why leave your bedroom?!

 After 4.5 years I decided our bedroom needed some updating.  When I told Andy I wanted to prime, paint & hang all my new decor in one day he gave me this look...



And this was even after I told him I love him 78 times in a row. 
He doesn't like to paint. 



Before:



Middle:

 After:

I never wanna leave my room.  I keep finding reasons to just go in there and sit.  It's amazing what some paint and a trip to Ikea will do.

a surprise for his lady :)

Last night Andy walked in the kitchen, handed me a box and said it was an early Christmas present. It was awesome because, 1) I love surprises and 2) Andy is totally against giving Christmas presents early. Which drives me crazy because I can barely control myself. I almost always give him at least one present early every year. If I could, I'd give him a present right now.

So I open the box and see this!!!!!

lfasjdflkasdf;lkajf;akjsd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He wanted me to have it early so we could take pictures this Christmas. Isn't that an amazing surprise?? Now I can stop making excuses as to why there are only 5 pictures of Molly and she's 8 months old.

I don't really know how to use all the features, but I have figured out how to take a picture. Last night everyone went to sleep and I stayed up for hours taking picture of stupid things. I took a picture of my Christmas decorations...my feet...Copper...my wedding ring...more Christmas decorations. I tried to take pictures of myself but that camera isn't made to be flipped around real quick for a self portrait. Especially when you're wearing it around your neck in the first place. Tends to choke you up. Gag.

What is also pretty thrilling is that we had the extra cash just laying around to buy this mother. That makes me happy. It's a really great gift to ourselves...sort of like a treat for being a good boy and girl. It feels good that we waited and did it the right way. All around happy feelings :)

I know you all know this...because I constantly blab about him...but Andy is the best.

I hit the jackpot.

500th post.

I just randomly saw that the video I just blogged was my 500th post. That's a record somewhere, I'm sure. I'd do a giveaway but I should have thought of that on post 497 or 498 so I could have prepared myself.

Instead I shall tell you...

• Thanks for sticking around.
• Cheers to 500 more.
• And the inside of my fingers are rough from the cold weather & washing my hand 50hundred times a day. I may sleep with socks on my hands tonight.
  
  Thought I'd end it with a personal touch.

Always Classy

saint katie

The other day I was in my kitchen when the doorbell rang and the mail lady delivered a box with MY name on it. I was in the middle of cutting my dad's hair [yep, I'm a kitchen beautician] so Andy got the box. He read the return address...it was from Oregon from a place called Saint Cupcake? Did he say C U P C A K E???

After a few minutes of Andy being impatient he went to grab some scissors to open the box with MY name on it. Oh no he didn't! After a few short words leapt from my mouth and cut to his soul he backed off and realized that he should wait for me to open the box with MY name on it. So he did. Thankfully.

I opened the box and saw this...another box, a pink one.

With a sticker on it that said Saint Cupcake.

Then I saw this sweet note. The cupcakes were from my friend Katie Holt who lives on the west coast. We went to church together and spent many summers together as counselors at Camp Adventure. She thought of me and sent me a special treat...just because! Which is why I will forever refer to her as Saint Katie. 'Katie' alone is no longer good enough.After the note I saw the sweetest individually wrapped cupcakes...Then I saw cute little containers of icing...Then sprinkles...Then wands to apply the icing and instructions on how to decorate a cup cake.Needless the say, this made my day. Let's say it made my week. These cupcakes were the most moist, delicious things I've ever eaten in my life! Seriously. My favorite was the chocochip cupcake and the cream cheese icing. Yum, Yum and Yum! And for all of you wondering...I only shared with Molly. Saint Katie said I didn't have to share with anyone else...and when Saint Katie says something, you listen.

Thanks again Saint Katie.
You're a doll.

you had me at hello.

We got a new sweeper and Colt is mesmerized by it's beauty.

beatboxing

Who says white boys can't dance?

flippin awesome

Tomorrow FedEx should show up at my door with one of these babies:
The video camera on my phone no longer works and my other video camera isn't handy enough to keep in my purse. I know it's been a long time since ya'll have gotten to see a video of my Coley...not much longer and I'll be giving my people what they want.

stylin

For Colt's Christmas Eve outfit we got him this really cute hat. We've been calling it a 'newspaper boy hat'. Every time we tried it on him Andy would yell 'News paepa's fo sale!' and then Colt would come running and rip it off.

He likes to wear hats but more in the form of bowls, cups, you know, things that aren't hats! Luckily for me all the stars must have been aligned on Christmas Eve because he wore his hat! I was so proud.

craftiness oozes

I made these.

Sold a few on e-bay.
Then made some more for Molly.

