Thanksgiving

We had an amazing Thanksgiving in Atlanta with my sister & brother in law, their family, and my parents. 

My brother in law's parents have a really big chocolate lab named Brutus.  Ashlyn loved him.  She followed him around the entire day and barked every time he barked.  It was hilarious.  She would pat him, touch his face, and let him lick her.  He even ate the bow out of her hair and she did seem to care.

This is Ashlyn "looking" for Brutus when he was locked up in the basement while we were eating.  She literally laid on the floor to try to catch a glimpse of him through the crack in the door.

We also got our Christmas decorations up this weekend, inside and out.

Surprisingly, Ashlyn has not been very interested in the tree. She has not even tried to touch it. I definitely think it is a good thing that her babysitter put theirs up a couple of weeks ago so she has had lots of practice not touching the tree.

Glass Front Cabinets

My husband has been wanting to put glass panels in the kitchen cabinets for a while.  I love it because this was totally his idea...

On a sidenote, I did not know Christopher was so handy when we first got married.  I think it all started about 5 or 6 years ago when we bought our first house together.  I hated the light fixture in the kitchen of that house.  He ended up removing and installing at least 3 different fixtures until I finally decided which one I liked best. And that's when I realized I had totally lucked out with my own personal handyman.  Love him.

Here is the before.

 He used a skill saw to cut the center piece of each cabinet out.  A little sanding around the edges and some touch up paint.

Michaels was charging $50 for each panel of custom cut glass!  So we bought 2 of these frames instead.  I think they are designed to hold record albums.  They were the perfect size and only cost $9.99 each.  Much better than $100.

These clips hold the glass in place.

And for $22 and an hours worth of work while Ashlyn was napping...

Go Christopher...you rock, sweetheart!

displaying Christmas cards

I LOVE getting Christmas cards! Christopher and I have been thinking about a fun and creative way to display them this year.  Our friends Vaughn and Cleve (who happen to love antique stores) bought an old window a couple of years ago for their house.  And I thought that would be a cute way to display Christmas cards this year...and birth announcements, wedding invites, ect.

So for $12 and a little glass cleaner...

Now we just need some Christmas cards to display!

Is there anything sweeter?

Funny faces

Ashlyn has really been in to making faces lately.  This is one of her favorites.  I love that she knows she is being funny and will keep doing it over and over again.  I have loved watching her little personality develop over the past few months.  She reminds me more and more of her daddy every day...she loves making people laugh and being silly.

What to do with leftover paint.

Have you ever read the book "If you give a mouse a cookie..."?  Well, I sometimes think Christopher and I are like that little mouse.

And so the story goes...

"If you give the Newman's a leftover half gallon of paint, chances are, they will want to paint the master bathroom.  And once they paint the bathroom, they will probably need to put up a new light fixture.  And after they put up a new light fixture, they will probably decide it is time to go to Target to get new mirrors." 

You get the idea.

Sunday morning, we (I) woke up and decided it was time to re-paint the master bathroom.  We had some paint leftover from the kitchen. And here is the rest of the story...

BEFORE

 AFTER

And we just let Ashlyn play in the tub all morning while we painted around her.

Just kidding.

More yellow...

I recently made some curtains for my sweet friend Amy.  We like to "barter" from time to time...she takes AMAZING pictures of my little sweet pea and I attempt to sew (or iron-on seam) curtains for her house.  So far, it has worked out great.  ***By the way, if you need WONDERFUL & FABULOUS pictures for absolutely any occasion, you can contact Amy here.***

There was a little fabric left over from the ones I just made for her new office, and she let me keep it (which just happened to go perfectly with the new yellow piece of furniture in the dining room). 

I measured a little bit of fabric for the bottom of the plain white curtains from Target and "sewed" it on using the "no-sew" iron hem stuff from Hancock Fabrics.  I LOVE NOT USING A SEWING MACHINE UNLESS I REALLY HAVE TO. Because, honestly, I am not that good of a seamstress.

Tied them together for a few hours so the pleats would fall right.

And the finished product.  I love how it adds just a little bit of color without being too much.

 

Dining room update!

Here is the dining room wall before...

And finally, here the "finished" product.  I used "finished" tentatively because I am sure I will end up changing pictures and frames a million times.  ;)   

I am also trying out a new color on the piece of furniture we originially painted gray.  My husband, being the oh-so-smart man that he is, commented to me the first time we painted it: "You know, I bet you will want to change the color of this 20 times."

Well, only 19 more times to go and I will prove him right...

I think I like it for now.  But I need to bring some more yellow in the room to make it work. 

How's this for a funny story?  I went to a fabric store to pick up some gray & yellow fabric to make a table runner.  I asked the lady who worked there to cut a yard for me.  She asked me what I was using it for.  I told her, "I'm making a table runner." She then proceeded to tell me that one yard was not enough fabric.  I told her I was going to cut the yard in half and then seam it together.  Her response:

"WELL, THAT'S NOT GOING TO LOOK GOOD."

Ouch.  I felt tears welling up (female hormones are such an interesting yet wonderful gift from God, right?)  Seriously, I am NOT a professional sewer.  My house is NOT on the Columbia Tour of Homes.  My freinds and family do not care one bit if I have a seam running down the middle of my table runner.  Really.

I just told her nevermind and left the store.  I think I will just order some online.  Where they don't ask you what you are making.

Happy halloween??

Ashlyn was not the biggest fan of her costume this year.  We dressed her up on Saturday for a few pictures.  She cried.  And when we tried to put it back on her again Sunday, she was hysterical.  So we chose not to fight that battle and let her where her USC Gamecock outfit for "trick or treating" around our neighborhood last night. 

Oh, well.  She still looked really cute even though we could not get her to smile.



It only took us 196 tries to get all of the kids to stay still long enough to take a quick picture in their costumes. I think the funniest part was Dawson (the little bear in the back row) who kept crawling away every time!