More Pictures

Got my cd in the mail of all the pictures from our Chubbyfoot session last week....my oh my how cute are these boys! Of course I am partial to them, but Mackenzie did such a good job! Here are a few of my favorite ones!

Ivory, black, lavender, navy, maroon, sky blue, brown, black, and blue!!

Those were the colors of all the bridesmaid dresses I have from the last 8 years!! Ginny, Roxanne, Jenny, Kari, Amy, Susan, Allison, Rachel, and now Kelly! :)

It was a busy weekend and I am still tired.....but it was a lovely wedding weekend for my oldest friend. The bride looked beautiful, the party was great, and most importantly, these 2 people who are so in love are now happily married!!!

Here are a couple pics from the weekend, the rest I am uploading onto smugmug! Enjoy!

Going to the chapel

no no, not me...my sweet oldest friend, Kelly! She is getting hitched on Saturday and I am just so happy for her! I have spent the last couple hours working on my Matron of Honor speech and hope that it sounds okay!

It is going to be a whirlwind 2 days starting tomorrow at noon. My parents are watching the boys tomorrow night while we are at the rehearsal and dinner and then my very kind co-workers/friends are watching the boys on Saturday. What life savers they are! My parents will be at the wedding on Saturday too so we were sitterless. What great friends, they actually volunteered! :)

I had the boys pictures taken on Monday in honor of M's all too quickly approaching 1st birthday and they turned out SO good! Cant wait to get the cd files so I can upload them all, but man, they are some handsome boys! What do you think of their shirts? ;-) I made them! And my little flower on my cardigan too...go me! LOL!

Better get to bed, its late and I have a long, but fun, weekend ahead of me!!!

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Tried a new dish tonight, ground beef stuffed bell peppers! I remember my mom making something like this growing up and for whatever reason I did not like it. But lately, it has sounded SO good so I started googling for a good recipe! I found it here, and it was quite tasty!

I only made 4 medium peppers and even then, I had leftover stuffing so I made it into a loaf. Think we will be having meatloaf and mashed potatoes tomorrow night! It was quite tasty and fairly easy although a little time consuming. I did glance through the reviews (which everyone raved over) and some people had some tips for speeding it up which could work. I think I had too much rice and that is why I had so much leftover...not sure? And maybe would like some extra of the sauce to put on after it cooked. Anyhoo, it was still really tasty, Matt went for seconds so I take that as a sign that I could make it again!

The website I found the recipe on is called Simply Recipes. Neat story, its a "blog" full of family recipes! I think I will be perusing for some new things to try!!

Halloween Garland

It actually looks much cuter in person!

I found these cute glittery pumpkins and bats and with a little festive ribbon, made a garland for our fireplace! The mantle is by no means finished as most of my Halloween stuff isn't out of the attic yet, so I just grabbed a few things that were out to help the look! :)

If you are in need of inspiration, go check out some of these great ideas!

Kelly's Bridal Shower

Looking forward to celebrating the big day on October 2nd!!!

Book Wreath

The project that reignited my love of crafts. Seriously, I have eyed this tutorial FOR.E.V.E.R. and finally decided to go for it!

Living with Lindsey was where I saw it originally and if you google book wreath, her's is the first one that comes up! I followed her tutorial exactly, including the trip to the $ store for my supplies. It basically cost $2...$1 for the book and $1 for the wreath, woohoo! It came out super cute and was a big hit at Kelly's shower, or at least they played nice as I proudly showed it off. It is hanging in our office right now but I am envisioning "framing" it (think big empty frame on the wall) and hanging the wreath in the middle of it in my guest room. It has been needing some personality in there for awhile.

So, here it is, my book wreath! Love it, thanks Lindsey! Now go make your own! :)

(Only one book was harmed in the making of this wreath, Dark Victory-Bette Davis biography. I like to think of it is "re-cycling"!)

Game Room re-do and thrift store find!

We have this great big game/family room upstairs that I love because we can close the door and just be comfy! What that also means is that it is a big fat hodge podge of things and stuff! I have been on a craft kick and reading all these great blogs about inexpensive and creative make-overs people do to rooms, furniture and decorating and am getting inspired! This room is a blank canvas right now and I am ready to turn it into something...just not sure what. So, this will definitely be a work in progress...especially because my vision and hubby's are surely entirely different. If he had his way, it would probably be leather stadium couches and a GIANT tv screen ;-)

So here is the room as it is now, messy and all.

