Minky Baby Blanket Giveaway!!

We have a GREAT GIVEAWAY today!! We are so excited to be part of a giveaway with one of our favorite blogs! Do you have or know someone with twins? This blog has all the tips, helps, discussions, and advice you need if you are expecting multiples or have a cute little baby a and cute little baby b!

This is out biggest giveaway yet, so make sure you are a follower of our shop on instagram @goldenhillshop and become a follower of twintalkblog @twintalkblog on instagram as well.  Head over to twintalkblog.com to enter the giveaway...you won't be disappointed!! You will love this blanket!

Good Luck!!

Twins First Birthday

Pink and Gold Birthday Bash!

Since we had so much help from friends, neighbors, and family during our twins first year of life, we really wanted to celebrate their first birthday by thanking everyone and just having a fun night.  I've been on a big gold kick lately and so have lots of gold decorations already on hand.  To make things a little easier, I decided to make it a gold and pink party! Plus, do you know how easy it is to decorate with a can of gold spray paint? My family teases me about what I will spray next and turn it gold! In fact, my twins have these sparkly pink bows and then I have the same bows in gold.  My 4 year old son, however, didn't know I had 2 gold bows as well.  The babies wore the pink bows one day and then the next they wore the gold bows and he turns to me and goes, "Mom, did you really spray the twins bows gold too?" Lol!! Too funny! Guess I've gotten a little carried away lately!!

I ended up running out of time to send announcements in the mail, so I quickly designed something on the computer and just sent out a text/email to everyone that was invited.

I got busy and made as many of the decorations as I could. I searched pinterest for ideas and did my best to copy others' great ideas!! :)

We ended up having about 70 people and probably half were kids!! I borrowed a commercial cotton candy machine from a cousin and so had bags and bags of pink cotton candy made up that everyone could take home as a party favor.  It was a huge hit! We ordered lots of food from several restaurants including Texas Roadhouse, Angies, and Cafe Sabor.  I bought a full sheet cake and we served raspberry sheet cake and ice cream after dinner.

Lehra- My Care-a-Bear-a  You give the biggest bear hugs I've ever seen.  Out of all my 5 kids, you are definitely the one who likes to snuggle the most! You are still dealing with laryngomalasia and so haven't been able to laugh yet, but constantly give the most giant smiles.  They are always silent smiles, but are so big and happy.  I can't wait for the day to hear you laugh!

You are so fast at crawling!  You get everywhere you want to go and LOVE when we leave the gate open to go up the stairs.  It is a race to see who can get there first.  You also absolutely love to crawl over things.  No matter what is on the floor, it is like a mission of yours to be able to crawl over it.  Super funny to watch!

You are not very picky when it comes to food.  You like most everything and are a pretty good eater.  Unless you have a cold  I can tell it really affects your throat and is hard for you to swallow/breathe because your eating changes quite a bit when you don't feel good.

You are starting to become a little more verbal.  It has been a little slower in coming, but I have seen lots of improvements over the past few months.

Lakin- My Lakes You have just started cruising with walking like no other!! I think it was the same week as your birthday in fact that you actually started walking!  Way to go...12 months!  You love to run/walk everywhere.  Still haven't figured out how to stand up in the middle of the room, so you have to crawl over to the couch to stand up, but then away you go! You absolutely love to be chased, tickled and teased.  I can tell you will have a spunky personality as you like to joke and kid around all ready at such a young age.

Your feelings are very close to your heart.  Any time sister is sad, the littlest thing will make you cry. If Lehra cries too loud, it will make you cry.  If someone you don't know very well is too close, you will cry.  Oh and we won't even talk about Santa holding you!! Boy, was he scary, or what?!?! Lehra is so laid back and you are much more up tight.  Fun to see how different you are.

You are also a pickier eater.  If you aren't in the mood to eat something...back out it comes and you WILL NOT eat it.  I can be sure that it will be spit back out in my face.  Not to happy about that, by the way!!

You have the funnest laugh.  You are very easy to make laugh.  I can tickle or play with you and you smile and giggle and it makes others smile or giggle too.

Both of you love to listen to stories and love to be held and have all the attention.  I can not believe we made it through the hardest year of my life.  I'm so grateful to be lucky enough to be a mom of twins!

Baby girls

Sometimes I wish time would freeze.  This past year my twins have been oh so hard.  And yet every once in awhile I am blessed with a moment in time when I just want time to stand still forever.  This morning was one of those moments.  As my twins get older, I'm starting to see more and more of those sweet moments.  I wasn't one of the lucky ones that got many of those in our first year together. I have loved them their whole little lives, but our first year was HARD.  I cherish my baby girls.  Having 5 children, I know how fast they grow up.  My oldest will turn 10 in a few months and I already feel like we've blinked and 10 years have gone by.  I will blink again and she will be moving out and going to college.  I'm so not ready for that. So, even though the days and long and sometimes I feel like the baby days will never end, I'm going to try and find those sweet moments a little more often.

