Friday Inspiration

Source: bing.com via Danielle on Pinterest

After a long night with the little one, I woke up this morning with only five hours of sleep. It would have been easy to skip the gym, to stay in my pj's, to wallow in my self misery that my child has not yet learned the glorious joy of sleeping through the night. But instead, I got dressed and dragged my sleep deprived booty to the gym. And 3 miles later, I walked out feeling refreshed & renewed. Of course that might have been the caffeine talking...

But either way, I can proudly say that today I loved myself enough to take an hour for me.

What was your inspiration today?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

May you give & receive as much love today as the other 364 days of the year...

I'll be covering my little Valentine with lots of extra hugs & kisses today!

Hope everyone has a lovely day! :)

One Year

One year (and one day...oops :) ago today, I married the most kind & handsome man I've ever known...

and today I couldn't imagine life being any sweeter.

Happy 1st Anniversary and so much love to my sweet husband! 

Pardon the Interuption

If I'm a little MIA this week, it's because I'm very busy and important. No, no, I'm only kidding! But really, one of my bff's is in town visiting for the week!!! There's nothing like having a great friend around to chat & be yourself with.

{Is it sad that the last picture of us together was from her Bachelorette party over 3 years ago?! Maybe we need to add picture taking to our itinerary this week!}

 Yay for girl time, shopping, and yes, of course...crafting! More on the crafting later. :)

Tulips and Cherry Blossoms

G and I spent the afternoon in DC soaking up the delicious aroma of those gorgeous cherry blossoms...

Don't you just want to eat them up?

Although I think we saw more of these beautiful blooms covering the ground than their trees...

{Couldn't you just crawl under that tree and take a nap?}

Either way, the air smelled oh so scrumptious.

And even Mr. Robin posed for a pic...

Guess there's no arguing that spring is officially here!

Hope you all had a great weekend soaking up the joys of Spring! 

Some Projects...

Some projects make you want to do this...

And force you to eat lots of this...

And make you buy yourself a bouquet of these at the grocery store...

{To feel better about being a crafting failure, of course.}

By "some projects" I mean this project. It sure is taking a lot more time {and patience} than originally expected! But don't worry...it WILL be finished!

Oh! And Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

I don't have a drop of Irish blood in me, 

but maybe the luck of the Irish will help me to finish this chair before my baby turns 18!

Disney Recap

So we're home from a great vacation and I'm having a little trouble getting back in the swing of things...

The break from the cold winter skies of Pennsylvania was great...

I wish I could have brought all the beds of flowers home with me!

Is there a TSA regulation against checking a thousand boxes of pansies on an airplane?

And as we were traveling through "Africa" in Animal Kingdom, I found these adorable little puffs. Loved them!

We met some furry friends...

And some not so furry ones...

Those of us without a baby in our belly rode some daredevil rides...and got a little soaked in the process!

Don't worry, I didn't mind staying high and dry. :)

And what trip to Disney would be complete without seeing a few characters?

Though they weren't all as "animated" as I thought they'd be...

...I was still quite impressed with these topiaries we found throughout the park.

We all had a great time. 

In fact, I loved the Magic Kingdom so much that I wanted to walk up to the front door of Cinderella's castle and see if there was room for one more.

Back to reality {and crafting!} tomorrow. 

Woohoo, weekend!

Happy weekend, everyone!
G and I are headed up to New Hampshire & Maine this weekend. A little business to take care of (more on that later) but mostly getting some unexpected but welcome time with family & friends. Although, the 15 degree temperatures are not something I'm looking forward to!

someecards

Good thing I love sweaters. 

And carbs.

Ikea, how I love thee!

Hello old friends. I should probably acknowledge the fact that I haven't posted anything in like 8 years. I have many excuses. Exhaustion? Laziness? Bedridden with sickness? Visiting family & friends? Christmas chaos? Traveling? Laziness probably wins.

But I have better things to talk about. Because today...today I feel in love. With Ikea. I know I'm totally behind the times with this one, but I had yet to make it into one. But it was worth the wait, let me tell you!

A little background story. My husband and I have 2 dressers. One is not appropriate for any person of the age of 5 to use, which I have conveniently hidden placed in our closet. The other is my college dresser which I bought at a yard sale for $7 ten years ago. Convincing my husband that we needed to replace either was like convincing Jillian Michaels that Little Debbie Snacks are good for you. But somehow, I did. (The former, of course.)

