Mock 365: April and Monday Morning Randoms

Hello friends and goodbye April...

for some reason it is May tomorrow. Nobody asked me if it could be May yet, but it is all the same.

I was stressed out making this months Mock 365 collages. Picnik was so. darn. easy!

I kinda-sorta figured out how to do photo collages using Picassa. There was a little hair-pulling, but I got it. If anyone has any Elements tips, lemme know...

Easter @ Biltmore.

Such a gorgeous day. I swear a pastel-colored filter was cast over the whole lawn creating this beautiful Easter-y glow. It was magic (and I don't even like calling things magic.)

Clockwise from left corner: Field trip to the farm; fun with friends; goodbyes in the airport; spring lambs; horse-riding; Spring flowers; the Blue Ridge Mountains; Sissy and Gramps saying goodbye after our surprise trip to South Dakota.

A fulllllll month for sure. Spring is my favorite. (as is any season we are currently in.)

In other random news:

The Farmer's Market.

Our new Friday tradition to get our veggies for the week.

I admit, I bought these green packs of strawberries because I like the green box....and because Sophia took a bite out of a strawberry and put it back in the package....ahem.

The Jack's at the farmer's market. Have I ever told you that my friend Carissa not only named her kids (well just one) the same as mine, but we also have the same anniversary...like not just the day, but the year?! How crazy is that?

So ya, here's the Jacks.

The Farm.

We took a field trip to a farm last week. It was the cutest thing ever.

These people raise miniature horses, lambs, chickens...so many new babies and soooo cute!

The horse pictured below had just been born TWENTY minutes before we got there! I almost cried! I am a sucker for birth stories, but really TWENTY minutes?! It took him a while to figure out how to find food, but he did. So cute.

Spring and it's new life.

This weekend was super full. All day Saturday was spent here....

Yes, it was lovely. Carissa and I lived it up for hours in IKEA, had a super girlie lunch, then headed off to a Pottery Barn Outlet store...pure shopping joy.

Sunday was then assemble day. I bought a daybed for guests that magically transforms into a double bed AND has storage. It's pretty cool. 

Ok, and last random...

Do y'all get Midwest Living magazine? Guess what's on page 10?! Pretty excited about this one :) These pillow are both in my shop or over at Dirt Couture, a gardener's hayday. 

Today is the first day of week five of six in my master plan. Only two weeks of school left. School, finishing up projects, cleaning, and lots of other detail things are going to be smashed into these next two weeks. Is your May busy too? Let's get started...

xo,

{alicia}

I want to live in the Pottery Barn catalog

I truly do. And who doesn't? The sight of it in my mailbox is like seeing a sweet little bottle of creative serum in there. I pour over the pages, dog-ear what I want (like all of it), I mark the things I want to make, and the rooms I want to recreate in my house.



When we moved into our town house in March, my friend Becky helped me get my decorating-groove back. We hung things, set up the rooms, and primped pretty much every nook and cranny. You can see what we did here. The one room that didn't get a whole lot of attention was my room. We did find some sweet curtains, but it still needed more. 

                     

That's where Pottery Barn comes in. I used it as my inspiration for my bedroom. I love their soothing rooms and that's how I wanted mine to look. I was scanning pinterest for ideas for something cool to hang over my bed. Nothing really jumped out at me except for some shelves. I went to HomeGoods on the hunt for a cool looking shelf. But I found this huge driftwood thing. I held a quick-official-kid-vote and the driftwood won, two to one (three to one, counting me). The shelf idea went out the window real quick. 

I'm so excited about how it all came together. I found the red-striped pillows at HomeGoods too. I saved myself the $100 I wanted to spend on a duvet cover and sewed up my own with fabric I had on hand. 

The calm, soothing, Pottery Barn-esque theme I was going for was achieved. Yeah! Jarrod made fun of how much I said "I love it!" Like when he came home from work on Monday: "Oh my gosh, I love this room." Tuesday: "Oh my gosh, I love this room!" I think he really means it though. 

My 6-week plan included some house projects that I wanted finished before my parents get here next month. So a big fat check mark is next to "My Bedroom" in my planner now.  Next on my project list is some projects in the boys' room. I painted a dresser and desk navy blue yesterday. Now to add some bright orange comforters, some cute side-table stuff, and to find something fun to hang over their beds.

