my friend is having a giveaway!

My dear friend Sarah just started her new blog for her business called Little Birdie & Me. She makes some SUPER CUTE stuff. She is having a giveaway to celebrate...so head on over to take a peek and enter to win!

green!

up to no good...

Two Words:
COUSINS
MISCHIEF

{February 8, 2011}

We've been spending quite a lot of time out at my parent's home these days (a short 15-20 minute drive away), so this might be one explanation of why this blog has been so quiet lately. In 10 SHORT days, my mom and dad will be returning to Alaska for the next 8 months, so we're squeezing in every last drop of Grammy & Papa time that we can before they leave. My sister and her family are currently living with our parents, but will be in the midst of a move come April. My brother and family also live in the same town as my parents, so we often get together for all of us to hang out. In fact, for the last month or so we have designated Wednesday nights as "Family Dinner Night" where each of us rotates making a meal. The cousins have a blast playing together (and getting into mischief as you can see in the picture) and the adults just enjoy sitting around, eating yummy food, and just "being" together.

Hope everyone is having a great week!

dress up

There's just something about these two that I can't get enough of!


Happy Friday everyone!

the in-between phase

At the end of January we finally decided that we probably shouldn't wait any longer to start the painting project on Mikayla's room. At the time of our decision, we had been in our *new* (sort of) house for 9 months! Nothing like putting off a project you could say. We purchased the paint for Mikayla's room back during the Memorial Day sale (one word: rebates!), but even that was 6 months ago!

Now, please don't hate me because I painted over this beautiful mural ("before" picture), but it's just not my style and so I knew it had to go...eventually. I was fine living with it for however long I did, but I was ready for a change. Although...if you had ever visited our first house, you will soon notice that both Mikayla's room at the old house and her room at the new house is now the same after the paint job was complete.

We're still in the "in-between" phase right now as we have lots of decorating to do to make the room more complete, but at least the hardest part is done! The next step is adding the chair railing...or whatever we decide to do. Let's just hope it won't take another 9 months to get finished!

Mikayla was so excited to help!

{BEFORE}

{IN-BETWEEN}
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{BEFORE}

{IN-BETWEEN}

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{BEFORE}

{IN-BETWEEN}
notice that we actually have the curtain rods up, but uh...no curtains?

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{BEFORE}

{IN-BETWEEN}

At least we've made some progress!!

happy valentine's day...in march!

The kids and I had a really good Valentine's Day...nothing too extra-ordinary other than a few special little things throughout the day. My hubby and I didn't ever make it out for a date night, but I hope to be able to use my "rain check" soon!

The day started out with heart-shaped pancakes with red sprinkles and pink milk for breakfast! I randomly found these cute little plates and matching cups at Safeway the night before...at 50% off! What a perfect little way to make breakfast a bit more special on Valentine's Day!


I put a new Valentine's book next to each of the kids' plates, and they also got one last little treat inside their Valentine's mailboxes. They were super excited for their special Valentine's Day breakfast!


During the morning, I was able to visit Mikayla's pre-school and be a part of her Valentine's Day class party. The kids played Bingo, exchanged valentines with their classmates, and enjoyed a little snack.


We headed out to Grammy & Papa's after pre-school and hang out for a bit. Grammy gave each of the kiddos a box of candies...which of course they loved!

{LOVE this picture of my sweethearts}

The rest of the day was pretty low key, but we did sneak in a little cupcake making for daddy before he came home.

My favorite little helper...

Let's make the cupcakes pink...

Ready to go in the oven...
Frosted all by herself...
{My Cupcake Cuties}
YUM!

Daddy brought them each a heart-shaped dollar. They were so happy to get "cash"...I love that the simple things make them so happy!!

Hope you all had a blessed Valentine's Day with your family!

the peanut butter and jelly meltdown

This is one of those posts that I should have written many, many, MANY months ago. But there's nothing in the rule books that says I can't go back in time! Now that I have come to the conclusion that this blog is mostly for me to be able to go back and see the memories I've made with my family, my creative inspirations, and organized spurts of my life, I have a little (a lot of) catching up to do! With that said, you may start seeing random posts from me in an effort to do just that...catching up.

By the end of the summer (2010) Mikayla had her peanut butter and jelly making skills perfected...even down to her cutting off her own crusts. One August day she showed me her masterpiece! I was so proud because she got out all of the ingredients and made it ALL by herself!

{August 29, 2010}

About a month later at the end of September (2010), Mikayla decided to try again making her own sandwich, but this time I had no clue she was doing this!! All of a sudden she is in my craft room where I was working and very upset about something. She was very concerned that she had used the wrong kind of strawberry jelly. Instead of grabbing the bottle of strawberry jelly spread, she had grabbed the strawberry syrup topping (for ice cream). Poor little thing was so distraught. The video below doesn't even capture the amount of tears when she came in to tell me what had happened. This is of her telling me again, so I could capture this sweetness on video. (never mind all of the random junk on the countertop, OK?)