Wearing o' The Green: St. Patrick's Day Celebrations

What did you and your family get up to for St. Patrick's Day weekend? We had an awesome weekend full of a family date, parade, lunch at a friend's house and dinner with another group of friends at our house, church and a special visit from cousin Kade! I think we are all still exhausted but happy out! Here are our favorite pictures from the festivities. 

Our parade is amazing and Teagan had lots of fun!

Teagan, Isla and Daddy watch on!

I took lots of pictures of baby Landon for his mommy, Leah who wasn't at the parade. Here's Isla flirting with him!

My Irish baby is eleven months old today!

She has four teeth coming in and is still the sweetest little thing. 

Hi Landon!

Teagan takes a break!

Our babies are starting to get sleepy.....

...very sleepy! Mom's shoulder is a great place to snuggle....

After the parade we had lunch at Paul, Jackie, Molly and Bethany's house!

My little leprechaun loved checking out all their toys!

Krissy and Brecken!

Molly showing Brian that she too is a Manchester United fan! Good choice, Molly!

I could scoop up little Bethany who is hanging out here with her Daddy!

I love this picture! It is so Jackie! Always bubbly, always happy. Saying hello to Isla!

They are such wonderful cooks and hosts. The kids loved this yummy leprechaun treat!

D-lish bread!

Decorations galore! It's cool that they used the clover growing in their garden for this craft!

I think Teagan had three of these when I wasn't looking. I kept finding her with pops in her hand!

Corn beef and cabbage fare was amazing!

At the end of the party she remembered she hadn't turned on her cool earring lights! 

Thanks for an amazing lunch, Jackie and Paul! We had such a great time!

That night we picked up cousin Kade for a sleepover and had our friends, The C family over for bangers & mash.

Lonnie, Landon and Jennifer

Olivia

Landon

Madeline and Jennifer

We had such a great time with them, as usual! Big love for this family!

Finally, we had a little visit with Dave, Shanna, Caleb and Liam over the weekend. 

Liam is going to be ONE YEAR OLD this week! I can't believe how fast the past year has flown by. We so look forward to celebrating with them.

Precious boy! I adore holding this baby.

It has been so warm here that I broke out the summer outfit from Japan that my friend Michiko gave Isla. Isn't it beautiful with her red hair?

Oh somebody is going to get a Liam kiss!

Bye baby boy! See you this weekend!

After all the festivities Teagan fell asleep going to our family dinner date. Brian took us to the most amazing restaurant. They had duck confit...on the kids menu. I was really nervous taking our little munchkins in. But true to their word, they were family friendly and we had the best time!

I hope you have a great day where you are!

Michelle

Destination: Inspiration Linky Party #7

How was your St. Patrick's Day weekend? What did you get up to? Our family had F-U-N! Serious fun. I can't wait to share  pictures in tomorrow's post from our parade, a fabulous lunch at a friend's house, and a late dinner of bangers and mash at our house with some friends to wrap up! And we had some amazing submissions again in last week's linky party!! Thank you all for continuing to provide wonderful inspiration and taking the time to submit each week! Here were some of my favorites. It is not easy narrowing these down, I can tell you!

Check out these DIY Sew in Labels Tutorial by Twigg Studios! I can't say enough about Aimee. Each week she inspires me with not one or two superkalafragelistic submissions but with four or five crazy cool projects!! Plus her photography is sublime! I am so gonna make these labels! Check out her website for inspiration galore. I just got a Silhouette Cameo (hurrah, happy heart!) and can't wait to try some of Twigg Studio's projects!

I also swooned over this 3-D Easter egg banner from Creations by Kara! Isn't it too cute? I have been wondering where I will find the time and energy to whip some Easter decor together. Kara's tutorial is so well done that I can see this happening for sure! Her blog is so fun and has a-MAZ-ing tutorials, yummy treats and so much more inspiration!

