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He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. ~ Ecclesiastes 3:11

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{via // source}

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I love this typographical design! It brings to mind one of my all time favorite books ~ Don Richardson's Eternity in Their Hearts: Startling Evidence of Belief in the One True God in Hundreds of Cultures Throughout the World. It's truly a fascinating read. If you're not familiar with it, I highly recommend you check it out. I usually reread it every few years. Perhaps it's time for me to pull it off the bookshelf yet again.

I stopped off at the Dollar Store and spent 2 bucks on 20 colorful sponges.

Then after cutting them into thirds, I turned A&A loose.

The result?

HOURS and HOURS of creative play.

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And that, folks, is money well spent!

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I must confess. I waited until the last minute to get busy on Emryn's nursery. We had a guest room that I kept in tact as long as possible. Plus I was annoyingly indecisive ~ I'll blame that one on hormones. I knew I wanted to use all the same furniture from A&A's nurseries and even the same Dwell Studio chocolate dots and stripes bedding that I originally bought while pregnant with Addie.

For Addison's nursery I paired the chocolate with pink and turquoise; for Ayden I paired it with blue, orange and green. But I wanted Emryn's room to have a look all it's own thus enter the mustard yellow. Even though it's somewhat of a popular color these days, it's certainly not common enough to find on the shelves of most stores.

So what's a girl to do but to bust out with some DIY projects? Thanks to Pinterest and Etsy, the ideas were endless. Plus projects like this go hand in hand with late-pregnancy nesting!

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{Mustard Yellow & Brown}

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{ The Details }

* Emryn's Change Table Mobile ~ Inspired by this one I saw over at Say Yes To Hoboken; however, instead of paint swatches I used texture card stock.

* Yarn-Wrapped Initials ~ Inspired by this Honest To Nod blog post.

* Lotta Jansdotter Fabric Covered Embroidery Hoops ~ Inspired by The Purl Bee's swatch portraits that I've wanted to copy for years now. Yay! I love them!

* Yellow and White Chevron Wall Art ~ Inspired by all the fun chevron art and fabrics flooding the internet these days!

* Colorful tissue paper poms hanging above Emryn's bed ~ Though I've made poms before, this time I purchased a dozen of them pre-cut off Etsy. All I had to do was assemble and get JD to hang them. Emryn is a fan; I catch her staring at them daily.

* The paper butterflies are just cut from card stock. I first made some of these for the kids' playroom in Canada. Addie has some in her room as well. I think they're so fun. What little girl wouldn't love seeing butterflies on her wall?

* The vintage mirror frame is something we found in an antique store in Idaho Springs last fall. We plan to hang some Polaroids and such on it in the near future.

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We started January off by learning about Dinosaurs. Both A&A really enjoyed this unit. I think all kids are fascinated by these mysterious creatures. After 6 days of learning and doing fun projects, we wrapped things up by visiting the T-Rex exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. It was awesome!

What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs? by John Morris and Ken Ham was an excellent read. It did a great job of answering questions about Dinosaurs by framing everything according a Biblical worldview. We also spent a good bit of time on the Answers in Genesis website. I'm thankful we have easy access to such great materials.

Here are a few highlights from that week...

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{Costumes made from paper plates}

{Dinos we created using fettuccine and our Cuisenaire Rods}

{Addie came up with this all on her own while I was upstairs}

{Our dino drawings and a few books that they enjoyed the most}

{Painting Dinos}

{The final result}

I love all the free printables available online these days.

It's cool that so many creative people are willing to share their art.

Here are a few that have been added to our playroom and bedroom walls in the past few months.

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{What I Love Most About My Home via eighteen25}

{Love via Children Inspire Design}

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{Love Note via Poppies at Play}

{Colossians 3 via A Country Girl + A Camera}

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ook who's getting bigger! When we got home from church on Sunday I knew we needed to snap a few quick shots of Emryn ~ she is growing so fast! Little did I know that her "real" growth spurt was about to hit. She's been such a hungry critter this week!

I think babies usually have their first growth spurt around the 3 to 4 week mark. Em's is at 5 weeks which seems about right since she's been a little behind in that way from the start. She weighed 7 lbs 7 oz at birth, but her jaundice soon got the better of her. By day 5 she had dropped more than 10% of her birth weight. She was just too lethargic from the jaundice to demand enough food. So we went on a 2 week nursing, supplementing, breast-milk pumping spree. Wowza!I won't sugar coat it ~ those two weeks kicked my bootie! Talk about wiped out.

