Happy New Year!

We decided to toast at midnight in Florida so the Emster could get to bed...

Another Visit from the Tooth Fairy...

Emi lost another tooth this month! We're not sure this one was absolutely ready to come out, but she made Daddy yank it out anyway. My brave little girl!

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Please no, not yet! We're not ready! After getting Emi to bed rather late, ensuring that we left out a plateful of World Peace cookies and Silk Nog for Santa and exactly 9 baby carrots for the reindeer, Emi was up and at 'em at 4:29 am ready to open gifts. She burst into our room announcing that Santa had come (he must have JUST left), we inventoried the tree, read Santa's note about having to ship Emi's locker because it wouldn't fit on the sleigh, then went back to bed until a reasonable hour.

More Respectable Hour

I actually had to wake Emi up 3 hours later to open gifts. Needless to say we were draggin' around most of the morning...

Up on the Housetop?

PeePaw, MeeMaw and the Grandkids

...or not!

Made it to the "Nice' list...

It was unclear last week when Emi received a phone call from Santa if she officially made it to the "Nice" list. When I asked her about it she said she thought so because "Santa was talking nice to me".

Santa Babies...

Hallelujah!!

We have electricity!! When the Ice Storm came in on Sunday evening our neighborhood trees were devastated by the heavy ice forming so quickly. We lost power Monday at 3am and in the dark we listened to the crack, pop and crash of limbs falling to the ground. It was eerie and much like being in a Stephen King novel (specifically Lisey's Story). We had phone service until late Monday afternoon when our pine tree snapped and took the phone line down with it...

We were without power until Friday evening. Lucky for us we had my sister's house to go to the first night, then my parents' house for the next 3 nights. So we were warm and fed, but being displaced was no fun. Our dogs wondered what they had done wrong when they had to stay in the garage. I guess now they will be on their best behavior. ;.)

Coming home every day in the cold and the gloom of the weather that followed the storm was depressing when we were still without power. The routine became, come home in the morning to feed the cats and drop off the dogs, head to work, come back home after work to pick up the dogs and clothes for the next day, feed the cats and assess the situation. We were getting ready to head out to the lake on Friday evening when the power clicked on. Had we been running on time, we might have missed that.

Our neighborhood looks like a war zone. Sad to see so many of the old trees completely gone or missing much of their limbs. We were lucky that our neighbor's mostly dead Silver Leaf Maple tree didn't fall onto our house.

...

Gallery....

Ready for Photos

Scott mounted the Flipside Wall Frames (Crate & Barrel) onto the office wall and I must say, I just adore our new gallery!! Rich chocolate brown frames (on Baby Aqua walls) will soon be home to 18 photos for display. Four 4x6 photos and two 5x7 photos pivot on each wall mounted bracket. The easy part is done, now we have to decide which photos to display. We are thinking it would be cool to put only black and white photos in the frames... I'll post more pictures when that happens!

Whim-sical Bathroom

I got the nasty wallpaper down from our master bathroom and painted the walls a pumpkin-ish color (RL Villa Torlonia). Haven't replaced the vanity, but I did hang up my "Little Girl Gone" print from a.t. whim

TGIF

Thank God I'm Filipino! ;.)

Today I was feeling my Filipino pride listening to some "Jazzipino"
songs by Charmaine Clamor. So I started looking for a t-shirt to advertise my Filipino (half) pride and ran into some funny ones.

Read this out loud and you will know what it's like to hear my mom talk:

AYM BER BYUTIPUL
HU KERS IP AY
HABAN AKSENT

The Tooth Fairy Pays Us a Visit

Last night my sweet precious 5-yr old lost her FIRST TOOTH!!! She was a brave one letting Daddy dry off her loose tooth with a paper towel and then tug on it a few times until it came out.... no tears at all! The Tooth Fairy left Emi $2 which she found under her pillow in the middle of the night.

Turkey Day

Thanksgiving this year was a tender, wonderful time at my sister's house spent with our families (biological and created). We counted our many blessings, spent quality time with loved ones and chowed down on some really great food! Thanks to Deanna and Gabe (aka "Cool Guy") for hosting it this year and sending us home with excellent leftovers. The littlest one chowed down on the Rosemary Mashed Potatoes when we got home and washed them down with Silk Eggnog! Yummers!

Long Awaited Library...