So what are you up to this weekend? Projects? Relaxing? Both?? That's my favorite :) Either way, have a great one!

xo,

{alicia}

Happy Day Challenge #7: Plan(t) Your Garden, Mary

Happy Wednesday, Chicas.

It's Wednesday...time for happiness.

I love my garden. So does Mary Contrary, she rocks a garden. We plant one every year. It was funny to me that one of the first things the kids asked about when we moved into our townhouse in October was, "where will we plant our garden?" We are trying something new this year. Since I don't think the leaders of our commune would be too keen on me with a tiller in their nicely landscaped village green, we will be gardening in containers this year on our balcony.

If you do not garden, you so should. who doesn't like spinach? Squash? Peas?

Ok, well probably a lot of people. But even if you just put your precious produce in a basket and give it to your neighbor it's still super fun. And I promise you, any tomato you get off of your very own tomato plant will be tremendously tastier than those pathetic things you get at the grocer's.

So here's you challenge: Plan or Plant your garden.

Talk about it with us (aka: blog, sillies)

Link up next week!

Yeah for everyone!!

Did I just make a poem with my photo captions? It's a very poor one, yes...but a poem just the same. I call it, "Gardens are Happy."

Ok now, for last week you were supposed to surprise somebody!! Oh, I hope you did! Go ahead and link up below and I'll be sharing some of your posts on my facebook page.

 

You can get a button just like this over there and add it to your post :) ------------>

                                                      

Have a happy day, girlies :)

OH! In case you were wondering about the mystery cow from Monday's post....



fine art for the privy

I was thinking it was about time for a craft project around here. I will admit, there's been very little of that stuff going on around here. BUT a few weeks ago, we got our craft on.

The kids have their own bathroom that was looking a little boring and what's better in a kids' space than kid art?!

I wanted them to do something modernish and something that would match the color scheme of the bathroom. After combining some pinterest ideas and some Alicia ideas, we came up with this.

Each kid had a canvas and painted the top 80% or so blue and the bottom grey.

Then on rectangles cut from a map (the skyscrapers) they added windows with a Sharpie.

Next was ModPodging the buildings on to the canvas...then they added "clouds" using all sizes of lids for stamps. I seriously love how they turned out. I could barely wait for them to dry so I could hang them up!

By the way...how was your weekend? Ours was full and fun. I love weekends with a good mix of accomplishments and leisure. I did some fluffing (that I'm really excited about and will share later this week...), we had dinner with friends, I pinned 10,000 ideas on Pinterest, listened to an amazing sermon on Sunday, and took a ride on the Parkway.

Look what I'm forced to look at every day!! Is it not beautiful?! I love green. I cannot believe the amount of trees here! I love it.  Also, on our Sunday drive we saw this...

...what is it? It looks like an ox or something. Like an ox-llama? Any information would be very appreciated. We were all baffled.

And I'll leave you with this view...

Blue Ridge Parkway 4/22/12

Happy Monday! Let's make it a good week. Our week is going to be full of appointments, farm field trips, school (3 weeks left!!), paint, projects, farmer's marketing, and all the other stuff that we all do.  The busyness and on-going drama of life has been making me a bit of a downer lately, so I've been trying to look at things more with the vantage point of the "glass half full people." I'm not always like them, but I've been trying to chum on their side of the lunchroom lately...are you already there or do you wanna come sit with us?  Let's have a great week, Sweet Ones.

xo,

{alicia}

ten thoughts on traveling

I kept having these random thoughts on traveling...specifically thoughts on traveling with kids, but not limited to. Now I'm no seasoned traveler, but I've done enough to know what not to do. And also, these are just my thoughts, not necessarily hardcore facts...so let's proceed, shall we?

1. If you pack too much carry-on stuff, you'll regret it. Oh, how many times I've jam packed their backpacks full of what I thought would be fun and time-consuming, only to end up lugging the heavy bag across the airport myself or try to find a place to put the dumb thing in the backseat. I have learned to just pack a few things I know they'll play with.

