Merry Christmas Y'all!

So I thought (and received some prompting :) it might be time to update the blog since it's only been what a mere 6 months. We are making the long long drive home to West Texas right now, 4 hours down only 8 to go!
Grace has been much better than expected, keeping busy watching Toy Story 3 and napping, we'll see if it continues to go this well through the night.
We just celebrated Gracie's 2nd and my 25th birthday last week, holy cow how fast did those last 2 years go! She got plenty of princess things and shoes, her 2 favorites ( I hope she's always this easy to shop for). There's a few (unedited) pictures of the party, and yes she insisted on wearing sneakers with that frilly dress. Being our social butterfly, completely opposite Momma and Daddy, Gracie loved seeing all our friends and the fact that everyone walked in with a present for her had nothing to do with that :) I've learned alot these last two years but mostly to relax and let be, I think she ate goldfish, cupcakes and strawberry for dinner.
As we enter into the Christmas season I love seeing the joy and delight in her eyes when we turn on the tree lights, see a snowman at the mall, drive around and see Christmas lights or hear her sing Happy Birthday Jesus. 90% of the people we run into ask her what Santa is giving her on Christmas and I found myself thinking about the whole Santa issue, do we play into it or do we use this time to teach our daughter the real concept if Christmas? We decided to do the latter, sure Santa is not going anywhere and I'm not saying he should, be Im not going to be signing From: Santa on any gifts or talk about a chubby guy who drops in to hand out free stuff every Christmas Eve. Don't judge me, if you do Santa, that's great and I'm not judging you, but its not for us. We've been talking about how Jesus was born in a manger and how he came to save the world, to save Mommy and Daddy and Gracie and everyone who believes in him. And no my children will not be the ones to ruin your kids Christmas, no classrooms full of children crying because someone said Santa isn't real, I promise.
Well were are getting close to the halfway mark and my butt is numb and my belly is rumbling! But it's not because I'm hungry... I'll give you a second to think about it.. Ok. If you haven't guessed or haven't heard, we are expecting!! Yup, I'm due late April with our second little girl! 2 little princess! You might want to avoid our house in about 14 years :) I'm 22 weeks and in the sweet spot between the exhausting and sickness of the first trimester and the hugeness of the third trimester. So as we enter into the last Christmas as a family of 3 I'm a little sad to see this time of having an only child end but I'm very excited to see the relationship between my daughters bloom and welcome another blessing into our arms.
My fingers are getting tired typing on my phone so I'm going to call it a day. Hope that kinda catches y'all up on where we're at. I plan to jump back on the blogging bandwagon, so talk to y'all soon!

Ashley

Thrifting

We headed out to Goodwill yesterday since baby girl has gone on a nap strike and momma had to get out of the house before she lost her mind.  We didn't find much but we scored on books, brand new (2 of which are hardback) books for 20 cents each!!  And that old school cork tiles (4 for a buck) are going to become some cutie bulletin boards that will go into the shop soon!

Happy Wednesday!!

ashley

All I want for Christmas is a Paint Sprayer

Long time no see huh. Well I have been up to my eyeballs in paint and stain and a palm sander.  Some good friends gave us a dining set they no longer needed and instead of going to goodwill they thought of me. By the way, isn't nice when people think you can make something out of nothing and give you stuff for free :)  Hubby picked it up after school about a month ago and it sat in the garage until I could find some motivation to tackle it, I had planned on selling the set once my new company Christian Creations is up and running (SOON I hope) but Hubby liked the chairs so much we decided to keep them. The table on the other hand will probably be sold (still finding the motivation to finish that). The chairs are solid pine and pretty comfy and free, what could be better?  After a quick sanding I started painting...this is where the post title comes in.  After the third chair I was about to shoot myself.  Those spindles were killing me and I saw that they were going to need two coats of paint.  But lucky me I survived, only to realize they looked too plain and would probably get filthy in a few days time.  So,  I channeled my inner Pottery Barn designer (didn't you know we all have one of those? it's called potterybarn.com )and got out the sander and some stain.  I sanded down places that would naturally wear and applied a thin walnut stain.  Working in small areas, I wiped on the stain and quickly wiped it away with a clean cloth, the darker you want it the longer you keep it on. And finally finished them with a coat of spray polyurethane. All in all, I love how they turned out but I have already asked for a paint sprayer for Christmas...  Some of you might think I'm being dramatic, and to ya'll I would say some very not nice things.  August in New Orleans is probably what hell feels like.  So here is some pictures to walk you through the process:

SANDED

FIRST COAT OF PAINT

and now the after dun dun dunnnnnnn:

Have a great Tuesday, I'm battling a toddler who refuses to nap so my day is going to be awesome.

ashley

Here's where I'm partying:


   

Fake-It Frugal: Fake Febreeze

Fake-It Frugal: Fake Febreeze I came across this great idea to Make Your Own Febreeze over at Homemade Mamas , and I just had to give it a try and thought I would share it with anyone else who is too cheap to buy the real stuff like me :)

ashley

Green Things Pasta

Here's a quick lunch we make thats made from things you probably already have that I thought I would pass on.  Even baby girl loves this so that's saying something...

Green Things Pasta

You need:

2 cups pasta

1/2 cup frozen peas

1 cup broccoli (frozen or fresh)

1/4 cup Italian salad dressing (more or less to your taste)

Parmesan cheese

1. Boil pasta according to directions (no specific kind, just whatever you got), halfway through cooking time add broccoli and peas.

