V-Day Cookies

The kids bought me a double heart-shaped cookie cutter from Crate & Barrel while they were at my parents house over winter break and last night we made sugar cookies and the kids decorated them.

Malia's cookie:

Malia's finished decorating & Aidan's getting a little "heavy handed" with the sugar sprinkles:

Aidan's cookie (he wrote "i heart u" on it):

Enjoying the finished product!

More ornaments!

And, hopefully this time one doesn't have a va-jay-jay mysteriously appear on it...damn paint has it's own mind!

So, here they are...12 more hand painted ornaments in all of their glory. These are smaller ornaments than the ones I previously painted and, again, the photo quality is crappy because I still haven't put batteries in my camera and my camera phone is obviously crap. Enjoy!

Decking the halls...

Well, just Christmas trees...this year I decided to make ornaments for friends, teachers, etc. After 12, yes TWELVE, failed attempts, I finally got it right and did NOT forget the key step of cleaning the glass (duh!). These pictures don't do the ornaments justice and this is only a small sampling of what I've done. But, I'm proud to say that the kids' teachers have all received one and I'm making more this weekend...handpainting ornaments my way (thank you, Google!) is a lot of fun. The pictures are not the best...I used my cell phone since both of my digital cameras were D-E-A-D...guess I need to plug in the charger for the batteries, huh??

Enjoy!

purging and reorganizing...

So my Spring cleaning has come a bit too late in the year (or maybe it's just early??)...but I'm sitting in my computer room trying to figure out what I'm going to do with the mess I have made in here. This space should be our formal dining room, but considering we are not formal dining people we made this into the computer room/office/catch-all room. It's been everything from the junkyard to the play room. There has been a couch in here and a foosball table in here. Right now, all that's here is a big ole mess.

I've never known what to do with this space. I mean, I know what I want to use it for, but getting it laid out how I want it and making the room how I want it have been challenges since the day we moved into this house.

What I do know is that I don't want to paint it. Three years ago, Jennifer Finch who owns Jaden's Dreaming Tree came over and painted a huge Hatteras mural on two walls. She eventually went on to paint in M & A's bedrooms, but both bedrooms have been painted over since. At any rate, the mural is fabulous and I love it and it goes so well with the "beachy" theme that our house has (ok, so maybe it isn't so beachy cottage-like, but it's my version of a beach cottage, ok?).

Here is a link to the picture of our room (this is the corner...you can see the itty, bitty Hatteras lighthouse):
http://jadensdreamingtree.com/seaside/3.jpg

Jennifer has two more pictures of the room posted as well.

Right now I have a computer armoire that has to go. I originally wanted it, but the dark cherry wood just doesn't go with the room. It matches my college diploma's frame, but that's about it. I'd really like to get a new armoire that is a whitewashed wood style, but with the finances being what they are I am going to have to continue to settle for the old computer desk that came from my now EX mother-in-law. I don't think it has any bad ju-ju surrounding it, but maybe a good cleansing ritual wouldn't hurt. I have two bookshelves from Ikea that are not the most spectacular, but they do the job. I also have a small shelving system and small cabinet from Target. In the corner I have an old white cabinet (again from the EX MIL) that holds all of my scrapbooking/crafting supplies.

Ideally I'd like to put a chair, table and lamp in here for reading and just to make the room more cozy, but again with the finances being what they are I probably shouldn't. Besides, Christmas is around the corner and I'll just move the chair out of the living room into this room when we put our tree up.

I suppose it would help to show pictures of the room and how it's laid out...but with the state it's currently in, I'm not going to do that. I do have my pride, ya know! So, for now I guess it's just a work in progress...one that I hope to figure out really soon.