Rain Boots and Bathing Suits - Spring Break '09

The week in review in pictures:
This is where we spent the week (Lake Martin, Alabama):





Rain boots and a bathing suit:

Just about everything was beginning to bloom:

Crazy hair (crazy girl!...it was COLD in the front of the boat!)
More crazy hair and crazy cold!
Five pound catfish they caught on the trot line (then later fried and ate):


Learning to drive the boat:

Skipping stones:

We took a picnic on one of the islands:

Toile Tuesday

I've missed blogging this past week! Having all four children at home during Spring Break kept me busy (but not as busy as I was yesterday cleaning up and doing laundry after a week without doing either!).

Anyway, I'm back and I'm easing back into the blogosphere.

Pretty Organized Palace (http://www.prettyorganizedpalace.blogspot.com/) is hosting a toile party today. I love toile, too! My two younger girls share a bedroom. I LOVE THEIR BEDROOM! (Is it terrible to love a bedroom?? I've always taught my kids, "We don't love things, we love people." They remind me of this occasionally when I see something I love and I gush over it. )

Anyway, I've included some pictures of the girls' bedroom. M and I made the headboards. It's just a piece of plywood with a large piece of foam covered in toile fabric. M then somehow framed the plywood in molding and ...ta- dah! Easy and inexpensive to make.

The other pics are of my dining room. I think I'll have this dining room until I die! My favorite part of the dining room is the toile ( the original) fabric that I discovered under two other layers of fabric on the piece of furniture. My husband keeps asking, "When are you going to do something about that old dirty fabric?" Never! I love it and was so excited when I found it on there! It may clash a little with the dining room chairs, but that's O.kay. One day I may change the fabric on the chairs, but I'll never change the fabric on the piece of furniture!

Happy Toile Tuesday!

The Misadventure of a woman on the edge...

Yesterday I met two friends for coffee. One of the friends said, "You HAVE to blog about the bread you sucked on!" She said that sometimes she'll just be in her house by herself and she'll bust out laughing because she remembers this story. So...since I have no shame...here goes.

About a year ago, I was on a diet. I don't remember which one, but probably The Abs Diet, or maybe Body for Life, or maybe Atkins. They all have one thing in common, though: nothing yummy. So M was on call and it was dinner time. The kids and I ran by Little Caesar's to pick up a $5.oo cash and carry pizza. While I was in Little Caesar's, I saw (and smelled!) their Crazy Bread. (BTW, if you haven't had their crazy bread, I will buy you some.) So I thought to myself, "I could lick the buttery Parmesan cheese off of the bread stick and my life would be complete." (Now that I think about it, I must have been on Atkin's - the diet that allows you to eat butter and cheese but not bread.)

I handed the pizza and bread sticks to AA when I returned to the car. Oh the smell of that pizza and those bread sticks. I know why they call it crazy bread...the smell will drive you crazy if you are on a diet. So I said, "AA, hand Mama one of those bread sticks." She replied, "Mom, you're on a diet. I'm not handing you one." I looked her square in the eyes and said, very slowly and deliberately, "Hand. over. the breadsticks. and no one. will get hurt."

She complied.

By this time we were at the redlight and it was 5:00, so it was a rather long red-light. I slowly licked the warm, buttery breadstick. It was like a piece of heaven to my sad, lonely tastebuds. They salivated for more. So I sucked the end of the breadstick! I sucked it until it was clean. Then...I kind of folded that piece back a little and sucked on the middle of the bread stick. I knew I looked like a crazy woman in a mini-van with a bread stick shoved down my throat. So I kind of "hunkered down" a little bit so that no one in the cars around me could see what I was doing. I felt safe. So I kind of folded the next section back (that sucked on, slightly chewed breadstick)so that I could reach the back end of the breadstick.

Life was good.

I was able to finish licking and sucking that breadstick before the light turned green. But all of a sudden, someone honked their horn. I turned, in horror, to find a Bronco full of college guys pointing and laughing at me! They had watched the entire thing! And they knew that I had positioned myself carefully so that no one could see me!

What could I do??!?!

I laughed too. The kids were full of excited questions, "Who just honked? What's so funny? What are you laughing??" I replied, "Mommy is mortified and if I don't laugh, I will cry!"

And today I am thanking God for a sense of humor and for yummy food!

Have a great day!

(And now I am on Weight Watchers! I can suck a breadstick but it'll probably cost me 10 points!)

La T Da - Up and Running

Come see me at Angel's in Opelika!

Have a great day!

Mojo On!

I'm having a ball with my new booth, "La Tee Da" at Angel's Antiques! I have stifled my creative side for the past 8 years (since AA was born) , but I've felt a need to satisfy this creative yearning that has moved in and taken over! I've been without my camera (long story) for a few days, but I've got it back and will post pics tomorrow of what I 've been doing. But I just decided that I'll take a picture of my dining room just to prove how hard I've been working. Fabric, trim, two sewing machines, paint, glue, scissors...you name it, it's in there. The greatest thing about my dining room is that it can be shut off from the rest of the house. So I can just shut the door and no one knows that it looks like a bomb went off in the next room.


I sew at night after the kids have been tucked in. I can't get to sleep at night because my mind is "on", thinking of things to make and sew. I am in love with the cutest-ever puppy appliqued pillows! I can't wait to show them to you. It makes me want to have another baby (a boy!) so that I can decorate a nursery with a puppy theme. Don't worry...I know better.


