Day 120 - Paintings for Will's Big-Boy Room

My best friend, Stacy has an adorable little boy named William and he just became a big brother, to a new little sister Caroline (I am going to meet her this weekend, so check back for more on that). To make room for the new baby, Will moved into a different room - his 'big-boy room.' And Stacy recently commented on the cute, simple paintings I did for my Godson & nephew Liam's room and hinted that Will could use something similar for his new digs. I was so excited that Stacy liked my other pictures enough to ask for something for Will - Now I had to figure out what to make.

Step 1. Buy a couple canvas's on sale

Step 2. Paint each canvas to coordinate with Will's new bed spread

(picture from Stacy's Facebook page - isn't he the cutest!)

Step 3. Decide what to paint on each one, this is where it got a bit tricky (it had to be something new to paint - for the purposes of this blog) . . . then Stacy called and said she was thinking of 4 canvas's - one for each of the 4 major 'boys' sports

Here's what I cam up with

BASKETBALL

BASEBALL

FOOTBALL

SOCCER BALL


I hope these paintings will add some fun personalty to Williams new room and that they last for a little while (he's almost 2 so I am sure damage is inevitable, but at least I had fun creating them, he he)

Day 119 - Get Your Groupon

Today, I joined the groupon website - they offer daily, reduced deals in many cities. The offer today was for 2 tickets to an imrpov show at a bar in town we like to go to anyway and the tickets are normally $12/ea. and I got them at $5/ea. - Awesome!

Plus when we actually go to the show it will be another first, win-win!

To join groupon for yourself CLICK HERE TO CHECK IT OUT.

Happy savings :)

Day 118 - Finished Floors & Sun Chips

Tonight our back porch floors got their last coat of sealer! They look so much better than before!! Next week we are going to repaint the trim and clean up all the furniture and very soon we will be enjoying our porch again, yipee! (Thanks Q for doing pretty much all the work on this!)

BEFORE

AFTER
Other Firsts: Sun Chips now come in a compost-able bag, that actually composts completely in 13 weeks (according to their advertising)

so we decided that this is a great thing and wanted to support them and we bought a bag. The chips are the same as usual but the bag was clearly different. It seemed pretty delicate and when you touch it, it crinkles like a piece of wrapping paper might (it is very hard to describe, so go to the store and check it out for yourself and better yet support them and buy a bag!)



Hooray for eco-friendly packaging . . . I really need to get my compost bin set up soon.

Day 117 - A Sweet little Onesie

Last week, I finished a second pair of booties.

Lots of our friends have babies on the way (and some that were just born!) so I figured I should keep making these and have them ready for gifts.

The booties are pretty cute but I decided just sending booties is not enough and tonight I made my a coordinating onesie to go with this yellow & pale pink pair.

Last night I took my booties with me and bought a couple different, fun fabrics, some iron on sewing adhesive and some needlepoint threads (not sure what the right word is for this stuff). I also bought some plain white onesies, got out my iron, a needle and some scissors and I was all set.

Tonight after my knitting group met, I got home & got to work (we had a pot luck for the end of our session until we will be meeting again in the fall and it was a really nice time).

First, I cut a small piece of fabric and sewing adhesive and attached one side of the adhesive to the fabric with my iron. (I just followed the instruction on the package)

Now that the fabric & adhesive was attached I could sketch a pattern, and cut it all out. I decided to free hand a music note because this set is going to some friends of ours who just had their first baby last weekend, a little girl and the new mommy was a music major in college & is a lovely singer.

Once it was all cut out I peeled off the other side of the adhesive and placed the music note onto the onesie. I set a towel over this and ironed it to set it in place.

I could of stopped here - it looked pretty adorable, but it was all yellow and the booties were pink & yellow so I kept going.

Next I took my thread and cut a long piece and then separated the strands and used 3 strands (there is a total of 6, but that seemed like too many for this project) to hand stitch around the music note

I stitched little 'x' stitches all the way around (this was the most time consuming part of the project and took about an hour - everything else only took 20 minutes). Also, I would like to point out that I have never taken a sewing class or been taught how to sew - so it is anything but perfect - however I do love the end result.

I used some card stock scraps, a hole punch, some ribbon and a safety pin to attach washing instructions to both the booties and onesie.

Then I was all set to package it up and send it off to our friends.

I loved this project - even the hand stitching around the music note, but next time I may try a sewing machine to ensure the image is secure and then maybe go back around by hand for a nice detail.

Day 116 - Green Thumb

Tonight I bought a new house plant. This is only my 2nd every house plant and I am hoping this one lives a much longer, happier life than the last one :)

We don't get a ton of light at our house, because there is a lot of shade from all the old trees, but I am going to do my best to keep this new addition to our home in front of the sun and to make sure he gets just enough water (not too much & not too little).

I brought the plant out to our almost finished porch for this little photo shoot

All the marker with the plant said was 'Assorted Foliage' . . . does anyone know what the name of this plant is? Please comment if you do, I am curious.


I really love having plants in the house and hope to get even more before too long!

Day 115 - Broadway Coffee

Today Quinn's family was all still in town so that we could celebrate our niece Talia's baptism. It was such a fun weekend to have everyone here, but we were pretty exhausted by the time this eveneing rolled around. So we decided it would be nice to do something low key and decided to go to a coffee shop and unwind a bit.

We looked online to find a new place to try and decided on Broadway Coffee & Roastery near Westport.


It was a charming place and we grabbed a small table next to a window which was nice. I ordered a white tea, that was made by 'mighty leaf' - which was another first. I loved the way it was served, the colorful sleeve made me smile :)

Quinn ordered an Italian Soda with hazelnut & cream that was made great (we have had a few bad experiences in the past) so that earned them some extra points in our book as well.

