October 12 of 12: Birthday Edition!

Yup. October 12th was my birthday! It's a national holiday ya know. No, really it is. The Columbus Day holiday fell on my birthday this year as well. I had just came home the day before from a weekend scrapbooking retreat. People don't actually sleep at scrapping retreats so that extra day added on to that weekend was really great.

I was woke up in bed to a lit cake and singing. Cliff is usually kinda well... blah-hambug about birthdays, so this was a real surprise. It completely made my day. I cried, because it was so sweet and thoughtful of him.

Then, I had my day made even cheerier when I got an encore cake lighting and song from Dylan. He had been asleep the first time around. It's kind of funny, because in his sleep he said we got you a cake momma, it's a surprise. If Cliff hadn't done the cake-bit earlier, Dylan would have spilled the beans on that!

A very un-cool present above. Dirty laundry had piled up while me and the 2 boys were sick earlier that week. I had a severe sinus infection, Dylan had something awful that was like the flu but not the flu, and Sam *did* have the flu. Cliff washed all the laundry while I was gone on the scrapbooking retreat. At least it's clean. Even today, I still haven't got around to folding all of that.

He's kidding, he's kidding! Or is he? Hmmmmm. We have drove one another crazy with this bathroom. I'm to the point now that I'm not even giving out opinions or even really listening about it. I do have to say I am pretty proud of all the work Cliff has done though.

Here's a view of the bathroom. New, differently colored floor since last time is all put down. Pretty tile is all up too. I think grout will be getting done sometime this week.

Lots of birthday calls from my family. My mom and stepdad called from my grandma's that shows up on the phone the first time. Miss Mae is the feisty, old lady that lives behind my grandma that has known me since I was a baby.

I gave Sam his bath. That's one of the things I exclusively do, because I'm picky about how it is done. Sam has horrendous allergies and bad eczema. The doctor only has me bathe him once or twice a week to avoid drying out his skin so much. I've been buying natural soaps and a body wash from OsayinHolistics that have calendula with no dyes or fragrances that have helped tremendously. After that, I cover the boy in Aveeno lavender lotion. I have no idea why that doesn't break him out but other Aveeno products do.

Sam is getting so big. He's 8 months old now! Wow! He is now sitting in the big boy side of his tub. Sam has started to like his baths more since he has started splashing. It's funny when he tries to grab the bubbles that are on the water's surface before they pop. He gets so confused when they pop. It's really cute.

Here's the mandatory self-portrait. Oh and hey, you can finally see the haircut I got last month somewhat in the picture too. Okay, well not really, but it's about 2 inches below my chin. Exactly long enough to still pull back so Sam won't eat it.

This is my cat Princess. She's gone by the name Prin-Prin since Dylan could talk, because it was easier to say. She is 5 years old. I got her as a baby kitten the same week I got married. She is very shy and snooty. So much so that she was originally named She-rah, but I knew that wasn't gonna work because of her prissy attitude. She hates Cliff for some unknown reason to us. This is the best picture I could get of her even remotely looking up.

Woohoo! A birthday card! My mother-in-law and father-in-law came by to hand off my present. They had missed The Amazing Race the night before on t.v. and we still had it recorded so they also came by to watch that during their visit.

Here's Rick giving Sammy some belly kisses. I don't think I have ever seen a man as infatuated with babies as Rick. It's quite endearing to watch.

Here's a new little obsession of mine. It's called Monopoly City Streets. It's a free game and works using the maps of the entire world. You can go and buy any street on Earth. I own a lot of the main streets here in my hometown. For some reason or other, I have enemies from Spain that like to put factories on my streets. I never did anything to them, but 4 of them have decided to target me!

I ended the night by giving in and watching Dylan play the new Halo. He wasn't playing online with other real players thank goodness, because the boy would shoot the same bad guy 20 times and run out of ammo instantly. He kept killing himself with his own grenades too. I had a great birthday. I enjoy low-key and lazy days. :)

September 12 of 12: Good Golly Super Late Edition

Erm, oops! At least I remembered to take the pictures right?! September's 12 of 12 was something awful. Let us start with this photo:

Yup, the a/c is out. Thankfully, our nice neighbors let us borrow their window unit. I think unless you live in Georgia you don't totally get the big deal of not having central air. The humidity is always about 90-100%. We live right off the fall line, so it's like where former swamp lands used to be. Even in September, the temperature was still around 95-100 degrees. You have to have central a/c. Even people in trailers, even people in one room shacks in the ghetto have central a/c in our part of Georgia.

I started my day off with a little sudoku and coffee in the Kimberly mug. I didn't learn how to play sudoku until I got Brain Age for the Nintendo DS. I would get frustrated with it on a screen, because sometimes I would accidently touch something and screw it all up. I love having sudoku in pencil and paper form.