Thanks to Tales of a Trophy Wife I just might learn how to sew before my girls grow up! Have you seen her new Sewing 101 tutorials? I.love.them and everything she has made in this series including this cute bubble skirt. I can just picture little matching spring skirts for Teagan & Isla! She is so funny and talented to boot! Check out her blog for tons of great decorating and crafting ideas as well as her linky party on Tuesdays!

Passport to an Awesome Party

Thanks so much to everyone for the amazing submissions each week! I am just blown away by the talent here. If you were featured I'd love it if you'd grab my featured button to post on your blog.

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*I am trying to grow my little blog so please do follow me using Google Friends Connect or Linky Followers on my sidebar!

*Grab my button and post it somewhere on your blog.

*Link to your post instead of your overall blog address.

*We all love comments so spread the love to at least one other blogger.

Happy Tuesday! I'll leave the linky up again until Monday night. I have lots of fun pictures to share from our Paddy's Day celebration, a book recommendation and more this week! What are you up to in your house?

Cheers, Michelle

When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

When Irish eyes are smiling

Sure it's like a morn in spring.

In the lilt of Irish laughter,

You can hear the angels sing.

When Irish hearts are happy,

All the world seems bright and gay.

Sure, they steal your heart away...

We had so many reasons to smile last week as we celebrated St. Patrick's Day. On Wednesday we got together with Teagan's buddies at an art studio to make all kinds of crafty fun!

I love this idea! They used contact paper which allowed the kids to stick buttons, felt, glitter and more to their shamrocks. When they were finished contact paper was added to the top to seal everything in and the excess was trimmed away! My friend Nisha said she will do this with an egg shape for an Easter craft for her neighborhood kids. Brilliant!

Sweet little Ashleigh!

I am so glad we recently met Katie from England and her precious boy, Leo! He hasn't met little Brecken, Liam or Landon yet but they are sure to become fast friends!

Two of my favorite girls! Lera and mommy Natasha.

Lera always has the best smiles!

We were super psyched that Zea and mom Nisha switched their schedule around to join us!

Ellie and Vivienne are also new, treasured friends. They are the sweetest and prettiest little girls. This goo they are playing with is like play dough/slime that doesn't stick. I heard it was made of some sort of acid....yikes! Normally the mention of acid and my little babies make for one nervous mommy but thankfully by the time I heard what it was made of the kids had been playing happily with it. In fact, they LOVED it! I have a hard enough time getting our dinners made according to the recipe so I don't see us trying this one at home!

Teagan and Ellie painting with colored shaving cream.

With the Irish, Russians, British, Americans and French representin' we've become quite the international play group! French Ellie is here with Teagan. Ellie is seriously talented with her art as is photographer mom, Catherine!

Aren't Vivienne and mom Heather beautiful? They lived in Colorado and Texas too!

It was a treat to catch up with Daniel, sister Ashleigh and their mom, Polly! We miss seeing them each week.

Zea and Teagan grabbing a quick hug!

This was another project where the kids used tongs to drop metal balls covered with sparkly paint into galvanized pizza pans. When the balls hit the round paper they made a cool pattern! Those ladies at the studio are just genius! I can't wait for Tea's next class with them later this month for Easter!

I spied little Ashleigh working away on her own as the class wrapped up. I just love this shot but wish my blog template would let me display a bigger version. It would even be cool in black and white or with a color focus. And I love that we can see all our kid's artwork hanging up above her drying before we head home with them.

Destination: Inspiration is coming up for Tuesday! And I can't wait to share photos from our Paddy's Day celebrations on Saturday afternoon and night! Have a great Monday, all!

Praise You in This Storm: Our Path to Parenthood

Hello everyone! If you are popping in from Kelly's Korner this week then you are very welcome!Although mine is a small blog compared to hers, it's similar in that I also share my love of Christ and the adventures of my Irish husband Brian and our two girls Teagan (2.5) and Isla (11 months). I also write about my role as an Advocate for Compassion International and a bit o' crafty/DIY inspiration. I hope you will become a follower. And if you have been hit with the Pinterest crafting bug then  please come back on Tuesdays for my Destination: Inspiration linky parties!

"Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not onto your own understanding, in all of your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path."

Proverbs 3:5

A Beautiful Beginning

When my mother told me as a high school teenager not to rush into marriage I don't think she ever suspected how long I would heed her advice! I traveled the world with school and my job and even lived in Japan for two years. I was blessed to meet Brian in my late twenties. We dated a whopping 5.5 years before we got married in front of 80 of our closest friends and family via a destination wedding in Playa del Carmen, Mexico! I was 35 years old. I never felt happier and life was working out just as I planned. As a project manager and risk consultant I felt any issue could be solved if you planned well and took a task-oriented approach to solving it.

Raindrops...

Looking back there were clues that I would run into fertility problems as early as my adolescence but at the time I assumed that all was well and we would have a baby in our arms in no time! After several weeks of feeling queasy I became so confused when my first pregnancy test showed a clear positive but before I could get back into town to tell Brian there was no longer a trace of a line on any subsequent test. I think this was my very first miscarriage though it was never medically confirmed.

and Storms...

The next few years brought a series of challenges including a tough schedule that had me traveling a lot, a cross-country move where we left our closest friends, not being able to sell our house, Brian having trouble finding a new job...it was as if we were stuck in mud and couldn't move forward or backward. And to make matters worse we couldn't get pregnant. My doctor had us try Clomid but after just one month he referred us to a fertility specialist.

 Testing, Testing - This is Only a Test...

The next few years brought test after test as doctors tried to determine why we couldn't get pregnant. And just when I couldn't take anymore tests...a light! We were scheduled for IUI (Intrauterine Insemination). This was it! I was SURE now we'd get pregnant. But the first round of treatment didn't work. We were devastated. The wait was long but the next time we tried we got a positive test result! A positive! I skipped happily into the reproductive endocrinologist's office for my blood work that morning and headed off to work to wait for the phone call with a confirmation. I was so absolutely confident we were pregnant that...as crazy as it sounds, I bought a baby onesie over my lunch break. I remember feeling faint when my nurse called to tell me she had bad news. The numbers indicated the pregnancy wasn't viable. I was stunned and kept saying over and over, "But I'm pregnant..."

Praise You in This Storm

Even now I find it hard to get into some of the details of our path to parenthood. Another miscarriage, an ectopic pregnancy when we least expected it...God bless The Casting Crowns!! I would listen to Praise You in This Storm by The Casting Crowns each day on my drive to work and home, over and over. It was like a salve on my aching heart that helped me actually make it through each day. Looking back I truly feel God brought me to my knees to show my project manager, type A self that His plans for me are far more wonderful than anything I could come up with. That I need to rely on HIS will, not mine.

But I hope in sharing my story with others that I can give you HOPE. My doctor said something very important to me: It is not IF you become a parent, it is WHEN. Ultimately our options were Invitrofertilization (IVF) or adoption. I swore we would never go as far as IVF in our quest to become parents. My heart was conflicted but it was also raw and someone close to us was going through a very tough adoption process. After taking four months to collect our thoughts and pray for God's will we ultimately chose the IVF route. And once we did, I found peace. As I saw our little embryos on the screen in the procedure room my doctor, who is a Christian, explained that he had taken us as far as science could but that this had to be of God for it to work.  

The Desires of My Heart.....

Teagan

2009

Isla

2011

For about a year now I've wanted to share the story of our path to parenthood. I found the infertility highway a road of loneliness, at times hope, and at others despair. I felt numb, cold, isolated and that I must be the only person in my social group going through these trials.  I am not sure why this is one condition that isolates us as women. Perhaps it is too painful to talk about? Or, as in my case, I felt that I was less of a woman because I couldn't "do" what every woman in the world could do - give my husband...myself...a baby?

