For those of you who are familiar with Operation Geekling Dinosaur Project, you’ll be happy to know that this week, Liam contributed his very first dinosaur art pieces to his own dinosaur room!
If you don’t know what Operation Geekling Dinosaur Project is, (here it is), in a nutshell: the Internet decorated Liam’s nursery before he was born with 76 different dinosaur masterpieces from all over the world. He received 2 more after he was born. We ran out of space on the first wall because apparently that many dinosaurs cannot be contained, so dinosaurs spill onto a second wall and cover over half of his room. We may be a little dinosaur obsessed over here. …

I knew the day would come that I’d look at the pile of kid artwork that I’d been stacking up in the guest room and make a decision. Do I keep them? Do I throw them away? They’re only going to multiply, like tribbles. How do I decide what to keep and what to throw away?
As I added another drawing to the pile this week, I swear that stack of artwork gave me the evil eye. It was reminding me that art in a stack is no fun. Art needs to be SEEN. On display and appreciated. And it was right.
I wanted to display all of Liam’s art that we’ve collected from school so far …

Christmas break is almost over and in looking back over the past two weeks, I realize that we packed A LOT of fun into our time off together. What a great vacation! This week it’s been really cold outside, and after feeling a little restless, we decided to whip up some bathtub paint to try something new. It was so easy, and I bet you have all of the materials already, too!

It’s officially winter break and our little family has two full weeks off together ahead of us. HOORAY!
It should come as no surprise that we wasted no time in doing some fun holiday crafts together here on day one. We needed some festive tags to mark all of the gifts we were wrapping, and I wanted to add a little personal touch to our packages.  I had recently been inspired by a thumbprint reindeer ornament I saw linked in a trackback to our Santa Hant Print Ornament post by Rachel Knows Best – DIY Christmas Ornaments… what a cute idea!

Okay so apparently our Hand Print Santa Ornaments post from last Christmas is a HUGE hit. (51k+ views… wow, you guys! Glad you love it, thanks for all the love!) and as I was checking out the post, I read at the end how I was thinking maybe we would make hand print Santa ornaments every year, so that we could compare hand sizes as Liam grew. That got me to thinking… what else could we do with hand print ornaments? I looked at our tree, which was missing something. A tree topper!

While it certainly doesn’t FEEL like knitting season yet, the fall months are just around the corner and I’ve already begun the season’s first knits… despite the weather being in the 90s as recently as last weekend. Instead of easing back into the groove with something simple, I decided to kick off knitting season with an ambitious project… a sweater for the geekling. Because… you know. Why not?

It’s not every day that a little boy turns one. Naturally, we had to make it a momentous occasion! Liam had a fantastic Star Wars birthday party to celebrate turning a year old. (“Wait, the Karpiuks threw a Star Wars birthday party? We’re shocked!” said no one, ever.)
From the Greedo doll we gave Liam, to father and son (and schnauzer) matching Star Wars tie shirts and party hats, we went very DIY.

Liam turned one this past weekend, can you believe it?! I decided that he would need something extra special to wear as the guest of honor to his birthday party. Liam’s Aunt Lora had given him a cute faux tie onesie 3 months ago that he’s worn into the ground, but it inspired me to make my own version of a faux tie shirt to match the birthday theme. But you know I couldn’t just stop there… naturally, Lucas needed one of these shirts so that both father and son would match. (Lucas’ idea, I might add.) And then I might’ve made a little matching tie “shirt” for our schnauzer as well. I threw together …