Friday Five!

Happy Friday!
Today I'm linking up with Christina, April and Natasha for Five on Friday!

 We had the hard-wood floors in the new house re-finished this week and I am so in love with them!! They did an amazing job! It's so hard to believe that move in day is a week from tomorrow! I can't even begin to describe how excited we are. This has been 8 very long months in the making!

 

 I found this tea towel here on amazon for our new kitchen that I really want to get. It would go along with my mason jar theme. It's so cute!

 I'm a chap stick-a-holic! I love chap stick and where it constantly. I have chap stick in my purse, at my desk at work, all around at home and keep it on all day long. Yet, my lips were still getting dry and chapped. :-( So my mom told me that e.l.f. had a lip exfoliator, so I thought I'd give it a whirl for only $3. It works wonders! I paired it with Burt's Bees moisturizing lip balm and my lips have never been so shiny and smooth! :-) My lips are definitely thanking me.

Avery is all about babies right now. She just adores her new baby cousin Emerson!

 And last but not least, don't forget to enter to win a free 16x20 canvas from Canvas Factory. You can enter here on my blog at this link. You have until next Tuesday, Feb. 2nd to enter.

Have a GREAT weekend!!!

Basket of Sunshine

A close family friend and member of our church recently had surgery. To help brighten her day and cheer her up, my mom, sister and I put together a little Basket of Sunshine for her to help her on the road to recovery. 

We each did some shopping last week and picked out a few items that we thought she would like. All items were yellow or had yellow on them to go with the "sunshine" theme. The get well soon card I found even had a sunshine on it! 

Here's what our basket looked like along with a list of what we put in our basket. :-) She loved it and said it did brighten her day. 

They were all just simple items you can find at any Walmart, Target or Walgreens.



**Don't forget to Enter to Win a Free 16x20 Canvas from Canvas Factory here on my blog. You have until next Tuesday to enter!**

Canvas Factory Review and Giveaway

You all know how much I love photography and displaying photos in my home, so I'm very excited to review a 16x20 canvas print from Canvas Factory today!

Canvas Factory contacted me a little while back to see if I'd like to review a canvas here on my blog. I didn't hesitate to say yes. I just love decorating my home with canvas prints. We had just gotten a new family picture taken so it was perfect timing. I went onto their website and quickly and easily uploaded my picture. Their website was very user friendly!! You're able to position your picture right onto the canvas to see how your canvas will look. They have several styles and sizes to choose from and three different shapes (square, rectangle and panoramic). The size I'm reviewing is a 16x20 which is a great size for a gallery wall.

I was very pleased with the quality of the canvas. I am always a little worried when I order from online stores. You never really know what kind of quality you're going to get, but I was pleasantly surprised with the quality from Canvas Factory. It was a high quality 360GSM canvas stretched across a 1.2" frame ready to hang! 

Canvas Factory has also offered to let me giveaway a free 16x20 canvas to one of my lovely readers! 

You can enter the giveaway using the rafflecopter below!!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Q and A with Jackson

Facebook has had this little Q and A floating around where, without any prompting, you ask your child these 14 questions and post what their answers are. I thought it might be fun to see what responses Jackson would give so last night I asked him the questions and posted the results. His answers were so cute that I thought I'd share them here on the blog so I can keep them forever and ever! 

Jackson: Age 4

1. What is something I always say to you? "I love you"! (This answer melted my hear and gave me some encouragement that I'm actually not doing too bad of a job as a parent. He knows I love him and that makes me so happy!)

2. What makes me happy? "Don't Yell" (I'm assuming he meant when he's being a good boy and I don't have to yell at him.)

3. What makes me sad? "You don't want to go to work." (Meaning it makes me sad to have to leave him and Avery and go to work.)

4. How do I make you laugh? "Scare Me" (He means when we're just playing around and I come up behind him and say, "boo".)

5. What was I like as a child? "I don't know, like Emerson."(Emerson is his new baby cousin.)

6. How old am I? "41"(Not the answer I was hoping for, ha.)

7. How tall am I? "1590" (He has no idea about feet and inches yet, ha.)

8. What is my favorite thing to do? "Rock Avery" (I do love special time rocking Avery to sleep, but it's funny that's what he chose.)

