Christmas Card Pic 2012

Finally.

Our Christmas cards are done.

And OMG was it a pain getting the picture!

First: I burned the cookies (at least it prevented me from scarfing them down).

Second: Landon HATES the Santa hat. I can't really blame him, it's itchy and awkward and too big. He normally is very gung-ho about hats so I put one of his favorite beanies on and then snuck the Santa hat on over top.  This fooled him for all of four pictures, but we got it:

He has grown so much since last Christmas!  And his little mind is just soaking it all in this holiday season!  So fun!

Happy Holidays!

DIY Snow Globes

Oh how I love snow globes!! And mason jars!! And combining the two is pretty much the best idea ever.  These little guys are sold for astronomical prices at Anthropologie:

FORTY DOLLARS EACH?! ARE YOU INSANE?!?!

I came across some DIY replicas over at Whipperberry and decided to give them a whirl.  They took all of five minutes to put together.

Supplies:
Trees
Jars
Glue dots or glue gun
Buffalo Snow

I found the trees and most of the jars at garage sales.  The buffalo snow and the tall mason jar I picked up at Michael's.  I needed one more teeny tiny jar so my friend Lindsey found one for me :)

I had some glue dots on hand to secure the trees to the lids. These rock, especially if you don't want to bust out the glue gun. 

 

I like a lot of snow so I filled 'em on up.

 

 

I needed some of the trees to be taller so I glued them on various caps, this one is from a cooking spray:

My out of pocket price was about six dollars total and I'm pretty darn pleased with the way they turned out!!

Happy Holidays!

Linking to: I Heart Nap Time, Nifty Thrifty Things, Not Just a Housewife, Kammy's Korner, The DIY Showoff, The Tidy Mom, The 36th Avenue, Tatertots & Jello, A Diamond in the Stuff, Whipperberry, A Lived In Home, Polkadots on Parade
 

The Postagram App

I have a new favorite app. 

It's called Postagram.

 

It enables you to transform your Instagram pictures into Postcards and it even mails them out for you.  It's incredibly user friendly plus you get five free postcards when you download the app.  After that they only cost .99, which is pretty much the equivalent of buying a postcard and slapping on a stamp anyway. 

 

 

The Wombat and I have been having fun sending them to various relatives :) 

Thanksgiving 2012

This year, for the first time ever, we hosted Thanksgiving.

I am unbelievably thankful for the 27 family members who crammed into our dining room (and also for those who couldn't make it).  There was not one single thing that I didn't have help with, from the turkey to the clean up.

The Wombat absolutely refused to try a bite of anything, so here he is with his yogurt during the feast.

He did love the whipped cream though.

Happy Holidays!!!

Rare Krylon Colors

I love spraypaint.  It goes on quick, it dries fast and it gets all those tough spots that would be a nightmare with a brush.

When it comes to quality there's several brands I use: Valspar, Rustoleum and Krylon.  When it comes to unique color Krylon is the way to go.  The only problem is, I can never find some of the colors that I know exist.

In particular, I've been searching high and low for a lovely little color called Coral Isle.  Be still my beating  heart:

I scoured hardware stores, paint stores, craft stores, even Walmart. No dice.  So I looked online at overpriced cans with atrocious shipping fees....even Amazon came to 15 bucks a can! No, thank you! 

Then I stumbled across a tip over at Vintage Revivals and turns out Krylon is owned by Sherwin Williams.  So all I had to do was go and special order it through the store. 

They came to 4.95 each plus no shipping fees as long as I picked them up in the store. 

There was a minimum order, but I'm pretty sure I'll use up all six eventually....especially since I'm already down to five after one day.

Here is a sneak peek:

A New Oven: Sooner Than Later

We knew we'd have to replace our oven eventually.  The microwave was a hazardous, taped together eyesore that was connected to the oven (thus the actual microwave we use seen on the right).

Thinking that this purchase would transpire sometime in the far future, we've been casually looking for a replacement.

So when the oven caught on fire NINE days before we were to host Thanksgiving, at least we had already done our homework.

Here she is moving into her brand new home. 

Sometimes blessings come in disguises. 

This one came just in time. 

Nine days in time.

Now picture it with white cabinets....

No Mess Finger Painting

My toddler loooooves to finger paint. 

Case in point:

The kind we use is super easy to wash off ANYTHING, but they still make a heck of a mess!  With the rainy season around the corner I decided to try a mess free finger painting option that I pinned from The Hippie Housewife.