We painted the living room walls a rich Ralph Lauren 'Tea and Sweets' (looks exactly like the "Sugar Cookie" color we had envisioned) and it was perfect in warming up the room. It's a subtle change from the flat beige that the walls were when we moved in, and it looks and feels really nice now. Our accent color (drapes, overstuffed rocking chair, etc) are a vibrant red, so we thought it would be okay to have a mellow color on the walls.

We've begun to organize books onto the shelves of our home library. Soon we will have some nice floor pillows and or bean bags for lounging...

Peace on Earth (or at least at our house)

Couldn't resist putting up a few Christmas decorations today...

Thanksgiving Blessings (Part 1)

We celebrated an early Thanksgiving at my folk's house because they decided to abandon us and go to Florida on Thanksgiving Day. It was nice to get that first gluttonous feast out of the way days before THE ACTUAL holiday just to get a trial run in.... The grandkids roped MeeMaw into whipped cream shots after Pumpkin Pie was served. Look at the grimaces on the guys faces in the background!







And Daddy is not one to be outdone...

Stuck in the 70's

It only took 2 years but we are finally sick and tired of the 70's vertical blinds in the bedroom and the floralie hell that is the wallpaper of our otherwise serene bedroom... We have begun the unlovely task of pulling down the paper...

Today we also ventured out to a furniture store in search of 2 matching bureaus to replace our hodgepodge dressers and we ended up leaving with the makings of our library...go figure! We should probably finish one project before moving on to another!

Why?

I ask you why would anyone stick (literally) their buttwipes on the wall in a permanent fashion? Maybe because the decorative container matched the blue toilet, basin and tub? It's gone now, nothing but a little sticky residue on the white tile...

Soon this room will be painted in a warm pumpkin color and outfitted with some shelving and a new medicine cabinet...yea!

Are we done yet?

After 3 coats of Stadium Red paint in the kitchen, I think we are done....

Not yet!
I finished painting 2 walls (of 4) in the walk in pantry... ...and we are going to paint the area surrounding the built-in china hutch a rich copper to reflect light coming in from the Gathering Room...

Alpha State

Q: What could make you feel warmer and fuzzier than a Kindergartner home from school (parent teacher conference day), cartoons and cookies?

A: Napping in the sun (check out our sleeping cat in the background...)

Feng Shui Fix

I've been in need of some color in my kitchen, specifically the color red to "strengthen healthy energy for the family" for the past 2 years (we never painted over the beige walls when we moved in). So today I took a "quick" trip to the Home Depot to purchase some "glittery crimson" paint for the accent wall in my kitchen. I got a gallon of Ralph Lauren's Stadium Red in semi-gloss.

Anne Painting Red Walls

Now, I am CERTAIN that I saw a show on HGTV where the designer added some glitter type substance to flat paint to give it a subtle shimmer, and so her vanilla walls had glittery vanilla stripes after some clever taping and painting moves. But at each paint center I was unable to find what I wanted, basically silver glitter on my wall of red. I got some silver metal & patina glaze and brushed pearl iridescent finish (both Valspar) to play around with for the desired effect.

Note: The show I'm talking about is the Christmas Before Deployment| After: Comfortable Elegance segment where the "living room makeover starts with a coat of vanilla paint to create a winter-white palette. Large vertical stripes painted with a mixture of glaze and silver metallic paint add some elegant glitz to the walls."

Seeing Red

I still need to touch up paint the accent wall, and paint the rest of the walk-in pantry area (one wall turned into 2 etc). I am LOVIN' the red! The plan is to hang a cable display system made up of the cable gleaned from a heavy frame hanging kit and a couple of cool cabinet pulls. This cool display system will feature Emi's masterpieces. Stay tuned for those pics!

In other news, we ripped up some carpet while waiting for the paint to dry and found that in some of our rooms we have some nice wood floors (at least in the particular part that we lifted up, we didn't check whole rooms) and in the office, there's crappy piecework linoleum). We are planning to do bamboo flooring in the office and hopefully in the living room and master bedroom, the old floors can be refinished.

Monster Mash

Today some of the kindergarten moms hosted a Halloween Party in Emi's classroom after their parade. And what a party it was! The main mom who organized the party set the bar VERY high on followup parties by having a cool handprint keepsake craft (with foam craft materials from Oriental Trading), cool goodie bags and a chocolate fountain for dipping wonderful things like fresh fruit and pretzels (yum!). The kids were definitely buzzing after hitting the snack table. Check out the anticipation...

A Haunting...