All-in-all it was a fun little spot to check out.

Day 114 - A New Toy Store and a Fancy Nancy Birthday Party

Today we had a very special & fancy birthday party to attend. Our 2 nieces, Rowan & Remi are turning 4 and they had a Fancy Nancy Birthday Party where everyone had to dress as fancy as can be.

Earlier today, to get ready for the party Q & I went to a great toy store to buy the gifts for the girls. It was called the Learning Tree and I can't believe we had never been before. They had a wonderful selection and wide variety of toys and it is only about 2 miles from our house, plus they gift wrapped for us.

Once we had our gifts ready we made a quick stop at U.S. Toy to buy some fancy accessories (Quinn got a white top hat & bow tie, a monocle and a cane. I got a glitter wand and some hand-fans)

*** Once I get a picture from my sister in-law I will add it ***

Here are some sweet pictures of our nieces and their fancy attire (before their wardrobe change . . . I think they all had on at least 3 different outfits a piece through out the night.)



Even our 8 month old godson, Callen participated in the fancy (here we put Quinn's hat on him) . . . although we can't guarantee he enjoyed it ;)

Day 113 - Conquered - The New Super Mario Brothers

Tonight Q & I won the New Super Mario Brother's game on our Wii :) It was so much fun and felt just as cool as when I was a kid and won any of the older versions of Mario! We got the game for Christmas and since then have played a level here and there in addition to 2 or 3 much longer Mario 'sessions'. Q is always Mario and I am the Yellow Toad.

I thought this would be a fun picture to share with this post

Q & I were Mario & Toad for Halloween last year . . . (complete with my homemade paper-mache toad hat and Mario-style blocks) even before we had our new Mario game for the Wii - I guess you can call it foreshadowing ;)

Now back to our big accomplishment of the day - Winning the New Super Mario Brothers game. Here is the a picture of the last castle . . . spooky

And here we are in one of our attempts to get past Bowser (it took us a few tries)

Once you knock the bridge out that Bowser is on (I am 'bubbling' so I wouldn't fall off the bridge too - by the way, 'bubbling' is a very technical term in this game). Once we got to this part it is revealed the princess is actually a decoy and you have to run through a few more obstacles with Bowser chasing & blowing fire from behind to get to the real princess.

(Q was bubbling at this point and I felt kind of bad after all our time together playing the game that Mario wasn't up on screen)

But that was short lived because in the animated celebration after saving the princess Mario get's all the glory


Once you save the princess a secret World 9 becomes available.

You have to have gotten all the big coins in every other world to be able to play each new world - which we had all of, except for World 8, so we still have some fun left with this game.

Day 112 - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle & COMPOST IT!

Happy Earth Day!

I got back in town tonight after a couple of longs days of meetings in Wichita, Kansas just in time for Q & I to go buy our first compost bin.

I have been wanting one for a while now and remember as a kid my dad had one he built in our backyard that I use to throw things in and thought it was so neat that things like banana peels and leftovers would eventually turn into soil.

Our first stop was Lowe's and I was surprised that the 1 model they had was sold out. I thought for sure Lowe's would have some different options. So we then set off to Ace Hardware where there was a tumbler available (which we had already decided was not the type of composter we wanted) and a cheap looking plastic box, that was over priced - to top it all off the guy who worked there was a complete jerk so we left and decided to take a break from our search and went to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner, Thomas.

we ordered a couple different things to share including this delicious meat, cheese & fruit platter. It was the first time we ordered this and it was so yummy.

One of the reasons we love Thomas is because of this guy

Vince Cook, a musician who plays just about anything you can imagine on the piano and sings along. Tonight wasn't very busy so he strayed from his regular play book (which is full of music ranging from the Beach Boys to Colbie Caillat to Afroman) and played some popular radio songs, like Miley Cyrus's Party in the USA - which was really funny.

When we got back home, full, relaxed & refreshed we did some online research for our compost bin and finally decided on the Compost Creator, which is about 120 gallons

Since we ordered it online we have to wait a week or 2 to actually get composting.

I am looking forward to all my home-grown soil to come :)

Day 111 - River City Brewing Co. & Kinkos by Email

I am traveling for work today and am in the lovely city of Wichita, KS. We took a client to lunch today and went to a new restaurant (at least for me), the River City Brewing Company. I ordered the macaroni & cheese, which was very good. There was also a macaroni & cheese pizza on the menu that I was tempted to try, but when I asked the waitress about it she basically told me it would be a ton of food for one person, so I passed (but I may have to make some macaroni pizza at home one of these days, it sounds interesting - plus I like macaroni and I like pizza so how could it be bad?)

Other Firsts: I worked most of this evening to try and get caught up after a busy day. One of the documents I had ready for a client meeting in the morning had some changes made that I needed to have printed - so I called a Kinko's near by and then sent them an email with the instructions. They just called me back to confirm everything and it sounds like we are all set. It was very simple (a little pricey), but I am glad to have the resource available and had a good experience of emailing Kinko's for an order.

Day 110 - Monchong (Pomphert) Fish

Tonight I worked late and then headed straight to a work dinner at 7, which didn't leave a lot of opportunity to do something new, so at dinner I skimmed the menu for something I had never had before and saw this
We we were at one of my favorite restaurants, Bristol so I knew I could trust trying something different there, plus the waitress described it as a light, white fish similar to sword fish, so I ordered the Monchong. After dinner I looked up the fish, and this is the image I found

The fish is caught around Hawaii and the way it was prepared tonight was delicious.

It was encrusted with a Macadamia nut mixture and served with an orange buerre blanc sauce and fresh berries with asparagus. It was a large portion but was so yummy I could of easily finished it all, but brought a little home for Quinn to try.

It's always nice when you order something new and it turns out to be a great choice :)