Lounging around

We're kicking back some and relaxing over here :) I'm taking advantage of my unemployment (which hopefully won't be much longer) and spending as much time as I can with my kids. There have been many trips to the playground, parks, and shopping trips to the mall. I'm loving it. Well, most of it. Seriously, how do all of you stay-at-home moms do it everyday?? I love my kids more than anything, but sometimes when they both throw simultaneous tantrums, I forget their cuteness and want to hand them over to the daycare for a couple hours so I can have some peace and quiet, or at least go to the bathroom by myself.

Connor is such a mama's boy, which I LOVE, but I'm not so much a fan of how he has to follow me absolutely everywhere. A girl just needs to go to the bathroom by herself sometimes, you know? I'm sure we'll laugh about it someday, but he's just so clingy lately. I'm sure a lot of it is related to the fact that he's 18 months, but mama's, please tell me that he won't always scream bloody murder when I walk into the other room? I don't remember my 3-year-old ever being this clingy. I keep telling myself to enjoy it while I can, which I do for the most part, but it's really difficult for others to take care of him when he's having a meltdown.

But then I snap a picture of him like the one above where he's lounging on the couch with his pants unbuttoned, eating chips and watching TV, and all of those tantrums melt away in my mind and I see my sweet little snuggly boy. Who am I kidding? I love that he's a mama's boy.

Oh and my big news that I've been hinting around about will be announced next Monday :) I can't wait to share what I've been up to!

Even princesses need ice cream

My MIL found a couple of Disney princess dresses at a garage sale recently, and Haley got her hands on one and immediately insisted on wearing it and spinning around the living room. She loved it so much that she refused to take it off during a trip to get ice cream recently. How often do you get to wear a big, puffy princess dress out in public?

So that's what we did.

I think we found a new favorite ice cream spot. I tried their "Bittersweet Symphony," which is a heavenly mixture of coffee ice cream with bittersweet ribbons of chocolate running through it. We've been back to get ice cream twice now, and I can't bring myself to try anything else.

 

Haley sat down intermittently for bites of ice cream, but she mostly enjoyed curtsying to passerby's who complimented her on her dress. This little princess had very refined manners. Except for the drips of ice cream that inevitably found their way onto her dress. Her lady in waiting (i.e. me) was called several times to make sure the little princess's dress was properly wiped clean.

Good thing Connor was on hand to "help" finish off the rest of the ice cream. I didn't need any help with mine :)

Bowls were emptied and Princess Haley was happy. I sense more trips to get ice cream in our near future, probably in a Rapunzel dress next time.

I'm officially a Pittsburgher.

We're here, we're here! After months and months of planning and dreaming (more like years actually) we're finally in Pittsburgh! My husband and I have been wanting to move closer to our family ever since we had kids, and that dream has finally become a reality. I've been taking a little blog break recently to unpack, recharge, and organize everything because wow, we have some STUFF. When everything is nicely organized in your house, you don't really realize how many things you have. That is, until you have to take it all out of your house and pack it into a 26 ft. truck. And your van. And your second car. And still, there's barely enough room for everything. I still feel like I'm recovering from all of the packing, unpacking, and organizing and it's still not completely done yet but we're getting there.

So far though, I am completely in love with Pittsburgh. What a beautiful city! For those of you who know Memphis, it's pretty much a concrete jungle (and a hot one at that!) Pittsburgh has so many beautiful buildings and such a wonderful sense of community. I'm really enjoying how genuinely nice everyone is here! I love that I can finally say that I'm a Pittsburgher.

There's also a few other things I've been loving about PA:

     1. Pittsburgh is like, a million degrees cooler. And less humid. And those 2 things alone are
     enough to make me want to move here.


     2. People walk around at night outside without fear of being mugged. That would never happen in
     Memphis. The sun goes down, you go inside.

     3. They have diet cream soda in their grocery stores. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but
     to me it's like finding the holy grail.

     4. Great local restaurants. Most restaurants in Memphis (aside from the BBQ joints) were  
     chains. Here, you can walk down the street and have the best hoagie you've ever eaten at a local
     hole in the wall restaurant. I plan on gaining lots of weight.

     5. Did I mention how awesome the weather is?

The one thing I'm having to really get used to are the hills. I'm just hoping I'll have some massive calves after being here for a few weeks :) Thanks for hanging in there while my family and I settle in. I've been giving myself permission to slow down a little lately, but I do have some projects that I plan on sharing with you soon! 

