Birthday Redo

What do you get a best friend of 30+ years for her birthday?? Yep, that's right a room redo! It all started with a chair that she didn't want to get rid of but didn't have the time or place for it in its current state. She gave it to me reluctantly and this is how it all started.

Her living room was a dark chocolate brown with amazing hard wood floors but you would never be able to see it in there because it was so DARK! Here are the before shots...

Trying to work with some of the things we already had to save some money, we decided to paint her white curtains with a fun yellow stripe. I taped and painted with Sherman Williams Flat house paint and they came out great.

Several inexpensive wall art ideas:  photo board, a goodwill frame and some chicken wire, old window frame from the rehab store along with a burlap wreath, a picture collage and a bird cage re proposed from her front porch. But the best of all... FREE pallet hand painted by Sasha...LOVE IT!!

We also stenciled the TV wall with a large wall stencil, she wants a flat screen TV along with an antique dresser to replace the big screen TV.

Wall color changed to a soft light gray. Pillows with grays, yellows and blues. I made all the pillows except the gray ruffled one.

The chair that started it all...Before

After

 

I loved working to put this all together for her, she is an amazing wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend. I admire her for some many reason and she knows my story from the start! I am so blessed to call her my friend/sister. Happy Happy Birthday Sasha, I love you!!

Craft Day #2

Well the girls (Steph, Cori, Traci) and I are still going strong with our monthly craft day, not a lot to show this month but want to show you our finished product. We are all runners and needed a place to keep our medals/bibs besides a box in the office, so this is what we came up with....

Started with 5 primed MDF boards. Miss Julie Sifford got our 5th plaque

 A little stenciling, a few hooks and some distressing and our race plaque  

Still not 100% happy with the lanyards, thinking I might shorten them or just hang the medal?
Next up, pallet art!!

Amelia turns 2!

Sweet Amelia,....why did you have to grow up so fast? I love this little face with eyes bigger than your head! You are so full of energy, smiles and now unfortunately a two year old attitude but who could blame you, you have a lot of ground to cover with those two older sisters. You and Avery are the best of friends and Audrey loves to mother you which can be a little annoying to you at times (me too) but they both adore you and fight for your affection. You are talking like crazy, 30-50 words and putting 2-3 word sentences together. Things that you love... Babies; real ones, baby dolls anything baby, your blanket must go everywhere with this, movies in the car and swimming!

Started two years ago taking pictures of Marc and I with the birthday girl alone, love this tradition. Now on to the birthday party pics...

The Elmo Milk and Cookie party was a hit! Thanks to Cori and her mad cookie skills, milk from Shatto Yummy!

Elmo plates

Birthday Girl!

What she did most of the time, shoving food into her mouth!

Happy Birthday Amelia!!

The Small Stuff

The last two weeks I have been busy with party prepreations for a special 2 year old birthday this weekend. Although, I have had time for a few small "naptime" projects..

Spring Centerpiece with real painted eggs, bird cage found at RE awesome new store in the west bottoms

OBESSION! I love gum ball machines, this was a goodwill find for $6.99. A little paint and some sweet hearts and its perfect in my kitchen

Goodwill table + Chalk Board paint and some craft supplies = a great craft table for the kitchen

Lots of tea parties with this little princess!

Have a great week

Pantry Makeover!

My pantry has lots of space and I use every inch of it, but can become very unorganized quickly because I don't need to be as cautious due to the amount of space. Because of this I needed to decrapification and while I was at it, maybe a face lift... because that's what you do, right? Here is what I started with, forgot to take a pic with the shelves full but you can see the clutter on the top half.

Started out with a stencil on the backside of the shelving....that didn't last long, ANNOYING!

Every pantry needs a chandelier :) Scored this one at the re-store for $10, a little patience and lots of tape she got an awesome makeover.

Another restore find...$.50 old drawer. A little paint and a new handle and it now holds all my trays and place mats.

And the finished product.... stencil was annoying me so it got a plain back splash

My new chandelier in all its glory

 Metal locker baskets store my table clothes and dollar store baskets are labeled and hold a variety of food

 Ikea magazine organizers contain all our school work that I want to keep for each year, after the year is over I put everything in a box labeled for each kiddo. My pantry also stores A LOT of my decorating and craft stuff that I use frequently.

 All my crafting supplies, can not wait to get to IKEA this fall to get some pretty baskets instead of my recycled ones

Feels great to be organized!!

