Christmas Time!

So I was going to do this like 2 weeks ago, and the night I went to make this entry, is the night my computer decided to stop working. So now I am going to do a quick post and then sometime either this weekend or next week I will put up another one with all the rest of it!

Thomas bought me a Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar.

This is by far the coooolest thing everrr! haha

He loves to play into my inner geek.
I have never had an advent calendar,
my family has never been very religious or anything,
so I never really knew what they were until I was older.

Im pretty excited every day opening it.
I cannot wait until the entire thing is opened and I can play with them all.
Yup at 25 I am going to play with my lego star wars.

 

SO MUCH FUN!!!

He ripped the front cover off of it so I could not see what they were.

HAHA

He is awesome.

Here is day #1

It is so much fun to play with!

HAHA. More updates on the calendar soon!

xoxo
Heather

Terrific Pins Tuesday!!

Well it is Tuesday again so we know what that means!

I finally got my computer back
$244 later. . . .
I am trying to figure out if it was worth that much money still
haha
I do have a brand new screen,
new keyboard,
new mouse pad and button,
and new plastics around the keyboard and screen.

It looks very very nice,
but holy cow was that a lot of money.

But enough of that.

On to todays pins!!

I cannot even remember what I posted last week, haha

Today is almost all crafting ideas.
I clearly have a lot of work to do in not a lot of time haha.

 

Stocking tutorial.

Thomas and I still don't have stockings yet.

Fail

From diaryofaquilter

 

Water color paints from markers

Great idea!

From Amanda at Finding my Marbles

 

Wine bottle lamps

I thought these looked pretty neat,

and I deff have enough wine bottles haha

from craftisart

 

How to Laminate with an Iron

This is good to know and saves me from buying a laminator

from ehow

 

I love this outfit

Super expensive on polyvore

Inexpensively recreated in my closet.

I just need to start buying some cute boots!

And this is all from me for today
xoxo
Heather

Mary here! Last week was crazy for me - office Secret Santa, office holiday party, boss in town, graduation party, etc. I thought this week would be calmer - but oh my gosh, is that CHRISTMAS that is only a week and a half away?! I have the materials for a bunch of different gifts - but they are not in the pretty wrapping stage quite yet.

This weekend will be Santa's workshop at our apartment. 

 

From eighteen25

My father-in-law always insists he doesn't want anything for Christmas and we all fight him for suggestions until about 3 days before Christmas. NOT THIS YEAR. This year he will be getting coal. And I think he will be perfectly happy with that - as the coal is actually rice krispy treats.

 

I found this tutorial on my new favorite blog Put Up Your Dukes

I love her style of writing and she's so crafty too! I'm thinking this might be a gift idea for next year. There is far too much on my plate for the next 2 weeks!

The next pictures are ideas for Christmas cards/photography tips. I have fantastic ideas about how our future children will photograph - but I have a feeling they might be more like blurs or go through that "won't look at the camera phase" for oh- 10 years or so. But for now, my children will pose perfectly for pictures like these:

Til next week! ~Mary

Terrific Pins Tuesday

Well its that day of the week again!!

Heather here,
My computer broke the other day. . .
Right when I was going to make a post about the awesome Lego Star Wars advent calendar that Tom got me.
I was pretty mad.
So I took it to the Apple store where they informed me it could be 1 of 3 problems. .
The catch?
2 of them were under $40,
The last?
$260. . .
Guess which one it is. .
Oh yeah the expensive one.

So today I bring you your pin update from my work computer.
And by work computer I mean. . .
The computer that belongs to the parents of the kids I nanny for.

Better than nothing I guess.

So here goes.

I found this hilarious.

I have done several projects I found on Pinterest,

but this would make it so much more worth it.

haha

Paper Mache letters.

Apparently this one is made out of a cereal box.

Go figure.

Thrift store sweaters,

cut the arms off

attach to normal socks,

or I guess make your own socks with them.

Then you have stylish boot socks

cute!

I love this idea,

wish I had thought of it A LONG time ago.

Its sand from all of their vacations.

I think its neat to see the differences in the sand from the different areas of the world.

This womans blog has everything you need to know to start couponing.

Best part. . .

I printed a coupon off it for brownie mix yesterday,

my store doubled it,

so I got a free box of brownie mix :-D

I had to make them for a birthday!

And this is what I leave you with today. . . .

Mary's will be added!

xoxo

Heather

Terrific Pins Tuesday!!

Better late than never I guess!

Haha, today was a little different than my typical Tuesday, so now I am trying to catch up.

Here are your pins for today. . .

 

 So it took a lot of searching through my pins but I decided on a theme for this week.

Fall outfits,

and the Gorgeous jewelry to go with them.

 

I wore an outfit like this today

 

UGH SWEATERS!!

I need more of them!

 

I love this heart necklace

 

One of the best sayings ever!!

 

Love love love this ring.

And that is all for today

xoxo

Heather

Mary here - I had a completely different set of pins in mind yesterday, but I kept getting distracted and never finished my post! Which turned out to be a good thing because when I woke up this morning - I had a new theme in mind - Christmas gift inspiration! With just a little over 3 weeks left until Christmas (eek!), this weekend is completely devoted to completing all Christmas shopping and assembling all the cute pinterest ideas I thought would be easiest. We will see. Also- my office Secret Santa starts next week, so I need to have everything ready!

