My Firstborn

Today is my oldest's birthday.  Kalyssa turns 11 years old today!  I cannot believe it, I mean really really not believe that I have a pre-teen!  Are you kidding me?

Kalyssa has always been our easy child (for the most part).  When she was a baby, she slept through the night almost right away, she never cried, she took great naps, she was a happy baby, she ate good, she never got into anything.  I'm not lying when I say I never childproofed anything with Kalyssa.  She was such an easy going baby/toddler.  And she still is a pretty easy going kid.  I don't usually have to worry about Kalyssa getting into trouble or being irresponsible.

She can however irritate her sister to no end, and she thinks she's being sneaky like I can't see or hear her torturing her sister.

Kalyssa is responsible, smart, funny, artistic, grounded, curious.  It's fun to watch her turn into a little lady.  She's not such a little girl anymore.

They just need to stop growing up so fast!

More Fun Stuff

So here is a nifty little project that I did Sunday afternoon.  It didn't take that long and I think it came out really cute.  I decoupaged the letter W with some scrapbooking paper and mod podge (this stuff is fantastic by the way).  I think I am truly addicted to decoupage.  I covered the corkboard with some pretty orange fabric and lepoard print ribbon.  I just used hot glue to stick everything.  For the buttons, I used large glass beads (found at michaels) and I stuck a piece of scrapbook paper to the back with some mod podge.  The paper matches the blue flowered paper I used to do the W.  Kinda cute right?  I think I might do one for each of the girl's rooms.  It is so easy and so cheap.

I See The Light

Holy cow!  Our house is in complete shambles right now.  On the bright side though, the majority of the painting is done and 1/3 of the laminate flooring is laid.  It only took Brandon about 8 hours to figure it out and get in a good groove yesterday.  I had to force him to turn off the table saw at 9pm last night before our neighbors called security.  So while my house is a disaster, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  And I have a couple of new projects I'm working on as well.  I'll post pics when everything is done.  If I showed you what my house looked like right now, I think I would have that hoarders show giving me a call to see how they can help me.

Happy Friday everyone!  Here's to a productive weekend - at least for me.  :)

The Joy of Decoupage

Ok, so apparently you can decoupage practically anything, with anything!  This is so exciting.  So this is my first decoupage experience.  We had a board that was not being used for anything so I used flower pictures, newspaper and a black and white print, tore them all into random pieces, then I used glue/water mix and glued everything to my board.  You can also use mod podge, can find it at any craft store, but I didn't have any so I used the glue/water mix.   I overlapped all the edges so you can't see any raw edges anywhere.

I think my first try turned out pretty good!  It needs a clear coat of varnish to seal it once it's completely dry and I will hang it on the wall once I attach a picture hanger.

Make sure not to use inkjet printer pictures, because the ink will run when you put the glue on.  You can make a photo copy of an inkjet picture and that will be fine.  The next thing I'm going to do is all of our light plate/outlet covers.  Instead of buying all new ones, I am just going to cover them all with a pretty scrapbooking paper.  I'll post pics of those when I do them.  :)

Now off to find some other things to decoupage!

Kitchen/Laundry Room Before & After

I finally got the wallpaper down in the laundry room, painted it and Brandon got the new vinyl flooring laid in kitchen and laundry room.  We have a small galley style kitchen that goes straight into the laundry area.  It already feels so much better in there.  I need to work on getting the wallpaper out of the kitchen as well, but that will most likely be after everything else is painted and the wood floors are down.  Wallpaper removal is last on my list right now.

I'm happy with they way it looks, so so much better.  And on a totally different note, my tattoo is feeling so much better today!  :)