A New Additon

Before anyone gets excited, when I say New Addition, I mean that literally. We are remodeling our garage attic to have a completed space in our house. I know, I apologize if my title was bit misleading! But it got your here, didn't it?

We have a lovely, albeit small, space above our garage with a full staircase. We have gone back and forth about whether or not to finish this space. In the end, we decided to turn our attic into a "mother-in-law suite". We have a family friend who does great work and has a good eye for finishing detail and he has worked his tail off on our new attic efficiency. It was also fun choosing all of the elements that go with it.

I am really into gray currently and want to paint all of my house in shades of grey. But for now, I will settle for my attic space. We bought a few items to complement the space and even put in a nice sized full bathroom. I also spent a weekend brown paper bagging the staircase using this tutorial and I must say, it turned out rather nice!

This was my inspiration:


This was the "before" picture


Just a regular ole garage from the outside

But now....ta da!

A Pittsburgh Stay-cation

We decided to do a mini "stay-cation" with the girls over Presidents Day weekend. I had read that Pittsburgh, a mere three hours from home, was a great place for kids, so we made some plans and off we went! The kids were excited to get out of the routine and so were we!

Conrad and I pricelined a hotel and ended up at the beautiful Embassy Suites (and apparently we were only one of a thousand other families with the same thoughts and a wifi access to Priceline!) It was perfect for our family, with a suite of rooms, an indoor pool, a made to order free breakfast, and an awesome atrium complete with waterfall and large colorful fish to wow the kids!

Our first day we visited the Pittsburgh Children's Museum and had the best time watching the kids enjoy the great exhibits and hands on play. Our highlights here was the wierd gravity room and the art studio, where the girls got to make thier own paper!


Our second day we went to the Carnige Science Center and that was cool too! The highlight for Conrad was the real life retired submarine that we got to tour. The highlight for Isabelle was getting to jump on the trampolene, tethered to a bungee cord in the SportsWorks. (The lowlight for Grace was missing this because she just didn't have the patience to stand in the long line! Oh the wailing!)




We ended that day at the Duquesne Incline. Which is this old historical trolley that takes you up and down the mountain with a great view of Pittsburgh!

Thanks to my Aunt Brenda, who buys our family a COSI membership every year for Christmas, we got in FREE to all of the museums/science centers with the reciprical membership! It would have cost us upwards of $160! Thanks Aunt Brenda!

We ended the trip with a stop at Mommy's favorite store, Ikea, and even had to put down the last seat in the van to fit all of our purchases in. We bought a ton of stuff for our new addition (info and pictures coming soon!) And, on our way home we stopped at Cabella's in West Virginia. I call it my brother-in-law, Eric's version of Ikea. All of those stuffed animals are pretty cool. But I can honestly say, there is nothing there that remotely tempts me to spend money. Nothing at all!

Grace-isms and Isabelle-isms

We are in the midst of the winter doll drums here. Although I can't complain since we have had a very mild winter here in the Midwest. I don't think we've seen nary a snow day around these parts! So if you're wondering where we've been. We are here. But I'm not feeling much inspired right now! While dreaming of warmer sunnier days, we were chatting about where we'd like to go. I was in the car with my well traveled children and the following conversation happened:

Mommy: Isabelle, would you like to stop somewhere for vacation on our way to India next time? Maybe London or Italy or Turkey?
Isabelle: Yes! Turkey. Definatley Turkey
Grace:.....Fitaly! I want to go to Fitaly
Mommy: Sounds good. I'd like to go to Greece. Doesn't that sound like fun?
Isabelle: Not Fitally or Greece. Chicken. I want to go to Chicken.
Mommy: *chuckle* You mean Turkey, right?
Isabelle: Chicken. You said we could to go Chicken
Mommy: I'm pretty sure I said Turkey.

A Pintrest Christmas, Part 3

For years, I've wanted to get my Grandma one of these fabulous personalized cake pans from the Cake Pan Lady. Granny cooks A LOT and is always bringing one thing or another for this or than potluck. She's also often losing containers. But I put it off because the cake pan lady is a bit pricey!

Fast forward to this fall and I found a great idea for etching your own glass. I have a Cricut Cutting Machine and thought, "huh, I can do this." Thinking through my gift list, I figured a lot of my family actually cooks for parties and potlucks and away I went. I simply bought some nice glass containers with lids on them. I then cut out thier names using my Cricut Machine and vinyl material. I stuck the vinyl to the side of the glass, and then applied etching cream to the name stencil. Wait 2 or 3 minutes, wash it off, remove the vinyl stencil and wah lah! I loved how it turned out. Not perfect (getting my sisters FULL name straight turned out to a bit challenging on a round bowl...) but nice!