9. What do I do when you're not around? "Go to the Store"

10. What am I really good at? "Reading stories to us and changing diapers." 

11. What am I not very good at? "Building"(He's probably referring to the castle that he and I tried to build together with legos and I failed pretty miserable at it, Ha.) 

12. What do I do for a job? "Work on the "puter" (a.k.a. computer)."

13. What is my favorite food? "Bread"(Well I do love bread, ha.)

14. What do you enjoy doing with me? "Fixing legos and playing games."

**(Be sure to stop by the blog next week for a free Canvas Give-away!!!)**

Kitchen Update

 I thought I'd give you guys a little kitchen update to hold you over until I can give a full blown house update soon. We have come so far from the last time I updated you all. We are planning to move in the first weekend in February (So just about 2 1/2 weeks away). I can't tell you how excited I am! There is still quite a bit of work left to do, but we are just about at a point to where we can at least move in now and then work on the rest as we have the time and money to do so. The kitchen is just about done, which was the most time consuming and expensive room of the house. It was the one room I definitely wanted to get done before moving in so that we wouldn't have to live through a kitchen renovation with 2 small children. I'm so happy my dad was able to do all the work and we were able to rent a condo from a friend to make this possible. We only need to add base-boards and back-splash to finish it up!!

Here are a few before and after pictures of the kitchen.

Before - Walking into the kitchen from the entryway.

After

Before - The main cooking area of the kitchen.

 After

 Before - The opposite side of the kitchen and the stairs.

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before - The hall from the entryway to the kitchen/stairs.

After

 The hardwood floors upstairs are being re-finished next week and then the baseboards can go down and the new interior doors can go in. At that point, we'll be ready to move in for the most part. The walls have all been painted in the bedrooms and my Dad has been working tirelessly to get things finished up. We are on the downhill slope for sure! I plan to do a full house update post once we are at least at the point of moving in. I will list where we purchased things and post a lot of before and after pictures. It doesn't quite seem real to be this close to moving in!!! We couldn't be more excited!

Such a Sweet Little Valentine

This past Sunday, I got together with my sister for a little Valentines Day photo session with my new baby nephew Emerson! We had so much fun! Surprisingly, he was very cooperative with all the ideas we had for him. :-) He was a great sport. 

Here are a few of our favorites!

(My mom crocheted this "kisses" hat! Isn't it the cutest?)

(I just love his smile. This is probably my favorite from the entire session.)

(I just love his facial expression in this image. He's looking at us like, "you people". Ha)

All About Avery

I haven't done an update on Avery in a while, so I thought I'd write a little post all about our sweet and spunky girl.

Age:
20 Months Old

Size: 

24 pounds

Clothing: 

You are mostly wearing 24 month clothes right now and they all seem to fit you pretty well.

Shoe Size: 

You wear a 5 or a 6 size shoe.

Diapers: 

Size 4

Teeth:

I believe you have 16 teeth.

Hair/Eyes: 

Your hair keeps getting lighter and lighter. It's a very light brown color with lots of adorable curls in the back. I've been able to get it into pig-tails for a couple months now and it's absolutely adorable. Your eyes are a beautiful brown, just like your Daddy's and you are learning how to use your big puppy dog eyes to your advantage. ;-)

Sleep:

You generally go down for the night at around 8:30 or 9:00 and you sleep straight through the night for the most part. You may wake up and cry out a little occasionally, but you generally go right back to sleep within a minute or less. On a rare occasion I have to get up and rock you back to sleep, but thankfully it's not that often. You usually sleep until around 7:30 or 8:00 the next morning. You usually take a short nap in the morning and then a little longer nap in the afternoon. I'm thinking that morning nap may be going by the wayside soon.

Eat:

You don't eat much, but you do love a lot of different foods, you just don't ever really want to sit down to eat. You do like pizza, grapes, french fries, apple slices, carrots, rice of any kind, sunflower seeds, macaroni, chips and cheese and crackers to name a few of your favorites.

Favorite Toys:

You absolutely adore Minnie Mouse and Peppa Pig. You also enjoy playing with your new kitchen and your new Disney Princess Castle that we got you for Christmas.

