Baby showers and cake

Yesterday me and some of the gals at work hosted a baby shower for a good friend of ours.  She is having her second child, a boy.  His name will be Colton Dean.  Isn't that cute?  And because my favorite part of blogs are the pictures...for your viewing pleasure.

Some of the decorations (we were working with a conference room at work so we did the best we could)

I cut out all those stars by hand, holy hand cramps batman!




some of the gifts...



"Lock up your Daughters" cuteness.

And...for the hospital bag, after the baby comes.  lol
And the cake.


cake by Laurie, http://www.sweetpresencebakery.com/

I found Laurie by chance and thought her cakes looked great.  I was very happy when I picked up the cake and even  happier when I tasted it.  I used to make cakes myself so I know how much work goes into them.  I have found a new bakery for all my cakes from now on.  Thanks Laurie!

Food, punch, cake, friends and cute, sweet baby clothes...what more could you ask for on a Thursday afternoon at work?

Thanks to all the girls that helped. Natalie, Robin, Kris, Tammy, Maria.

And a special thanks to Becky for taking pictures so I had one less thing to do.  My friend who is a professional photographer and had to make do with my crappy point and shoot.  She did the best with what she had to work with.  To check out her real skills hop on over to her website, blog, of Facebook page.

I have a problem

I have a serious problem.  I'm working hard on changing.  I am obsessed with the scale.  I get on it everyday.  I know you aren't supposed to do that because your body fluctuates daily.  But I can't stop.  And it messes with my mood.  If I get on and it's down from the day before I feel great all day.  And probably let myself slip a little with what I eat.  If I get on and it's up I feel crappy all day.

So for the past few weeks I've stayed away.  I have only stepped on once a week or even once every 10 days or so. 

I feel better already.  The numbers are actually going down even without constant supervision from me.  I've been eating better and doing my kettlebell routines every night.  Even when the numbers weren't going down when I was on it everyday I felt like my clothes were fitting better and my stomach was a little smaller.  That's why those numbers where screwing with my head.  I felt like I was looking better, but that number said I was the same or worse.

I'm trying to break this chain that the scale has on me.  I'm feeling better about it every day.

And for the first time in a long time I actually WANT to do this.  I want to eat healthier.  I want to fit back into my clothes.  I think it's partly because I know I'm done having babies.  I think before I just was kind of in the mindset that if I got pregnant again then all my hard work would go down the tubes.  I know a lot of people stay healthy and all baby when they are pregnant, but not me...I gain weight EVERYWHERE.

So the first step is admitting you have a problem.  I'm moving on.

Sleeping Beauty...err, Prince.

So my youngest son, Jack, is a horrible sleeper.  He is 3.  I vaguely remember a time when he was younger that he just laid down in his crib with his blankie and monkey and drifted off to a peaceful slumber.  Then he got sick.  He's had respiratory problems since he was 4 months old and had pneumonia.  Since then he's been on and off the nebulizer with different meds and such.  He seems like he's growing out of it, not getting sick so often as he gets older which is a great thing.  But he got into a routine where he would take his breathing treatment at night, fall asleep on it, and then we'd carry him to his bed.  He'd wake up in the middle of the night and come to our room and we were so out of it that we'd just let him get in bed with us.

Since he's been well for quite some time now (no coughing, etc.) I've been trying to wean him off and get him to sleep in his own bed. 

My husband on the other hand, seems to always succumb to his tactics and end up sitting by his bedside waiting for him to fall asleep. (grrrrrrr)

A few weeks ago (superbowl sunday in fact), I told him if he wanted to stay up and watch the football game then he would need to take a nap.  He walked into his room in the middle of the day, laid down and fell asleep.  This kid loves him some football obviously.

So I got to thinking that it was time to start the weaning process again.

Two nights ago, he just went into his room and went to sleep all alone.  I was pumped.

Then last night he started crying about wanting candy, not liking his bed, not wanting to be a big boy, etc.  Anything to keep from going to bed.  We got him laughing and then he started telling us how candy makes his muscles big and strong...that's why he needed more.

*light bulb*

me: You know what else makes your muscles grow big and strong?
J: What?
m: There are a few things.  Vegetables, milk, exercise, candy and REST. Have you had all those things today?
J: I had candy.  And milk, and exercise.
m:  Did you have vegetables at school today?
J: yes
m: So there's only one thing left you need to grow big muscles.  REST.  That means you have to go to sleep in your bed.

Like magic, he was off to his bed.  And fell asleep all by himself again...for the second night in a row!

Pray that this phenomenon continues.

In case you talk to my husband before Sunday...

Here's what I want for Valentine's day...Pandora bracelet

With this...

And a few more eventually...I know we aren't made of money...