But thankfully I found my voice. I was open and honest about our setbacks. With friends and family. With strangers. And it was at the moment when I was most vulnerable that I found some peace in the form of others who seemed grateful to be able to talk. To relate. I so hope this provides peace for you my friend. I would be privileged to pray for you. Please comment below or send an email to teaganstravels@yahoo.com if you want more privacy. In the meantime, let us pray together:

Dear Heavenly Father,

Please hear our hearts today. Hearts that beg for a child, for children in our homes, God. Our minds tell us that you are in control, that you have great plans for us but oh, the hours are long and our souls become weary. Lift us into your arms. Give us strength. Give us hope. Help us to be open to your path to parenthood for us. We pray that we can praise you in this storm and learn what you want us to from this experience. Give us the gift of patience and perseverance.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

God Bless You and Yours,
Michelle

ShamROCKIN' Good Sugar Cookie Recipe!

Welcome! If you are looking for this week's linky party please click

Destination: Inspiration Tuesday Linky Party #6

Last St. Patrick's Day I put out a call to anyone who could tell me for the love of all mom's who have to bake cookies, why oh why my sugar cookies resembled more of a ...blob...than a shamrock??? Since then I've been on the hunt for THE perfect recipe.

Thanks to The Girl Who Ate Everything who posted this recipe by her friend Alison I have found it! If you are looking for a moist cookie that is a puffy cloud of perfection, not too sweet and holds its shape then look no further! I made these for Valentine's and again for St. Patrick's Day with no worries.

Soft Sugar Cookies
by Alison Tolbert
1 cup sour cream
2 cups white sugar
1 cup butter, slightly softened
4 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract or vanilla (I like almond)
6 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350.

Combine sour cream, sugar, butter, eggs, and vanilla/almond extract. Beat for 2-3 minutes.

Add dry ingredients and mix well. Dough will still be wet and sticky. Let the dough chill in fridge for 25 minutes or until firm.

Roll it out to about 1/4 inch thick and use cookie cutters to make shapes or circles. You may have to add a little flour to roll them out so the dough is workable but remember the less flour you use the softer your cookie will be.

Bake until LIGHT golden brown about 8-10 minutes. When you take them out they will seem underdone but they aren't. Let them cool on the pan and they will be perfect and moist. It you like them harder and more crunchy just bake them a little longer.

Makes around 4 dozen.

We were in a hurry and just used canned frosting but colored it two shades of green because little Teagan just can't get enough of her favorite color this holiday!

The only snafu I ran into was giving a toddler flour...yeah, don't do that. Ever. Make that fairy princess. Lately this costume from her Auntie Angie is the only thing she wants to wear!

I never posted a picture of our St. Patrick's mantel. I love the burlap and green this year. Next time instead of the foam shamrocks with wooden painted gold lettering I am going to use fabric scraps instead for more texture (thanks for the idea, Leah)! I tried to take them down because I wasn't sure about them but my Irish husband is still loyal to the Emerald Isle and wouldn't hear of it! *LOL*

Yesterday Madeline came over to help me with the girls and the cookies. She is just the sweetest girl! And I had to snap this picture of her with Isla who woke up from her nap with the funniest bedhead! My little monkey. It's hard to believe she will be a year old in one month!

Have a great day there! I can't wait to post the story of our infertility struggle and path to parenthood this week!

Destination: Inspiration Linky Party #6

Ombre Lucky Print by Cameron Homemade

Happy Tuesday everyone! I hope you are off to a festive St. Patrick's Day week! What are you doing to celebrate the holiday? Please share in the comments below because it really makes my day hearing from you! I received a few annonymous posts this week and I am not sure why but Disqus is not displaying them. Ugh to the ugh. But I can read them and am trying to work that out so please continue to post. I love getting to hear from you!

I love this burlap ombre print above. It's from Cameron Homemade. She is so amazing. I love her Paddy's Day mantel and so many of her tutorials. Just got a peek at her horseshoe wreath...squeal! So hope she will link that up here this week. You've got to see it so head over to her blog!

