I feel a surprise brewing...

Braces

 The before.

 The during.

 The after.

two very expensive beautiful smiles :)

Spring Break 2012

 We kicked off spring break heading to my new FAVORITE place on earth to eat.

Pinkeys

REMEMBER THE NAME, YOUR GONNA WANT TO TRY IT!

They have the best macaroni and cheese, and their pulled pork is to die for! The sliders, which is all we ever get because even one can fill up a grown man or a  pre teenage boy and is made on  homemade rolls. {you can see the flour still on them!} So you have to sit in a tent, but every last freezing cold moment of it is worth it I tell ya.  Go. Try it. You won't regret it.

 So Seattle can be beautiful, if you have the patience to wait out all the rain, you will be rewarded with an occasional gorgeous day.  Truth be told, April started off this way and has pretty  much held steady so far. Keep our fingers crossed it's a sign of a beautiful summer to come.

True found a lady bug first thing, he and I love those little red bugs.

 Made the kids pose..and that they did.

 Shilo, True and I had an afternoon of cookie making.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2012/02/chocolate-cookies-with-toppings/

shocked it was a pioneer woman recipe?

While Chastin spent 3 days at a Shoreline camp, enjoying hiking, mountain biking, swimming, and his all time favorite~ paint balling. {lucky kid}

 He then spent a weekend camping with his boy scout troop.

Top picture is him leaving, all smiles, clean, energetic.

This is him coming home.

Tired, hungry, a wee bit grumpy and very, very dirty.

And just a note: Jordan didn't enjoy any of our Spring Break 2012 festivities because she... drum roll please.

WENT TO FRANCE!!!!

The Pioneer Woman

I had the privilege of going to Third Place books with some good friends and hearing the Pioneer Woman speak about just that~being a pioneer woman, on a farm, how she grew to love the art of photography and some really funny stories along the way.
Did you know that she once was a balarina and her toe nails had seperated from thier beds, and one day in high school she was sitting next to a boy she had a crush on and  she removed her shoe and sock and sticks a paper clip under her toenail, then proceeds to hag her foot out the side of her desk and show said boy her neat trick! Ree says she had no reasoning behind it, just thought it would be a neat thing to do. She was cracking me up!

When she was  alittle girl about 4 years old she had a 'fun little habbit' of putting various items up her nose, one of those things being fruit stripe gum wrappers. Her mother found Ree to smell quite a bit and kept bathing her, powdering her and scrubbing her down, finally out of desperation to figure out why she had such an oder, she took her 4 year old daughter to the doctor to find out that she had shuved quite a few fruit strip gum wrappers up her nose and had forgotten to pull them out.. She said she really liked the tickle of the paper unwinding in her sinus...cracks me up just replaying her story telling in my head. She was Hilarious! And just what I needed at the end of a hard day of work and doing the single parent gig. So glad Chastin is old enough to stay with the kids to give me a quick break.

Ree was so fun to see! Just like on her show and in her book, "Black heals to tractor wheels" she really has a great sense of humor. At one point she sang about her basset hound charlie, that he was her one love, her first love..in different voices, quite funny. Shannon was cracking up big time, tears rolling down her face...I was busting up, in that feels so good, your sides hurt and your face starts to cramp kinda way. {You've all been there right?} Thanks to Wendy for pushing me to go and to Shannon for sitting with a bunch of crazy excited fans in the fourth row, holding our seats {for someone she had never heard of..}

