My baby (and 15 of my other girls!) are now Junior Girl Scouts.

I am so very proud of them all. They planned the whole ceremony from the invitations to the decorations and food. It was such a great night for all of them. And not to be left out…the Brownies did a little presentation for their sisters.

It is an honor to get to help guide these girls on their journey to becoming our great leaders of tomorrow. Keep your eyes on all of these special girls.

…I used to have time to write, people!

I went back through the blog looking for the kitty cake from when Ad turned two and got all caught up in reading old posts. Back in the day when the ladies of the house were a mere 4 and 2 years old – I had all kinds of fodder and photos for blog posts.

What happened? I’m far busier now, the girls are funnier, smarter, and just as photogenic (well, maybe not so much on that last one!) but I can’t seem to string a coherent sentence together. And how did I post nearly every. single. day?

Of course, the pinnacle of my blog career might have been reached in the the old “poop in a teacup” post. You were all spot on when you predicted that someday I would look back and laugh about that. I’ve been sitting here laughing for the past 20 minutes.

I’m vowing here and now, I will do a better job of documenting our chaos around here. I want to be able to sit here on the sofa and have some more good stuff to laugh at.

We are back! Just because I haven’t posted a CT in a few weeks doesn’t mean that we haven’t been crafting it up around here.

Birdie #2 and I have tried very hard to meet for some all-day crafting days. We haven’t been able to do it every week, but we have accomplished a few projects the last few weeks.

Birdie #2 did these awesome pillows. Cutting out the stencil with Eva, and then just fabric painting right on the burlap before she sewed the pillows together.

Cute eh?

She also did a calendar wall of dry erase squares for her high schooler’s room. (Activities blurred to protect the innocent!)

She cut out each square with rounded corners and the top squares she cut out the days of the week – so the wall color shows through. Grid them out and stick each square to the wall. Easy, peasy.

And my contribution to Crafty Tuesday – I knocked off a little sign that J. got me (the one on the left!) for my anniversary and made him one (the one on the right) in return. I just reversed the paint colors and cut out the stencil using Eva. Then painted on and peeled the stencil off.

I can’t wait to hang them in my kitchen. The KITCHEN! The kitchen that is almost done. I think it deserves a post all to itself. As soon as the cupboard doors are returned and rehung…we will do the big reveal!

What craftiness am I missing out on since I haven’t had a moment to read a blog in weeks? Tell me, please?

Okay, I just couldn’t resist. LOOK at all of you!

Happy Birthday to my eldest niece, Lexer. Not that I would ever play favorites, and I always thought that I wanted kids, but when I would spend time with you when you were little, you just made me certain that I needed to have a little girl like you. You were so sweet, funny, photogenic and ADORABLE. And clearly you just get better with age. (Well, we need to work on that photogenic part…why is it so hard to get pics of you now?)

Okay…well, that one is pretty great – but in general, I’m lacking some good Lexer pics. 😉

At any rate, we hope your day is great, Roo. We love you, love you, love you!

Happy Birthday!
Love,
Aunt Bean

We had a most excellent day. Hours of waterpark, cake & ice cream and lots of presents, good wishes and love from family and friends near and far. I think she had a fantastic day.

Mommy is going to bed. It is 8:17. Photos and more details to follow soon.

Thank you all for the love.

xo

That is the sound of our week flying by.

I don’t know if it was the holiday Monday (yes, let’s blame it on that!) or the fact that EVERYthing started this week – ballet, piano, choir, soccer, girl scouts, (hmmm…maybe it is that?) but it has been incredibly insane around these parts and I completely flat-out missed Crafty Tuesday even!

Oh…and a certain little someone is expecting birthday celebrations this week, too. Her closet door this morning…

(Translation: Don’t Come In – Closed. 1 2 3 4 (with the four crossed out) count down to Addie’s birthday.)