Kids Playdough by Homespun with Love

Homespun with Love submitted this cute tutorial for kids Paddy's Day playdough. I adore the printables and background decor too so check out this link to be sure. She also submitted an awesome recipe for potato, leek and proscuitto soup...YUM! Her site has so much to offer so pop on over!

I can't believe how cool this beautiful handmade TV console by Vixen Made turned out! Vixen Made has one of my very favorite blogs in a sea of wonderful choices. Check out her fabulous Etsy offerings and tutorials while you visit her. I also love that she introduced me to these furniture Plans from Anna White!

I always feature three projects from my linky parties but with Easter on its way I just couldn't leave out this adorable Framed Bunny Silhouette by Uncommon Designs Online! Bonnie and Trish are so very talented and I love their blog. Be sure to check it out! 

On to this week's party! If you were featured I'd love it if you'd grab my featured button to post on your blog.





<center><a href="http://teaganstravels.blogspot.com/"><img src="http://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa394/sticksandmouse/th_basebutton.jpg" border="0" alt="Teagan's Travels Button, 2012 February"/></a> <center></center></center>


<center><a href="http://teaganstravels.blogspot.com/"><img src="http://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa394/sticksandmouse/IWasFeatured.jpg" border="0" alt="I Was Featured, 2012 February" /></a><center></center></center>

Passport to an Awesome Party

*I am trying to grow my little blog so please do follow me using Google Friends Connect or Linky Followers on my sidebar!

*Grab my button and post it somewhere on your blog.

*Link to your post instead of your overall blog address.

*We all love comments so spread the love to at least one other blogger.

Happy Tuesday! I'll leave the linky up again until Monday night. As a reminder this week I will be posting the story of our infertility/path to parenthood for a linky on Kelly's Korner, adding more Paddy's recipes, pictures and more! Please come back and see us!

My Little Shopaholic Mini Me!

My pictures today are looking at the Spirit O' Paddy's Past!

Here Teagan is at almost two years old. She looks so little to me here. 

Oh boy. Am I in trouble. As in trou-UH-ble. I've suspected this for a few weeks but now it becomes official: my almost three year old loves shopping as much as her mommy! I took Teagan and Isla out today for shoes. Just shoes. Ok, and two white shirts to wear under their St. Patrick's Day dresses. But you get the idea. Not a big, long day. Just a store or two. Easy-breezy, right?

That plan so did not happen. We had only been in Store #1 a milisecond when Teagan began  throwing clothes into our stroller with such abandon I couldn't keep up! Wait a minute??!? What happened to keeping our hands to ourselves? What of sitting in the stroller quietly so mom could shop and we could move on to better things like kiddie train rides and an ice cream treat?

None of this mattered. She was on a mission, grabbing up anything her toddler hands could reach. Anything, friends. I am still stunned by her speed, her grace. I thought I could do some damage in record time but we had sparkly headbands, shirts in a rainbow of colors, a boy's baseball cap...scary bright orange sandles five sizes bigger than little Tea's feet. Sigh. And that was just one store.

...I'm not even sure how we managed to get outta The Children's Place without alarms going off! It wasn't until Isla innocently handed me a pair of glittery jelly sandals that I realized the secret stash of stuff underneath her feet. We had to double back and give up the goods to a sweet natured salesperson. Even in "my" store she found a green cardigan and wouldn't take it off opting instead to parade around and around until the sales team fell into a fit of giggles. But they weren't laughing  when she dumped a table full of sunglasses on the floor insisting that the cool tray beneath them had to be hers. Before long I was worn out and cut out trip short without the shoes, the train ride or the ice cream. We still had a great time. As we happily headed home Teagan muttered with her sleepy eyes closing, "Mommy, can we just go to one more store???" 

Yes, I have my little mini shopaholic. If you haven't read this series by Sophie Kinsella you must! It is hilariously funny. And I am so grateful for my two mini me girls! This week I can't wait to share our infertility/path to parenthood story, Paddy's Day fun and more! Hope you'll be back soon.

Michelle