Bountiful Baskets

{sorry for the picture, not the best}

SO at dinner group a week or so ago, some of the girls were sitting around talking about "Bountiful Baskets"..
This whole concept was new to me. They explained that b.b was a co-op. For a $15 contribution, you receive a whole basket full of fresh produce!{ I have to say I was skeptical.}And for $10 more you can make your produce all organic.
 But after picking up my basket I have to say "where have I been hiding all this time??"
This last Saturday John and the kids and I headed up to a parking lot in Lynnwood where we picked up our very first basket. I was impressed, very organized, all volunteer based, quick, friendly and good quality. The only draw back that I can see that some might not like is that you have no say as to what comes in your basket. But my friend Sarah said if something like mushrooms { that her family doesn't care for}ends up in the basket for the week, she just gives them to someone else.. No biggie. She's only out a buck or less, for a whole carton of mushrooms!
Some of the shipment is what restaurants order and our order is just tacked on to theirs.
There are {roughly} 6 kinds of vegetables and 6 kinds of fruit in every basket, roughly $50-$60 worth of produce they say. I haven't added it up, but I would venture to guess it to be a pretty close guess. Bountiful Baskets is just cutting out the middle man, no stand or grocery store.
The produce was supper fresh! I picked up the largest lemons I had ever seen and the romas were HUGE!
So I didn't categorize all of the goods received. but it certainly  was enough for me to order again this week.
Rough counting, i got:
4 green bell peppers
4 yellow onions
4 zucchini
4 yellow squash
head of bib lettuce
bag of brussels sprouts
7 roma tomatoes
a beautiful bunch of bananas
6 kiwis
3 GIANT lemons
5 purple pears
8 or 9 pink lady apples {so yummy}
5 oranges/ tangelo kinda things
5 navel oranges
So if you are interested, check it out and see if there is a location in your neck of the woods!
http://www.bountifulbaskets.org/

I would love to hear if you give it a shot! Happy eating!

Up cycle

What I have always considered Shabby chic is now called up cycle..Who knew?

When I was in high school my mother took me to Dania and let me pick a few pieces for my room. I was immediately drawn to the crisp freshness of white. The shade made me feel happy and everything around me feel brighter.When John and I bought our home I just continued to like the style. But as all things do, it evolved, from things at furniture stores to pieces I found on the corner, painted and found uniqueness in. We once went to a local furniture store and picked out a lovely table, dark cherry wood, cream padded chairs, quite eloquent. I picked it because that's what I thought grown ups had. My grandmother had a very similar taste, she had a beautiful dark cherry table that always had a beautiful centerpiece adorning the middle, she always let me know how much she loved that furniture, how hard she had worked and saved literal pennies to purchase these comforts. I followed suit, but was quickly displeased. It was a blessing to be able to go buy a new table and I should have been happier, but seeing as though it wasn't my style I quickly wanted to change it. 

After much careful negotiation with my sweet husband I talked him into letting me buy a $40 table off craigslist and painting it white with a crackle finish. That big, sturdy cherry table still sits out back in my garage just waiting for me to sell it to some family who will have a perfect fit for it in their dining room. In my dinning room sits a shabby chic table that was someones cast off. With pencil lead sitting in its cracks from years of homework being written on it, paint from past art projects being created by children and stains from markers.

Just my style!

 I found this frame in my neighbors garage, she had picked it up because she couldn't bare to think of it going to the dump. I rescued it. It was originally a frame that framed plastic ceiling lights in a kitchen. I use it as a giant frame on my dining room wall, it holds 16 x 20 prints I had developed at costco for $10.

 Vintage luggage from a thrift shop for an end table, that was the idea, but I can't keep anything on it because the kids love to climb up it and sit on top to watch out the window. I keep seasonal glass ware all wrapped in newspaper in the suitcases for extra storage.

 Paige gave me one of the windows from her old house. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I went looking for glass door knobs to have John make it into a coat hanger for by the front door. When Shilo makes an art project in school we hang it up on the glass. 

 For super Saturday Sarah came and taught people how to make a menu board out of a picture frame. Once again, I knew exactly what I wanted mine to look like! So I went to hobby lobby, picked up a 12 x12 shadow box, a  piece of paper that looked like an old fence with chippy paint and created a menu board. And can I just tell you how much of a life saver this thing has been!? Saturday or Sunday I come up with a menu, usually asking each family member for one idea, making me only needing to come up with two ideas on my own. I flip though Shannons cook book, Our best bites, and of course, Pioneer woman, head to the grocery store Monday for what we need and tada! Dinner! No more 4pm thoughts about what to make and that I didn't defrost anything... Making for a very happy mom.

