Swinging Cousins - Sharps Gulch Ranch
/Awesome photo by my sister-in-law Andrea - wish I was back there with all these kids right now!
Emmy's Baptism
/
We celebrated a big day for Emmy on January 18, 2014 - she was baptized a Mormon! It was a special day for Emmy and she had all her biggest supporters there to be a part of it. FULL POST HERE
Free Range Kids
/
To start 2014 we have some big news... Finally after 5 years of looking at ranches and dreaming of someday having our own property - we bought a ranch and couldn't be more excited. We have high hopes to raise our own all-natural pasture raised cattle. And if I can talk Heff into it - maybe chickens and hogs :) It's going to be a lot of work and a slow process to get an operation going but it's a great starting point for us. The ranch has pasture lands for cattle and lots of wide open space and wilderness to raise some free range kids!
I started a page for all the ranch posts - my 2014 resolution (one of them) is to get back to blogging and there is going to be a lot of fun to blog about setting up camp on the ranch :) more pics there!
The Giving Tree Shop is OPEN!
/Come shop for kids at LPCH this holiday season at the Downtown Los Altos Giving Tree Shop 2013!
Come to the Play! courtyard after school to paint a tote bag for a child or family in the hospital and fill it with items from our shelves of gifts. All gifts were shopped locally from our sponsors (Red Racer Hobby Shop, The Land of Nod, The Makery, Area 151, Adventure Toys, Bubble Kids, Kids Only and Linden Tree) and are offered at 50% off retail to fill your bags. NOW through FRIDAY Dec 20!
Winter Lodge Skating
/
Friday night we all went to a really fun family holiday party at The Winter Lodge. The girls were pretty proud to show off their ice skating skills to their friends. (PS I love these new auto effects on picasa... I didn't add this fake snow, it just showed up on upload?!)
Thanksgiving in Red Bluff
/
We had a mellow-by-Heffernan-standards Thanksgiving in Red Bluff this week with Oma, Opa, Nana, Pops, Maureen, Doug and their 4 kids and Brian and I and our 4. It was the smallest kids table we've ever had :) We went up early Tuesday and spent all day Wednesday driving up even farther North to check out some ranches and wide open country.
waiting around watching the bird on the BBQ
Kids table
and sweet Ellie bathed all of the kids after dinner!!! what a treat
Land of Nod Trunk Show!
/
We had so much fun hosting a Land of Nod trunk show at The Makery last Thursday night! We met new friends, gave away Nod toys and crafted elfies and paper flowers. AND got everyone excited for the Land of Nod Toy Shop coming next week to downtown Los Altos!! Alos thanks to our friends at Nod for a coupon code for friends :) use discount code "makery" online for 15% off through Thursday!
We had over 100 guests and almost everyone crafted their own elf!
Chalkboard art in progress - Happy Holidays and #hashtags :)
Michelle, the Managing Director, of The Land of Nod came out to be our Nod rep at our trunk show! We were super honored to have her and really had fun getting to know her - she's awesome as is her company of course :)
End of night raffle - we gave away ALL the Land of Nod toys that they sent!
Cristin, Me, Michelle and Michaela - fun night with these ladies.
We were honored to host the Trunk SHow night with all these other awesome, talented bloggers and women across the country...
Atlanta
Joni Lay of Lay Baby Lay
Boise
Kirsten Grove of Simply Grove
Charleston
Chassity Evans of Look Linger Love + a former Real Families participant
D.C.
Darcy Troutman of No Monsters in My Bed + a former Real Families participant
Rebecca + Suzanne of A Feteful Life
Kansas City
Carrie + Morgan of Ampersand Design Studios
Los Angeles
Kelly Lanza of Studio DIY
Nashville
Raechel Meyers of Finding My Feet + a former Real Families participant
Salt Lake City / Provo
Kirsten Krason of 6th Street Design School
Thanks Land of Nod! can't wait to see the Nod Toy Shop pop up next week in Downtown Los Altos!!!
Mark's 40th in Red Bluff
/
We had an awesome weekend up in Red Bluff to celebrate Uncle Mark (aka Uncle Clarky or Hot Dog) turning 40! We planned a pig roast at our house in the Bay Area but it was a hard weekend for Opa/Tom to travel so everyone rallied up north for a weekend of family food and fun. What else is there!?
5 sister-in-laws and 5 baby girls on hip. #howweroll
and pheasant phun. Good huntin' Heff.
The Land of Nod... in Los Altos!
/
We were so thrilled to be included in the Land of Nod "Real Familes || Real Kids" feature this summer and have been working with the amazing people at Nod on bringing some of their awesomeness to Los Altos. This is part of the Real families feature... it was so fun to see the girls on the pages of our favorite magazine and still online for some of the items in their room!
Well this holiday season our dreams are comin' true :) Land of Nod is opening up a Pop-Up Holiday TOY SHOP Downtown Los Altos for the month of December!!! They are opening 5 other Toy Shops around the country but this will be their first presence in Northern California.
We are also co-hosting a Holiday Trunk Show at The Makery on Thursday November 21 from 7-9pm. We are going to have Land of Nod holiday items for sale at 20% off and all retail at The Makery is 20% off for attendees too. We have a few spots left if you'd like to attend! Please RSVP to Mary@theHandH.com with your name and a guest if you'd like to bring one. It will be a super fun night with crafting by Nod and a "Decorate Your Elf" vintage
Bethy Baby Shower!
