Antique Mall Finds

It will be a while until our "finds" find their permanent homes in our home, so for now here is a sneak peek at what we got:

 Old farmhouse paned windows. The yellow one will go "as is" to my bedroom and the white one may get a fresh, distressed coat of paint for my living room.

 

 Tony's finds, old radio and phone extension. The tag on the phone says "non-working", DUH!

This shabby table will get a fabric covered foam seat and become a bench for my bedroom.

 

This little old school desk already found a home in the girls' room. We also picked up the little personal chalk board hanging on the wall.

 

I got this just because it was funny/cute to me. Published in 1951, I am sure it is ripe with misinformation {even the cover has a baby on its tummy, not what we are told to do these days}. I will have to read trough the section on breastfeeding, I am sure it will be hilarious!

These are going to be a bed side table in Alexa's room. Her room eventually will have a world traveler theme with her pictures of Europe, etc.

We also picked up an assortment of old kitchen gadgets (rolling pins, graters, apron, sifters. etc) that will be hung on the soffit above our kitchen cabinets.

The whole time we were keeping our eyes out for windows, old typewriters, and an old Singer. I described to Tony the black metal with gold writing of the Singer sewing machines that I like. We never saw one but Tony did find me this:

 It's not a Singer, but it sure is pretty. Best part, we plugged in in and it works!

Mini Vacation Day 5

The last day of our mini vacation we were in a hurry to get home, but we did stop at a few antique malls in Albuquerque and got some fun stuff.

We passed on a cool find, and are kinda kicking ourselves. It's my fault because I want to remodel our kitchen and get all new appliances. I have had old appliances for too long. I should have considered this option a little more. We found one of these:

In this shade of PINK!:

 These photos are from the Internet, I did not get a picture of the one we saw.

We probably should have gotten it, it was really cool and actually even cuter than these. I didn't really think about the fact that we could have had it restored or even use it as a shell with a new range top etc. The best part is that Tony liked it and would have gotten it. Oh well! Live and learn.

Mini Vacation Day 4

Day four of our vacation was a little rocky.

Let's just say that a night of storms, lack of sleep, and a not so kind monthly visitor put me in a pretty grouchy mood.

There was a highlight though, meeting this little guy:

 We stopped at Tony's sister's place in Oklahoma City and met the newest addition to the family, her grandson Santiago, 11 days old. He was such a sweet little guy. I had to get some pictures of his cute little baby parts. Glad I got a baby fix, it sure brightened my day.

Shopping at a fun books store and a fabulous dinner helped, too!

Mini Vacation Day 3

Day 3 of our mini vacation was probably the most fun. We started our day just outside of Memphis, so we decided we had to see Graceland.

When we got there, we decided we did not have enough time to do the whole tour, but we did see it and his jets, and got some souvenirs for Tony's mom who is an Elvis fan.

 

After Graceland we stopped at the cutest town where they had an antique mall {I'll post my finds later} and farmers market:

  

 It was a fun day of meandering across TN and Arkansas, taking our time and seeing the sites, shopping, and just being together.

Mini Vacation Day 2

Day two of our little vacation we left Kingsport/Jonesborough {after a morning breakfast/business meeting} and headed towards Nashville.

We took our time and stopped at some flea market, antique, farmer's market, picker malls along the way. I will have to do a separate post about our "finds" as we stopped at a lot of places between TN and Albuquerque...Anyway...

One of the main reasons I wanted to do this little trip was to see my family in Nashville. About a year ago my family moved my Granny from CA to live with my uncle Jim and his family in TN. I was really glad they were all available on short notice to have dinner and visit with us.

Tony, me holding Addison (my cousin's daughter), Brennan held by my aunt Mary, cousin Vanessa, Sith and cousin Kelly, my Granny and uncle Jim. (Thanks to Vanessa's husband David for taking the picture!)

Me, my cousins and Granny

It was a nice visit. I am ashamed to say I had never met Kelly's husband, Sith, as it has been 20 years since I had seen Kelly! I had also never met either of Vanessa's kiddos. They were so cute, and reminded me how much energy little ones take, and how fast they grow! I was nice to get to know them again.

As you can see, I am a little taller than most of my family on my mom's side. When my Granny first saw me she said "have you always been this tall?". So funny!

We had to say our goodbyes and get on the road. We ended our day at a nice little campground just shy of Memphis {as we were advised by David to maybe not stay IN Memphis!}

Day 3 coming soon...

Mini Vacation, Day 1

Having your own business can be tough. Tony has been having a lot of out of town jobs. However, it has it's perks, too. Recently he was in TN and I flew out to drive back with him. It was a fun mini vacation, free to us thanks to the business, love that!

I flew into Kingsport, TN and we headed straight to the job site for me to see:

 

This is the plant Tony and the boys disassembled in KS and reassembled in TN.

