Easter Decorating!

Last weekend Ava helped me put on our Easter Decorations.  I love decorating for Spring!  I only put a few things out every year but I always enjoy getting them out.  I put most of our decorations in our dining room.
I always like to decorate our hutch for every season.

I love the top shelf!  I got the lemon tree last year at Pottery Barn, the bird cage is from Michael's, and the Easter Bucket is from Whimsy Tin.

A close up of our Easter Bucket.  I love the colors in this bucket!

Here is a close up of my cloche filled with an egg garland.

An Easter Bunny!

I love this wire pot at Hobby Lobby I love it for spring!

I put a few spring things in our living room.

Here are some decorations on a little table in our living room.

Here's our Spring mantle with an egg wreath.  I got this wreath a few years ago and I love getting it out every year.  

A few spring branches in a milk vase

A spring pitcher, I got this last year at Cracker Barrel

A little spring bird. 

I hope you enjoyed our spring decorations!  It will be fun looking at everyone's spring and Easter decorations. Happy Wednesday!

Taking a risk

Today I'm participating in the  The Nester's take a risk day.  I couldn't think of any risks that I take in decorating so I didn't think I'd be able to participate. Then I remembered my biggest house project that I did all on my own-painting our kitchen from top to bottom (even cabinets!)    My kitchen (like everyone's) is the most important room in our house. Our house was built in 1920 so it is also the smallest ( I guess big kitchens weren't that important in 1920??) and the first room that you walk into when you come into our house using our side door (which everyone does!).

 I did this BIG project the week between Christmas and new years last year.   I LOVE the way it turned out but it was a ton of work! When we moved in our kitchen was knotty pine-yuck!!! It was awful!

I love the rest of our house and the kitchen was my least favorite room. Right after we moved in Graig, my Dad and I spent a few days and painted our whole kitchen blue. I liked the way it looked for a few years but after a while I wanted a change! So right after Christmas I decided to get to work. It took a lot of work but I am SO glad I did it! I really, really like our kitchen now!

It was a HUGE risk because if I messed it up it was going to cost us a ton of money to fix.  But by the time I painted our kitchen and cabinets I felt pretty confident because I had already painted almost every room in our house.  Thankfully I  love the way it turned out.  This is a risk I am really glad that I took and I am thankful that I have a husband who is supportive of all of my painting and constant re-decorating!  It will be fun to look through all the posts on risk taking maybe I will find my next project!

Ava's birthday weekend 2011!

First of all it was SO beautiful here this weekend so we spent a lot of time outside which was SO nice!  This afternoon I took Ava and 2 of her friends to the park.  I took our dog Daisy with us because she loves walks.  We had such a good time being outside!  Here is Daisy she is SO happy being out in the sunshine!

Saturday was Ava's 9th birthday.  We just had a family day since her party was the day before.  Brock had 2 basketball games so we went and watched his games.   It was the semi finals and finals of the church league that he's been playing in.  His team won the semi final but lost the final game by 1 point! 

To celebrate Ava's birthday  we went out for pizza and wings with Grandpa Larry and Uncle Gary and Anne.  After dinner we took Ava to Wal-Mart so she could spend all of her birthday money on an Ipod touch.  She was SO excited!  She spent every single penny of her birthday money but she's really happy!  She has been playing with my iphone forever I was SO happy to delete all of the apps she downloaded on my phone since she has her own ipod now:)  

She has facetime on her ipod touch so we were able to facetime with my sister Shelby and her husband Ryan last night.  We got to see little Ainsley she is such a sweet baby!  They just moved into a new house so Ryan was able to give Ava and I a tour while Shelby gave Ainsley a bath.  We are going to love staying in touch using facetime!

Here are some of Ava's birthday cards and a sign that I made last year to celebrate her big day!

I also hung some of her cards in our dining room.  She had a great 9th birthday!!  I am so thankful for all of her friends and our family that helped her celebrate!!

We have a busy week ahead!  Brock has baseball tryouts at school this week for the middle school baseball team.  He is also playing in a basketball tournament all week and Graig is a referee in the tournament so Ava and I will be watching lots of basketball games this week.  Have a good week!

Ava's birthday party!

This afternoon we had Ava's 9th birthday party at the Skating Rink in our town. It was the easiest party ever!  The only thing that I had to bring was the cake and the goody bags!  Ava really wanted to have her party at the skating rink this year and she has been talking about it for months.  She LOVES celebrating her birthday!
Here's a picture of her cake, we got it at Wal-Mart and Ava had to have a peace sign on it.

The girls were running all around during the party so it was hard to get a good picture of them all together.  I did manage to get this one before they had cupcakes.  This was their crazy picture :)

Here is a picture of Grandma Jan and Graig

Brock invited his friend George.  Poor Brock got his top braces yesterday so his teeth hurt :(   He had a chocolate milkshake for lunch because his braces hurt sooooo bad. 

Ava's 2 bff's Olivia and Ava

 Ava with her two friends from our neighborhood Sarah and Anika

Ava in the money pit.  This was the highlight of the party for Ava!  She won 3 dollars!

 The birthday girl and Grandma Jan

 Ava with her friend Maria.  These two have been friends since day care!

