Treasure Hunt ~

Today the kids and i headed outside for a Treasure Hunt. You see i have a list i made of fun things for the kids to do outside at home and a list of fun things to do out and about away from home. I let them pick what they will like to do and today they picked out going on a Treasure Hunt. So i told little girl to go and find a bag or bucket in her room to use on the treasure hunt. She picked our her Pumpkin from halloween. :P It works. So we head out on our adventure. Funny what little kids put in there "treasure" bucket. Mine found flowers, leaves, sweet gum balls, sticks, nut shells, dead grass and dead locusts.


And before we could get to far into our treasure hunt....little girl found something that she wanted to put in her bucket so badly..........

Can you guess what it is?

Yep, a turtle! He was a good sport while the kids patted his hard shell. Little girl said this was the best treasure hunt ever! Good thing cause finding this turtle put a stop to anything else they could have found. When Mr. Turtle finally scooted away the kids had had enough of the hunt and then jumped in the pool. :o) And checked on the flowers they planted.

These sprouts have been the fastest flower sprouts i have ever seen!

Oh how i LOVE days like this!

HAPPY FRIDAY!!

Tip Me Tuesday ~

Last friday i hit up a few yard sales {surprise, surprise}. And at one i hit the jackpot. Little girl got a brand new princess bike with training wheels for 8 buckaroonies and i got a cute little white kids bench and white little kids chair {for photography biz} and 2 big potted tropical looking trees and a few other nick nacks for a total of $20!!!!! Yes OH yes i was excited. I had been wanting a few potted plants for my back porch so after the yard sales we headed to walmart to get some of those cheep flats of bright flowers for the kids to plant. We got home with all our flowers and started putting them in the pots. Here is my little secret to keeping those potted plants well watered. Wait for it.......

Yep you see right...diapers. They have those little crystals in them for absorption. And they hold moisture. It helps out for when you forget to water some days. OR just if you don't want to water every day. What i do is put some soil in the bottom of the pot. Then lay the diaper open/ inside up. Then more soil and then plant your flowers. :o)

Easy as that. Try it the next time you pot any flowers. I promise you will be glad you did.

Cabinet Questions ~

Alot of you have emailed me asking about our cabinets. First i want to say thank you for all your sweet messages letting me know you think our cabinets look nice. :o) It means alot to us to hear that.

The cabinets are RTA (ready to assemble). We went with RTA for the sole reason of price. They are waaaayyyy cheaper than going to Lowes and picking out some of their cabinets. TRUST ME! Also the ones we went with are better quality. The only down side to RTA is that yes...you have to do the work of assembling them yourself. BUT since i have a handy dandy hubby....that part didn't bother me. Now the time to put them together bothers me. HA! Actually it isn't that bad. But in the end seeing them i'm so glad that we did go with what we got. I'm proud of them and they saved us a bundle! And that makes me S.M.I.L.E!

Second question was about color of cabinets. The color is called Arlington White {creamy off white} with a chocolate glaze. I went back and fourth about off white and white cabinets. I love the look of white cabinets but with kids...i cringed with the thought of always having to clean white cabinets. I'm hoping with the color we chose it might help with the "kiddy marks". hehe!

In the end when it is all done i want to do a whole post on what we used and why and the break down of cost. :o)

Monogrammed Jewelry ~

My little sweet darling daughter asked me the other day if she could have a necklace of mine. I said no this is momma's necklace but maybe we will look into getting her one. So i thought about it and went down into the craft room and dug in all my crafty things and found some silver beads with letters on them. I then looked threw my colored beads and found some pretty pearly white ones that would go with anything. Now the tricky part. Sitting a 3 year old down with beads! So i waited till little brothers nap time. Oh by the way....my 3 year old no longer takes naps. :( It just happened out of the blue. She was such a good napper and now....well that is over. But she is usually good about playing quietly these days. Anyways....so he went down for a nap and i told her that we were going to make something. I got everything out and she was all smiles. I then told her that SHE was going to get to make her own necklace. So with alittle guidance she made not only a necklace but a matching bracelet too. Oh it is just the cutest set. And she is so proud that she made it.

She wants to make all the little girls at church one to match hers too. :o) I just love that she has her daddy's engineering brain...but also some of momma's craftiness.

Time ~

Seems like there is just not enough time in the day these days. I don't know how these ladies who have a family and work too do it. I am so blessed to be able to stay at home and be a wife and mother to my babies. It is 10:00 am right now {the morning is almost gone} and i'm just now getting around to taking a break and drinking my coffee. I'm pondering what all i "need" to do today....and then reality sets in and i realize what "might" get done today. HAHA! Oh...i laugh to keep from crying. I think the hubby and i are running on fumes these days. Just trying to push threw it and get the kitchen done so that we can have a more "normal"...semi relaxed summer. I have so much i want to do with the kids this summer and this remodel is just getting in the way....HA! Some people have asked {and i really can't believe they have the nerve to do so...hehe} why is it taking so long? Really Folks? Have you ever ripped out a kitchen by yourself and started from scratch putting it back together? No contractors, no help.....just 2 people {mostly the hubmeister} single handedly trying to do this DIY project with 2 littles running around. Sorry...it's just that i have been asked that question way to many times and i'm alittle on edge about the whole kitchen thing. Personally i think we are doing a fantastic job. :o) I'm so thankful for my handy hubby. He really is doing an awesome job. Here are a few pictures of our progress.

Here is the side where the stove is going. :)

Pantry and fridge!

