Featured on Budget Decorating!

I haven't been able to log onto Blogger in quite a few days, so I'm late in posting a HUGE thank you... but THANKS to Tonya Lee for featuring my plate wall in her Budget Decorating column at About.com!

You can see the article HERE!

:)  Courtney

A party for a Super Hero. Part 1

Our Rylan is ALL boy.  He is REALLY into superheroes, which is very interesting and fun to us since Brodie has always been more into building towers with blocks or Lego's than dressing up as a powerful caped person.  LOL.

So, since he really wouldn't have it any other way, for Rylan's 5th birthday last week, we threw him a little Captain America birthday party. 

I had fun putting everything together, and we really lucked out on the red, white, and blue decorations.  Our local party supply store had all of the Fourth of July Patriotic stuff on clearance, but it worked perfectly with a Captain America theme.

A photo backdrop I painted hung on the wall and I set up the art project area on the dining table.

In the kitchen/family room area, I set up a drink station to the right and had our hotdog bar fixings on the bar.

I didn't take a big photo of the hotdog bar.  I meant to do it after the hotdogs and buns were in place, but by then we'd started doing activities and I got distracted taking photos of the kids.  :)    I did manage to take photos of each of the food labels during setup though.   I found the little yellow bowls on the clearance aisle of WalMart for $.75 for a pack of four. 

I'd also set up fruit salad and potato salad, but they were lidded at this point and didn't have their labels on.  I believe they read, "Power Boosting Fruit Mix" and "Hero Worthy Potato Salad"... in case anyone was wondering.  :)

Chili stayed warm in the crock pot, and chips were served in a basket lined with brown craft paper.

First up, the kiddos worked on their art project, which was decorating their own Captain America shields.  I assembled the shields themselves before the party, and put out sticky letters, precut out circles, glue, construction paper, and coloring sheets for them to use to decorate their shields. 

This photo cracks me up because my husband's mother and grandmother appear to be
SO serious about these shields, lol!

Next up, I cleared away the art supplies, we ate, and then came CANDLES and presents!  Yay!!!

My heroes.....  <3

The Birthday Boy...

Brodie and my Super Hero Husband...   LOL!

and... our sweet little friends who were our neighbors when we lived in Austin, and now live only about 5 miles from us.  Crazy right?

Overall, everything turned out really great and our little boy had a GREAT day.  I'll be back in a few days with a post about specific little projects I did for the big day.

:)  Courtney



Do you Pinterest?

I've added a link on the sidebar to follow me at Pinterest if you'd like!

Do you Pinterest?  Let me know if you do! 

:)  Courtney



A new addition to the office...

Gotta love the rotating 50% off sales at Hobby Lobby.   We're getting there.... slowly.  :) 

-Courtney

Day in the Life - Sun, Mon, Tues.

Well I'm just a complete failure at this Day in the Life thing, lol!  Actually I went to post Sunday night and suddenly watching a movie, wrapped in a blanket, with the husband, sounded a lot more appealing than updating the blog. 

This will be the shortened, condensed version since I didn't post for the last 2 days! 

Yes I did actually write that on the chalkboard.  I have been in a pretty foul mood lately, and I really need the reminder.  Positive, Thankful, Kind mom is a lot more fun to be around than Negative, Ungrateful, Moody mom.

We didn't do much on Sunday other than homework.  I don't even remember what I fixed for any meals, but I do remember that we rented movies that night and I made brownies. Yum.

Oh yeah, I did take this photo of leftovers, ha!  Since strawberries are in season, I've been putting them on EVERYTHING... we really love them on salads.

My husband is always off of work on Mondays, and he let me sleep in yesterday.  Oh my goodness, it was so needed.  Actually, the reason he probably let me sleep in is because I had somewhat of a meltdown on Sunday about the fact that I hadn't had any decent sleep in over 2 months.  lol!   To be honest, it has been more like 8 months (Liam is still not sleeping through the night), but I do remember getting to sleep in while Brandon took Brodie to school, sometime in early May.  ha!  I've been running on anywhere from 3-6 hours of sleep a night and it just ISN'T enough for me to function on.  Baby just does NOT like to sleep.  Anyhoo, I had my little temper tantrum and I got to sleep in.   LOL.  It is what it is.