Which brings me to my next point:

2. Usborne sticker books. These are so fun! My kids just love these are there are so many to choose from. Sophie dressed up ballerinas the whole trip while Jack dressed soldiers. Two of their favorite things. I know there's also a wedding book, nights, fairies, cowboys. There's lots. I have gotten them on Amazon and at B&N for about $9.

3. Bring something...something. Every time I fly I look around at the sad few on the plane that brought nothing. What are they doing?? They are sitting there reading that airline magazine. Have you ever looked at one? It's basically an infomercial in print. It's awful. Do anything but read the airline magazine. It's almost too boring to think about.

4. Neck pillows. They're light and save your baby's neck from getting all disjointed and uncomfortable looking. You can try propping their head up with a scrunched up coat or something, but it's just not the same. Get the neck pillow.

5. When you're in the airport, specifically busy airports, do not be rude. Listen, the McDonald's lady did not purposely give you caff instead of decaf. There is no need to call her a b-word. That's just rude. I thought you were a b-word after you said that, but I would never tell you that because that would be rude.

6. Bring boys in the girls bathroom if you don't have a hubby with you. The raised eyebrows are not worth the six-year-old standing at the urinal next to a weirdo. And when you're in the Chicago airport with 60,000 or so people that could be potential weirdos you just take them in the girls room with you.

7. Children's Dramamine. This can be used as a preventative to motion sickness even if your child has never had motion sickness. The end.

8. Angry Birds. The end again.

9. New books. Most of the time when we go on trips I'll pack new books that I know they've wanted but I don't allow them to crack the cover til we're in the car. The anticipation of a new book is major! Do not underestimate it.

10. Have fun. There's been so many travel moments I've ruined because I'm tired and/or feeling icky from eating badly or sick of being in the car. Dr. Dobson says that it's a necessity to go away with your family for at least a long weekend to make those family memories. Let's not mess up the memory making with our rants, k? Ok.

Happy weekend to y'all.  I will not be traveling, but doing some house projects. My six-week plan includes some bedroom projects in all our rooms, so they're scheduled and on the docket for this weekend. I hope they turn out!

xo,
{alicia}

Happy Day Project #6: Surprise Somebody!!

YooooHoooo...Surprise!!

If you follow me on Facebook, you probably already know I just got back from a little trip. Where to?? Well, So Dak of course!

This trip was so chock full of surprises, it's impossible to tell them all, but the Cliff's Notes version of this post is that my dad has been having a rough go after surgery, a near death experience and a cancer-is-still-in-there report when all was said and done. He's been needing some love...grandbaby love.

Now the part of the surprise that I'm at liberty to tell (some of the surprise is confidential) is that we showed up for a long weekend...just showed up! It was amazingly awesome!

Before my Aberdeen peeps get in my business about not hanging out, this was a quick trip and a family-only trip kinda trip. It was rushed, but casual still.

Movies, dogs, fields, food, grilled burgers, ticks (yes, ticks), gut laughs, group self portraits, mud, dog hair, coffee, sleeping in...that kinda weekend.

This was our first time back since October's big move. I thought the goodbyes would be more bitter, I thought more would have changed, I worried there would be awkwardness. It was decidedly opposite of all that. Some happy tears at the airport mixed with excited expectation talk of their visit to NC in a few weeks were more the topic on the floor.

So here's your Happy Day Challenge #6: Surprise Somebody!!
Send flowers to a friend, show up in the lunchroom at school for lunch, leave a little gift on your hubby's pillow (which I will not be doing because my hubby forgot everything I told him to do while I was gone...ahem), do something fun like that!

So do this...it will be super fun!!

Also, a Dad note: he had appointments at his oncologist yesterday...and guess what? There's no cancer after all!!! Surprise!!!

Maybe Doc is secretly doing the Happy Day Project, ya think?? :)

So now, sweet baby girls, if you were able to check out for a bit this week and get some alone time, let us know! I'll be sharing link ups on my facebook page.

Before you go, here's a quick vid of our surprise in action. My brother was in on the jig to help me organize it. My parents were thinking they were meeting just Jesse for lunch and then we allll showed up. They're just sittin' there staring out the windows...oh, we got 'em good!

Just remember to link up your direct link, not just your blog url. Also, if you could kindly add the Happy Day button from the sidebar, I'd love you forever. Thanks! :)

xo,
{alicia}