 

While my parents were in town for Thanksgiving last week, mom and I went to a craft fair. I had been to this particular craft fair the first year we were in Florida, when I was feeling a bit homesick for cooler weather and my mom and aunt were preparing to go to Christmas Village (link: www.christmasvillage.org). It's basically a Nashville must-do for the holiday season. The fairgrounds are FILLED with craft booths. It's amazing. I was hoping for something along those lines when I went to the craft fair at the Florida fairgrounds. It's not as large a show as the one in TN, but it definitely helped me get into the Christmas spirit - and I found the most adorable Florida ornament. Which brings me to the point of this backstory...the first theme for Secret Santa this year is an ornament. Perfect. I should mention that the temperatures have been in the 80s the past week - and this week we are having a "cold snap"...with temperatures in the high 60s. :)
 

 

My brother and sister-in-law's anniversary is a couple of days after Christmas, so for this year, I decided to make this "movie gift." I had been talking to Brittany earlier this year about how they never get to go out to the movies because it's just so expensive! Then I found this idea - a movie theater gift card, with snacks! I think we'll include their favorite movie snack and drink in these popcorn boxes I found at amazon!

 

I think these cookies in a jar are too cute...I just need someone to make them for! Is it still a gift if they have to mix it up themselves and bake it? I would love something like this - but it's hard to judge how other people will feel. I have seen several different versions of this recipe- but this (Via) one is for a pint sized jar and makes 6-8 cookies. Perfect for a couple.

 

I admit, this recipe (Via) makes something like 120 pieces of fudge so my primary purpose in making this might be to make fudge for us. Because you have to taste test these things...right? 

I love the smells of Christmas - Christmas trees, baking cookies, and potpourri! And how great would it be if you just had to empty the contents of this jar (Via) onto your stovetop and add water?!

Christmas is seriously my favorite time of the year. Can't wait to get all these ideas going this weekend! Plus Santa will be doing some wrapping so my sneaking husband won't find his presents...

Happy Holidays! ~Mary

Birthday Cakes!

So I was tasked with making Baby J's first birthday cake.

Instead of doing one big baby themed cake I split it up.
I did a fall themed cake,
and a personal little cake for J to bust into.
The little one was supposed to be cookie monster, which it looks like,
it was just bigger than it probably should have been and kinda looks deranged.
haha

But here it is.

 

E and B are very partial to Funfetti

So I used it.

B says he likes it better than my home made cake.

Kids!

 

For B's birthday there was an entire oreo layer.

So we used these for filling this time.

 

Layer 1 was orange

 

Layer 2 was red!!

 

I made Big messes

 

Very very big messes

 

Fondant!

 

I was going to swirl them together for the top of the cake.

But

 

They mixed together instead.

At least they made a nice brown color instead of poop brown.

 

Cookie monster!

 

I didn't have enough room for birthday.

Next time. . bigger cake

 

Starting my tree

 

Home made chocolate frosting for the tree. .

Super easy AND delicious

 

Like I said. 

He kinda looks deranged.

 

Finished CAKE!

3 days of hard work and a little bit of screaming and crying later. (I was not crying)
Friday the kids had a half day,
So I had 4 of them here while doing this.
Yes I was doing quite a bit of yelling.
Oh well.

The day ended well.

I went home and had a few beers.
Fixed the toilet
And went to bed.

Exciting huh? haha

Xoxo
Heather

Guitars and Stars

Here in Rochester we have our local country station, 92.5 WBEE. Twice a year they put on a show called Guitars and Stars, once in the spring and once in the fall. I have never been to it before, well until this week. This was our first one, and it was awesome!

Proceeds benefit the Ronald McDonald house, which is awesome. Who does not love helping out a charity. And the radio station gets a bunch of acts to come up, sit on stage all together, tell stories, sing us a bunch of awesome songs. All for $25.00. Cant get better.

This falls Line-up was;
1.The beautiful Trent Tomlinson
2.Gloriana
3.Chris Cagle
4.The Jane Dear Girls
5. James Wesley
and the wonderful host
6. Neil McCoy

My camera, as we have already seen, is not the greatest. Plus we were on the floor so I was trying to take pictures over peoples heads. haha. But its all good I got to take some anyways!

 

This is right as they start calling artists up

They started with Trent Tomlinson

 

Then The Jane Dear Girls

Followed by James Wesley

 

Then Gloriana

 

Chris Cagle and Neil McCoy came up last

 

 

Hehe Tom would kick me if he knew I posted this on here.

Doesn't he look so awesome?

He hates when I take his picture in dark places.

hehe

So that is what we did for our date night this week.
It was a great time.

Sometimes he surprises me.

Tom that is. .

This morning I had extra time so I dropped him off some banana bread at work. Hes a paramedic and as soon as I got there they had to go on a call. So I left an came to work. Well he just so happened to have to take his patient to the closest hospital to where I work, and came to say hi before going back to the base :-D

So cute. E got all sorts of excited.
I was in the kitchen and I hear
E: What the. . . . .TOMS HERE!!!!
So I walk out of the kitchen to see the big red ambulance sitting in front of the house and his wonderful face walking to the door :-)

All because he did not get to say goodbye before going on the call :-)

sooo lucky <3

Look for another post either today or tomorrow.
Im finishing baby J's cake today!!

xoxo
Heather