Bath Time!

 Elizabeth Faye was born in June of this year and our lives have not been the same since!  She is such a joy to be around (well, the times that she’s not crying ) and I just love her so much! 

I’ve been debating on if I should make this more of a mommy blog or keep with my food and baking and decorating, but I think I’ll just blog about everything.  Hopefully it works out well!!

If you’re still reading this blog, can you PLEASE leave me a comment telling me so?  I’d love to know who my readers are right now.

Most of you should remember that John and I just bought a house and moved.  The front garden had a lot to be desired.  Our neighbor told us that no one had ever done anything to it.  Here’s a before picture of it:

There isn’t a whole lot to see, except for a crooked green tree in front of the window.  The larger tree in the yard was taken out before we moved in to the house.  A few weekends ago, John’s dad and step-mom took us to a gardening store to buy some plants for the front flower bed.  We looked and looked until we found the perfect plants.  I’ve since forgotten the names of most of them, sorry.

Here’s a picture of it now (when I say now, I mean that literally, I just went outside and stood in the rain to capture the pictures, just for each of you! ):

I just couldn’t stand to throw the crooked tree away, so we dug it up and planted it on the right corner of the area.  Hopefully it’ll start growing straight!

Here’s a close up of the tree when it was blooming a few weeks ago.

I also got two hydrangea plants for the front porch.  I’m excited to find out if they are going to be blue or pink!  Any guesses?

I know these aren’t the best pictures, but I was getting rained on, so at least I have a good excuse!

(Your turn now Katy. )

I have had a little bit of time to work on the dining room.  John’s mom, Denise, helped me pick out curtain fabric.  Two weeks ago I made my first set of curtains!  My mom came over the second night and helped sew on the beads, but other than that, I made them!

I also got coordinating fabric and recovered the dining room chairs.

Before

After

Much better I think!!

Hopefully there will be lots more decorating posts soon!

I baked the cupcakes last weekend and froze them.  Then, I did the characters and made the icing last night/this morning.  I think they turned out really really cute!  The Characters are in the Software we sell. 

The Characters in the first column are (from top to bottom) Millie, Sammy, Bailey, and Trudy.  In the second column are Noodle (he changes colors).  And in the last column are verb frog, a hedgehog (I don’t know his name, but he’s the one I like the least), noun dog, and monkey (I don’t know his name either).

I absolutely love love love my cupcake courier!!  My fabulous Mother-In-Law got it for me at Christmas.  Thanks so much Denise!!!  I love that I can carry 3 dozen cupcakes at one time.  I love that the cupcakes don’t jiggle or move when I’m transporting them.  I love that the layers are tall enough that I can decorate the cupcakes as tall as I want and not have to worry about the layer on top smooshing them.  They are one of the best inventions ever (okay, maybe not ever, but they’re pretty darn cool!).  If you know a baker, buy them one and they’ll be so grateful!!

It’s officially Spring with all the Thunderstorms and Tornado Warnings.  Here are a few pictures that John took last night… He’s getting pretty good I think!!

My old (old as in not my current boss, not that she’s old) boss recently moved to South Carolina and her house was for sale.  I pleaded and begged and finally talked John into just looking at her house.  It was gorgeous!! But a little bit (30K) outside of our price range.  But suprisingly, John asked to look at more houses so we looked for about 1.5 weeks and fell in love with this house.  It’s in an amazing neighborhood and we got it at a great price.   We closed on Monday and have been slowly moving in since then.  Did I mention that we started looking in January?  So this entire process has been about 2 months, talk about a whirlwind!!  Here are some pictures of the house.  I’ll update with more pictures as we get things moved in and decorated.

My amazing kitchen!!

We have a different fridge than what’s in the picture above.  It look almos tlike that one but the handles are black.

Here’s the living room, looking back to the kitchen.

Another view of the kitchen from the hallway.  I love the fireplace!

And if that hasn’t been busy enough, I also took on my very first wedding cake order that was due yesterday!!  And we’re going on a vacation with John’s mom, stepdad, brother and his wife to Colorado!  We leave on Saturday.  Yes, I think I may be 1/2 crazy. But it’ll all be fun!  I’ll update with cake pictures tomorrow.

P.S. If you know of any good blogs with decorating advice, let me know in a comment!

Well, I don’t have a whole lot of time to write now, but I thought I’d show you a few pictures. We’re having a birthday party at my house tonight. We are going to eat at a nice restaurant in a neighboring town, then everyone is coming to my house for cak and board games. Fun! Oh wait, did I mention that there are 30 people coming! And that we are moving in 11 days so my house is currently half packed! Crazy! I know it will be fun, I just have no clue where to put everyone. My house is tin-ny for 30 people. Here’s the cake I just finished with for the party.

It is funfetti flavored (the birthday girl’s favorite). And I it is a checkerboard pattern inside (pink and white). When we cut it tonight, I’ll take a picture to show y’all.

I really wanted a banner for the party, but the ones at the store were multi-colored and didn’t match my pink, black, and white theme. So, I bought some scrapbook paper at Hobby Lobby and used my mom’s Cricuit machine and made this for her!

I think it will look better at night when there’s not light shining through behind it. Well, I better go finish cleaning! Funny story, I’m in a wedding in August and the silly bride (love ya Katy!!) decided to buy us 19″ heels to wear with our dresses. So, I decided to wear mine today when I’m cleaning to try to break them in a little bit. Everyone wears windpants and heels to clean right?

Very cute shoes, but tall!!

Talk to you soon! Promise!!

Here is the first one, so precious!  (There isn’t really a yellow dot, I think it’s the reflection of a Christmas light.

And this one looks like a postcard, how adorable!.

And the back of it,

Yesterday we had a few snow flurries, so John and I felt it was the perfect night to put up the Christmas tree.  Neither one of us felt like cooking, so we ordered Chinese food.  I think we’re going to make it a tradition, Chinese takeout on the night we  decorate the tree… What do y’all think?  Does anyone else have any traditions like that?

My great uncle Rex has taken a liking to John.  We see him about twice a year at a local town’s dinner theatre when the whole family gets together.  The most recent meeting was the first weekend in November.  Uncle Rex (I have no idea why we don’t call him GREAT Uncle Rex since that’s what he is?  I also have an Uncle Rex and we just call him Rex…. we messed up somewhere along the line, lol.)  When we all got together Uncle Rex told John he has something for him.  After dinner was over, they walked out to the car and Unlce Rex gave him this box and told him not to open it until Christmas!  John has to wait 2 months to open it!!  But luckily, the wait is almost over.. only 2 more weeks.  Now that our tree’s up, we have somewhere to put it…. I have a feeling John may be opening it at 12:01 A.M. on Christmas, hee hee. 

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If you want to see some of my other favorite ornaments, check out this post from last year.

Enjoy the pics!  Oh yea, you can click on each picture to make it bigger….Kite was getting so sleepy towards the end… you can see her little eyes getting sleepy.