Thankfully all the hard work paid off. At her 2 1/2 week appointment her weight was right on, and since then she's steadily putting on some chub. Yay!

Everyday she's just getting cuter and cuter! And we are starting to see more of her fun little personality. She's been full of smiles lately {especially for her daddy}.

She looks a good bit like me in my baby pictures, but I doubt that will last. Our kiddos tend to have a look all their own. I'm guessing she'll blend in quite well with A&A.

We are curious to see if she'll keep her strawberry blond hair or be more of a brunette. She has a funny little dark brown patch on the top back of her head. It's in the same spot that Ayden has his red patch. She also appears to have my cowlicks, as does Ayden which is why he wears his hair up in the front.

Overall, I'd say she's a pretty chill gal. She's certainly the calmest baby we've had. A&A were pretty easy too, but Em just seems extra laid back. She's a fantastic sleeper too ~ woot!

Don't you just love her facial expression in the second photo? It looks like she's having an "ah ha!" moment. Or perhaps she's just filling her britches; she's good at that.

I'll try to post pics of her room soon. This time around I married brown with mustard yellow, and I love how it turned out.

{via be-the-change // source: etsy.com}

Years ago JD and I chose Colossians 2:6,7 to be our family verses.

"Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him and firm in your faith just as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness."

So recently when I came across the artwork above, it really resonated with me. Our desire as parents is to see our children come to know the Lord as their Savior and then to guide them in growth ~ to teach, encourage, and show them how to be rooted and built up in Him. But oh what a process. A long process. There's certainly no special checklist to follow. And sometimes no clear way to gauge the progress. Are we doing the right things or inadvertently stunting their growth? Most importantly, are we trusting the Lord each step of the way?

God has entrusted us with 3 amazing little acorns that we hope and pray will one day become beautiful oak trees...solid in their walk with the Lord, rooted in their understanding of His Word, and firm about who they are in Christ.

I pray that God will continue to give us wisdom, understanding, and lots of patience as we raise our precious little ones.

Speaking of precious, here's my tiniest acorn giving me some snuggles. I must say, she is the sweetest thing! We are certainly overflowing with thankfulness.

{ 1 Month Old }

Apples + Caramel + Coconut + Pecans + Almonds

= Today's Snazzy Snack

~ BEFORE ~

~ AFTER ~

A&A and I were all in agreement.

The ones with the coconut were the best.

But judging by the empty plate...

they were all tasty!

Addison {5 yrs}, Ayden {3 yrs} & Emryn {4 wks}

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The McCulley Three!

                a. AJ, my little puzzle lover
                b. One of many hot breakfasts JD has treated us to recently
                c. Our new family photo canvas for the dining room
                d. My Canadians showing off their new maple leaf mitts from the Karys
                e. Sweet Emryn @ 2 1/2 weeks
                f. Used to have a #4 block...now we are 5
                g. Fun on the playmat
                h. Normally I'm a germaphobe, but they thought this was so fun

This week A&A are learning about Dinosaurs. It's been fun! To bake with the Letter D, we perused my Pinterest board of recipes and settled on some amazing looking cookies from Annie's Eats {I've always been pleased with her recipes}. However, in keeping with our theme for school we decided to alter their name to...

Dino-sized Double Chocolate Cookies!

And believe me, they really are Dino-sized. The recipe yields 12 giant cookies!

First of all, these cookie are awesome! They were a big hit around here. Second of all, I usually hesitate to make larger cookies for fear that they won't cook all the way or will turn out odd in some form or fashion. But these were perfectly moist & soft.

For the sake of time, I'm not going to type out the recipe; you can hop over to Annie's post to get it. Also, here is her printable version.

I only made 2 alterations to the recipe. I scaled back the chocolate chips by half a cup as a personal preference. And, since I didn't have any dark cocoa powder I just used the regular cocoa from my pantry. I imagine the dark cocoa adds another wonderful chocolatey dimension, but with a newborn in the house quick trips to the grocery store are a thing of the past for the time being. Not that I'm complaining ~ Emryn slept peacefully while Addison, Ayden & I whipped these up. It was great to be back in the kitchen again with my munchkins!