Oh, look... he's sleeping.  :)   I knew I'd better take a picture!  ha!

We spent a wee bit of yesterday fertilizing the plants around the yard and my pumpkins and squash.

 

Yesterday evening I started applying the board and batten look to the staircase area.  So far, so good, but I still need to prime and paint.

Dare. Devil.

The tooth fairy visited our house last night.  Brodie lost his fourth baby tooth. 

We've spent most of today doing little art projects.  I also washed sheets and cleaned a bit.

Here are some other photos of the last few days.

Watching How to Train your Dragon

Building wooden cities..

Being Superheroes.

:)  Courtney

Day in the Life - Saturday

First I'd like to just post a little reminder that the Plate Wall Party is still going on, if you'd like to link up HERE.  A big Thank You to those that did!

I spent most of the day painting and didn't really take any good mental notes on what we did, so this might not make much sense.

Liam and I (notice how we always wake up at the same time?  lol) woke up at around 7 this morning.  I was SO tired because he did NOT sleep well at all last night, and I really wanted to stay in bed but he just wasn't having it.   I finally took him out of the room so that Brandon could sleep in, and I let him play on the floor in the living room while I attempted to lay back down on the couch.  That was short lived because soon the other boys were up looking for their breakfast. 

After that, the morning is a blur because I started painting our ginormous two story wall above the staircase.

  I was thinking I'd have to hire a painter to come in with a big extension ladder, but then I was watching a staging show on HGTV that showed the host using an extension pole with a rectangular pad on it (I forget what these things are called) to cut in high up.  Genius I tell you.   Unless you have weird angles on your walls like we do.  Yeah, I probably shouldn't have been cheap and just paid someone with a ladder.  LOL! 

 I mean, it looks okay... unless you look closely.  BUT, it is painted, which is more than we can say for the past year of us living here. 

Lunch time was here before I knew it and I fixed soup and sandwiches for the four of us that eat real food.  I fed Liam, cleaned the kitchen, and then did some school work with the boys.  Brodie has a long list of words he needs to learn before school starts in August and I'm trying to get Rylan ahead of the curve, so he's learning the words Brodie was tasked with in the first few weeks of Kinder.  We also did some addition problems, which they both did amazing at.  It actually really impressed me because we haven't been focusing on math much. 

I can't really tell you what they did after that because I went upstairs and continued painting in the hallway. 

I did snap this one photo of Liam and Brandon in the playroom.. I meant to get a photo of everyone playing in there, but the older boys ran off while I was getting my camera.

 I love weekends because I feel like I can actually get stuff done without having to stop every 5 seconds to tend to a child.  I know how horrible that sounds, but I'm sure you other mothers can relate.  It's nice to have an extra set of hands there so that you can finish up a task. 

Before I knew it (again) it was dinner time and I fixed wheat spaghetti and green beans.

If you're a detail oriented person and are wondering about the tons of beer bottles on the counter, my husband has gotten into home brewing and is saving bottles to reuse, lol.

I actually cut up a few noodles and let Liam self feed himself a bit.  He LOVED it.  He made quite the mess, but he thought it was quite tasty.  :)

After dinner, Brandon took the boys out to swim and Liam to swing while I cleaned the kitchen. 

 I finished up and they were still outside enjoying themselves so I went ahead and fluffed the pillows on the couch, picked up toys, swept the 1st floor and then dusted the front room.  About that time Brandon came in asking me to bring my camera out. 

 Liam had fallen asleep in his swing.  He never would take an afternoon nap, and he finally gave in.   Brandon brought him in to lay him in his crib and he woke up, so I couldn't clean anymore after that.

We needed diapers, and a friend and cousin of mine had passed along codes to get free movies at a Blockbuster kiosk.  So, we loaded in the car and went to our local Randall's, which has a kiosk in the store.  The boys picked out a movie and Brandon picked out Battle Los Angeles, and I picked up diapers.  LOL.  Does that seem fair?

We came home, cleaned up the boys and started homework for ourselves.

Currently the boys are in their playroom watching their movie and Brandon just put in his, I have a feeling I'll be sleeping through half of it because I am TIRED!

:)

Courtney