I might make him wear one for Christmas.

it's new

and I haven't taken it off since I bought it.
It's a headband.
It makes me feel pretty when ever I'm wearing my pj's [or my 'hobo clothes' as Andy would call them].
You likey?

christmas in september

After crawling across my mattress and realizing that my knee was hitting the box spring...AND after Andy was laying still one night and felt a spring go hay wire underneath him...AND after we worked our booties off in August and had some money left over in the budget...We decided to buy ourselves a new mattress. AND since we can't totally justify dropping hundreds of bucks just because we want something new we decided we would make it our Christmas present to each other, but we'd wouldn't have to wait until Christmas to get it :)

There was a Sealy sale and since I used to work at a furniture store I and since I know the right people we got a great price on a brand new Randolph Terrace Queen Cushion Firm Pillow Top mattress.

Let's just say we slept like babies.
This morning was the first day in months Andy said his back wasn't killing him when he woke up!
Merry Christmas Baby!
Now...how many naps can I squeeze in today?
All I want to do is to go back to sleep :)

it's a blogoversary...is that what they call it?

233 posts later I celebrate my first blogoversary. A year ago I started this blog as a substitution to scrap booking. I wasn't really sure if I'd enjoy it or if I'd have anyone read it other than Kaley and Andy [when I force him to] but it has become an outlet for me and something I even, dare I say, cherish. What happens if the internet magically disappears one day??? [EXCLAMATION POINTS]

Around Christmas I added a Stat Counter to my page just for fun to see how many people were visiting a day and to my surprise there are over 100 people a day who stop by...often times hundreds. I don't think Kaley and Andy are that bored to make hundreds of stops here a day :) Lets just admit it... I have blogosphere friends. I have met and grown fond of so many people since I started my blog. Ladies from all over the country are friends with me. I talk about them like I know them. And other real life friends and I have gotten much closer just by following blogs. The internet amazes me.

The following chart is from my Stat Counter. It makes me laughs. It shows the visit length of my visitors on a regular basis. We have two opposite ends of the spectrum here.
Visit Length:
51.6% of my visitors spend more than an hour visiting my site.

41.8% of my visitors spend less than five seconds visiting my site.

I feel like the 51.6% is probably from my Grandma who just leaves my blog up on her computer screen everyday...occasion hitting the refresh button to see if I've updated it the last hour :) HI GRANDMA! She's my number one fan. AND the other 41.8% of you only have 5 seconds or less for me. I say what I need to say in the first sentence of my posts anyway : )

Thanks to all of you for putting up with my bad grammar and my excessive exclamation points. I do know that your not supposed to start a sentence with SO or AND but I do and will continue to...I just can't help myself.

Out of the hundreds reading my blog there about 10 people who comment. I love reading comments...Who doesn't LOVE reading comments?

So since it's my blogoversary...leave me a comment and tell me what about this nonsense has made you come back.

To end this joyous occasion I thought I'd leave you with the ugliest piece of clip art I could find. Tur Dur!

out with the old, in with the awesome.

Can your computer do this?

Late December of 2003 I bought a lap top. I drug it with me to college, then on to design school...my family used it everyday and Andy used the same laptop to run his business from. It slowly started to break in half about a year ago. Seriously, the screen no longer stayed attached to the base so it became a permanent desktop and just leaned against the wall. We had promised each other to be nice to it and let it go as long as possible before it took its last breath and forced us to by a new one.

Last week the power cord stopped working and we panicked and finally bought a new one and Oh my gosh, I didn't know what I was missing. I feel like I've come from the stone ages clinking rocks together. It's so fast! I used to rest my head on my hand while things loaded on the screen and seriously PRAY for patience so I didn't slam it into the wall. The best part is it was only $440 bucks and we paid CASH :) "Mo, I'm so proud of you" - Thank you Self.This is Andy's please-tell-me-your-not-taking-a-picture-of-me-holding-a-computer-so-you-can-blog-about-it face.

i'm a crafty son of a gun

A while ago Nobody got all crafty on us and recovered some furniture. I was inspired. I got this chair from a garage sale and went to town. I've recovered many bar stools, many dining room chairs and a piano bench so I was thinking that this would be a piece of cake. I was wrong. This seat cushion didn't unscrew off so I had to figure our how to tuck and staple and hide mistakes and all that jazz. Two things: 1) don't judge & 2) don't look too close because you might get a staple in your eye...they're are a few untamed ones.

This might be one of my finest Marta Stewart moments...and I'm not talking about jail.

Before:

After: [drum roll please...]It looks like a box of Crayola Crayons threw up in my living room. Let's just say, I'm not afraid of color...or patterns...or things not matching...or peacock feathers. Wanna hire me? HA!