 This is how I spend a lot of my day.  I love that they snuggle up to each other as they fall asleep.  I could've stayed here and just held them for hours if I didn't have SO much to do when they sleep.  Just love my twin girls.  My heart is full!!

Light Stick Bats

My son was asked to bring a treat to preschool (to celebrate his "birthday" since his birthday is in the summer) and so we gladly started thinking about what to take. Since Halloween is just two weeks away, we decided to do something with a fun and festive theme.  I gave him a few ideas about what to do and he decided he wanted to do something with bats.  So we got thinking and this is what we came up with. Light stick bats!

There is actually a little candy attached to the back, you just can't see it.  :)

As you can see, these were really simple to put together, and the kids loved them.  They get a little treat to eat and then a light stick to have later.  I just drew the faces on with a black permanent marker.  I used a hole punch to punch a hole through the candy bar wrapper and used bakers twine to make a necklace that would hook the two together as well.  I cut the bottom of the tissue paper to look like bat wings, but once they were crinkled up you really couldn't see it that much.  If I would've had more time, I would've cut the ends of the wings into a point as well, but I just ran out of time.  My husband reminded me that the kids were 4 and wouldn't care. Lol!!

Happy Bat Flying!!

Animal Print Minky Blanket

We are so in love with this new blanket.  It is the softest minky ever.  We had such a hard time mailing it away, but we did it anyway.  It is made of neutral tones that compliment each other perfectly.  It also has just a subtle animal print which gives it fun personality and character...but isn't too overpowering.  This material is also great because it washes so well.  It can be used, loved, and then thrown in the washer and it will come out like new! Head to our shop at goldenhillshop.etsy.com to check out this blanket and other great products.

This blanket is so soft and snugly it will force you to sit down with your favorite beverage and book or movie and relax for a while!  It will keep you nice an comfy through the chilly months of fall and the cold winter months as well.  With its basic earthy tones it's sure to match any home! Don't wait any longer...head to the shop before its too late!! :)

Pick Your Poison

Teachers.  There aren't many people who work harder then teachers.  Ok, I totally have a biased opinion because I used to be a teacher, but it really is true.  Teachers work so so so hard.  For not very much money and not very much recognition.  They do it because they love the children.  They love to see them learn and progress.  To meet their goals and advance in ways that even the child have no idea he or she could.  Its a pretty amazing job.  It is, however, a very tiring and stressful job.  I wish more then anything I could send a teacher gift everyday to my kids' teachers.  They deserve it.  Heck, I wish I could send them on a trip to the Bahamas! But this is reality and since I use to teach, I REALLY don't have the money to send a gift every day or send them on a fancy trip! Lol!! So, I try to send something every once in awhile to tell them thank you for their hard work and brighten up their day a bit.

Becca had the the cutest idea  to send something fun for Halloween.  Instead of sending a teacher gift, she thought it might be fun to send something the teachers could use in the classroom as a reward system or prize jar.  We found jars at a local craft store that had chalkboard labels attached.  They didn't have enough, so we found some plain jars and some chalkboard labels and attached our own! Sometimes you have to improvise! Then we filled it with Halloween candy, and prizes from the craft section that included spider rings, googly eye rings, erasers, and other little trinkets.  The kids went nuts over them!

Going Golden

This year Becca and I are all about GOLD! I have loved seeing gold in every store and in almost every department.  Becca brought me a super cute black and gold chapstick yesterday that I was head over hills about!  How cute is that?  I'm pretty sure you'll be seeing lots of gold incorporated in our shop as well as our decorating.  We just can't get enough!

So I decided to try a few new things that I've seen on floating around on pinterest.  Its nothing new to many of you, but I've never spray painted pumpkins gold and black before....and they turned out super cute!

It was actually quite simple and fast.  Just a little spray paint, thumb tacks, ribbon, glitter spray paint and done! The tacks were the most time consuming but that just depends on which pattern you decide to do.  Completely up to you! The big pumpkin on the far left was just plain gold spray paint.  The little guy next to him was gold paint with gold glitter on top. Then black spray paint with gold thumb tacks in a chevron pattern.  Then on the right, the large pumpkin was plain black spray paint.  The little one was black with gold glitter spray pain on top with gold tack polka dots and the last was plain gold spray paint.  Then ribbons on all.  How are you decorating your pumpkins?