I'm a bad blogger, but a good scrapper

My Thrifty Finds!

What a fun Saturday I had out garage sale-ing! I hit a teacher's garage sale bright & early and was able to score a number of books for Camille, as well as some organizational stuff for our Learning Room. No pics of that stuff.

At her sale, I bought this great birdcage for TWO dollars - yay! I've been wanting one for awhile and it's perfect! Thought it would go above the kitchen cabinets, but it's a bit big for that space. Not to worry.....she'll find a home soon.


There were some other odds & ends that I picked up - black double-matted frames for 30 cents each, a cobalt spoon rest, an outfit for Lily, but the real score was these finials. I spent a bit more than I normally would at a garage sale. Ten bucks. But, there were seven of them (the tallest is about 22"), and 1.42 each ain't bad.



Now, here's my question(s):
1) Should I group them all together? Or split this family of finials up?
2) Should I spray paint them or leave 'em as is?

Can't wait to hear what you gals think! Now go visit Miss Rhoda for lots of other great Thrifty Finds for her Thrifty Treasures Mondays!

Go VOTE!

Okay, friends, the voting polls are up! Click the link below to get to the poll - - and please vote for Heimann's Hotties :) You don't have to register or anything. Just click & vote!

Battle of the Creative Teams

Game ON!

The Battle of the Creative Teams is ON at Digiscrapaddicts.com! I'm competing with a group of talented gals representing Amanda Heimann - - we're Heimann's Hotties! word.

This week, our challenge was to use white space & for the entire team's LOs to be cohesive w/ colors, theme, etc. We chose a blue, turquoise color scheme with pops of orange, and our theme was beachy pics. I knew right away that I had to use one of the fabulous pics that Cheri had taken of Kohen during their Cancun trip.

I hope you like the LO, Cheri! You can check it out here & leave a comment if you'd like.


I think voting starts Sunday, so I'll link back up as soon as you can vote for us!

Something Fishy

Just back from vacation, I'm finally going through our pictures from the trip and wanted to share a few. Our visit to the Georgia Aquarium was actually one of the last things we did, but we had so much fun - and I didn't think anyone would protest the lack of chronologicality. Yes, I made that word up. And do forgive the photo quality - - I ended up taking my P&S camera with me and leaving my SLR at home.



Can I first just say that we loved the Georgia Aquarium. It's fab - - and the largest in the world. Being there made me miss Atlanta so much. So much to do, so much energy in the city....oh, I really do miss home.



One of the first things we saw were these amazing jellyfish. They were stunning! The girls were mesmerized immediately!




The next exhibit was super-awesome. We got to walk through a winding tunnel in this large tank. The sharks were amazing. The hammerheads darted back and forth and sometimes looked as if they were coming right for us.




And swimming right above us....this scary fellow! Check out those teeth!

Surely the most spectacular thing in all the aquarium was the wonder that Lily had upon seeing all those fish. It was incredible. I had not expected her to be so captivated by the fish, and I just enjoyed so much watching her.

We loved the grouper. They were seriously huge! (and, yummy if you must know)

To put that delicious, er, I mean, impressive guy in perspective, just check him out swimming above Brandon and the girls :) eek!

After our visit, the girls were completely exhausted. We headed from the Aquarium to search out a place for dinner. Something local & unique. As it turns out, several of my old favorites were not where they used to be.....alot changes in 10 years, I guess.

Because the girls had quickly fallen asleep in the car, we opted to drive around some of my old neighborhoods instead. It was so great - reminiscing, seeing how things had changed. Atlanta really is such a beautiful city. Brandon remarked that if he had to live in a big city, Atlanta would be it. Hmmm.....I think I'm gonna hold him to that ;)

Before & After

Since you gals asked, I thought I'd share the before and after of my master bedroom paint job. Now, the window treatments are still in the works - not all the decor is as it will be, but you can get the general drift.

The before was a really lovely pale sage color. It went great with the bedding I had when we had our queen size bed, but when I changed decor, it just didn't go as well.

