Playing Baseball Under the Lights

Jackson's last game of the season with his Rangers team was this past Monday night. They got their medals before the game, which is always exciting. It was his first time getting to play an evening game under the lights! It was a nice evening to watch him play ball and as always, he did great!



Sunflowers!!

My sister and I met up at a local, public sunflower field this past Sunday evening to get some updated pictures of the kids. I had never been to a sunflower field before, but it was a dream of mine ever since I started my photography journey. Despite the fact that it was super hot and super crowded, we got some great shots and I'm excited to share them with you today.

Our main goal was to get a cousins shot which we were able to accomplish! After that we had some specific shots we wanted to get as well but anything else was just icing on the cake. We managed to get most of what we wanted, despite the sweat dripping down our faces and the bees trying to attack us! Ha. My nephew Emerson (red overalls) was the only one that gave us some trouble (terrible twos, ha), so unfortunately we didn't get an individual shot of him by himself, but we got just about everything else we wanted so that's pretty good. :-) I can't say that I blame him for not being too willing to cooperate. It was HOT!!



5 on Friday!

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

One

We got Jackson's baseball pictures back recently and he looks so handsome and grown up!

Two

Last week I happened to have my camera at work because I had a photo session in the city right after work and before I left for the day, there happened to be a rainbow and I was able to get a quick picture of it. So pretty.

Three

Last Saturday the weather was beautiful, so we took advantage of it and headed to Six Flags for the evening. We have season passes so we love to go out there and spend some family time together. They have their Mardi Gras Parade going on this month which was fun to see and the kids got a TON of beads! While we were there, Jackson asked if we could go to Hurricane Harbor sometime soon, which is the water park at Six Flags, so since I was off Monday, my Mom and I decided to take the kids there. We had so much fun both days!

The kids at Hurricane Harbor on Monday!

Four

We have an upcoming Disneyland trip planned for the last week in September so I ordered a few shirts for us for the 4 days that we'll be there.

These 2 are for Avery and I.

This one is for Jackson because he LOVES Space Mountain!

These two are for Jake and I. ;-)

Five
Mine and Jake's 11 Year Wedding Anniversary is tomorrow. :-) While we don't have an elaborate trip planned like last year, we are planning to spend a night out together. I can't believe it's been 11 years already. It's been a great 11 years and I am so happy to be sharing my life with Jake!

Our Updated Entryway!

I'm so excited to share a house update with you today that I recently finished. Our house does not have a grand entryway or anything like that, but I love it nonetheless and have had dreams of updating it ever since we bought our house 2 1/2 years ago.

When we bought our house in September of 2015, the entryway looked like this...

The entryway had a drab yellow paint on the walls (this was actually in the whole house), bad laminate flooring, a very old front door that had been painted numerous times, old closet doors and an old brass light fixture. It needed help to say the least... the whole house did back then.

So after buying the house, but before moving in, with the help of my dad we painted the walls a light gray, replaced the closet doors, the light fixture and we replaced the laminate floor to ceramic tile. Here's what it looked like when we moved-in in February of 2016.

Then once we moved in, we added the floor trim and it stayed like that until we eventually (in April of 2017) added a new front door and side-lights. My dad installed it and did all the trim work around it and it looked so much better, but still needed something inviting on the wall.



I'd been wanting to add a little entry-way table and a cute gallery wall for over it, but just hadn't found the time to do it. So finally I pulled the trigger and decided on this Better Homes and Gardens cube storage shelf for the entryway. It was ordered through wikibuy and I love it because it's cute and also provides much needed storage for us. It was the perfect fit for our small entryway and I love the rustic gray finish as well.

The baskets in the shelf are these from Walmart. I made the "be our guest" sign over a year ago at a "Mommy's Design Farm" party and had always planned to make it part of a gallery for our entryway wall. I'm so happy to have it hanging now. I had the digital watercolor picture of our house made from a local Etsy shop here in St. Louis called Laura Firestone Design. The other prints I made myself and just framed them. The frames are all from Walmart. The "hello" sign is from the Target dollar spot as well as the white pineapple candy dish. The candy dish came yellow with a green stem but I painted it white to better match the rest of the décor. The Pineapple sign on the wall and the "Welcome Home" sign are both from Hobby Lobby.

This is just a photo to show how the entryway flows into the living room/dining room.

This is a photo from the front door looking into the living room/dining room.



And because I always love a good before and after, here is our entryway before and after, side by side so you can see the difference.

4th of July 2018

I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July, I know we sure did. Minus the heat, it was a great day filled with great food, family, friends and fireworks!!

We had a huge pool party with close to 80 people. It was a blast! Everyone brought an appetizer/dessert. We ate and swam all afternoon and then when it started to get dark, we had a huge amount of fireworks for the kids (and the big kids, ha!) It was such a fun day!

I took a few pictures of our decorations before the party really got started and then a few once we started the fireworks. I had intended to get a picture of the pool all full of people, but I totally forgot. Boo!