience? Perhaps. So, in honor of Baby Peaches and her lovely mom, we held a baby shower the weekend before Halloween (told you these were all out of order). Really, this post is just going to be a photo dump from the shower, so enjoy!

Those caramel rolls on the table? Probably THE most amazing caramel rolls I’ve ever had in my life. I tried to make them on my own once, but it was a miserable fail. For some reason the ability to make caramel rolls has always escaped me. These little beauties were made by my mother. She made A LOT of them for the shower and I think I probably had three… in my defense, Sophie kept stealing parts of mine. That’s not much of a defense…

There ended up being 109 diapers in this container. Guesses ranged from low 40′s to the 120′s… The best part about this game? The Mother-to-Be gets 109 usable diapers, plus a convenient little caddy to store things in. Gotta love games with some function to them as well.

I cut these little onesies out of cardstock I got uber cheap at JoAnn Fabrics (with coupon). Super adorable + super thrifty = Job Well Done

Don’t you just want to mush his little face???

Aww the Mom-to-Be and Aunt-to-Be!

All in all it was a really good time, I think. Happy Wednesday!

Trick or Treat

With two kids, the post has literally taken me three days to write. Plus, this post is definitely not in order… and the post after this will also be a part of that trend. This post is all about Halloween which happened before Charlotte turned one month old (how about that photo? Isn’t she a doll?) and the post after this one actually happened before Halloween. So I’ve got my timelines wrong… I’ll blame it on the lack of sleep.

But I did want to post about Halloween because it was an amazing day. Sophie, of course, was really excited about knocking on peoples’ doors, saying the “magic words” and getting candy put into her bucket. She didn’t really eat the candy too much, she was just really excited about putting things in her bucket. Gotta love that girl.

First, a couple people have asked if we carved pumpkins with Sophie and Charlotte and if we did anything to get them “involved” in the process since toddler + knife = disaster and newborn baby + physical activity = not happening. This year we thought it would be fun to get Sophie involved by letting her pick out her own pumpkin (which she ended up picking about 8 of them and we just sort of took one from that pile… the whole way home she was asking “punkeen okay?”) and we used her hand as a template for the carving. Observe:

We traced her hand onto the pumpkin and carved it out. It’s not the most creative thing in the world, but we thought it was pretty cute. She loved her little pumpkin. She was really confused though when she would try to pick it up from the stem and the top would come off without the bottom coming too. Took her a couple of times before she realized she had to grab it from the bottom. Too funny. Here’s her pumpkin hanging out with its friend…

As far as costumes and traditions go, we dressed up Charlotte in a little flower suit that we got as a gift when Sophie was born. Sophie was born right as we were going into summer and so wasn’t able to wear it for very long, but we took the opportunity of a baby born in the heart of fall to show off the adorable piece (we’re also excited that we’ll be able to use it several times before she outgrows it… I think Sophie only got to wear it once):

Don’t you just want to pick her up and snuggle with her? We definitely took lots of pictures of our little dumpling. She seemed pretty indifferent to the whole Halloween thing. That was kind of alright with us though because most evenings she’s awake from four until eight… awake and really unhappy. I don’t think it’s colic but it’s definitely her bewitching time where she just doesn’t want to sleep, thinks she hungry every ten minutes and will not let you put her down. Sophie did this too, if I’m remember correctly so we’re hoping she grows out of it as fast as her sister did. Otherwise we’ll never be able to have friends over for dinner again.

What did Sophie dress up as? Did I sew her a super sweet costume? Well, no I didn’t sew her anything. We found a witch costume for four buckaroos at Menards that sang cute and cheap to us. Remember how Tim loves cheap? This was no exception. So we jumped for the cute, cheap witch costume and Tim promised me I could make her something next year. I’m holding him to that. We tried to teach Sophie how to say “Abra Kadabra” too, but that didn’t really turn out. “Trick or treat” caught on a lot better. Here’s our little family all dressed up (Tim and I went as parents to two cute little girls… creative right?):

I love Charlotte and Sophie’s looks in this photo. Tim and I are being all cute and smiling for the camera while the girls both look like they’ve got other things on their mind. I believe Charlotte was pooping, and Sophie was watching a dog run around in the yard. We did have a couple of people join us for the trick-or-treating experience. Tim’s parents came out with us and my aunt and uncle with their puppy, Eddie, came too. Sophie loved taking Eddie for a walk along the sidewalk and, even better, he was all dressed up for the occasion.

 We probably stopped at about 8 to 10 houses and then headed back to my Mom’s house for the annual chili get-together. It’s something we do every year and, I would like to officially put this out there in cyber-world, my mother makes the best chili. This year she outdid herself, and it was amazeballs. It was awesome. I know many of you would like to argue, but you’re officially invited to next years chili dinner and you will see that you have, in fact, been wrong all along.

I hope that everyone else had a great Halloween. We’re looking forward to next year when we can take both little munchkins out for some good, old-fashioned candy hourding. Cheers!