Are you a hospitality queen?

I just discovered a great new blog Southern Fried Dreams. This girl has some great ideas and recipes. While I was reading through her blog I found this little quiz. It was so cute that I wanted to put it on my blog. I hope she doesn't mind :)

I LOVE being a hostess. One of my favorite things to do on the weekends is to have people over to our house for parties. We aren't formal people at all, but we do like to have our friends over to eat, have fun and hang out. Our favorite summer parties are cookouts and in the fall/winter when it's too cold to be outside we like to have to have people over to watch football. Graig loves football, me not so much but it's more fun when we have people over to watch the games. Since we have kids most of our parties end pretty early...like 10pm (when I was in college that is the time we were getting ready to go out not go to sleep-ha ha!) but it's still fun to get together with friends. We are having a little party on Saturday night with some other baseball families. It should be fun!

I took this quiz and got a 26!

Give yourself one point for every question you answer “yes”.
1. Cooked supper last night.
2. Have at least one apron.

3. Make weekly menus to grocery shop from

4. Consider the color of food when you prepare a meal.

5. Light candles in your home daily

6. Have at least 10 cookbooks. BONUS Add 5 points if you cook from at least 5 of them!

7. Have something in your refrigerator/pantry right now that you could prepare a whole meal.

8. Know how to make a cheese sauce.(not melted velveeta).

9. Have at least 3 different sets of matching napkins/placemats.

10. Have more than 2 sets of dishes

11. Enjoy reading cookbooks like others enjoy reading magazines/novels

12. Entertained in your home within the last month.

13. Worked in your yard/garden this last week.

14. Know what you are serving for breakfast in the morning.

15. Know how to make a curtain - mistreatments count!

16. Ever copied a décor idea from someone else. BONUS Add 5 points if someone has copied an idea from you.

17. Play background music when entertaining.
18. Ever crafted your own flower arrangement. BONUS Add 5 points if you used fresh cut

flowers from your own garden/yard.

19. Baked something from scratch within the last month.

20. Updated your home for summer.

Baseball, Ice,cream and friends

Tonight Brock had a little league game, usually his team does pretty good but tonight wasn't their night, his team lost 15-0! His team has never lost by that much, it was such a loooooong game because his team was loosing so bad. The other team just kept getting hit after hit. We play again on Friday so hopefully we will win that game.

Brock, Grandma Jan and Cotton after the game

Here is Brock with Marshall, he is the son of our good friends Dan and Jenn. Marshall wanted to come down and watch Brock play. Here is Ava with Marty, Marshall's sister.

Ava is such a mother hen she loves "babysitting" Marshall and Marty

Ava with Marshall

After the baseball game we all went to Dairy Queen.

Here are the 4 of them with their ice cream. Doesn't Brock look thrilled to be in the picture?

I love this picture of Marty, Marshall and Ava

So cute!! I love Marshall's face in this one

Kimba's Garden Party

Kimba, one of my favorite bloggers is having a Garden Party Today!! You should go to her site and see all the people that have posted some beautiful summer projects and flowers, I can't wait to go through all of them and get some good ideas. I love planting flowers and making the outside of our house look pretty. It's a never ending job! I think I will always have a project I want to do or a new idea I want to try. Here are some pictures from our yard this year.

I made this chair planter this year. I love the way it turned out. I got the chair for $3 at a yard sale and the seat was missing so it was perfect for putting a pot right where the seat goes. I spray painted the chair cream and then I dry brushed black and apple green over the whole chair. I posted about this project here. This is a bird bath that we made in our Craft Club last year. This is the second summer that I have had it out I think I like it better this year than last year. When it rains it fills up with water. My super talented friend Sabrina wants us to make these again with a smaller leaf on top and a larger leaf on bottom so we can make a fountain. I think those would be so pretty!These are the flowers hanging up on our garage. To save money this year I put together my own baskets. I just went to the nursery and got a lot of sun loving plants and stuck them in this planter that I already had. They have already grown so much! I got two of these little pots of petunias at Lowe's for only $5!! I couldn't believe how cheap they were. They are by our side door. I love the white, pink and red together. Ava's tomato plants on our deck. The girl loves tomatoes!! The bigger plant are Roma tomatoes and the smaller one is grape tomatoes. They look a little droopy, I will have to water them tonight!
I love this window box right by our side door. Usually I try to do a color theme in this box but this year I just put in a lot of sun loving flowers.
I hope you enjoyed my garden tour, It will be so fun to look at all the other bloggers who are participating in the Garden Tour. Go to Kimba's blog to see more of the Garden Party

Busy Bees

We have been Soooo BUSY lately I haven't even had a second to post. I will try to catch everyone up on what we have been up to and I'm going to try to start posting again everyday because this blog helps me remember all the fun stuff that we have done as a family. Summer is definitely the busiest time for us.

