And Another Thing...

Snippets from our day

This morning:

Ben - Grandma was here!

Me - Yeah (?)

Ben - I knew she was here because Cattie smells like Grandma.

 

This afternoon:

Olivia - Why didn't you name me Caroline?!?! (imagine a very dramatic, exasperated voice)

 

This evening: 

Saragh - This will be your 26th anniversary?

Me - No, this will be our 10th anniversary

Saragh - That's 3 and 7, right?

Me - Ummm...  (she's five and we've never done math)

 

And a bonus:

We hear Saragh run outside and a few mintues later, the doorbell rings.  When Oliver goes to see whose there, he finds Saragh hiding under a box giggling.  Yeah, she's awesome :o)

the deconstruction of a strawberry

It's love at first sight.

Dive right in!

It's important to let the strawberry think it's got the upper hand.

And then you go in for the kill...

What???  No more strawberries???

You have GOT to be kidding...

I don't think I like this joke.

I KNEW you were bluffing!

I'll just shove this in so you can't take it back!

mmmmmm...

nummy!

All gone!

Whew! What a great weekend!

This weekend was a whirlwind of activity.  On Friday, we went to our orthodontist's annual ics skating party.  I didn't get any pictures of this, I was way too busy eating pizza, pigging out at the chocolate fountain and ice skating with the kiddos to photograph anything.  Suffice it to say, it rocked!

When we got home, we had to bathe the girls and get them into bed so we could all get up early for Olivia's First Communion!  But first, I put Olivia's hair up in rag curlers.  It was so much fun and she looked so cute!

So when I was done, I shooed her off to bed and finished getting the house ready.  Then we were up early and bustin' our butts to get out the door on time for Olivia's mass.

Ben and Braidon served this mass so I thought I'd include ths shot of them and our beautiful church. 

Olivia in the dress my mom made for her, the sweater I knit for her and my own First Communion viel re-made to be a little more modern.

Olivia with my dad, because my dad made his First Communion this spring too!   After 40 some odd years, he finally relented and became a Catholic.  Olivia actually made her first communion at the Easter vigil with my dad.  This is technically her second communion.

Olivia with Grandma and Grandpa.

Olivia with Grammy and Papaw.

Olivia with Mama and Daddy.

It was a great mass,  Olivia got to read the second reading and enjoyed spending the morning in the limelight for her special event.   It's not very often in our house that you get a whole day just for you!  After mass, we went home and started getting ready for the party, of which I have no pictures beacause I have apparently taken leave of my senses.  I don't know what's wrong with me, people...

On Sunday, we got up and a bee-yutiful morning!  Oliver's parents stayed the night, so Oliver made french toast for everyone to selebrate Mother's Day.  It's super yummy french toast, and uf you ever spend the night at our house, chances are, you'll wake up in the morning to find Oliver in the kitchen, frying up a batch.  Yes, he deep fries his french toast.  Yum-o!

Then we spent the morning outside chatting with Oliver's parents and generally enjoying the first really fabulous day we've had this spring.

Good times :o)

Not bad for a morning's work...

This past weekend, we worked on the little girls' room and as soon as I put the finishing touches on, I will certainly be posting about it.  But for now, I want to show you how I spent my morning.  Inspired by this post, I ended up with a completely different project.  It was so neat to see how this evolved in my mind.  You should have been there.

I started with 3 framed pictures like the one above.  I bought these a few years ago at a garage sale and they were up in the little girls' room a year or so ago, but they don't go with the new look of the room.  So, I decided to repurpose them.

I used an Exacto knife and cut out the paper backing.  You can see the background paper on the counter behind the frame.  I just picked up a couple of pieces of it at Joann the other day.

Then I seperated the matte and picture from the carboard back.  I did this because it was too hard to get back in the frame under the staples with the matte still on.

I used the cardboard as a template for my patterned paper and cut it out to the right size for the frame.

I printed out the girls' names from the computer using a "holiday" foint I downloaded a while back.  Purple for Anna and blue for Saragh, of course.  Then I cut the name paper down to a good size, centered it and glued it onto the patterned paper.  I also cut out a heart shape out of a coordinating paper and glued it onto another coordinating paper.

And then I hung them on the newly painted yellow walls!  I am so excited about how this turned out!  I feel like the little girls will finally have a nice, pretty room to live in. 

Tonight, we're going to hang some bookshelves on the wall.  This is another project that I'm pretty stoked about and the inspiration comes from this post on ohdeedoh.  I'm using four Bekvam spice racks from Ikea as forward facing book racks.  I can't wait!