So...BEFORE....
And, AFTER: This is "Muted Gold," and I'm really liking it. It's a little more orange-y than I would like in certain lighting, but it's on the walls, and I'm not changing it anytime soon~! LOL! ;)

I've got lots of pics to share from our trip, but I'm tired, and a certain little redhead is in need of some lunch :)

Engaged!

Brandon's sister, Melissa, and her boyfriend, Brian, got engaged this week! They're the perfect couple and we know they're going to be very happy together! We're so excited for them - no one more than Camille. She is crazy about Uncle Brian :)

Her ring (that I should've gotten a pic of!) is gorgeous. They designed it together and it has the coolest thing - a tiny blue diamond inset on the side of the band.

So, congrats, Melissa & Brian!! We love you guys and wish you every happiness together!

Pretty Little Clips

Jacque Larsen is among my digiscrapping idols. She's so amazingly creative. Her designs rock. Her photos are fantastic. Her LOs are gorgeous. And, she's about the sweetest thing ever!

This weekend, she's giving away some super-cute felt hair clippies. Go check 'em out and enter her contest. Jacque's BLOG & her designs at The LilyPad

I'm Her Best Mom Ever.

This post is a wee bit belated, but no less well-intentioned.... This pic is of the girls and me on Mother's day morning. So stinkin' cute :) And, yes, Camille frequently tells me that I'm her best mom ever. Being her only mom ever, I guess this makes me both the best and the worst.

Having been shopping earlier in the week with Brandon, Camille was insanely excited for Sunday to roll around. She kept dropping hints all week long and trying her bestest to get me to play a Mother's Day guessing game with her. She needs to work just a bit on her clue-forming skills as to leave just a bit of suspense in the game. Case in point:

Camille: Mom, when you go in the office, you're going to smell your wonderful present from me.
Me: Oh that sounds delightful, honey! I can hardly wait.
Camille: Don't you want to guess what it is? I'll give you a hint. It smells good.
Me: Then it must be perfume!
Camille: No, not perfume. But, it smells good and when you burn it, it will melt.

Just in case my deductive reasoning skills weren't completely in check with that little tidbit, Camille helped me along just a bit more by proudly announcing "We got your gift from there!" when we passed by Yankee Candle. Oh, the little darling! ;)

Another thing that's been totally getting me about Camille is her card-selecting skills. She is absolutely adamant about choosing her own for me. Now, she can read the cards just fine, but she doesn't always "get" the humor in some of them. This year, my card read something like:
"You're such a great Mom. You deserve so much more that just a card for Mother's Day!"
and inside: "So, I'm going to get you a card for your birthday as well." hee hee....

Hi Mom!!! Some new pics of your girls :)

I've been scrapping again & wanted to share a few pages:

Happy Scrappy

A few pages I thought I'd share....

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Camille attended a little garden party a few weeks ago, and little did Daddy know how that would all pan out! Camille got to plant a few seeds and bring them home to care for. Her seeds grew into little plants, and we needed a place to put them. A couple weekends and a few trips to Home Depot later, and Brandon had built his little honey her very own garden patch!

It's the most perfect size for our yard. About 4x4' square and we've planted squash, beans, tomatoes, cilantro, basil, cucumbers, oh dear....just a whole mess of stuff!! It will be lots of fun watching our little garden grow!

Some Pages to Share :)

I've been scrapping a bit this weekend & thought I'd share a few LOs. Mom, we're gonna miss seeing you next week & hope that you're feeling better soon. Love you!!

This last LO is from our Family Movie Night this past Friday. Watching movies together is nothing new, but I've added some hype to the whole affair. We plan on having themed movie nights - and will have dinner, snacks, props, whatever to go along with that movie :) Some of my digi pals have been doing this and it looked like so much fun that we had to give it a whirl.

Our first FMN with Doctor Doolittle was a huge success. Since Dr.D can talk to animals, our edibles were animal themed (hot dogs, animal crackers, monkey's banana pudding). Okay, and I know the monkey looks like a bear. So what. Bears are animals, too, right? And, I'm pretty sure they like bananas. Camille had an absolute blast with our first FMN, and I can't wait until our next one!