Here are all the supplies you need:

First introduction lasted all of five minutes.

Sometimes old fashioned finger painting only lasts for 5 minutes too so the onvenience of leaving this mess free painting option up for a couple days made it an instant winner.  He kept coming back with renewed interest every couple hours or so.

Saving this for upcoming rainy days!

Halloween 2012

This year marked Landon's second Halloween and he could not have been more excited about it.  He has been practicing wearing his costume for quite sometime since I found it at a garage sale a few months ago :)

Ben had to work on the 31st, so we kicked off Halloween early and attended a local Trunk or Treat with some friends.

Without further adieu, Yoda and his Dragon pal:




The Wombat was sooooo into trick or treating this year. He is too young to realize that he's getting candy, he just loves collecting things and putting them in his bag :)

We even ran into C-3PO (Landon did not care for him much)

But he did love the bounce house! 

And playing in the haystacks

On actual Halloween we trick or treated the.entire.neighborhood.  He had the time of his life ooo-ing and awe-ing over decorations, knocking on people's doors and asking for treats. His bag got so heavy that I offered to carry it, which did not go over well.  I ended up just sneaking candy out of his back and into the stroller.

Hope everyone had a good Halloween!!! Here's a flashback to 2011 Nemo.

And on a separate note, looking forward to blogging more now that I got my laptop cord back and we've made some serious progress on the house!  Yay!

Garage Sales: Seeing the Potential

The past few weekends I have acquired some project pieces.

First there was this little end table for $2:

 

This table will eventually be transformed into some sort of Lego table, like this one from Meet the Dubiens:

I also picked up this $5 table and will eventually paint it to match my living room color scheme (once I figure out what that is):

And here we have a huge bag of frames for $5. A great deal since frames at Goodwill are 1-2 dollars each.

These guys will be transformed into a gallery wall similar to one of my previous projects:

Also good for chalkboard frames too!

This heavy duty bench was $20.  I was just about to offer $15 when another woman piped up and said she'd take it if I didn't want it! Boo!  Oh well, it was worth it.  It's going to get a coat of paint too :)

Then there's this milk glass collection which needs no touch up at all because it's gorgeous and only put me out a total of $4!!

On our way home yesterday I couldn't resist following the signs for one more garage sale and was disappointed when they had already closed up shop, but THEN I turned the corner and on the side of the road found these for FREE:

Ben accused me of stealing some random kid's toys that they left out, but there was a free sign!  Lol!
So what if they are a little sun faded?  Check out this awesome spray paint makeover from Sweet C's Designs:

 

 

A Bat Mobile just might be in store for the Little Wombat :)

 

Wedding Weekend

Earlier this month we attended one of the most beautiful weddings I've ever been to: My sister-in-law and now brother-in-law's ceremony at Slide Ranch.  The venue was totally unique and STUNNING, as was the bride.

Brigitte and the bridesmaids got ready in the super cute cottage that we stayed in, courtesy of my father-in-law, in Muir Beach.  This place is definitely going to be somewhere to return on vacation someday.

The Little Wombat was the ring bearer.  Unfortunately he had to walk a very loooong way holding his cousin's hand and so there were some tears but he managed to make it down the aisle....where I was waiting with a sucker to keep him quiet for the rest of the ceremony.  He was his normal, adorable little self the rest of the ceremony and reception, which was a relief since this is how he reacted the first time I tried his complete outfit on:

There were too many things for The Wombat to explore at the venue so he forgot to be upset about his attire.  Plus I also bribed him with sticks.

I was busy keeping this little one year old from throwing dirt at guests, sticking his hand in the extra sheet cake (OMG I would have DIED), wandering too close to an electric fence around the chickens and just trying to keep up with his four year old cousin. That being said, I didn't get to take as many picture as I would have liked to, but their photographer did an amazing job!!! He was super on the ball and had them up on his website a few days after the event. You can check out the rest of his pictures over at Duy Ho Photography but here are a few of my absolute favs:

The first glance. Oh, how I love this picture!!!

The ceremony.

The kiss.

Landon hugging his second cousin :)

Our little family.

The bride and groom did all of the signs, centerpieces, bouquets, basically everything themselves.  Seriously, amazing.

The party.

We could not be more happy for them!!!

The following day we were able to have a little family fun at the beach, which was just a short walk from our cottage.

It's not often we get to visit the ocean so it was a nice treat to wrap up what was already a great weekend :)