Preschool Graduation.

It's official ya'll ... Griffin is a preschool graduate!


This is a picture of Griffin with his very sweet (I mean extra sweet!) teacher Mrs. Lisa. He LOVES her!

His preschool hosted the annual end of year program last night. There was alot of singing, fellowship and friends on the agenda. The teachers and director do such a good job teaching our children amazing songs.

It was a joyful, sweet and happy tears filled evening.


I took this picture of Griffin yesterday afternoon. His official last time to walk out when his name is called at the end of the day. Oh how I will miss this!

Preschool was the BEST thing for our son. He grew so very much academically and socially.


(Griffin pictured September 2008 first day of preschool ~ age 3)

I remember this timid 3-year-old getting out of the car for the first time. Slowly making his way down the sidewalk into the school. He turned into a rambuntious 5-year-old jumping out of the car running down the sidewalk into the school for the next day's adventure.

We were blessed to have so many wonderful teachers over the past two years. Thank you Mrs. Lisa, Mrs. Carol, Mrs. Pat, Mrs. Linda, Mrs. Julie and Mrs. June for guiding our child in bible, art, academics and just plain fun! Thank you Mrs. Jennifer for being a great director and parent advisor. And thank you Pastor Tony for being a great leader of the church.

We love PPP!

Teacher Gifts.

Look what Griffin and I made for his teacher gifts this year ...


The little glass jar is filled with chocolate covered pretzels.

Then we tied them up with gingham ribbon and added a little gift note to the bow. Then we topped it off with one of my handmade paper flower scallops.

I think they turned out pretty cute.

I hope his teachers like them!

For The Birds.

Where we live we are lucky to have a wide variety of birds. I love watching the bird feeder to see what will come to visit.

We frequently have cardinals, blue jays, robins and dove. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post we had a red breasted grosbeak visit the other day too.

I've been keeping an eye out for two other bird species that visited us last year.

We were lucky enough to have BOTH of them visit us yesterday!

My pictures are not that great because I took them through the window and screen. I was afraid if I opened the door they would fly off.


Someone recommended we get one of these bird feeder socks to draw the american gold finch. I put it up a couple of months ago and yesterday they finally visited! You can see the female on the bottom of the sock and the male is sitting on the top. So nice of him to let her eat first.


This spectacularly colored indigo bunting came for a visit yesterday too! I only spotted one of these in the feeder last year.

This year I'm using a new bird seed specially formulated for song birds.

It looks like it's doing the trick!

Happy bird watching ...

Mt. Vernon Trip.

Mike's mother came for a visit this past weekend.

We decided to take a trip to George Washington's estate Mount Vernon.


The three of us in front of Mount Vernon


Bett and Me


The three of us with the Potomoc River in the background


Grandma & Griffin


We took a boat ride on the Potomoc River ... this is Mt. Vernon from the river's view


Just a cute picture of our sweet boy


They had a few farm animals on the estate including this sheep


The bull was funny ... he was scratching himself on the tree


This is a view of the river from the house ... spectacular isn't it?


A view of the river side of the house


This was Griffin's favorite part ... the blacksmith.

It was amazing walking around the estate. Several times I realized how very lucky I was to be there. Imagine walking on the same soil that George Washington once walked on. It gave me chills!

This Week's Give-A-Way Winner ...

This week's Fun Friday Give-A-Way Winner is ...

Janet Doll!


Congratulations Janet ... I will get your Teddy Bear in the mail to you today.

Everyone ... please come back this Friday for another Fun Friday Give-A-Way!

Fun Friday Give-A-Way!

Hi everyone ... welcome to my Fun Friday Give-A-Way!

As many of you know Facebook has instituted very specific rules about give-a-ways so I've decided to move my Fun Friday Give-A-Ways back to my blog. If you've visited before and entered one of my previous give-a-ways you know it's easy breezy to enter here as well.

This week's Fun Friday Give-A-Way is my cute handmade "All American Kid Teddy Bear Paper Piecing". The bow is included however it is not attached so the Teddy Bear can be personalized for a boy or a girl.


This is a great patriotic paper piecing that would be great on a summer, Memorial Day or 4th of July layout, card or other craft project.