We have some good things in the room...comfy couches, entertainment center with shelves, another set of shelves, a toy box and 2 book cases. The problem is its so unorganized I don't feel like its properly being used. The first thing I think that needs to be done is to buy some baskets and get the entertainment center under control.

The next is the layout of the room....I am not sure about. I think I want to cut that bookshelf in the back in half, paint it, and make it more kid friendly. Those are all MY books that I love, but truly, I could probably part with half of them and the ones I love move into our office. I also think maybe moving the couch up against the back wall to give more space?

The other thing I want is a kids table, somewhere Z and M can sit and color, do crafts, eat, whatever! I have this old end table that is perfect. Pondering making the top a chalkboard or maybe just making the whole thing a fun color?

And I picked this adorable kids rocking chair up at goodwill today for $9! It is in perfect condition and nice heavy wood, I figured I can surely turn it into something.
So there you have it, all the players in this thing we call a game room. Any ideas or suggestions to turning this into a more organized, fun and CUTE room??

**Oooh, and Matt found these OLD baseball pennants from when he was growing up...I am thinking somehow they would look GREAT in this room!**

Halloween Footprint Art

Ok, I know this is a juvenile project, but the boys sure had fun getting their tootsies painted and I think we will look back and marvel at how tiny their feetsies once were! ;-)

So I picked up a 2 pack of canvases at Michael's for about $6. I already had the paint and ribbon so that was about the cost of this project. Love that!

First I painted the canvas black and let dry overnight. Then I took the boys outside for the fun!

I wiped their tootsies down with a wet wipe to make sure they were clean and then started painting a foot! We had some construction paper with us to practice with first :) And made a few handprints too just because!

Then we made a nice white footprint on our nice black canvas!

After both boys had done their foot prints, I let the canvas dry. Then I wrote a small BOO in the corner of each and after that dried, Mod Podged of course!

A little glitter and embellishments around the edges... I am not quite satisfied with their faces....May have to work on that!

And a bow to top it off and we have two cute wall decorations! Grammy gets to be the recipient of the second one. I had other plans for my 2nd canvas but Z felt each one needed a foot print!

So there you go, cute, inexpensive and fun craft for the kiddos too!

I am linking up with Fireflies and Jellybeans: show off your stuff! Lots of cute ideas out there, go check them out! :)

Radio Talk

Was listening to the radio this morning, flipping channels and landed on the Gayle King show on and they were talking about a few things that I found very interesting....your 6 word memoir and the FRP (friend reduction program), ....Bear with me, I promise it was interesting, LOL.

I'm sure you all know who Gayle is, Oprah's bff. Well she was sitting on a plane next to a man and they were just chatting it away and he started talking about how at a certain point in his life, he realized he was over stressed, over scheduled, and not spending enough QT with the ones that matter the most. So he trimmed the fat, so to speak. His way was a little harsh I think as he actually told the people that he longer had time for them in his life, but I did have to relate a little to what he was talking about. As a dual-working family with 2 crazy little boys, I quickly came to realize that my time was not my own any more and sometimes, I just cannot do it all. One thing that I am very blessed about is that I have my book club, my "sisters" and I get to see them no matter what, once a month. This is such a relief to me, since some times you just cannot attend it all, that no matter what, I have a once a month "date" with them! Friendship is good for the woman's soul! And I have other friends, mostly out of town that I am blessed by the Internet and facebook and email to be able to keep in touch with. What did we do before? I guess people just lost touch that much easier? Once I did realize that saying No to a commitment was okay, life got a bit more simpler. I don't think I ever had to really do a FRP, I think some relationships naturally drifted apart as life moved on but I can see how some people would have to do it. Have you had to do a Friends Reduction Program at all as you have gotten older, relationships changed, added children into your life, where certain people or groups no longer fit into your life or lifestyle? I was really amazed by how many people called in and consciously did this.

The other lighter topic was what would your 6 word memoir be? Kinda like a haiku ;-) After a night with little sleep and a crying little ALMOST 11 month boy who just wanted to, ahem, PLAY when he should be sleeping....I decided my memoir is (at least for today) Someday I Will Sleep Eight Hours Again! Oooh lordie y'all, I never want to fast forward life and skip any of these stages, but I sure do look forward to the day when I get more uninterrupted sleep! What would your 6 word memoir be for today??

Other than that, I am just pondering all the crafts and projects I want to do. I am blown away by how creative some people are out in blogland and has me seriously wanting to hit up my local $ stores and thrift stores! Stay tuned, I will share with some of the projects as I create them. I started one yesterday that the boys got to participate in and I think it is going to turn out pretty cute! :)