Look can you see the dish washer? Unfortunately it isn't hooked up yet. :(

I don't know if you can see it in the picture...but the cabinets have a chocolate glaze on them. LOVE!

The cabinet style we ordered didn't come with matching corbels or legs {around sink cabinet} so we had to order them from a different company and paint them ourself. Hubby did a great job painting and now i'm glazing. Let me tell you...not as easy as i thought it would be.

Ok...now onto other projects in the house. I have always wanted a wall or staircase full of pictures of the family....ya know a big'ol photo wall collage. I just love them don't you? I think they tell such a story. As i was going threw and organizing the house the other week i came across ALL of my mix matched frames from the past and my mind started to wander. I haven't put many pictures up since we moved into this house. So i pulled them all out and decided to just do it. First i laid them out how i would like then i cut news paper out to match the frames. Then i taped the layout on the wall to get an idea of what it would look like. Moved some around and then finally got them the way i like it. Not all of my frames are the same in size, color or style. BUT once i spray paint them all the same color {BLACK} it will make them look like they go together. :o) As for now they are in place...i still need a few frames to finish out the stairs but i love it. I'm currently going threw all my photos and deciding which i love the most and getting them ordered in correct sizes. Here is a sneak peak of my "wall gallery".

I used newspaper to cut out the frame sizes.

And here are most of my frames. Sorry for the way i took the picture. I'm shy about posting to many photos with our faces. But you get the picture. Now i just have to take them down again and spray paint them all black. :o)

I have a few projects with my daughter coming up. She is so proud of a few things she has made this week and i thought i would "feature" her and what she has made. Stay tuned.....

Wordless Wednesday~

It's been a week ~

One week ago today around 6:00 in the morning the first siren of the day went off. Wind was blowing pretty hard and rain was coming down. I lay in bed just listening. The hubby got up and went in to work. Later that morning around 10 am more rain and the sky turned black and again sirens were going off. I turned on the news only to see the state light up with warnings.

Local news was on and they were urging people to take cover. The hubby called and also warned me of weather. At that point i grabbed the kids and went to the lower level of the house and waited till it quieted down. Soon after we had another warning that a tornado was spotted in the next town over which is just right down the road. We take cover again. After that warning the weather calmed down a bit and the kids were getting tired. Against my better judgement i went ahead and put them down for a nap and kept a close eye on the weather. It wasn't 2o minutes after i put them down we got the worst warning of the day so far and it was getting ugly outside. I ran up and grabbed them out of bed and went back down for cover. We were safe again but as soon as i got to the news again there had been atleast 3 tornadoes spotted all around us.

I called my husband at work to see if he was ok and asked him to stop and grab some dinner if the weather permitted. We were back and fourth running for cover till about 4:00pm. At this time the wind was still and the rain was slowing. At 4:10 the electricity went off. The hubs made it home safely with dinner in hand. We never regained power that night. We listened to the battery powered radio only to hear all of the devastation that had hit our state. We went to bed not even knowing the half of it. The next morning i got out of bed with the knowledge of what we had heard and no electricity and no food in the house. You see Thursdays are grocery day. So i told the hubby that i was going to go out and see if i could find anything open. I drove into town and there was no power anywhere. No cell phone coverage either. I was listening to the radio and they said that nothing was open and even Walmart was closed. I started to cry cause i was also hearing of more devastation that had happened and that they were saying that the estimation of the power being out was at that time 4 to 5 days. Just then i heard that publix was opening and just so happen that i was right there at it when they opened. It was mass chaos. I can't even describe what it was like. I went in with no buggy but was able to find some reusable bags and started filling them up with what i could find. It was hard to think at this point. I grabbed water, crackers, soup, peanut butter and cereal. I left and tried to get gas but there was non to be found. I went on home. As i was driving home i was thinking about how long they estimated the power being off. I thought that we might just pack up and go somewhere with electricity and food and gas. But as i was thinking this the news on the radio was going over how the roads in every direction was full and backed up and people were running out of gas trying to get out. By the time i got home and put the groceries away i calmed down and realized we were going to be ok. That we were the lucky ones and that atleast we still had a house and we were all ok.

That day was sunny so the family and i just spent the day outside. When it started getting dark we came in and washed the kids up and the hubby and i read by candle light and went to bed.

Friday morning at 1:13 am our power came back on. Husband was still off of work and my daughter and i watched the news and Prince William and Kate Middleton get married. My little girl was so excited to see a Prince and Princess. She was obsessed with her hair and how pretty it was. Our power was off and on threw the day but we did have power. No complaints here. At that point we had also decided not to go anywhere till we heard if there was gas to be got. Since we did have power though and the hubs was home he continued to work on the kitchen remodel and I decided to do some spring cleaning and started filling up bags to go to goodwill.

By Saturday we had heard and seen on the news of ALL the devastation that had happened. UNREAL! I then realized that i had just bagged up some things that people might need. So i went threw my house again and started gathering up things that i had double of. Towels, sheets, blankets, bibs, burpclothes, crib sheets, baby blankets, outgrown kids clothes, adult clothes, shoes and baby items. We started listening for drop off points. We also picked up laundry detergent, soap and shampoo to donate.

Sunday we had church with no electricity. You see we were the lucky ones....no one else seemed to have power. Sams Club was open and had gas so we filled up. Cars lined up and truck beds full of gas cans. I saw one man filling 14 gas cans. Some friends of ours came over for a shower and dinner and to just sit in a house with electricity.

Monday still no power. Tuesday some power. By today....power. Except where my husband works. He is still off of work. It has been one week.