/
We were lucky enough to host a baby shower for my BFF since 5th grade Bethy. We grew up two doors down and spent zillions of hours on Menlo Oaks causing trouble. Bethy lives in San Diego now and came up for a friends and family shower to celebrate the impending arrival of baby girl CARTER! (love the name :) Beth didn't want a ton of pink so we went woodland theme in the backyard. Lots of Makery Made details and flowers by The Botanist - thanks for all the help Alicia and Marisa!
Witches' Night Out 2013
/
We had another fun Witches' Night Out for the 5th year in a row! It's a fun tradition we have to keep up... bringing friends from all over together for a night of witching gab and fun. We planned to do it in the backyard but it was really cold that night so we moved it inside and spooked it up in there too!
Marisa and Alicia and I got the house ready for the witches...
Life Lately - October Edition
/
These crazy girls! Just catching up on some of the latest of the craziness. Dad took the picture above (it's his new screensaver) after a chalk paint Sunday when Mom was at the flea market. And tiny in her ADORABLE sweater JP from The Makery made for her - it's amazing!!
Red Bluff Fair 2013
/
We went up to red Bluff the last weekend in September for the FAIR! My favorite weekend of all time :) and for once we didn't have a newborn or pregnant belly in tow :) We stayed at the 4H/FFA auction from 9am to 4pm and bought four hogs to have processed into sausage. We take this "know where your food comes from" thing seriously at Bumble! It took a lot of due diligence to talk to hog leaders and find out which pigs had never had hormones and were 100% sure fed all natural grain. The girls really got into it asking the kids about their pigs in the line up and running to tell us the stats. Francie even did her own bidding n the last ones!
AHhhhhhh, Red Bluff. :) Oma's house is like a sanctuary!
Corn dog pit stop
love these cousins!
FULL POST HERE!
Look Who's Walking!
/This TINY!
sweet little Tess (who thinks she is ready for school) started walking this month! She took a few steps at the beginning of the month and really started walking in earnest last week. She's so proud of herself
Bethy Baby Shower!
/
We were lucky enough to host a baby shower for my BFF since 5th grade Bethy. We grew up two doors down and spent zillions of hours on Menlo Oaks causing trouble. Bethy lives in San Diego now and came up for a friends and family shower to celebrate the impending arrival of baby girl CARTER! (love the name :) Beth didn't want a ton of pink so we went woodland theme in the backyard. Lots of Makery Made details and flowers by The Botanist - thanks for all the help Alicia and Marisa!
Wood burned signn for Carter - now in the nursery!
Mimosa Bar, obvi
We set two long tables in the backyard for 24 - it was a perfect sunny day for it!
sneak peek details on instagram
love long tables
thanks Alicia!
Onesies for decoration and little Makery details
Makery made custom graphic for champagne favor burlap bags! - thanks to Britt! Fun shower, can't wait to meet Carter!!
What's New at The Makery
/
We've been busy with lots of classes and events at The Makery lately! Our first calligraphy class with Linea Carta sold out and we had a great afternoon pouring champagne and learning to calligraphy A-Z's in our studio. We had a Sip-Shop-and-Make event on a Tuesday night with over 75 guests in attendance! Every seat in The Makery was occupied with hands on crafting - macrame, linocut, knitting, painting and more.
and Myriah our awesome sewing instructor who also teaches classes at SF Academy of Art is starting a class series on beginning sewing - the first class was to make a clutch
and a pumpkin patch! We turned the "alley" between The Makery and the to-be-built Alley into a little festive space for locals to buy pumpkins, dig in the corn pit and peek at the Haunted House
all set up for customers!
Tess in SF Magazine!
/
Tessa is on the cover of San Francisco magazine this month! A friend of Ali's from work needed a baby to do a shoot for SF Magazine and the new "tech generation" and asked if she could submit Tess to the editors. I said yes of course and they asked if she would wear glasses for the shoot. Tess is pretty tolerant as the youngest and I figured they meant reading glasses so she'd look "academic" (I mean geeky) so we sent these pictures to prove it ;)
They had 75 babies submit and they picked Tess and another baby to make sure they got a decent shot, knowing babies are not easy subjects! We went up to SF one morning for a quick shoot (a beautiful sunny day in SF - so rare we shuold have stayed longer!) and poor Tess had like three big scratches on her face - thank god for photoshop!
The shoot was in an apartment near the Marina and of course when I get there they said "ok here are the glasses she needs to wear - they are REALLY expensive though so if she pulls they off we have to catch them." Oh geez.
Reward for her work - playing with toys and grips after the shoot
turns out they got quite a few good pictures to use - she's all over the inside spread too!
Contents section- she and the other baby sharing a tablet (this lasted about 2.2 seconds... the other baby was not pleased with any of this by the time we got there!)
BOOM is right ;)
This was the middle spread but it's the other babe on this page
Checking your email Tiny?
Thanks for a fun shoot and these extra images Brittany, Tess will be your subject anytime!
Nice work Tessa!
what a fun way to commemorate your 1st year and your birthday month. It will be pretty funny to look at these in 20 years with you and say "look at that old, lame technology!"