Week in Pictures

I pretty much failed at taking pictures this week! We planned on being moved out by this time, but unfortunately our move out date continues to be pushed back due to circumstances beyond our control. We just keep telling ourselves that it's going to happen soon, but waiting is so hard to do sometimes. So for now, here's a picture of my son looking like the baby from The Hangover :)

On the plus side of things,the weather has been cooler the past few days, so hopefully that means nice weather when we move out next week! Oh and by cooler, I mean 91 degrees which is great compared to the 104 degree heat we've been having lately. We're just ready to have this whole move and house sale done so we can start a new chapter in our lives.

And speaking of new chapters, I have some exciting blog-related news that I'll tell you about soon :) You may have noticed that I've slowed down some on projects lately, but really I've been working my butt off behind the scenes. How vague, right? I expand on that more later once I've had a chance to actually move one of these days and settle into our new city :) 

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Oh this boy.

Each day I see less and less baby in him. He's talking much more at this age than his sister ever did. I think the impending move has caused me to look at both of my kids and really see how much they've grown over the past 3 years we've lived here in Tennessee. We moved here when my daughter was only 3 months old and my son was born here, so this is really the only house they've ever known. We've had lots of great memories in this house.



Of course we're looking forward to moving at the end of the week so we can live close to family again. I would be lying if I told you I'll miss the 14 hour drives. And the heat, oh the Tennessee heat. It's unbearable at times. We'll be living with family until we can get back on our feet, so we're very thankful that they're allowing us to make their home ours, even for a short while.

But this house has been more than a roof over our heads. It's been our home for the past 3 years and I'm sure going to miss it.



I hope the next family that lives here makes even more wonderful memories with their family and that they too will eventually know this house as their home.

Week in Pictures

It's Friday, friends, time for another relaxing weekend....but not for me! I'm totally fine with it though because WE'RE PACKING! That's right, we finally got an offer on our house and we're making the big move to PA. We've been waiting for this day since February, and it's finally happening. We'll be close to family for once, and away from the concrete jungle here in Tennessee. We're so excited (and exhausted from packing!) so I will probably be taking a backseat to blogging here soon so we can get everything packed up and finalize everything on our house.

In the meantime, we're enjoying our remaining time here in Tennessee while we can. Have a great weekend everyone!

Garlic Roasted Asparagus

My husband is a man who knows what he likes. When we first got married, I tried making him the meals that I grew up on. The problem is that most of those meals involved mushrooms, which happen to be the number one food on his "foods that make me gag" list.

I once made salmon patties, which is a food that my mom has made for my brother and I since we were young. After 3 bites, Patrick declared that the sandwiches were made of pure evil and wouldn't go near them again. He was sick for two days after that, which he still blames on the salmon patties.

After much trial and error, we found a middle ground with garlic. We put garlic in most of our dishes, and asparagus is one of our favorites. Many of you probably have a dislike for asparagus because you may have been force-fed it as a child. I challenge you to give it another try! Asparagus is actually not a very scary vegetable at all. It has many numerous health benefits, and it also has great flavor, especially when paired with garlic and cheese.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound asparagus
• Olive oil to drizzle
• Kosher salt
• Pepper
• 1 Tablespoon minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons shredded Parmesan cheese.

FIRST // preheat the oven to 350 degrees. While the oven is preheating, wash your asparagus and cut the tough ends of the off.

NEXT // place your asparagus on a cookie sheet in a single layer and drizzle with olive oil. Next, sprinkle with salt, pepper and generous amounts of minced garlic. Toss to coat.

LAST // sprinkle with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and cook for 11 minutes.
 

Roasted asparagus has become a favorite at our house, I hope you enjoy this recipe as well!

Check out my sidebar to see where I link up each week!

Week in Pictures

1. Making zucchini chips 2. Baby Mozarts 3. Shadow play 4. Strawberries from my garden that we got to before the birds did 5. Waffles for dinner 6. Weekly ride on the merry-go-round

Changing table to craft station

Sorry about my rant earlier in the week, and thanks for being so understanding! Now onto happier things :) After my post on how I organize my fabric, I thought it'd be fun to share a little bit more of my craft room and how I organize all my ever-growing craft supplies. I'm certainly no expert on organization, but I like to keep things simple and use what works, and this baby in the picture above has helped keep all my stuff nice and clutter-free for the past several years. Yep, my craft station is actually a children's changing table and hutch combo that I scored off of Craig's List a few years ago. And it's perfect.