Last weekend was Ava's dance recital. I wrote about it here. It was such a fun weekend! Ava had a great time and remembered all of her routines. She also got lots of flowers from our friends and family that went to see her she was really happy about getting flowers and being with all of her friends :)

Fast forward to this Saturday I signed Ava up for a cheerleading camp and she loved it!! A few of her friends went so she had a good time hanging out and cheering with them.

The girls in action!! The cheer coach that did the camp asked me if Ava would be interested in being on her competition cheer team next year! I am not sure if Ava is going to do it yet or not but she had a great time at the camp.

Right after the cheer camp Ava and I raced over to the Cast Party for Ava's dance recital. It was so fun hanging out with all the Mom's and kids that we at the party. Here is Ava with some of her dance friends.

Saturday night after a long day of running around and baseball a few of the baseball families got together for a little party. We all had a great time and ate a ton of great food!!
Here are the girls with mojitos, they were so good!

Graig and Ava with his BFF Jim

Graig and Ava with Eric another Little League Coach

Poor Brock, I need to start taking pictures of his baseball games. Usually I am so into the game that I forget to take pictures but he has another game tomorrow night and I will take some pictures of him!!

Happy Tuesday!!

Weekend project!!

This weekend is going to be super busy because of Ava's recital and Brock's baseball and soccer games but I am going to try to sneak in one project. Isn't this the cutest window ever?? I found it on Buzzings of a Queen Bee and I knew I had to find a window like this! I searched and searched and I finally found one at a garage sale a few weekends ago, and it only cost $2! I bought some scrapbook paper yesterday so I am all set to start working on this project. It will be so fun and I will let you know how it turns out!

Have a great weekend!!

Show us where you live Friday!!

It's time for another Show us where you live Friday that Kelly's blog is hosting. Last week was kids rooms, I love Brock and Ava's rooms but I didn't have time to take and post pictures last week, I will have to do that soon.

This week is Home Offices! Our office is right next to our dining room and I love having that space for our computer, our files and other stuff. Since we live in an old house we have a lot of built in shelves. I love having this wall of shelves in our office, it's great for storage! The couch Graig has had since Grad school! It is about 15 years old and it's SO comfortable!! This little table and chairs we bought 10years ago when Brock was 2, it was his birthday present. Underneath the table we wrote a note to him and we outlined his hand and our hands in sharpie. After Brock got too big for the table then Ava used it, now Ava is too big for it but I can't put it away, I love it and it reminds me when they were little and all the time they spent coloring and playing with play dough at this table, I am not ready to put it away yet :)On the other side of the room is our desk, we looked for months for a desk that would fit in this little space, Graig finally found one and this is where Graig uses the computer, I always use the laptop.

We also have this teeny tiny bathroom in our office. I think this used to be a closet and I think our office was used as a bedroom and then the closet was turned into a bathroom because most people want a bathroom on their main living floor, I guess they didn't think of putting a bathroom downstairs in 1920 when our house was built!
I hope you enjoyed the tour of our office!! Enjoy your weekend!! I am so happy it's Friday!!

Babies, Being Busy and The Obamas

I had no idea what to call this post, I have so many things to write about today so I hope you will excuse the weird title :) I know it's all over the place and that's how this post is going to be!

First of all I am so excited this week because 2 of my friends at work and 2 of my favorite bloggers are having (or have already had) baby BOYS!! One of my favorite bloggers Blue Eyed Bride, is going to be induced tomorrow morning and Whitney just had her baby over the weekend. My friend Rebecca at work had her baby last weekend and my friend Robin (whose office is right next to mine) is going to have her baby any day! For a while I thought everyone I knew was having girls but now it seems like everyone is having boys!

Second I feel like the four of us are constantly going in different directions with work, school, after school activities, friends, etc. So I am going to copy Her Southern Charm and start a Home Organization notebook. I just started working on this project and I think it will be a fun one to work on over the summer, I will show you what it looks like when I am all done.

I can't wait to see the Obama special that was on NBC last night and tonight, I didn't get a chance to watch it yet but I DVR'd it and I can't wait to see it! A preview was on the Today show today and all four of us were glued to the TV while it was on! Hopefully, I will get a chance to watch it over the weekend.

I better get to bed I have a full day conference tomorrow for work, I hope to squeeze in a little shopping too after the conference :)

Summer shells

I have been doing some summer decorating to spruce our house up for summer! Let me start out with my favorite new decoration, this is an art project that Ava made at school. She is so proud of it. I think it turned out really cute!I love seashells and sand so I made this little display with my glass jars from Ballard Designs

I got this little glass jar at a yard sale for 25 cents!! It's in our dining room.

A little display with shells and a candle, I put this in our sunroom. I think this says SUMMER!A lemon tree that I ordered from Pottery Barn. I like the way it looks on our fireplace in our living room. While I was taking all of these pictures Brock was laying on the couch. Doesn't he look so tired? He played baseball and basketball last night so he was one tired boy when he got home!