And this one would be perfect for Valentine's day too...because he holds the key to my heart, and always will...

and a few of these too, while he's shopping...

And these for the kids...

Thanks for looking and don't forget to mention how much I would love a Pandora bracelet for Valentine's day...oh and that if he doesn't buy it, I'll just go buy it myself...and I'll pick up a doghouse for him while I'm out.

I'm on a roll huh?

So all of a sudden this week I decided that I wanted to get some things done around the house because tonight I'm hosting a bunco party.  Tomorrow, Mike is playing Poker at the house with his friends.  And then Sunday we are having people over for the Superbowl. 

The room I'm most focused on is the guest/boys bathroom, because obviously, besides the living room where the TV is at, this will be the most viewed room this weekend.  Here's a pic of the bathroom when we moved in, partially remodeled by the previous owners.



Okay, so I thought I had a better before picture...oh well.

The mirrors are not hung and all the fixtures are that brushed nickel color.  I'm more of an oil rubbed bronze kind of girl myself so...here's what we've done.


This is the light fixture that was hanging in between the mirrors.

With a little help from my new best friend...


Whala!



It's really hard to get good pictures when you are doing home improvement projects at 10 o'clock at night! 
I spray painted all the cabinet handles/knobs too. 

And the only pics I got of the mirrors are on my phone...bad bad blogger!



We painted the walls a few months ago...Toffee Crunch is the color and I <3 it!

I'm off today to get some rugs, maybe a new shower curtain(even though we don't use this shower/tub AT ALL, but that's a whole other story)...I can't decide if I want to go bold with red or more subtle with a robin's egg blue color as an accent. 

Attacked by the Glue Gun Monster

Last night was a craft extravaganza at my house.  I was working on some Valentine decorations for the house.  Logan was working on his valentine box for school.  And Jack just had to make a valentine box too just like Bubba.

Everything went downhill when I was attacked by the dreaded Glue Gun Monster.  I was wrapping fabric around a heart shaped wreath form and that fabric got a hold of a hunk of hot glue and wrapped itself around my hand.  I did the "I'm burning my flesh off" dance over to the sink and put it under some water.

Man that sucker hurt for the longest time, and I think I have a pretty high pain tolerance.  I sprayed some Dermoplast on there and took some Advil and went to bed to sleep off the pain.  Today I'm rewarded with big nasty blister on the side of my middle finger.  The crazy part is that I'm still itching to finish that project but I'm a little gun shy(pun intended).  So we'll see if Mike can pull it off for me tonight...with my excellent tutalage of course.

Crafts and LOST

If you are living under a rock (or aren't a LOSTie, how could you?!) and didn't know, last night was the premier episode of the last season of LOST.  I must admit I didn't get into the whole crazy LOST thing until a few seasons in.  But once I did, I went back and watched them all...and was even more confused.  It's that show that you watch and at the end of the hour you have maybe 2 answers to the 100's of questions you had before the show...and then 100 more questions about what when on in that hour!  But I'm hooked and I love it. 

Thanks to the miracle of DVR, I started watching last night about 30  minutes into the first hour (which was a recap of the past 5 seasons).  So I didn't catch up to live TV until the last 5 minutes or so...it was awesome. 

Have I mentioned that I love my DVR?

Anyway, to make myself feel better about neglecting my family and locking myself into the bedroom for 2 hours before the kids went to bed, I decided to work on a project that I've had sitting around stewing for a while.

My parents are remodeling/redecorating their house.  Score for me, because we are getting all the stuff they aren't using anymore.  Much to my husband's dismay when we leave their house with a car load full of "junk" every weekend.  :)

Mom gave me these lamps from their bedroom.



The base is really pretty, it's a kind of yellow/amberish color...and the shade, well, not really my our style at all.  So this is what they turned into.



That's burlap folks.  I've been hoarding all the burlap I can find lately because of all the projects I find online.  So I finally whipped some out along with my trusty glue gun.  I still need to put some trim on the inside of the shade to cover up the edges of the burlap but I couldn't wait to put something on here...since I've neglected the blog for so long lately.

I'm on a house kick lately.  It's about time I got my butt in gear again! 

More projects to come soon!

Who loves ya?

I found this totally AWESOME idea for handmade Valentine cards while I was blog surfing the other day. (hello google reader, how did I ever live without you?)

So this is what I spent part of last night doing...





Want a closer look?





These were super easy and not too time consuming...the part that took the longest was sending the pics to a local photo lab, driving out of my way to pick them up, them not being there because I apparently forgot to press send.  Then driving home, resending them, and sending Mike to pick them up an hour later.  :)

I found the idea here, which came from here originally.  Thanks for the ideas ladies!  You are now a fixture in my google reader.