To enter to win this paper piecing all you have to do is leave a comment below in the comments section. Comments will be accepted Thursday, May 13 through Sunday, May 17th, 12:00 pm ET. The winner will be selected randomly from the comments left below on THIS post only. The winner will be announced right here on my blog on Monday morning May 18th!

Here's a couple of tips to leaving a comment:

♥ If you are not familiar with Blogger or are not a member ... no worries. You can leave your comment by clicking on "ANONYMOUS". You will type in your comment and please be sure to include you first name and last initial.

♥ You can join Blogger by "Following My Blog" in your Google Reader. I would love that! That way you get updates from my blog each time you sign into your Google Reader. Then you can sign in to leave your comment for the give-a-way.

♥ Of course if you are already a member of Blogger just sign in and leave a comment.

Should you have ANY questions at all feel free to email me at mgmh@aol.com with your questions.

And hey ... don't forget ... I have some cute handmade paper piecings available in my Ebay Store:

http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/missymadeit

If you are not a friend on Facebook I'd love it if you would join me there as well!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Missy-Made-It/233806810359

Wishing you a happy weekend ...

New Birthday Teddy Bear Paper Piecings!

Hey Ya'll ...

I have a couple of new Birthday Teddy Bear Paper Piecings to share with you today.


This is the girl version all dressed in pink with a sweet pink cupcake and balloon.


And the boy version dressed in red with a yummy "chocolate" cupcake and red balloon.

You can find these and others by clicking HERE to visit my Ebay Store. You can also visit http://www.missymadeit.com/ for a visit as well!

If you have phrase ideas please leave me a comment and I will see what I can come up with!

I'm having such FUN creating cute new Teddy Bears!

Mother's Night.

Griffin's preschool hosted Mother's Night Friday night so he and I had a sweet date night together.


This is the reason I get to celebrate Mother's Day ... he's the reason I am a Mommy.


The Mother's Night celebration was a luau theme complete with leis, limbo, songs, sand art and dinner.


Griffin enjoyed doing the sand art ... his creation was very cool!


I am so lucky ... I love being his Mommy!

Rose Breasted Grosbeak

Griffin and I spotted this bird out in the yard yesterday ...


In all of my 42 years I've never seen a bird that looks like this.


He sat on top of the birdhouse for a very long time. He even let me get pretty close to him to take some pictures. Then he decided to go inside the birdhouse to eat.


This bird is called a rose breasted grosbeak. You can click here if you would like to read a little more about the species.

The information said he was a common bird ... funny thing is ... I've never, ever seen one before yesterday.

I guess we were at the right place at the right time.

Happy Mother's Day Weekend ...

The Sand Box.

Griffin's playset "Fort Griffin" has been up for about three years now.

There was a sand box area and we just never filled it with sand.


It mostly just held all his sand toys that he played in the rocks or his little plastic pool with


Mike decided it was time to fill it with sand. Off to Home Depot we went and loaded up the cart with play sand.


Once we got home all we had to do was empty the sand bags into the sand box area.


He's soooooooo happy ... now he can play with his tractors in the sand.

Thank you Daddy for the GREAT idea!

My Daddy ~ My Hero.

Mike was grilling on the BBQ the other day and noticed the momma bird that had built her nest in the eves of the porch addition was acting a little different.


He went over to look at the bird's nest and realized the baby birds were gone. Finally, he saw one laying on the ground in the gravel.

He went back and forth about whether or not he should rescue it and put it back in the nest. Sometimes you hear you shouldn't, others say you should.


He picked up the sweet little baby bird ... her eyes weren't even open yet.


And then he gently placed her back in the nest.


Mission accomplished ... and a boy learned a valuable lesson from his Daddy.

Help those that need it.

We kept a watch outside the window to see if the momma bird would notice the baby bird back in the nest. We had no idea how she got out or where the others were.

Then Griffin noticed the Daddy bird up near the triangle part of the roof (in the last picture). He was fluttering his wings and just raising cain. Mike took a look and realized there was a snake up there! No wonder the momma bird pushed her babies out of the nest ... she was trying to protect them from the snake. Well, let's just say Mike eased the momma bird's fear of the snake, he no longer lives up there.

The momma bird kept flying under the house ... so that is where the other baby birds are. And she finally found the baby bird back in the nest. She's still there this morning.

We are so proud of Mike for helping to rescue this little bird family.