Prior to my current storage solution, I had been using small canvas storage bins to hold fabric and supplies and I was quickly outgrowing them. My husband, Patrick, and I searched the internet to find something affordable that could store all my stuff, but everything that we liked was pretty pricey. While browsing Craig's List one day, Pat found a changing table/dresser for dirt cheap and just knew it was exactly what I needed to store all my crafty stuff.  That same day, we made the 2-hour trip to pick it up, and I'm SO glad we got it before someone else did! I really couldn't ask for anything better, it's surprisingly perfect for storing craft supplies.

The small shelf above the changing area serves as storage for my paints, glue, and other miscellaneous supplies. The bar itself, which is supposed to keep everything from falling onto the changing area below, is used for ribbon storage. This is my favorite part about the craft hutch itself because all of my ribbon is displayed for quick selection and cutting, and the bar can be easily removed to add more.

I use the top of the hutch as storage for my books, iron, and a box of jewelry supplies.

The three drawers serve as a great way to separate my bias tape, ribbon, patterns, and clothing waiting for refashioning into separate compartments (which I know needs even more organizing eventually :). I keep my main supplies in the top drawer so they can be accessed easily.

I have a lot of fabric, so the drawers are perfect to store these. If you remember my post from last week, I used cereal boxes to create mini fabric bolts to organize and store my fabric (I keep more in the cabinet door below and in another small bookshelf  on the floor). The small shelves on the right side of the hutch are perfect for storing the mini bolts and felt squares.

So that's my little craft hutch! I have big plans in the future to repaint the whole thing, remove the backing and replace it with pegboard, and replace the knobs. But that's a project for another day. for now, the hutch is perfect for keeping all of my clutter hidden and organized.

Do you have any organization tips that you'd like to share? I'd love to hear them!

Check out my sidebar to see where I link up each week

Week in Pictures

1. Haley's first candy necklace 2. Riding on Daddy's shoulders 3. A refreshing drink 4. Eating at a fun local restaurant 5. A visit to the ER

It's been quite the week this week...Connor had a trip to the ER recently when he was having a bad night. It was the perfect storm of a double ear infection, oncoming virus, and teething. He's OK, but he gave us quite the scare. Here's to a less eventful weekend :)

Week in Pictures

 1. Daddy gets a Spongebob band aid for his boo boo 2. Connor's Starbuck's obsession (don't worry, it's just a strawberry smoothie :) 3. I actually have actual strawberries growing in my garden! 

4. Ostrich burger 5. Bedtime stories

Yay, it's Friday! After a long, busy weekend I'm definitely ready for the weekend. This week has been pretty interesting. The highlight was when I tried an ostrich burger for the first time - definitely an experience. Not so sure I'll get it again (it has a flavor that you can't seem to compare to anything else), but I'm glad I tried it. My friends tease me that I eat the weirdest things, and it's true. I'm always the one who will pick out the weird looking foods at buffets because I'm curious. That gets me in trouble a lot, but sometimes I discover a new food I really like. Can't say the burger is a new favorite, but at least now I can say I tried ostrich :)

We're still in the process of trying to sell our house, so that's made us very anxious and impatient, but we both continuously remind ourselves that God has a plan, and it's better than ours. 

 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Week in Pictures

1. a trip to the car wash 2. sushi with friends 3. amazing cupcakes with the BEST peanut butter frosting 4. decorating with sidewalk chalk 5. trying a new beer (I think I'll stick to the original thanks)

Happy Friday everyone! This week, I've done a lot of eating (if you couldn't tell from the picture above :) I got to have sushi TWICE this week, which is a really rare treat. A friend of mine introduced me to squid salad a few years ago and ever since then, I just have to have one each time I go to get sushi. I can't get enough of the stuff. In fact, when I was pregnant and on bed rest with Connor, I craved it so much that my friend brought some to the hospital for me. The idea of squid salad may sound a little weird but try it. Trust me.

I also tried some amazing cupcakes with mile high-frosting that tastes exactly like my mother-in-law's peanut butter fudge. And luckily, it's right across the street from my house. Which is dangerous. One of these days I'll write up a post for the peanut butter fudge. I am not a fan of fudge usually, but this stuff is life changing.

Aside from that, we've had a pretty routine week with a trip to the carwash (which both kids thought was pretty terrifying) and decorating the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk. We're still trying to sell our house, so fingers crossed for that!