2. Drain, return to pot and add dressing and cheese.

(I love this italian dressing and am guilty of buying it in bulk when it's on sale)

Done!

Perfect for a lazy lunch and tricking little ones into eating green things

ashley

Envelope Pillow Tutorial

Baby girl had a really good nap today (aka 2 hours) so after reading lonnymag and getting a little motivation to do something I decided to make some summery pillow covers for a pair of feather pillows I found at GW awhile back.  I did a quick google search (which is how I find out anything) for easy pillow covers and came across a few but I wanted something easier than easy so I made up my own way.  I was really trying to avoid hemming because I hate it so I used a flat sheet I found at a garage sale this weekend and used the hemmed sides for the envelope edges.  Here is how I did it:

FRONT:
1. Measure pillow insert and add 1 inch to each side for seam allowance.  For example, my pillow was 22"x22" so I cut out a piece of fabric at 23"x23".
BACK:
* Pay attentions to where the hem is if your using a sheet.  Make sure it is on the shorter side (the 23" side in my case) so you can use the premade hem.
1. Add 1 inch to the pillow dimensions on one side and 5 inches to the other side.  So my 22" square pillow needed a rectangle 23"x27".
2. Cut your rectangle in half length wise.  My 23"x27" rectangle was cut in half and became 2 pieces each with the dimensions 23" by 13 1/2".
3. Pin the 2 back flaps overlapping each other to the front piece wrong sides out.

1st flap

2nd flap overlapping 1st flap

*I decided to make another pillow cover before bedtime because it was so easy, it would have taken even less time but my "helper" was having a few issues*

4. Stitch around the sides, backstitch the overlapping flaps for extra security.

5. Cut off the corners to allow for a square corner.

6. Turn your cover inside out.

Hope that made some sense, Happy Monday (almost Tuesday) everyone!!

ashley


linking to:

Potty Training

We started potty training today (Dun, Dun, Dunnnnn).  I have no idea what I'm doing but baby girl is loving sitting on this thing.  She's got the "take diaper off and sit" down but we haven't mastered going in the potty.  We've gone on the floor around the potty, many times, but not in; but hey you gotta start somewhere huh.  I don't think she wants to get the potty dirty is the thing (she is a first-born, very meticulous just like momma).  We talked about it and talked about it and I would ask every 10 minutes if she had to potty always receiving the vigorous shake of the head no and realized this is going to be a long trip.  Later, out of the corner of my eye I watched her put a dolly on the potty, pick her up, look at the booty end and said "poo poo" and put her back on the potty. I never knew such simple things like poop and where to put it would boost my confidence as a mommy 1 trillion percent! Doesn't it feel awesome when you teach your child something and you see them "getting it"!

Happy Thursday from the best seat in the house!

ashley

Happy 4th!

oh, the things you dig up in a Katrina yard

*oops, this was supposed to be posted yesterday but things got hectic with party planning!

With the long weekend comes lots of home improvement projects which lucky for me hubby enjoys doing.  If you know me or have been reading this blog for a little while you know that we moved into our newly built house in January...what home improvement projects could we possibly have you ask.  Well, our house is a Katrina house here in New Orleans, actually the levee break is about 3 houses down from us, the levee is directly in our backyard so when it broke our house was a goner.  We are lucky to say that we were not living in the house at the time so we didn't lose any personal belongings.  The house was striped down to the studs when we bought it so we had a lot of free reign in how we wanted our home to look and we love how it turned out.  The outside is a different story, the yard has been a field of weeds for sometime and so the boys got to work this weekend.  They started out by cutting down the 15 feet tall weed trees (seriously) then went on to making flower beds.  It was a TON of work made extra difficult since it is summer time here in New Orleans which means 95 degree weather, 100% humidity and random rain showers but it's almost done, we just have the pathways left to do!

digging out the grass that went to fill in bare spots in the courtyard and backyard

we used the ton (literally) of bricks left over from the house to line the planter boxes

ashley

Sweet Nothings Bench

First of all, its almost 9:30am and baby girl is still asleep....what the what? I've never been more quiet in my life but I'm sure she will be up before I finish this sentence. Nope, ok let's do this fast!  Yesterday I shared my story of finding this bench:

she's a looker, yes I know.

I sanded down the legs and gave them a coat of primer before spray painting them with Krylon Gloss Dover White (I buy mine at Kmart, it's about 2 dollars cheaper then other places).  I chose a green and white checkered fabric that was sitting in my craft closet (Joann's clearance $2/yd score, BTW check out this fabric I just got yesterday for $3/yd! I'm thinking new nursery drapes one day). 

Pulling each side taut I used a staple gun to attach the fabric onto the top, I made sure to staple into the wood for extra security.  To cover the staples I hot glued natural twisted cord to trim it out the bottom. At this point I was covered in sweat working in our 1000 degree garage and called it done and went to find some air conditioning.  The next day when I went to bring the bench inside I looked at it and it was "too perfect" so I got out the sander and went to town, I figure it's going to get beat up and busted up sooner rather than later anyways.  So here she is, the Sweet Nothings Bench:

and look whose up...

PS. We are starting potty training next week....any suggestions or helpful pointers????? Thanks for reading!

ashley