Bicycles and Bathrooms?

While walking through Walmart last evening, in the bicycle aisle no less, I was struck with a decorating inspiration/problem solution for my upstairs bathroom. Once I get a little extra $$$, I shall reveal my ingenuity. : )

Gettin' Big!

I took these pictures on Sunday morning. It's one thing to see a picture of Burl and think "he's getting so big." But when you put him next to Halie then you can really see just how big he's getting!


Aren't they just the cutest things ever?!?

Here's Burl lookin' all handsome and ready for church. Our friends Darryl and Jodi bought him this outfit.

It's hard to see, but he's finally getting some fuzzy hair on that bald head. : )

(Don't forget that if you want to see a larger version of any of the pictures on my blog, all you have to do is click on the picture to enlarge it. Then click the "back" button to go back to reading.)

Halie's "Kitchen" is Finished!

So, remember at Christmas when my dad gave Halie this kitchen set he had made her?

I wanted to take it a little further once we moved and actually decorate it and make it into a "real" kitchen for her. It's finally finished now!

I slowly got it all put together, but decided it needed a sign declaring it to be "Halie's Kitchen." Because we spell her name different than most girls with her name, there's never anything "pre-made" with her name on it, such as mugs, keychains, signs, etc. So I knew I'd never find one with her name on it and to have one custom made would be way expensive, so I decided to attempt it on my own for the first time.

I had thought to buy some wood, new, from Lowes or something. But I happened on this great little piece at the Restore for.........wait for it....$1. Can't beat that. I have no idea what it was originally, maybe a skinny cupboard door or part of a shelf. Dunno. But I did know it was exactly what I was looking for.

So I took my new sander (my 30th birthday present from the Hubster - yes, I specifically asked for it, he almost had a heart attack) and sanded off the shiny finish.

Coated it with a couple of coats of white paint as a primer base.

I put a coat of Krylon Candy Pink on the back, then dusted off my left brain and did the measuring to put in the hanging hardware evenly and correctly.

Then I finished off the front.

I used my Cricut to cut a stencil.....

Painted it....

And voila! My first sign. Not bad for $1, huh? She was SO excited to have a PINK sign with HER name on it!

So here is her kitchen, all decked out in pink.

My sister, Dee Dee, gave me 3 of these pink flowered, handpainted frames she found at a yard sale. This larger one was missing the glass and the backing was kind of falling apart. So I painted the cardboard backing with black craft paint and then used white paint to make it look like a chalkboard. No glass needed. I used "Chicken & Fries" because every single time we go out to eat, it doesn't matter where it is, Halie always wants chicken and fries. : )

My dad bought her this A-dorable apron set! And see that little pink trash can in the corner? From the dollar store.

It originally looked like this.

I have to admit, I saw this idea in a magazine used as a pen/pencil holder, and I ate it up in a heartbeat! It was perfect for all her cooking utensils.

Also at the dollar store, I got her these white plastic baskets to serve as her vegetable and fruit bins in her fridge. Sickeningly cute right? : ) And no, she does NOT keep it that organized. That was a little staging on my part. That orange pitcher was mine when I was little and loved to play house.

One more look for ya. Oh yeah, see that little salt and pepper shaker set on the counter to the right of the sink? My mom sent her those, they were originally a bright red and yellow. Spray paint works wonders. Meemaw Cantrell sent her the pink microwave, and the pink mixer was from my sister's husband's parents, who were here visiting from England at Christmas and were sweet enough to buy her a gift. It was perfect!

Halie LOVES it, so what do you think?

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Linking up to Funky Junk Saturday Nite Special

My Favorite Lil' Chunker

Here are two little video clips of Burl for those of my friends and family who either are missing him dearly or have yet to meet him.

In this first one he's doing his little attention-getting-I'm-being-funny cough and farting noises he likes to make.

After the 3rd attempt, I finally got some video of the lil' booger rolling over.

Hope you enjoy!!

Another Thrifty Redo

I'm cookin' right along and got another little project for Halie's room completed this weekend. She had these great, shabby, white picture frames in her nursery when she was a baby. Of course, I didn't bother to take any before pictures of them so I had to go hunting for one that showed them.

Sorry about the blurriness, I tried cropping the picture so you could see them better. Anyways, they had red mattes and black and white pictures that Robert and I had taken. They were super cute, but alas, red no longer matches and she's no longer a baby, so I wanted to update the babyish pictures.

So one night while Robert was at school (the same night I painted her lamp) I got them out and painted (yes painted) the mattes pink. I figured, why go buy new ones when I could just paint them? I already had the paint mixed up for the lamp so I just used what was left and did these too. Then they sat next to my messy (creatively disorganized) scrapbooking armoire for about a week waiting on me to be struck with inspiration. I searched through my stash of paper, but had nothing that was calling out to me. I knew in my head what I wanted to do, but my paper stash wasn't cuttin' it. So, on my trip to Hobby Lobby to buy the trim for her lamp, I perused (walked up and down about 50 times) the scrapbook paper aisle until I found the combo I wanted.

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Then the paper sat on top of the frames (next to my creatively disorganized armoire) for another few days. Finally, this weekend I'd had enough of walking past them and decided to "git r dun!" So I dusted off my Cricut and set to work.

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This is what I came up with.

It doesn't show up well in the pictures, but the pink paper on the words is actually polka dotted paper. It looks kinda plain in the photos, but looks cuter in person.

Robert hung them up for me, but then I decided the top of the toy organizer looked too bare and needed some height.

So I stole the newly revamped lamp from her dresser and moved it over here. I think I like it there.

Now that means I have to restyle the top of the dresser. Sigh......one project at a time.

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Linking this up to Funky Junk's Saturday Nite Special.

Some Randomness as of Late

I haven't posted very many pictures of the kids lately so I figured I'd throw in some random ones from the past month or so.



Isn't this lil' guy just the squeeziest thing you've ever seen?!? His overalls were 3-6 month size and were too small for him. They went in the "pack away" pile after this. The lil' chunk is only 4 months old!







One morning Halie requested that we make doughnuts so we tried it out for the first time ever.

I scrounged up all kinds of things to use as toppings and we had fun making them. And they were quite yummy, too!

Can you tell?

Dressed up in his baseball outfit from Meemaw and Papaw, gettin' ready to go to Chuck E. Cheese for big sister to have some play time.

Don't those fat lil' cheeks just make you want to reach out and squeeze them right through your screen?!?


These are just some crazy "self-portraits" we did one wintery day of cabin fever induced boredness.

Dressed in their jammies and ready for bed. They were playing together, all covered up staying warm, and they were just so cute. Poor Halie's bangs are in her eyes now. They were getting too thick and I want to grow the majority of them out.

We have been having SO much snow! Last week we already had a few inches of snow, and then that got covered by a thick layer of ice, and now it's putting down inches upon inches of more snow on top of that!

Can't really tell what this is, can you? That's because I can't either just about. I was standing on our back step looking down. There should be a big drop down to the ground and then the area beyond that is the flower bed. Completely covered!

This snowman we built a couple of weeks ago? The whole bottom layer......now buried in snow. (She's also minus a head because Halie knocked it off)

Well, there you go. A little glimpse into our life recently.