Milestones: 

You are talking up a storm now, (more on that below) you have pretty well mastered going up and down stairs, and you have started showing interest in the potty!! For the last 2 weeks or so you've started showing a lot of interest in the potty. You will grab your diaper and say "pee" and then drag us to the bathroom with you. We take your diaper off and sit you up on the potty but you never actually go... that is until this past Saturday morning (Jan. 9th) when you surprised me by actually going pee in the potty!! I was so excited and proud of you and I was sure to make a huge deal about it. You haven't gone since, but you keep wanting to try and I am very excited about your enthusiasm about potty training. You're definitely not ready for potty training yet, but I'm thrilled that you're excited about it and I'm hoping this is a good sign that potty training you will be easy when you're really ready to start.

Vocalizing:

Right after getting your ear tube surgery in November (which was a great success by the way), you started talking a whole lot more. Pretty much just within a few days of your surgery you started saying words you had never even tried to say before. It was pretty remarkable! Poor thing must not have been hearing clearly, which we were concerned about. You are picking up on new words and even short sentences all the time now! It's so stinking cute! You will try to say just about anything now and I'm so proud of you for the progress you've made in such a short period of time.

Personality:

You are Miss Personality! You have so many facial expressions and use your eyes to say so much! It's so cute! You are a good mix of sweet and sassy! You do have a little bit of a temper though (which we are working on) and you aren't very good at sharing with your brother (we're working on that with him too). However, you can be so so sweet as well and you are most definitely a Momma's girl. :-) Patience is not your strong suite, but you come by that honestly. You love clothes, shoes, purses, make-up and hair bows. You are definitely a girly girl! You've shown a lot more interest in t.v. shows and movies lately. You sat on my lap the other night while we watched The Rescuers and you almost made it through the whole movie without wanting to get up. It was sweet snuggle time with you and I loved it since it doesn't happen very often.

So that pretty much covers you at 20 months old! You are so busy and changing every day! You are at such a cute and fun age. I love hearing all you're new words and short phrases and it's so exciting to watch you learn and grow! I love you to the moon and back baby girl! 

  Love, 

Mommy - xoxo

For the Love of Legos!

Jackson has a new found love for legos. Our pastor's wife at church got the kids a set to play with and every Sunday after service, they go straight to her office to play while we fellowship. It works out great! 

So for Christmas, Walmart was having a big sale on Black Friday on a large box of assorted legos that we decided to get Jackson for Christmas. I knew he would love them, but I don't think I realized just how much. 

He has not stop playing with them since Christmas morning. It's ALL. THE. TIME! From the time he gets up, until the time he goes to sleep... if he's home, he's playing with legos. They keep him very busy, which is great for me too!! I am looking forward to when we move and he can have his own room to play with them in, instead of our dining room table, but regardless I'm really happy with his new hobby!

He got a gift card to Toys R Us for Christmas so I took him there this past weekend and he got another set of legos. A "Cars" set. We also stopped by Walmart and got him a big tote with a lid that he can keep them all in. 

He's always so proud of all the things he can build with his legos and I'm really impressed with what he can build as well. I love seeing his imagination come to life. He can look at the pictures on the box and put that object together without any instructions!! 

Maybe he'll be an architect someday, or maybe it's just a lego phase, but nonetheless, he's having so much fun with his legos and I'm really happy with the developmental skills legos provide. We are loving legos at our house!!

Our First Snow of the Season

We had the first accumulative snow this past Saturday. We didn't get much, in fact some parts of St. Louis didn't get any at all. We were "lucky" enough to get about a half inch or so... just enough to put a nice thin blanket on the ground. Thankfully, it didn't even stick to the sidewalks or the roads. :-) 

To say Jackson and Avery were excited to see it snowing, would be an understatement. Jackson really wanted snow for Christmas, but it was in the 50's here for Christmas. I wasn't complaining but I know he really wanted a White Christmas. So needless to say, a 10-15 minute play date, with what little snow we got, was definitely in order.

I bundled the kids up and took them over into a big open field right across the street from our condo building. There was plenty of room for them to run around and throw snowballs!

We had a lot of fun with the little bit of snow we got. It was just the right amount in my opinion. Ha. :-)