Hope your week has been great (and full of yummy food) too!

Photo layout c/o Katrina of Pugly Pixel

Week In Pictures

1. lemon face! 2. enjoying the wonderful weather 3. fried pickles at Gus's Fried Chicken 4. cloud watching with my favorite girl

I've decided to start a new regular series on the ol' blog called "Week in Pictures" where I give you a little peek into my life each week and what I've been up to through the pictures I take on my iPhone. I love taking pictures with my Rebel, but most of the time it doesn't make sense for me to lug the giant thing around with me all the time. Like I mentioned recently, I discovered my absolute new favorite app, Pixlr-o-Matic, through my sister-in-law, and now I can't stop taking pictures with my iPhone.

My poor phone battery is pretty much dead by noon. No joke.
 
I'm going to try to keep up with it each week and make a goal to post each Friday if possible. Oh and by the way, in case you're looking for some AWESOME free Photoshop tutorials and downloads, go check out Pugly Pixel. I don't know what took me so long to find the site, but I stumbled over it last Friday night and then sat glued to my computer as I downloaded every available free Photoshop goodie that Katrina offers. It is chock FULL of amazingness, including the photo layout that I used above. She has tons of clipart, photo layouts, free brushes, you name it. And then, as if all of that wasn't great enough, you can become a 30-day member for only $5 and get a ton more amazing stuff.

Drop everything and go there now.

So, this past week was spent enjoying the amazing spring weather here in Tennessee. I'm loving all of these mild temperatures we get before the blazing hot of summer, so we're spending as much time outside as we can. We also got to go visit a great restaurant where they make pretty tasty fried chicken (I have a weakness for the stuff.) While we had the chicken, Connor decided to try his first lemon which resulted in some pretty hilarious faces :)

Here's to another fantastic weekend!

My visit to PA through Pixlr-o-matic

Things have been quiet around here over the past few days because we were off on a visit to Pittsburgh to  see a show with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law. We saw our first Cirque du Soleil show! We've been trying to go for years, but one thing after the other kept us from going. The one we saw in PA was a tribute to Michael Jackson, one of my favorite artists, so we pretty much HAD to go see it. It was really interesting to see his life through dance and song (and plenty of acrobatics!)

While we were there, we fit a ton of other fun stuff in too as usual :) Rather than tell you about what I did, I thought it'd be fun to show you through the pictures I took on my phone using Pixlr-o-matic (my favorite new photo editing program!) My sister-in-law got me hooked on it over the weekend. I love all the different editing options and frames they offer, and you can download even more if you sign up for the paid subscription (which I may be doing in the very near future.)

1. Sibling love! 2. Riding the merry-go-round at the zoo 3. A yummy ice cream sundae on a hot day 4. My little cowgirl 5. Trying out a new hairstyle 6. Mini me 7. Aunt Shanny with her nieces and nephew 8. Pretty painted tootsies after a spa party 9. One of the many beautiful churches in Pittsburgh 10. Worn out from all the fun

Just a peek into our extended weekend in Pittsburgh. It's a beautiful city with lots of great photo opportunities, even if all you have is your phone! I definitely suggest downloading Pixlr-o-matic if you're looking for a great editing program for your smart phone. Also, for some tips on how to take great pictures with your phone, check out this post on A Beautiful Mess. You might never use your camera again ;)

Easter

I hope everyone had a great Easter yesterday! Since the closest family is 13 hours away, we had a nice relaxing Easter with just the 4 of us. We went to church in the morning, then had an Easter egg hunt in the back yard afterward.

Connor didn't quite understand what he was supposed to do. He ran around the yard with one plastic egg, throwing it on the ground every few minutes. That freed Haley up to get pretty much all of them. Which was fine with her :)

I guess this is also an unofficial sneak peek to a dress tutorial I'll be sharing with you soon :) I've been wanting to make a dress with a crossover bodice for awhile, so a week before Easter I whipped this baby out. Haley loved it too, she wouldn't take it off when we got home from church! That's a win in my book.

After the egg hunt, I thought it'd be nice to get a picture with both kids together since those are so rare. It didn't go well.

Haley was a perfect angel, but Connor ended up doing this most of the time.

I got Haley by herself and she cheesed it up for me :) This kid is going to be a singer or a TV show host, I'm sure of it.

Eventually I got a semi-smile from Connor. I'll take it!

All in all, it was a great Easter weekend. How was yours?