I think you can see the sweat matted on Dylan's hair here. He ended up going to Cliff's mom's to escape the heat of our house the rest of that weekend, so this is the only photo I got of the fella. He had fallen asleep on a pallet on the floor the night before watching cartoons.

Here's Sam, happy and cheerful as usual. He had just ate some sweet potatoes. Still not much hair. His eyes aren't really blue, but for some reason showed up that way in this photo.

This is about round the time I started feeling bad. I don't even know how to explain it. It was like flu symptoms without the actual cold and cough part. Then you add in the sweltering heat I had sat in earlier that week as well and I was miserable. I had some of my shows dvr-ed and watched Project Runway. Tim Gunn can make anyone happy.

Cliff was in and out the entire day. I didn't really ever see him between doing the a/c, doing the bathroom renovation, and going back and forth to Lowe's. Here, you can see he had got one wall of the bathtub wall up and tiled. It's slowly coming along.

So still feeling awful, I got in bed the rest of the day and Sam was off-schedule anyways to the point I didn't care about fixing it. So um, this is my self-portrait for the month. I probably slept about 12 hours of that day.

My brother, Lacey (girlfriend), and one of her friends all decided to come wake me up to play the new Halo. Yes, even in the heat. I was pretty annoyed at first, but I cheered up pretty quickly. My brother is hilarious and I wanted to know about how Lacey was feeling. She's pregnant if I haven't mentioned that before somewhere on the blog. I'll be an auntie sometime at the end of March-ish.

Cliff popped in a few pizzas for us all.

One of those things that annoy me to high heaven is when other people load the dishwasher. I won't mention names. Do not try and tell me that stuff is clean with dirty water filling those gladwares halfway.

Here is the beginning of the granny square blanket I am making for my future niece or nephew. I chose green and purple, because I figured that would be gender neutral enough. I didn't want to wait to find out the sex, because I knew I wouldn't be anywhere near finished if I didn't start on it right then and there. Here's my little piles of squares completed so far.

August 12 of 12

This was a weird month to document. Dylan is preschool now, so it's just me and Sambo at home looking at one another waiting to go pick him up. I really don't know what to do with myself without Dylan during the day.

There was a picture of a grumpy Cliff and Dylan getting ready in the morning, but um, it got erased. The mornings are smoother NOW, but on the 12th, we were still settling into the new morning routine with Cliff and Dylan. The moment they left, I found one of my favorite and perkiest looking mugs, filled it with coffee, and sat on the back porch for a bit. I can sit out there in the morning just drinking coffee, looking at the woods, and petting the dog for about an hour if you'd let me. It's my happy way to wake up.

Mandatory self-pic. Me and Wilson. He is always so hyper in the morning to see people. I really think he needs a buddy-dog since Chance ran off.

It had rained off and on. Mushrooms were popping up everywhere. I'm pretty happy with this picture!

Taking photos of items to sale in my etsy shop. Dontcha just love my professional studio set up? LOL Just to giggle even more, that chair is a kid sized spongebob chair.

Woohoo! It's 2:20! I can just say to Sam, "wanna go get brother?", and he gets all excited and smiley. Well not in the picture. The red-eye prevention light on the camera kinda freaked him out.

Picking up the munchin. I was exactly on time, but everyone else had got their kids at 2pm! Poor Dyllie-boo was sitting there alone for 30 minutes looking glum when I came in the door. He smiled in this picture only because I promised him candy from CVS.

Super sunny out, hence the squinty eyes, but got the two boys to pose for me next to the school's fence before we drove away.

The rest of the night involved Cliff and Dylan on the Wii. We got Punch Out and them two get pretty aggressive playing it. Oh, but hey! Notice the walls aren't orange? We are in the middle of scraping and peeling it off in the living room. 2 walls down, 2 more to go.

I guess this one can speak for itself, eh? BTW, Bitch Away is a natural soothing oil that helps with cramps and PMS I got from OrionStars on Etsy. Happy, yet annoyed he even mentioned it, Cliff says it works in nicer words for you blogosphere people.

Still not done with the bathroom renovation. If you look at last month's 12 of 12, you'll see there has been some progress. The tub walls got plastic behind them and I got a floor down. Well, sorta. He screwed that up as well and did the wood pieces vertical instead of horizontal and we ran out about a foot at the door well to finish it off. Growl!

Savvy N Sassy August Ribbon Kit Creations

I got the Henry's Brilliance August Ribbon Kit to create with this month from SavvyNSassy. Tons of blues, so you know I was happy! BTW, these ribbons were grouped together to coordinate with the new Nikki Sivils papers.