Traditional furniture stores and their somewhat "stalker" sales people kind of make me cringe. Which is why we set off on our maiden voyage to Ikea in search of a new dresser for our bedroom. We meandered through the store, stopping to look at, sit down, test out, & examine all the pieces in the showroom. The store is really set up like a maze, but it's very smart, in that you don't really ever feel lost...but you end up looking at everything they offer, even if you didn't want to. We were there for bedroom stuff, which in order to get to, you have to head through the living room, kitchen, etc. areas. I didn't mind. And not one sales person will bother you, pressure you, or stalk you. Genius.

And then half way through the store-maze they conveniently put the Ikea restaurant. Which is genius. Because at this point you are basically thinking...if only I had a snack to keep me going. And I must say the Swedish Meatballs are SO. YUMMY. And my husband and I both ate lunch for less than $8. When has that ever happened? (Never.)

The moral of the story is that we found our dressers. Yes, not ONE but TWO new dressers! They were such a great deal that we decided we might as well get two. We chose the Hemnes 8 drawer dresser and the Hemnes 3 drawer chest to come home with us:

Images from www.ikea.com

So I think we all owe a big thank you to the Swedes for bringing us IKEA, my new Hemnes dressers, and all 20 of those Swedish meatballs G & I shared for lunch. Yum, yum, yum.

Superheros

Over a month ago, my sis in law asked me if I  would want to make Halloween costumes for her two girls. I love them to pieces, so of course I was thrilled to oblige. And I never blogged about it. But since it IS Halloween weekend, I figured I still could.

Their little brother is obsessed with superheroes. Not to be outdone, the girls chose their costumes accordingly. Wonderwoman & Pink Batgirl. Fabulous choices. Expensive choices if you are buying them. So my goal was to make them for less than $10 each. Here are their costumes of choice:

Images found here and here. (Superheroes obviously not to size.)

So here is what I came up with. 

There were a lot of little parts and pieces to each one. 

(And yes, I did add "fall" to some of the pictures...bare white was just not screaming Halloween!) 

 

(My first try at a t-shirt...was easier than I thought!)

And every super girl needs accessories...

Anyway...there you have it. I didn't use any patterns, so I kind of just made it all up as I went along. Apparently they were a hit. The day they arrived in the mail, batgirl refused to take hers off so she wore it to Walmart & received lots of compliments.

As for the price - almost all of the fabric I found on sale, or used coupons. I ended up spending less than $20 for both costumes! Not a bad deal.


I even had enough fabric left over to make matching trick or treat bags for them & their little brother...who is of course, also a superhero.

Have fun tomorrow, kids! 

Hopefully you wont be too busy saving the universe to pose for some pictures for me. 

Monogrammed Appliqué

I love appliqué! I don't think I have tried it since maybe I was 10 years old? My niece & nephew are turning 5 & 6 next week, so I thought I'd make them some monogrammed tee's to mail to them. It was SO easy that I now want to appliqué everything in sight!

A for Annabelle & a matching flowered skirt & ruffled headband. I added some silver sequins because what little girl doesn't like a little sparkle? I didn't make the tee or skirt, but they were $5 each at target, so still a win for me! She's getting some cute orange leggings too.

Z is for Zackary in a skull pattern & a little skull on the sleeve. He's also getting some sweats with his, but not exciting enough for a picture.

Happy Birthday to my favorite kiddos!!

Uprooting & Downsizing

So here we are again! I have been a negligent blogger. I've been a teensy bit busy planning that whole wedding thing...getting married (most beautiful day, um, EVER. recap on that to follow)...going on a fabulous honeymoon, and most recently, packing up our 6 month old (to us) home.

We're headed to Hershey, Pennsylvania. I've never been there, but people tell me that it's nice & smells like chocolate. How bad can a place be that produces 1 million pounds of chocolate a DAY?

We'll be moving out of our 2000 square foot house into a 1000 square foot apartment while we sell our house & decide on where our next one should be. Not just downsizing. Halfsizing. We'll have a lot in storage, but I'm kind of excited. When G and I first moved to NH, we rented a tiny 1.5 bedroom apartment. I could clean it top to bottom in less than an hour. I could vacuum the entire place without unplugging the vacuum cleaner! It was a life of leisure with free time for weekend adventures & projects. I'm not looking forward to leaving my beloved NH home behind, but as most big houses, she was a needy thing, and I am excited to get acquainted with her new, low maintenance, temporary replacement.

Pictures & stories are promised to follow! Stay tuned...

High Flier

Some pics of Uncle Ben throwing Zack into the deep end. He was certainly the best at it, as you can see from the amount of air he got! And had to throw in the pic on top of Zack losing his shorts...too cute!