Christmas Morning and Santa's Footprints

When I was about six years old I started catching on to the fact that Santa wasn't real. I'm not sure how I came to that conclusion, but I asked my Dad, and being my dad, he told me the truth. And I was fine with that harsh reality. As long as I still got the presents. Of course I went to school and shared it with my friends. My cousin Michelle's mother still hasn't forgiven me for killing the Christmas innocents in thier home (sorry Linda!) In light of that information, and in light of the fact that my oldest has been (so far) much like her mother, I figure we have, at most, another year or two of Magical Santa Belief. So we lived it up this year! We throughly enjoyed the starry eyed wonder all morning long!

Isabelle came downstairs in the middle of the night, jumped in bed and said, "Mom, Sants came! He left presents and footprints all over the living room!



I had cut out my own shoe print on a piece of paper and mixed flour and glitter and sifted onto the foot cutout all over the living room. Clever, right? Well, I am original, you know.



Along with eating all of our biscotti (we wanted to leave something unique for santa) and milk. Santa left a note for the girls. He also marked the packages with special North Pole Delivery Tags. How cool is Santa? Thankfully, no one noted that the wrapping paper was the same that Mommy used on all of our gifts to our family. Shew!



MY favorite gifts that we Santa got for them were these pesonalized plates from etsy. You design one to look like your child. I also got one for Abby and Jack. I love love love them. Grace was all like, "ahh..whatever...next." And Isabelle was all like, "Ahhh Braids! I don't wear braids, anymore! I wear ponytails. ONLY ponytails!" Oh well. They'll appreciate it when they're older. Hopefully. And you gotta love the "reality television" looks we were getting that morning. If they weren't small children I would describe these pictures as "hung over."



A good time was had by all and caos ensued!

Christmas Eve

As is our Christmas tradition, we traveled north to my family's home and had several more family Christmas parties. My kids were in wrapping paper clouds of joy, as they piled up gifts, opened presents, and ohh and ahhed over toys and clothes. Isabelle got a dog that barks and whines whenever you pass it and it's almost better than a real dog (or BETTER, depending on who you ask!) And Grace got a rupunzel dress and long flowing blond wig. It's kinda cute, but mostly creepy. No matter, she loves it.

We just had fun hanging out with our famiy, giving the gifts we had searched long and hard to buy or make, and eating yummy Christmas food. I snuck roughly fifty percent of the presents away before they were looked at and hid them in our closet (good thing Isabelle doensn't yet read). Hope all you gift givers are okay with this. We will go ahead and get out one at a time, in the next few months, so they can really enjoy each one. Love you all!

A Pintrest Christmas, Part 2

I saw this great idea on pintrest of hosting a scarf making party. I'm usually not one to overbook myself during the holidays, but I had no other Christmas Parties in the calender, so I scheduled this little Scarf Making Shindig. We only had a few kids there, but I made some cookies and hot chocolate and I bought some cheap fleece and cut out tons of circles! We made these very cute, no sew scarfs. Well, almost no sew...at the end you had to stitch a bit to close it on up!





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The Cupcakery

I found a great Groupon like thing for a Cupcake decorating class recently. I then talked my friend Natalie into going with me! Natalie has taken some cake decorating classes in the past, so was looking forward to expanding her skills. I do a lot of cupcake making for my little chickens, so was looking forward to the same!

We went to this quaint little Cupcakery
and had a blast learning how to make Santa hats and Christmas trees. It wasn't very high skill level, but interesting non the less. Their signature frosting is an almond butter cream, and it was really good. We all came home with six cupcakes decorated ourselves. And with interesting flavors like pistachio, gingerbread, and red velvet. Yum!

The Family Talent Pool

Our first family Christmas party of the year was with the Payne side. Lucky for us, this year it was held in the general vicinity of our house. Usually we travel a couple of hours, but one of my dad's brothers lives near us and they hosted our annual Christmas get together this year. Oddly enough, several family members were sick or missing this year for various reasons and it didn't seem as loud and boisterous as usual. The food was delish, as usual, and the girls got presents that were very thoughtful.

I love spending time with my family and a highlight for me this year is the fact that my cousin Shannon, who is a very talented graphic artist, also started her own photography business. Seriously! To say I love good photography is an understatement. And Shannon has an eye for it AND lots of skill with photoshop. It's the little things that make me happy, really.

As you can see from the below shots, most of which are Shannon's. My favorite are the one with my dad and the grand kids and the one of my sweet Grace. Thanks Shannon! You can count on us as regular customers!

My Dad with Grace, Jack, Abby, and Isabelle


Kelsey, our the "Little Girl Whisperer" as we like to call her. Showing her own doll collection to my daughters and neice. She had them completely spell bound for hours.


Jenna, home from college, with Eian and Isabelle


My beautiful toothless Isabelle, currently down TWO teeth!


I love this shot of Sam, Eian, Jenna, and Kelsey.


And My favorite of Gracie. Do you love that big bow or what? I swore I never would, but I did. And I even though she could barely keep her head up with it on, I don't regret it one bit!