Look at that! A layout! I'm trying to catch up on scrapping the pics from the 12 of 12 project I'm participating in. This is my first time using Thickers too. Gasp, I know, right?! Close-up of my embellishment cluster below. :)I got these embroidery hoops at a flea market, even though I don't do embroidery or cross-stitch. I'm liking how this came out. I call it faux embroidery! I used a thinner patterned paper that somewhat looks as though it could be printed aida cloth. Traced around a chipboard "S" letter for Sam trying to make the lines look like stitching. I added the threaded needle to make it more realistic. Mission accomplished?
Dylan gets Highlights magazine and every month there is some sort of pull out craft. Since it's just flimsy magazine paper though, it never holds up well. So I cut it all out and made a front and back chipboard cover from cereal boxes and surprised Dylan with this when he got home from school. He was thrilled!
Here's a little whimsical journaling spot I paper pieced like crazy. This is one of those things that no matter how hard you try to take a photo, it just looks better in person.
Don't shoot me for creating this Christmas journaling spot in the middle of Summer, mmkay? :) The Santa is actually pop-dotted from the blue snowy background behind him. Looks really neat in my opinion. I'm still a newbie at coloring in stamps, but Stickles always help to make things look better!
Here's a Halloween card done up in non-traditional colors. I'm happy with how it came out. It also felt good to create something so satisfying from my beloved Love Elsie paper stash. Pop-dotted paper-pieced Pink Paislee skull stamped image too. {Say that 3 times fast.}
Thanks for looking! Check out SavvyNSassy for this awesome ribbon kit. They also have all Gel-a-tin stamps on sale til Friday!

July 12 of 12: Super Belated Edition

Everytime I would go to upload these pictures, I would either have dead batteries on the camera or get interrupted by the two boys. So, a week late, but not a dollar short. Here's my July 12 of 12. :D

We are in the middle of some major home renovation and doing it all ourselves. This bathroom was completely gutted, I mean completely! No sheetrock, no tub, no toilet, no floor. Here's our progress so far. The truly sad part is that Mr. Cliffy forgot to put up the plastic sheeting under the wall, so is gonna have to re-do all of this.

Almost everyday I call my Mommy. We talk for about 30 minutes. She is the only person I don't mind talking on the phone to. I was updating her on bathroom renovation situation.

Little Sambo is getting so big and playful now. His favorite thing on his exersaucer is that blue thing in the right hand corner. It moves and has a lion face on it. He's eating baby food now by the way. He's tried a lot and the only thing he hated was peaches. But because of his rashes, I'm starting all over on introducing all foods to him to figure out if something he is eating is causing it all. Good thing he loves his bananas and rice cereal, because that is all he is getting for now!

It truly isn't as messy in the house as this photo looks. We only have wooden floors throughout the house, so for Sam to get tummy time I have to make a huge thick comfy pallet of blankies. Dylan had been looking forward to this new episode of Fairy Odd Parents for a while and I recorded it for him. It was the Anti-Poof one with the bad fairy baby. Dylan and Sam will cuddle and play like this for hours, makes me smile.

My dorky husband {sorry Cliff, but you know you are} bought all these goggles for doing the house renovation stuff. Dylan ganked 2 pairs and we played pretend together.

We were pretending we were swimming under water. This is Dylan being a "diver man". I was a mermaid by the way. :D

Hmmm... can you tell these two guys are related? This is Cliff and his Dad. Rick and Cindy came over to visit the boys for a wee bit. I tend to kinda keep Sam to myself and they were missing him.

Sundays are a good t.v. night for us. We are so glad Big Brother is back on for the summer. So far, Casey is my fave.

So maybe I'm not the perfect mommy, but Dylan sleeps on the couch about, ummm, 96% of the time. {like my degree in Statistics there?} It's pretty cute. He had me tuck him "up" and passed out in about 2 seconds.

Cliff got a hankering for birthday cake. I'm always game for birthday cake. Well he went to Kroger and all they had out was cupcakes, so we made-do. They were waaaaay too frosting-ly.

Yeah, I know a horrible blurry picture. Every time I went to take a picture, the characters would change on the screen. Anyhoo, I love True Blood. Since Dylan was asleep, I actually got to watch it on Sunday! I usually have to wait because of all the nakedness on the show. Hot damn Jason Stackhouse! I think Sookie is about dumb though and Bill is not my favorite. I love the Sam story-line the best I think. {and for the record, I read/watched this series after my Sam was born!}

I'm sure the neighbors just love us for this one. This is what happens when you're tearing your house up. We have the old fashioned powder blue toilet in the bathroom in my bedroom, so this cream one will soon replace that one.