The reason for my lack of blogging...

*Let me first say...Dad, you will probably want to stop reading now, there will be no pictures, no stories nor a mention of your two favorite little girls...;) Sorry.

....Is that I am a tiny bit obsessed with doing things around the house. (not to mention...cleaning! I must confess, I'm not so good at the "housekeeping" part of my job, but I have come to realize how much easier life is when I pick up after myself and my 3.....uhh, I mean 2 kids. :) But aside from cleaning, I have been decorating!! And having a blast doing it. There are sooooo many crafty, talented women out there in blogland who are gracious enough to post their very inexpensive, super cute ideas, not to mention step-by-step instructions on how to do them!! I'm thinking I will make this a weekly post so it will keep me motivated to continue....so I will just post my very favorite new thing I made! I got the idea from my new favorite blog, Shanty2Chic! They are sisters from Texas and they have tons of fabulous, cheap, crafty ideas on their blog. The first one I attempted was the apothcary jars.

I turned these 3 wooden candlesticks, circles and finials (plus 3 glass jars, black spray paint and natural jute string I forgot to take a "before" picture of) into.....

These 3 beautiful apothecary jars filled with lots and lots of fun fall goodies!!

Aren't they so much fun?!


I spent:
$7.50 on the glass jars
$3.50 on the finials
$.75 on the circles
$1.50 on the candlesticks
Most of the materials inside the jars were FREE from my front yard...I did buy the little pumpkins from the 80% off section at Hobby Lobby. I think they ended up being $.40 each. I then spray painted them brown.
So for about $15, I was able to make a beautiful, unique decor item to go on top of our new Queen Anne tv stand that I love!! I got it off craigslist for $25!!! It is in perfect condition and is a wonderful addition to our living room.
(Russell was not happy with me taking pictures while he was trying to watch football...)


Ok, that's all for now! Stay tuned for more fun, crafty projects....(plus some Marissa and Allie updates:) )

Ahhhhhh....Vacation at last!

This post is about a month overdue...lots going on these days!! Better late than never, so here goes!

On Thursday, Oct 15, Russell and I hopped on a plane and headed south, waaaaayyy south for a sunny, wonderful, baby-free vacation. My best friend from high school had the FANTASTIC idea to have her wedding in the Dominican Republic then an even better idea to make me a bridesmaid, which in turn meant that Russell and I just had to go....not to mention we had not been on a vacation since our honeymoon. We were due. And let me just say, we had an amazing time! I do not have one bad thing to say about the whole trip. The place we stayed was beautiful, the food was great, the drinks were free and the sun shined the entire time! It was so hard to pick out just a few pictures because there were so many good ones, but here are some of my favorites!
Once we landed in the Dominican, we had to ride a bus to the resort, here we are on the bus ride, sooooo close to vacation-time!!

Our beautiful room.

And even more beautiful view.

all dressed up for rehearsal dinner

Wedding Time!!

Father and the bride.

Mr. & Mrs. Perini

The whole group!

me with the beautiful bride

giving my speech:) (talking to a crowd with a microphone=one of my worst nightmares...looks like i was saying something funny though, so that's good.)

i love this picture...Russell and I had so much fun that night...we danced the entire time! It was the most fun we have had in a long time!

Another one of my favorites:)

First dance.

The three girls...Courtney, Krystle and I dancing the night away:)

Our last night there...just hanging out before we had to say our goodbyes.

Can't wait to do it again!:)

Do a little dance....eat a little candy...get down tonight!

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Our little angels 0:)

A little warning...lots of angel cuteness below:)
This year I dug deep and found my inner-Martha Stewart and made some super cute (not to brag or anything) costumes for the girls. I decided I wanted Marissa to be an angel so I found one on ebay that I loved, however it was a ridiculous $70!!!!! You have got to be kidding me. I kept going back to it and the more I looked at it the more I realized it was just a tutu, wings, and halo. I thought it couldn't be that hard to make. So, I found videos on you tube of how to make a tutu and wings and figured the halo was just tinsel stuck to a headband, so off to Hobby Lobby I went!! I spent about $30 total (including turtlenecks and pink shoes). All this time, I was thinking I would just put Allie in the ladybug costume Marissa wore last year, until my friend Layne talked me into making an angel costume for Allie after I told her I had enough materials left over. Well, that was really a lot of unnecessary information, I was just proud of myself for making the girls' costumes this year:) Ok, on to the good stuff....
One of the fun things about living here and Russell working at the Country Club is that the girls get to have 2 nights of Halloween (which means double the candy!) Thursday night was the Halloween party for the kids. Here is Daddy with his angels:) (we were already bribing Marissa with treats so she would be still long enough to take pictures, please don't judge me...)

