Party Party Party

Little Miss M is going to have a birthday this Friday. She will be turning 8!!! We can hardly believe it. We threw her a party this last Friday. It was a clown party. Here are the cute invitations:




I painted all the girls faces and gave them clown noses. Here is M:

Here are all her friends that came to the party, and of course they had to make some funny faces:

We decorated clown hats for them to wear:
We played bean bag toss and ring toss. I was too busy keeping track of points to get a picture though.

And of course, we had to open some presents. M's favorite thing, is an adorable purse. It fits all of her presents in it and she has been packing it around the house non-stop since the party.

We also decorated cupcakes to look like clown faces. Check out the creativity!


I don't know what that one is....definately not a clown face, but fun and inventive non-the-less.


It was a fun party. I think M is really looking forward to her real birthday so she can open more presents!

Zoo time....

A few weeks ago we took a trip to the zoo. The kids always love the zoo.



Aren't they cute?

Who knew giraffes had such long purplish tounges!
We always have fun visiting the elephants.
You can't really tell from this picture, but there is a lizard in there flirting with my 5 year old. She would move her finger and the lizard would follow. She said it was her favorite thing at the zoo.
We can never miss the train ride.

This turtle was fun, and suprisingly rather quick for a turtle.

The zebra is always K's favorite thing to see.

The monkeys are my favorite. This one has a little baby. It was sooooo cute. It was funny though because the baby is all white and the mom is mostly black and white.

And we always have to spend a little time with the non-animals.

Dad is D.O.N.E at the zoo.

My new boyfriends...

Here are my new boyfriends....ironically, both of their names are Jack.

They are even better at night.

We are not even going to carve pumpkins this year because these ones are SOOOO cool!

11 months old today....

Our little baby is 11 months old today. Her first year is almost over. HOW SAD!!! She is just as cute as ever though. She has the cutest little grin. She crinkles up her nose and shows off her little teeth....it just melts your heart. She is super busy these days. Like right now she is in the bathroom. Just a minute while I go remove her.

I thought I would post some pictures of her adventures this last month.

We took her for her first swim. It was a little cold for her! Her little OH OH OH's were sure cute though. She wasn't really fond of the water, but she loved the paddle boat ride.

Nothing quite like sand and skittle juice all over your face to make a cute picture.

I know what you are thinking. Look at that sweet innocent face. Don't let it fool you. As soon as you aren't looking she throws her food or her sippy cup over the edge of her high chair and stands up and starts doing the "Look at Me being rotten" dance in her high chair. I guess that is why dad tried to feed her to an alligator this week....

She had much more fun sitting on its head. And speaking of....if I ever lay down on the floor that is where she goes....straight for my head. She will sit on my head and pull my hair. Obviously she isn't over her hair fetish yet.
See that? That is what she does ALL THE TIME. She sucks on her thumb while she plays with my hair. I don't think she likes it wet though.

And while we are on the subject of hair. Check out hers! She is our little porcupine. No matter what I do that hair just sticks straight up in the air. It is so cute though.

She is into everything these days. She takes after her big sister K and likes to pull out the pan drawer and climb right in to play with the pans. She loves to climb into anything these days. The other day she was in my paints container sitting on all of my craft paints. She has discovered that there are treasures to be found in the cupboards, so now they are all held shut with rubber bands (yes, low budget child-proofing).

She can stand independently. She loves walking around furniture and with anyone willing to take her for a stroll. She also loves running around with Dad.

She definitely keeps us busy running around and cleaning up after her. She is so precious and sweet though....especially when she is sleeping.

Going upstairs....

Okay I am finally getting around to taking you upstairs. I promise this will be the last day of my extensive, drawn-out, long house tour! First stop is my bedroom....

My bedroom is rather feminine, but my hubby doesn't mind all the pink in there. A girl has to have a little pink right!?! So let's take a walk around my room. See the rocking chair/glider in the corner? My husband gave me that before our 2nd daughter was born. The chest at the end of my bed was made by my sweet sweet grandpa. I wood burned ivy along the bottom of it, but you can't see that in this picture. See the fabulous dresser in the corner with the mirror on it? It was given to my brother-in-law. It really isn't there style (they are more southwestern) so they gave it to us. We refinished it. I LOVE IT!!! It is another of my favorite pieces of furniture.

Here is our bed. My hubby's uncle made the bed for us as a wedding gift. My hubby actually went out to Arkansas to help him finish it. Don't you just love this cute spread? I am addicted to quilts. I HAD to buy this one for our new house. It was only $40 so why not? I am very particular about my bed. I love to have it all pretty...pillows fluffed and looking inviting. On almost any given day, if you come to my house, my bed will be made. (Of course, as I say that it isn't today....but hey I am busy making grape juice and painting, so today doesn't count.)

This is a table that my hubby's uncle made as well. The lace doily thingy was my hubby's grandma's. See the pictures of my adorable little girls when they were babies? I need to add another one of baby H, but I haven't found a frame that matches yet. There is also a wedding picture of us. The wash basin was my grandma's. When I was little my aunt made a wash basin for each of my sisters. I loved them, but I of course, was too little to have one, so I was excited to get this one years later.