Olivia's Room

We've been working on redecoratin Olivia's room for far too long now.  It was all supposed to be done over Christmas break, but as you can see, we're hopeless procrastinators.  We finally made some huge progress this weekend and I thought I'd share what we've been up to.

Oliver built a dollhouse bookcase for Olivia and I got to finish it today.

Here is the "before" picture.  I atcually liked the way it looked unfinished, but Oliver said he didn't make it to be unfinished so I had to paint it.

I painted the roof with brown chalkboard paint so Olivia can use it as a drawing surface.  I painted the body of the bookcase with white kid proof paint so hopefully it will be easy to keep clean.  Olivia and I took a trip to Joann this morning and picked out cute fabric that has the feel of vintage wallpaper.  We hot glued this to the back board of the bookcase.  We also picked up some pre-painted wooden flowers and a butterfly and used them to make a little yard scene on the side that will be visible.  So much cuter than plain white!

Here it is all installed in her room!  I love this so much!  It came out exactly as I had envisioned it and I LOVE the fabric.  If I had seen this when I was shopping for fbric, I would have made a duvet cover for her out of it. 

This is a banner I made for her a few weeks ago.  I had to wait until the new bookcase was installed becasue the old one was too tall.  It was totally worth the wait and it is lovely in her room.

So, there are a few more things to do.  I have to finish her quilt.  HAVE TO!!!  It's been sitting since before Christmas and I'm starting to feel terribly guilty about it.  I was going to have a friend quilt it for me, but I think now I will just tie it and then figure out some sort of binding for it.  I really need to get it done so keep on me about it!  I also need to put her valance together.  I'm just going to tie ribbons in various colors and patterns on a dowel and hang it.  It really just needs to cover the top of the ugle blinds so you can't see them during the day.  Oh!  We also hung her pink lights today.  She is DYING to go to bed so she can turn them on.  Hopefully Oliver will get some shelve thrown together for her closet soon so that we can get the dresser out and give her a nightstand.  Her room is really tiny and the less furniture the better, especially since we put the full size bed in there. 

I think that's it for Olivia's room!  If I can get my stuff together, I'll put up a post about the upstairs hallway (we painted it a deep, bright blue yesterday and it is quite dramatic!).

What happens when Daddy takes a snow day...

He might just pick you up and throw you in a mound of snow.

Silliest cat in the world

This is Trogdor the Burninator, aka Troggie.  He happens to be the silliest cat in the world.  This is where we find him at least once everyday.  Notice that he is about 4 times too wide for the tray he is sitting in.  That's the nature try, by the way.  However, it happens to be conveniently located on the Spike's cage, so Troggie sits in it in hopes of a snack (which will only make the tray fit even less, but he doesn't seem to care).

Spike does not care for this arrangement.  If you could hear this picture, you would know what it means to listen to a completely pissed off guinea pig.  He was running around his cage squealing in rage and a little bit of panic and Troggie thought that he was being quite ridiculous.  I believe (judging from Troggie's body language) that he is telling the guiea pig to just hold still and it will all be over soon.

I think this picture best conveys how ridiculous this cat is.  Not only is he way too big for the tray, he is seriously warping the cage!  We've been talking about this and trying to come to a resolution, but we're not getting very far. Troggie only has one demand and as much as Saragh loves him, she just won't consent to letting him eat her guinea pig.  They appear to be at an impasse, but Spike is thinking of listing himself on craigslist with the specification that he go to a nice cat-free home. 

It's all about eight...

Eight?!?!  Really???  How can that be?  Can she really be eight?  Oh yes.  She can be and she will be eight.  And she'll do it with a vengence because that's who she is.  This little girl could rule the world, if only she were a bit taller.  I have watched her grow these past eight years and I can tell you without a doubt that she is going to set the world on fire and never look back.  She know what she wants and she'll figure out a way to get it.  But behind that tough girl exterior lies a very sensitive young lady who reminds me every day to be gentle and kind and thoughtful.  I would like to say that I can't wait to see who she becomes, but I can and I will and I will enjoy the ride in the meantime.

Love at first snow...

We sure had a lot of fun playing in the first snowfall of the year! 

A serious portrait session with Benjamin

Smile for the camera please, Ben.

No, smile.

Stop that, just smile would ya!

Sigh.

Okay, ha-ha mister.

Not exactly what I had in mind, but I guess I'll take it considering the alternatives...