Mommy's angels

I absolutely LOVE Allie's face in this picture!

Sweet Allie Joy

The daddies playing with the kiddos (Bryce was a very cute scarecrow!)

Bryce giving Allie a little lovin'

Allie just got a hug, Marissa got the kiss:)

She makes a beautiful angel, don't you think?:)

Another beautiful angel!

Daddy was being a good sport and let Marissa put stickers all over his face.

He got a big hug in return, so that made it ok:)

The end result-sticker-man!

On Saturday, we went to GA to spend Halloween with the Johnson family. Marissa was sooooo excited and talked about Riese, Cooper and 'Cane (McKane) all week long! We had a wonderful time and although it was a cold, drizzly Halloween night, we did get to do a little trick-or-treating.

This was one out of about a hundred attempts at getting a good picture of the two of them...it was impossible. My arm ruins this one, but it was the best we could do.

This one is good, just no smile from Allie.

The whole gang: my angels, Riese the zoo keeper, Cooper the UPS man, McKane the ninja G.I. Joe and Sydney the witch. (look how sweet Marissa and Riese are holding hands...)

The family pic.

Trick-or-treating in style.

Running circles at the house after lots and lots of candy. She kept saying "Meesa likes candy!" (She calls herself Meesa since she can't say Marissa)

All smiles after sampling some candy:)

"Hey big sister, whatcha got there?"

"yummy! this is waaaaayyy better than my bottle!"

Ok, so I saved this picture for last b/c it is probably my favorite all-time picture. I don't know why she is standing like this or making this face, but it looks like she got spooked by a ghost and how appropriate that it was on Halloween night. Absolutely hilarious!!!

Mommy's little helper

A couple months ago, we had some new neighbors move in across the street and I have been saying to Russell ever since they moved in that I need to be "neighborly" and take them something and introduce myself. Well, being the procrastinator that I am, I put it off until finally I was able to use Halloween as a better reason to take them something, seeing as how they moved in to the house over 2 months ago....oops. All that to say, I enlisted a little help from the cutest 2 year old I know in decorating the cookies. Her job was to hold the candy corn kisses with the bottom side up so I could put some icing on them, then she would turn them over, put it in the middle of the cookie and push them down as hard as she could so it would stick. She was such a great helper and I only caught her eating the candy twice (which, if you look in the 3rd picture you will see on the left side the 2 pieces she got to before mommy could get to her:) )

Here is my little helper in her super cute apron that Pops and Nana got her while they were in Pennsylvania. She's got her sleeves rolled up and she's ready to work!

TREATS!

Showing off the finished product:)

Mommy and my little helper-we make a great team:)

2nd Annual trip to Camp Lee Pumpkin Patch

This time last year, we made our first trip to the Camp Lee Pumpkin Patch. This time around was even more fun because Daddy, Allie and the Allen's were there with us!
Here is Marissa at craft time...she is BIG into coloring these days so she enjoyed it, plus they gave us all graham crackers and hot chocolate which made coloring even more fun!

Allie didn't get into the coloring, but she thouroughly enjoyed the graham crackers!

Here we are on the very crowded, cold and bumpy hayride. Marissa was not at all excited about this part...I had to run get mani and silky (paci and blanket) otherwise, I'm pretty sure she would have screamed the whole time. Once we got on and got situated, it was fun looking at all the pretty trees and well....that's really all there is to say about that....:)


Then it was time to take pictures with the pumpkins (or as Marissa calles them, "punkins")

Aren't they too cute with their hats:) They were fascinated with the hay...

Family pic

Marissa and Bryce picking the mums

TOUCHDOWN!!

By this time, Allie was very sleepy....

Then we went to slide for a minute...

Daddy and his girl:)

Allie says enough with the pumkins, someone take me home and put me to bed! :)

We had a lot of fun and I was very thankful Russell was able to go with us!

*By the way, I am waaaayyy behind on my posts, lots of updating coming soon!! Plus, pictures from our wonderful vacation (which is why I am so behind)...stay tuned....