We stayed the night in Jonesborough, TN. It is a super cute town, and we stayed right in the heart of it's historic district:

 This is the view from our room, a little one room school house, so cute!

And we ate dinner here, a cheesy little Mexican restaurant the boys ate at almost every night. Michael was amused by the sign with the American and Mexican hands, so I had to get a picture.

That's all for day one, more to come...

Pinterest Sundays

My girls and I have had such a great time finding fun things to do on Pinterest, I have decided to make it a {semi}regular blog feature, Pinterest Sundays.

Without further ado, this week's Pinterest Sunday theme is......drum roll..........more cupcakes.

But not just any cupcakes, we went with a theme, COCKTAIL CUPCAKES! I can't take credit for this idea, I was inspired by my friend Toni and her post about Guinness Cupcakes she had in DC and then later made herself. We kicked it up a notch and made Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's Irish Cream ganache filling and Bailey's butter cream frosting. When I told our house-guest about them he said "car bomb cupcakes? Sounds awesome". OK, so I didn't know about the drink known as a car bomb- 

"Pour half a pint of chilled Guinness into a beer mug and let it settle. Take a shot glass filled with 1/2 oz. of Irish whiskey on the bottom and 1/2 oz. of Irish cream on top. Drop the shot glass into the Guinness and chug."

The ganache was supposed to contain the whiskey, but we used more Bailey's instead:

 Guinness car bomb cupcakes

I know what you are thinking, "you let your girls make/eat those?" 

No way! We had a non alcoholic version for them, Shirley Temple cupcakes! These beauties are made with 7-up, grenadine, and maraschino cherry juice butter cream on top:

 

Shirley Temple cupcakes

Cheers!

Remembering 9/11/2001

I am sure everyone remembers where they were when they first heard about the events on 9/11/2001. It was the first time in my lifetime that I was aware of not being at peace in the world.

I was a 28 year old, stay at home mom. Michael was 10 and in 5th grade. Alexa was 7 and in the 2nd grade. Celeste was almost 4 and I was expecting our fourth child {one that I lost a little over a month later}.

It was like any other school day morning, in that we never turn the TV on before school. Our little neighbor, Patrick, came to the door for a ride to school and said "someone just bombed the Pentagon". I thought he must have heard wrong. An attack on our country? On our soil? That just did not seem possible.

I took the kids to school as usual and immediately turned on the TV. I don't remember eating all day. I don't remember taking care of Celeste. I only remember those horrifying, life changing images. I was hysterical, sad, scared, traumatized, and I didn't even personally know anyone there. I have a hard time putting into words how it affected me. How scared I was to be bringing a child into the world that now would be at war.

I am now watching on TV, playback of the live coverage of that morning. It is bringing it all right back.

My heart goes out to everyone who lost someone that day.

My heart, and gratitude, goes out to those on flight 93 who sacrificed themselves to save others.

I think about how different our world is now. How my Sophie was not even born yet, and her entire lifetime our country has been at war.

I am remembering how that day forever changed us as Americans.

``If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate,'' said Sandy Dahl, the wife of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl. 

 

Sunday-Our day of {Pinte}Rest

I know what you are thinking, "another post about Pinterest", but Sundays around here are quickly becoming our day of Pinterest. We always do our weekly laundry and grocery shopping on Sunday, but...

Since discovering Pinterest, we have added some fun to our day! We loved our Mountain Dew cupcakes, so this past Sunday I assigned Celeste the job of finding another cupcake recipe to try. She chose "Nutella" cupcakes. And let me tell you, they made it impossible for me to stick with my no sugar plan! There was Nutella in the batter, then injected into the warm cupcakes, and also in the buttercreme frosting (the best part). They were AMAZING!

 Sophie wanted to do a special project for her teacher, so we found a tutorial for this fun and cute project:

 

And I had a yard of jersey knit fabric from SAS that I got for $1.99 that needed to be a comfy skirt:

It's not so easy to photograph yourself, let me tell you!

 Extreme close up! Now, if you see what looks like lint specs, it's not. This brown, creme, and mustard jersey fabric is GLITTERED! Hello $1.99 skirt!

If you want to know where I got all these great projects, recipes, ideas, etc...just click on my "Pinterest" link Here  or on my sidebar where it says "follow me on Pinterest".

 

Pie In The Sky

If you have been reading my blog you know that I HATE traditional school photos. I mean, I think my kids are cute, but maybe not too photogenic, and these photos were always HORRIBLE. The past few years I have been doing them myself, but this year I had the fabulous Amanda of Pie in the Sky photography take them. The girls had a blast with Amanda, she is so fun and creative. They enjoyed putting fun outfits together and doing interesting posses. I can not wait to see them, and share them on here. Here is a little behind the scenes:

Amanda sure knows how to get down, I think she'd do whatever it takes to get the shot!

 And later, I took a few of my own:

 Stay tuned, t-minus two weeks till we get the real thing from Amanda. Can't wait!