I Rest Assured

Hey friends! I hope everyone is having a good start to your week. I myself am not a big fan of the Mondays but this particular one has been exceptionally great! The fact that I woke up not having to do anything or go somewhere felt wonderful. Other than finding out that my laptop is dead and needs to be plugged into the wall and I can't read my daily devotions before I get out of bed, I am greatly loving it. 

I am writing this post on John's computer, and it feels weird because my fingers are so used to the small space on my macbook, my fingers keep pushing the wrong keys! lol For a long long time, [read: two weeks], I have pretty much left my www life behind and have not been stalking my favorite websites or blogs like I always do. But today, I got a chance, and I found this on pinterest:

pinterest

I thought it is a great reminder. It made me smile and I hope it does you too. If you have been following my blog, a lot has been going on around here... and I believe it is not just us that needed to be reminded of the fact that Someone out there is watching out for us, Someone loves us unconditionally and Someone has arms long enough to reach down and pull us out of the rut we are in when we ask to be taken out of the bad situations or decisions we put ourselves into. 

Have a wonderful week!

Congratulations Class of 2011!

The Husband and I are at our friends' [Quinton's and Sara's] home today to celebrate their oldest son's 8th grade graduation. : ) We have known Sara and Q for about four years I believe but we didn't start hanging out 'til about 3 years ago. In the process, John and I didn't only win friends in S and Q but we also got two very wonderful kid friends that we consider our own niece and nephew, Will and Whitney. Ever since we have known their parents, the kids, too have become a part of our lives. There has never been a birthday that John and I are not present. Long story short, we just got to love these two kids like they were our own. 

So to celebrate Will's 8th grade graduation, I made him this:

And here is our graduate:

And here's Whitney, she is going to be graduating in a couple of years:

So here's my CONGRATULATIONS to all of the graduates this year! Hope all of you got a really great cake to celebrate you, your hard work and your education! : )

Hugs!

C is for Cookie

Hello friends! It is only Tuesday and I already feel like it's Friday. A lot is going around here. The weather is bad, bad, bad; we are still trying to straighten our house out from being moved around so many times in the past week and by we, I mean ME; and this is also the time of the year where I help my Aunt Betty whip her yard back into shape. She is almost 90 and she is living by herself, doesn't want to go to Assisted living apartments just yet so every year for the past five years we would hang out mid-spring and get that beautiful yard of hers manicured and pruned... This is also a rough time for the husband. He is a teacher so work is stressful and everything is organized chaos with awards, graduation, spring productions, and add to that my husband wanting to up the pay scale and taking another job offer. So now, he is juggling doing the things he loves and the stuff he is sick of plus the stuff we are doing to our house. Even though we feel like plucking our eyelids off, I believe we are keeping a good balance between home and work [that's what I tell myself at least! lol]. : )

So yesterday, it was awards day where my Hubby works. To help him out, I wrote all the names in the certificates during the weekend. It was a lot but I knew I didn't miss to write anybody's name. I know those kids' names and I know them personally. I have worked on and off at his school in the past couple of years. It about gave him a heart attack when there were three kids that didn't get called up the stage because there was not a s certificate for them and one of the kids were almost in tears when all of her classmates have been called except for her! So Mr. Randolph had to do some serious damage control and  tell the truth that he actually didn't notice that there were three certificates he didn't grab as he was hurrying to the gym for the awards ceremony. I got a phone call immediately right after from him and I knew he was feeling really bad so I did some damage control myself. I didn't want him to leave them with bad memories, so I made these cupcakes and handmade cards for the three kids:

And here's my QUALITY CONTROL person:

Have a great rest of the week everyone! 

Hugs,

Things Have Just Gotten Even Better

Hey friends! I am still on a home reno coma... and I don't believe I will get out of this state until the new floors are installed in my living room. We are thinking about stepping it up and ripping the carpet out of the dining room too, so we will see. 

This has been such a great week. John has finally gotten out of the rut that he was in career-wise and found a new home for his overflowing energy and passion for music and the arts. The current job just isn't doing it for him anymore, and the fact that a lot of small schools have been going through very rough financial times was a great motivation. He felt like he had to move on and get an even better program... And he did! He got two out of the three places he sent an app to, which makes me ever so proud of him. He had to turn one offer down. This is a good problem to have in times where jobs are becoming so scarce. : ) So I have been having a very excited, hyper hubby all week. He is very very excited. And when he is happy, I am happy. 

I have been endlessly painting all week... and figuring out which of the stuff I want to keep and which ones go. Seems like since we have been doing our updates, the look of each room changes and some of the stuff that used to be there don't work like it used to. As I was realizing this, I was also trying to look for a way to think of ways to make up for the stuff I am possibly going to be eliminating in the room. However, I am loving the minimized look!!! So we may stick with that for a while. 

At around 3 PM today, I decided to take a break after I ran out of paint. Sat and watched TV for a while, and got to work in my craft room. Here are the finished products:

I love tone on tone cards. They are simple but very pleasing to the eyes! And of course I love this green cardstock from Paper Trey Ink. I forget the name of it... But I think this is my favorite among the greens that Paper Trey Ink have. I used a Basic Grey stamp set to stamp the background. I didn't have the matching ink, so I used Versamark Ink.

The patterned paper I used on this card didn't match the kraft cardstock I used [from Paper Trey Ink also]. But there is nothing impossible when you have distress inks on hand! I simply distressed the edges of the patterned paper and the cardstock too, and voila! They match! :)

Everyone have a wonderful rest of the week!!! 

Few Pics

Sorry friends, I can't find any before photos fast, but will post them soon as we finish the updates. : ) It has been fun so far. I have blisters on my hand from holding the paint rollers but I am so happy with the results.

The photo above is a picture of one side of our fire place. There used to be an open shelf there, but we took it out to replace it with a much better one. I painted my walls with Sherwin Williams paints in Samovar Silver and used Grays Harbor as an accent. They both come from the same swatch. The biggest challenge we have is trying to contain or tame the cords from the TV and the home theater system. We have a long living room, so putting the TV on top of the fireplace works except that hiding the cords is a huge undertaking. I think John has found a website to get the cord organizers and the other fittings that we need to contain all the wires. 

the furniture looks better with the paint color.

This is a portion of the dining room. We went with a creamy yellow from Sherwin Williams. It's called Hinoki. I like it better than the pinkish tan we first chose. Thank God for sample paint cans and we were able to change our minds quite a few times re the dining room color choices. Excuse the mess in the background. I took this while we were working on touch ups and wiring in the weekend so stuff were still sitting on chairs to keep them out of the way.

And here's my cat, Mr. Peapers. He can't wait to have his space back. He has punished me by waking me up and sitting on my face every morning. Guess he wants me to get up early so I can get the job done faster... The faster I get done, the faster he can get the peace back in his house. lol

Laterz!