Psycho Astronaut and Elvira

Tonight we went to some friends' place to visit their Haunted Forest. It's the third year they've hosted this event and it gets more and more fun (for the adults) every year. Even though we kept talking about how scary it will be to walk through the haunted woods, Emi kept assuring us that we were just putting her on for Halloween and that it wasn't real. The first trip through Emi was cautious, but not scared. She helped herself to the buckets of candy and didn't jump out of her skin when the motion activated props moved or screamed. But the second time through, she came into the kitchen where I was noshing on some creepy delectables, buried her pale frightened face into my bosom, and wailed like a baby. One of the helpers had come running from out of the dark woods and scared my poor little girl. One of our friends offered to kick the scary guy in the shins for her...

My costume was pretty lame because I was tired of being a psycho astronaut, but my friend Stacey's costume was very cool. Most of us didn't know it was her when she got to the party because her hair was long and pitch black and she was sporting some serious eye makeup! I knew she was going to be wearing a black cape (or is it a cloak?) but she obviously spent some time adding to the costume. We surprised her with a champagne toast for her birthday....complete with a triple chocolate mini cake and chocolate covered strawberries from a local French bakery...

Little Devil and Elvira

The life of a dog....

At lunch today we snuck up on the dogs to see what they were doing while they thought we were at work and school...napping in the sun...what a life!

Feeling Campy

We went to Flint Ridge for the annual Halloween camp trip. We forgot the camera so we are relying on other campers to supply pics....stayed tuned. While you are waiting, guess who we are:

Awwww....

Mesmerizing

We were driving down the back drive along the creek when I was mesmerized by a tall cottonwood tree that was moving in the wind. The leaves were moving in such a way that made me want to stare. I pointed this out to Emi who was in the back seat unaware. She asked what "mesmerizing" meant. I told her it was like looking at a pile of red ants - the movement makes you want to stare at it. Or if something was so colorful or shimmery, etc that you felt you had to keep looking at it. As I looked at her in the rearview mirror for her response to this new word, she said that she sometimes does that to Brooke in her Kindergarten class, then she showed me her mesmerized look. I hope this look doesn't scare off her little friend!

Narrating the obvious...

Today was hard, leaving my family (especially my sweet little daughter) for a week to attend a conference in San Antonio. I'm usually tough (appearing that way, anyway), but this morning I couldn't stop my eyes from watering at the airport. After saying our goodbyes, my family watched me as I made my way through the security line. While I was waiting, Emi came up to me in line and said "Mommy, it looks like you are about to cry." in her sweet little 5 year old voice. I told her it was because I was going to miss her so much while I was away.... I could barely speak for the frog in my throat..

Next time the family comes with!

Muchas Gracias!

A friend of mine sent me a funny video that I just had to share... I needed this today!

Enjoy! One Semester of Spanish - Love Song

Lovely Things...

Lately I've been snagging up things to make my life easier and more organized...also to help maximize the real estate in my home. I hate wasted space and flat surfaces (because they so quickly get filled with piles of stuff). I bought a 2008 Busy Family Wall Calendar at Barnes & Noble. What a WONDERFUL way to display my whole family's (including pets) schedule.

And I found a really cool footprint shoe rack to fit in my foyer that looks much more attractive than the shoe tray that I used to have near the foyer. And this shoe rack will keep those annoying shoes out of the "library" (stay tuned). I realize that I will have to drag that annoying tray out of the sunroom once the winter boots come out of the closet, but for now I will enjoy my shoe-free floor!

Kindergarten Picture Day

Today was my sweet little girl's first school picture day. Daddy and I worked with her on relaxing and trying not to do the fake smile thing. We told her to think of something funny. We practiced a little, but I can't see that either of us looked like we just heard a funny joke...

Life is Good

The year that Emi was born we unofficially adopted the motto "Life is Good". When she was 5 months old we took a trip to Vegas and purchased the first of many, many LIG items. A green hoodie from the Canyon Ranch store on the canal. Since then, we've been spreading the positive LIG vibes to family and friends and my husband's old office (Outdoor Rec) has incorporated the LIG shirts into their office uniforms (how cool is THAT?). Today when my daughter wore a new LIG shirt to school, a teacher read her shirt and Emi let her know that that was our family motto.

"M" for "Mine", "More" and "Morgans"

Today we did some extensive testing of our new brownie pan - The Edge Brownie Pan - and the consensus is "WE LOVE IT". My husband who has always preferred the inner gooey brownies has converted to an edge lover after this weekend.