Tomorrow is Ava's actual birthday.  We are going to go out to dinner and she is going to open the present that we got her.  She also wants to go and get an I-pod touch with her birthday money. 

Have a good weekend!

Almost wordless Wednesday!

I am organizing my pictures and I found this one of Brock and his friend Theo from the first summer they played Little League All Stars when they were 10.  He looks SO young in this picture.  I can't believe how fast he is growing up, we are trying to enjoy every day with him!

Snow Day!!

Yesterday we had a snow day!  Sunday night we got over a foot of snow.  It was so bad even the College where I work closed and that hardly ever happens!  Graig went to work and Brock, Ava and I slept in which was SO nice.  When we got up I decided that we needed to clean out our closets.  When we were done our king size bed was FULL of clothes that needed to be donated!  We also filled up one large garbage bag of things to throw away. 

Ava turned her closet into her American Girl Doll Room.  I will have to show you that in another post.  It's really cute.  She put her doll beds in there and made a TV for them out of construction paper. 

In the afternoon we went over to my friend Sabrina's to work on our ribbon wreaths.  I have made two ribbon wreaths this year one for Valentine's Day and one black and white one for our kitchen.   I get all of my ribbon from etsy at this site.  The ribbon to make one wreath costs about $11 so it's not too expensive. 

Here are the two that I have already made.

Today Sabrina and I worked on our spring ribbon wreaths.  Mine is light pink, dark pink, lime and lilac (the colors in Ava's room :)  I'm going to use it in her room until I want to decorate for spring) and Sabrina's colors were called tutti-fruti she used yellow, green, turquoise, pink, orange, etc.  Her colors were really cute. 

Ava and Eliza eating a little lunch while Sabrina  and I were making our wreaths. 

The ribbon comes packaged like this from etsy.

To make the wreath you need to cut your ribbon into 2-3 inch pieces once you have them all cut out you fold them in half and hot glue them.

Here are a few of my loops.  Once we got them all glued.  We glued them on the wreath form which we got from the Dollar Tree. 

3 hours later here are our finished projects! 

I think they turned out really cute!  (Don't worry Sara and Allison we are still going to work on yours soon!) 

It was a fun afternoon and Ava and I were glad to get out of our house for a few hours to work on these. Even though it feels NOTHING like spring here I am really excited to start decorating for Easter and spring.  I think this wreath will be a fun addition to our decorations. 

Green Monster

taken from the green monster movemement website

One of my New Year's resolutions is  to eat healthier.  Specifically I want to stop eating processed foods and start eating more fruits and vegetables. This is a daily battle for me.  I love chips, cookies, candy, pizza etc.  Basically if it's unhealthy for you I love it!  I am trying really hard to change my eating habits this year.   Anyway, I was reading this blog and she talked about trying the Green Monster which is a  breakfast shake made with spinach, a banana, milk and ice.   I know it sounds gross but it's really good!  Brock even had a drink of mine and he loved it until I told him what was in it-ha ha!I    I didn't even taste the spinach and it  kept me full until lunch time.   
I used the frozen spinach that comes in the square package. 

The recipe I use is:
1/2 package (about 6 oz.) of spinach, 1 ripe banana, 1 cup of milk and ice

I made this again this morning and here is the recipe I used. I don't like drinking milk so I added orange juice instead and I think it tasted SO much better.  The recipe below is the one I will use from now on.  If I don't have strawberries I will substitute another fruit like blackberries  or blueberries. 


1/2 package (about 6 oz.) of spinach, 1 ripe banana, 1 cup of orange juice, a handful of chopped strawberries and ice

On the Green Monster website there are a ton of different recipes that you can try.  I am going to make this again tomorrow and add some strawberries.  Give the Green Monster a try and let me know if you like it!

Weekend fun!

This weekend was a lot of fun!  Friday night Ava and I went to family fitness night at the YMCA.  We did 1/2 hour classes in zumba, kickboxing and yoga.  We both liked zumba the best!

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early to go to a flea market with my friends Allison and Sabrina.  The flea market started at 8am and we got there a little before 8 and there was already a line!  I found some great treasures that I'll show later this week.  I got some really cute things including some toys for sweet little Ainsley.  I can't wait to give them to her when we visit them this summer!  My sister posted this picture of Ainsley on her blog today.  It's Ainsley in her bumble bee costume.  I love her so much!

Ava wanted some pink highlights in her hair so we went to the salon and I let her get four pink highlights.  She was so excited but a little scared and she didn't want me to take her picture-ha ha!

Saturday night I went to a fundraiser for our YMCA with some friends.  It was called "pub and grub" and all of the restaurants and bars in town donated food and drinks and we got to try everything and then vote on our favorite one. It was a fun night for a good cause!

Here we all are! 

This morning I got up early and met my friend Sabrina to start our first day of training for Couch to 5K.  There is a 5K in our town that we want to run in October so we are starting early-ha ha. 

We went to Sunday school and church and we saw 4 babies get baptized! They were so cute!  We also ran into Brock's 6th grade teacher and she said she couldn't believe how big he is getting :(  He is taller than both of us!

This afternoon Ava and I went over to the mall and wal-mart to get out for a little bit and when we were driving home the roads looked like this!  We are getting 8-12 inches of snow tonight!  I am hoping for a snow day tomorrow.  I hope you all had a good weekend!