Not that anyone is counting, right? God bless my spelling-challenged child. You would NEVER in a million years guess that she got almost all 100%s on her spelling tests last year, would you? The difference is…she WANTED to memorize the spelling lists. My stubborn (almost!) 7-year old.

Back to work. Got some meetings and parties to plan. We’ll be back over the weekend, I’m sure. Well, I intend to. Let’s just agree on – I hope to be back this weekend.

Longest week ever. Just thought it would be good to jot down a quick Friday Love since I haven’t done so in quite some time.

Here is what there is to Love on this lovely Friday:

• Daddy comes home. Tonight. Top of the list because it is the one thing that is getting us through this week. We have had meltdown after meltdown, puking sessions, a night of bloody noses and not enough sleep all week…but Daddy comes home tonight and that makes it all right.
• Kitchen cabinets are looking pretty awesome. Of course they still don’t have any doors or any drawers – but I love the difference it has made in our kitchen. It feels new and a little more modern and sooooo much cleaner. I picked out a pretty green-blue for the walls too. It is just a bit darker than the green outline in our tile. I’m very happy with the decision to not do the cabinets in that green now. I really do think that the neutral cabinets will let us play with the rest of the kitchen color for many years to come…and Lord knows I do not want to be painting kitchen cabinets for many years to come!
• Football season starts tomorrow. Go Blue.
  
  
• Mommy rules. I had one of the best parenting moments earlier this week. Our “rule” in the house is that you have to “read the book before you can see the movie.” I always feel like the books are better, and it is a rule I keep for myself, too. When I see a movie that looks good and it was adapted from a book I haven’t read, I will make sure to read it first. So we have been working our way through the Harry Potter books – reading each night with Daddy. Last Friday we finished the 4th book and Emma could barely control her excitement for movie night on Saturday. While we were out walking on Sunday morning she turned to me and said, “You know, Mom? I don’t think the Goblet of Fire movie is really very good. Well, it is good, but I don’t like that it doesn’t have all the good stuff in the book in it. They don’t even talk about Winky or show Dobby. I just think I like the book better.”

  Cue the clouds parting, sunbeam shining down and chorus of angels singing. Ahhhhhh. Yes. Validation. See? Sometimes Mama gets something right.

• Winter whites.
  We also had a discussion this morning about wearing white after Labor Day.
  Em: “Mama? Is it true you can’t wear anything white after Labor Day?”
  Me: “Well not ANY thing. You are not supposed to wear white pants/skirts and shoes. Although I don’t think a lot of people follow that rule any more, especially here since the seasons are not as defined. But you kind of switch out your summer wear for winter wear on Labor Day.”
  Ad: “But you can wear your white shoes on Easter!”
  Me: “Right, that is kind of the start of the spring season, so you get your white shoes back out.”
  Em: “So, no white in winter time.”
  Ad: “RIGHT! Because if you were wearing white…nobody would be able to see you!”

Yeah, took me a minute too. Especially coming from the kid who has barely spent a week in snow!

Hope your Friday is filled with love – and your whole weekend, too! See you next week.

Nothing crafty this week going on except…dum, da, dum, dum, duuuum…the great kitchen cabinet painting project of 2012.

Yes, as is customary when J. leaves us alone for a week, we find a project to keep busy. I’ve been working up the courage to tackle the cabinets for so very long and finally – this is it! Although, I have a sneaky suspicion that there is no way this job is going to be done before J. gets back on Friday. It took me all night just to get cabinet doors and drawers off. We are never going to be one of those cool kitchens with open cabinets…

In fact, I can’t believe I’m showing the whole internets our mess that is usually hidden behind our kitchen cabinets. I cleaned (good ‘ol TSP) and sanded them down today and tomorrow we will tackle priming.

And I think I may have sweet-talked a friend of ours into spraying all of the doors and drawers for us. It may take a few weeks, but that is fine since it will give me some time to clean out our cabinets! 😉

House projects? Crafty projects? Anything less messy happening at your place?