Mia, Elmos Girl

Amelia loves music an as her vocabulary grows so does her musical numbers. She can sign most of...Twinkle Twinkle, You Are My Sunshine, Rock A Bye Baby and her fave Elmo's World

Tag Game

Thanks Cori @ http://www.momsoutlet.blogspot.com/ for including me in your blog tag game..I think! Btw, check her out before she's famous. Book release summer 2020 :)

Okay here it goes....
1. What is one thing you would change about your physical appearance if you could?
     The new scar that has planted itself on my large forehead :(

2. Where was your first date with your significant other?
     Julie Siffords wedding :)

3. What job do you see yourself doing in 10 years?
      Mothering all 4 of my wonderful children, running marathons with Cori and TRACI! Maybe a business of some sort?

4. What is your favorite dessert of all time?
     I'm not really a dessert person, I love salty things but if I had to choose one sweet it would probably be ice cream.

5. How long have you been blogging, and why did you start? :)
     A month, Cori and Traci made me :)..I have always loved reading blogs and finally got the nerve to start one with the help of friends.

6. What is the biggest obstacle you have faced in life so far?
     The untimely death of my dad. 8 yrs ago March. My dad was killed in a work related accident at the young age of 48. Dealing with that over the last 8 years has been an emotional one for myself and my marriage. I would have never been able to pick myself up again with out Marc and the girls!
  
7. What is your favorite room in your house?
     Usually the one I am currently working on but overall the girls playroom.

8. Do you follow politics closely?
     Yes. We love our Democrats in this house

9. Do you like Scentsy? Which scent? (I have recently become a Scentsy nut. I don't sell it, I just adore the products.)
     I don't have a scentsy but I do have the walmart version :) I like anything that smells clean. We have had two episodes of an accidentaly dumping so we are sticking to the plug ins for a while.

10. Name one thing you wish you could change about your high school years?
     Reached out to others that where not in my circle of friends, absolutely NO boyfriends, you have a lifetime to hang out with boys (husbands), friends are so important!

11. Name one splurge you would not want to live without.
    my new Dyson

Craft Party

Oh My I love CRAFTING and I love it even more when I can do it with friends and because I am still waiting for my lucky number to be called for this craft weekend with meg http://megduerksen.typepad.com/craft/ I guess a craft morning with girlfriends will have to do..for now!

We (me forcing them) have all agreed to a monthly craft day at my house and this month we made coffee filter wreaths. They are everywhere on pinterest and blogs and have wanted to make on for so long. This is so easy and CHEAP, supplies are a round wreath form, a package or two (depending on the fullness) of coffee filters and a glue gun. I completed mine before we have to get little kids at school but the other girls ran out of filters so I would say 2 hrs from start to finish.

Thanks again Trac, Cori, Kim and Steph for letting me fulfill my inner craft leader :)

In the process of filling in my wreath

Our Jr assistant!

Finished product! LOVE

Pin of the Week

I love this...

found it here http://sissyprint.blogspot.com/, she has tons of FREE printables!

A Valentine and a Fish

Audrey came home with the best Valentines card ever! Of course she couldn't wait to show Marc either and when he read it he said "did your mom cry", they know me so well. I needed that card, lately I have been so hard on  myself about my short comings as a mom, some days are just so hard! I am constantly learning from them, thank God they show me love, forgiveness and grace even when I don't deserve it. Thank you Audrey

Traci and I swam laps tonight at the Y and after our workout we let the kids swim. Avery is my ear tube baby who for the last 4 yrs has refused to put her ears in the water, even in the bath tub. But not anymore...we took the kids to the Great Wolfe Lodge last month and she put her face in, then her ears and before the weekend was over she was prone floating. She's come a long way...swim team next year, hopefully! BTW, please excuse the loud voice ugh it was so loud in there.

1st All Around

Our weekends are consumed by either basketball games or gym meets and sometimes both. Audrey is in her first year of team Level 3, she competed last year on Level 2 which they only competed against other gymnast in our gym. However, this year we have competed in Lenexa and Riverside with 40-60 other area gymnast. Audrey has taken 3rd all around and two 1st all around and she loves it. She is so much like Marc when it comes to competition, she is so nervous but when she arrives at the gym all is gone and she's got her game face on!! She is so poised and methodical about every move, I love watching her. She excels on the Bars and Beam.

 Before the meet

Two All Around Champs!