Refinishing a bench

My friend, Amy, introduced me to the Springfield Extravaganze flea market last spring. I guess it comes around twice a year, spring and fall. We feed off each other when it comes to buying trash to turn it into treasure. She got a library bench(I think that is what it's called) at a garage sale and made it a beauty) so I told her we had to find one for me too! We found one at the flea market - priced at $47 and she took $30(not too bad) I painted it, got new foam and fabric for the cushion and I am loving it in the foyer. While I was at it, I painted my coat tree - it was a honey oak color and the black just makes it feel a bit more current! Fun fun! We also got 2 more friends addicted to this - Tara and Jill, aren't you happy we introduced you to this? I even drove Kirk's old red truck(which I think has been deemed "big red" to haul our treasures away in and boy, did it come in handy!)

12 years!

Our anniversary is actually on Sept 27 but my mom offered her babysitting services on Friday so Kirk and I could go out to dinner. We went to a place down by Ikea called Mesh and it had wonderful food and a HUGE wine cellar with glass windows displaying all of it. Of course, being so close to Ikea, what husband wouldn't want to make his 1st trip there on his anniversary-but with a little pleading, I got him to go - heck! we're saving gas $ since we are already down there, right? I would highly recommend the restaurant, it is a bit pricey though! 12 years? wow! We are blessed to still be able to put up with each other and have such beautiful, sometimes charming kids!

Tote bags

I was a bit behind on having Bradley's bag ready for his 1st day of preschool but we did have it done at the end of the 1st week- he helped me by painting his hands and pressing them onto his bag - he loved his bag! Ryan got in the spirit of it,however, not sure we will let him take this particular tote bag with him to preschool - not that there's anything wrong with that! :)

Bradley's 1st day of preschool

Today was Bradley's first day of school at Epiphany Lutheran Preschool - he was excited and it went off much better than last year - no tears! He was eager to go into his room and had a great day!

Fall decorations

I love to get out my fall decorations - I think it is such a great way to quickly warm up the house! I bought those little black shelves at a rummage sale and they were yuck! Imagine crackle white with a gold ball on the bottom and gold shelf at the top- very dated! So, again, the wonders of spray paint and voila! I love them now and they were the perfect place to perch my pumpkins in the kitchen - $5 for the pair, not too bad!

2nd grade girls soccer

Morgan started soccer today. Kirk has helped coach in the past when a coach is out of town but this year they asked him to be a head coach - we are in a new district so he wasn't certain about the rules but he has an assistant coach who has coached numerous teams in the past so that is helping him figure it out-hope we have a good year!

Labor Day weekend 2009

We always rent cabins at an Ohio State Park for Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends with Kirk's family. This year we congregated at Dillon State Park, almost in Zanesville.( Actually, prior to kids, we had a pop-up camper, some tent-camped and some stayed in the lodge). The finer aspects of renting cabins with real running water and flushing toilets, stoves and microwaves, comfy beds become more appealing as you add children to the family. We always have a lot of fun and take lots of pictures. Being so close to Morgan and Bradley's birthdays, we celebrated their birthdays with their aunts, uncles, cousins(which they finally have!), and grandparents. We also try to be crafty while there so we attempted the tye-dye fun! Loved how they turned out, however, we need to learn how to perfect maintaining the bright colors - with limited resources, I am not sure we did such a good job on our first attempt!

Can't take all the credit!

I have several blogs I love and I believe this was from Thrifty Decor Chick or Just a Girl- so thanks! They had this wonderful, simple artwork as an idea and I thought it would be perfect to duplicate for Morgan's room - artistic, I am not! Some might think Morgan painted these in art class. If you look at the bottom one, that is the one that DID NOT make the cut - I tried again for the skinny tree because I felt my original skinny tree was much too fat - it looked like Bradley fingerpainted the tree and then pressed his thumbs down for the ends - like the redo better but will never attempt anything harder than this!