 Lakeside rummage sale always holds some great treasures to be found. Classroom size cork board holds all the random pictures people give me of my kids. Or pictures my kids have made, strange sized prints or pictures  that just aren't ever going to go in a frame but I want to enjoy. Spray painted white of course. Hangs in the mudroom.

 Old pie cabinet is now used for Cd storage in the corner of my dining room. One of my favorite finds. EVER. 

 Jordan's friend Ben had 10 sets of these powder coated gym lockers in his garage waiting to be taken away! For free! The red actually works out absolutely  perfectly with all the white in the house! I had John haul 2 sets of these beautiful lockers to our house, this set with tags made to tell True what locker holds which of his toys sits in the corner of his room.

 This was originally a small closet door, I painted it white with an inset of chalk board paint  that I leave inspirational thoughts on. It hangs on the wall in a bathroom with silver hooks to hold damp towels. Another one of my favorites, it turned out just the way I had hoped.

 My friend Kelly made me this tin ceiling tile fitted with a mirror for a birthday one year.

It has a special place  in our living room flanked by two old parlor doors.

My father in law gave me an airline cart one year for my birthday! {He always gives me cool junk that we both like!} It was gray, then I painted it white, left it outside and forgot about it, and this is what I got. At first I was bummed that I let it get all rusty, but then I started to think that I actually liked it. I like things to be individual, uniquely mine. I don't want our home to look like a museum, hotel or the same as what  somebody else has in their home. I never want some one to come in and say " this looks just like a show room or magazine,"or "I have that same thing!" I want it to feel comfortable, feel welcoming & like my children live here. I love that when all the teenagers hang out here they feel comfortable enough to get a glass & snack or unload their back packs on to the table to work on homework. 

Maybe I will have inspired you to take something that once had a certain purpose and give it a new home with a whole new function, if so, I say happy up cycling!

True is 3!

 Cute man was waiting for his candles to be lit. I made a delicious chocolate cake that we devoured at grandma and grandpas.

True would say right now while making this face"do you see my smile?"

 He didn't know what to do when we were all singing to him {out of key, i might add} 

 he blew out his candles and wanted to do it again!

 Next came the presents, he got a new rocket ship bike. True has been really into rocket ships this year. At Christmas time Johns boss sponsored a family from church and the 3 year old wanted a bike, so that's what we decided to give. Well the night we went shopping  that we only had True, he is the same age so we thought this would work to our advantage. He would try out the helmets and bikes and we would know what size/ kind a little boy would love. Problem was, True fell in love with this rocket ship bike we bought for the other little boy...so when it came time to deliver it, he kept asking where his rocket ship bike was...so low and behold he received one for his birthday 18 days later. He enjoys riding it from one end of the house to the other and down to the bus in the afternoon to pick up the kids. 

 "my rocket ship bike!" he kept saying

like we had been hiding it from him all this time:)

He has discovered Piggie and Gerald books by Mo Willems. He LOVES them and will let you read them to him every chance he gets.  He opened 'I broke my trunk' and 

' Elephants can't dance' We just went to the library and wiped them out of all the other Mo Willems books they had. Knuffle bunny is also on the list of must reads.

True is full of personality. He loves to play outside, jump on the trampoline, read as long as possible, say dinner prayer {he gets very upset if he realizes someone else said it}, he wants to go for walks daily, and takes lots of opportunities to let me know his is a big boy and can do it himself! He asks Jordan to take him on the city bus frequently, Chastin to take him to Safeway for a free cookie and Shilo to play tea party, pollys, animals and to take a bath with him so they can squirt each other. Play doh is high on the list of daily things he needs to play with, he can spend an hour creating by himself while I make dinner.  He is working hard on being potty trained and  loves to cuddle and be helpful. We sure love laughing at this little man as he makes all sorts of crazy voices and expressions.

We are so lucky to have him in our lives, he makes it so much fun!

{as he lays at my feet singing Justin Beibers Santa clause is coming to town...}