I have tried many different things out in the bottom of it, but I love these sea shells in it the best. I love sea shells. I don't know why because I have never really spent that much time at the beach.

Come on in to my bathroom and I will show you some more sea shells.

I have a few of them in here. I actually started collecting sea shells for my bathroom before we even had a master bathroom. I kept them until we finally had a bathroom of our own. I had tons of them out in our last bathroom. I have actually tried to tone it down a bit because sea shells are a pain to dust. Especially this little wreath, but I love it anyway.

I made it one night when I couldn't sleep. I should not sleep more often!

I use to be a hard core, no products on the counter type of person, but I finally gave up to convenience. Here is my attempt at making something functional and cute....baskets....what a wonderful thing!

The rest of my stuff hides in this drawer though.

Oh, and there are some things in this cabinet. We bought this cabinet at Lowe's. It was just their cheapest bathroom cabinet. Then I attacked it with our Dremel. It has a plastic finish, so believe me it wasn't easy, but I think I succeeded in giving it a little character. Sorry, I should have taken a little closer picture of it.

Well I guess that is all for the Master Suite. Oh wait, I forgot the closet.

Well that is all for my home tour. What is that you say? I forgot the girl's rooms? Well, yes I did. I haven't decorated them yet. They are not even on my radar at the moment. They are a mess!! One of these days I will get around to making them cute and then I will post some pictures of them.

Thanks for stopping by!!!

Onto the family room......

Sorry I have kept you standing in my dining room for so long. (It has been a little busy around the itybty house!) So come on into my family room.....
My family room still needs some decorating, but it is getting there. I just found the fabric to make some pillows that I have had hiding in a box for over a year.....one of these days I will get them done!!! I also need to fix up something fun over my armoire and bookcases. This is my FAVORITE piece of furniture. Did you guess that my hubby made it? Well, he did. He made it for me for my birthday a couple of years ago. He was such a trooper! My birthday is in February and he started working on it in January....in the FREEZING garage. He spent many evenings freezing his poor little fingers off trying to cut and sand all the wood. We did bring it inside to paint it and polyeurethane it. We distressed it and antiqued it. It was such a fun project. We are always amazing ourselves with what we can do. We just love building stuff.

Do you want to see where all the blogging magic happens? This is where I spend WAY too much time. I have a project in the works to do a board over this desk to display my daughter's artwork (back to the 2025 plan again....sigh). I guess it would be no surprise if I told you that my (AMAZING) hubby made this desk too. This is actually something he made in High School. It is sooooo heavy. Luckily it hasn't gotten too banged up with all the moving we have done. I was surprised when we bought our house that they didn't put a mantle in. So in the meanwhile, until we can get one, we put my favorite clock and some vinyl (of course!) above the tile surround. I am excited to crank up the fireplace on a cold winter night and snuggle up with my hubby, some hot chocolate and a good movie.

Can I tell you about my curtains? I had been looking around for something to go on my sliding glass doors. I wanted something that would match the window next to it. I found some curtains that I loved at Lowe's. After hunting for the price I found that they were on clearance for $4.00. SWEET!!!! They were regularly $32.00! The only problem.......there were only 2 of them.....I needed 4. The cashier looked them up on the computer and told me that they had at least one more at another Lowe's nearby. So the next morning I took off to the other Lowe's praying that they would still have it and hoping that I would be able to find one more at another Lowe's. Well just my luck, they had TWO!!! So I got them and had them hung up by that night. I love finding a good deal. So do you need to use the bathroom? Okay, sorry I asked, but just in case, here is our guest bathroom. Do you see that blue sticker on the toilet? Yeah, I should probably take that off. One of these days I will be perfect. Ha ha ha! I still have plans to put a cabinet (for bandaids and sunscreen) above the toilet and put some sort of painting or picture above my towels.

They had left over granite from my kitchen, so I got to have it in this bathroom too.

Come on through the bathroom to my laundry room.

Yes, I think a man designed my house. I don't know of any woman that would have made the laundry room smaller than the master bedroom closet. This is the only thing about my house that I have really hated. For some funny reason, I don't really think your bum should hit the wall when you are bending over getting your laundry out of your dryer. I must be grateful though....at least I am not washing my laundry in the river!

This room is actually much better than it was. When we moved in it didn't have any cabinets, so we put in the wall cabinets and the base cabinet, so I could have some storage space and a place to put all the detergent and stuff (Yes, the builders were men too!). We have another cabinet that we are actually going to bump out into my garage space so that I have a place to put some laundry baskets and to hide that monsterous pile of laundry. Can you tell I don't like to iron?

And we can't forget the vinyl. I think I might actually hang this sign on the wall, with some adorable black and white snap shots I took of my girls playing in the laundry drying on the clothes line. Do you see those fun GIANT clothes pins? I saw some in a model home once and loved them. I found them in the Pottery Barn catalog and they were EXPEN$IVE. I ended up finding these at my local grocery store and they were cheap. Another sweet deal.

I would really like to get an antique wash board to go in here, and maybe an old rug beater. My sister gave me an antique iron (it is on the counter, so you can't see it) and I thought it might want some good old friends to play with.

Well that is all for the tour today. I will take you upstairs next.