I have been hitting the thrift store every day, looking for something that I can turn into "something special." It has been a ton of fun. For those of you who are familiar with Auburn, Heartstrings closed and donated everything that they had left (displays, merchandise, etc) to the thrift store next to K-Mart. We drove by the thrift store today and I heard Sunshine say to herself, "I love that store." Great...I'm sure her dad will love that!


So here are some pictures of my dining/work room and also a picture of the chair I bought yesterday for $5. ( I have a feeling it was a display at Heartstrings).


Have a great day!


Thanking God today for this creative energy that has "got me going" and for my dear friend who encouraged me to do this!

Summertime, Summertime, Sum, Sum, Summertime.

Days like today make me ache for summer time!

My "post before last" ("I'm Blushing") caused a little chaos among myself, my mom, and two of my sisters! Holley finally said, "The only thing I said was that you can't post a picture and call it "ghetto" when you really are ghetto! You can look in the mirror and see that AAA's room is a mess." Everyone needs a sister to "tell it like it is."

So not only am I blushing that I posted pictures of my washboards, but I'm also blushing because I, apparently, am from the ghetto.

So here is a picture of what AAA's room looks like everyday. Okay, not every day. Not even every other day. But this is what it looks like on a good day. And I scraped the paint off the mirror!

Smiling heart and a snaggle-tooth smile!

Kit Kat is five years old. My L'il Man is seven years old. Kit Kat has lost two teeth. L'il Man has lost none. Ouch!

The first thing KitKat said when she woke up without her tooth was, "L'il Man is going to be so jealous!" He overheard her and barked back, "No I'm not!" I said, gently, "Buddy, it's O.kay if you're jealous." He said, matter-of-factly, "I'm not jealous. It's one of the Ten Commandments."

My heart smiled.

Thanking God today for reminding me that they do listen!

I'm blushing

I'm embarassed. My mom came to town yesterday and told me that one of my sisters (I know which one!) said, "Tiffany is so crazy...posting pictures of her washbaords on her blog?!"

I wanted to crawl under the table! Was that weird that I posted that?? I like looking at other people's blogs when they put pictures of their stuff in their houses, so I just thought that

it would be fun to do the same. Anyway...

Have a great day!

No wonder we're in a recession!

Kit Kat lost her second tooth the other day. She is amazed when she goes to bed with her tooth still in her mouth and she wakes up without a tooth and there is some money under her pillow! This is the second time that her tooth has fallen out (so she thinks!) while she is asleep. If you've been reading my blog long enough, you already know that KitKat is "high drama for her Mama! " Remember how I "ruined her life" while we were in Disney?! Enough said! Well try to imagine her with a really loose tooth. She won't eat, she'll hardly drink, and it is a nightmare trying to brush her teeth without touching "my tooth that is loose." So we have resorted to pulling her teeth while she is asleep!! And she doesn't even flinch! And she wakes up happy!

But that's not the point of this story. While at our house the tooth fairy only gives $1 a tooth, he/she/it gives $5.00! at our neighbor's house. Try explaining that to KitKat. I think that all the tooth fairies out there need to get together and agree upon an amount that we will pay for our kid's teeth. And if a Tooth Fairy pays more than that, then their child should be sworn to secrecy about how much money the tooth fairy left them. Or that Tooth Fairy needs to loan me some money to leave under my child' pillow. I bet that even the Tooth Fairy is in line for a bail out!

My Treasures!

I love a good garage sale! And thrift stores and flea markets! And even an occasional "side of the road" junk pile! I think I come by this naturally. I can remember being in high school and driving with my mom. She'd slam on her brakes and come to a screeching halt. As soon as her foot hit the brakes, my hand would reach for the handle on the side of the seat and I'd lay my seat back as fast as I could so I wouldn't be seen. Wow - things have come full circle. The other day I passed a really great pile of junk! I turned my car around and drove by it really slowly so I could get a better look. Yes!! Good junk! I strategically parked my car and carefully loaded my precious cargo into the back of the van. I heard my four year old say to my five year old, "I wonder why Mom likes trash?"

I adore her for not directly asking me. I guess she didn't want to insult me or embarrass me! Never mind that I "ooh" and "ahh" over the junk and trash that she brings me (you know, then pen caps, the bolts she finds in a parking lot, the bottle caps, etc.) That's different, it's not trash...it's treasure.

(The pictures above are some of the really good "trash" I've found. The picture was $1 at the Salvation Army! I added the frame, but it was seriously only a dollar. It was an AU student's art project. He made an "A". If you recognize it, I'll sell it back to you! The next pic is of a vintage scale I picked up for $3 at a yard sale, and the old parsley tin and miniature Chianti bottle were each $1 at Roland's Thrift store in Opelika. And the red scale next to the parsley was $1 at a yard sale!) FUN!

Whatever!

Yesterday morning, at 8:10 to be exact, a tornado hit Auburn just a few miles down the road from us. The sirens had been blaring off all morning, Belle had been howling, there was a raging river pouring through our back yard. Four hours later, the sun was shining, the kids were outside playing in their flip flops- and it was 74 degrees. This morning at 6:15, it was SNOWING! I mean, it was a blizzard by Alabama standards. I can honestly say that I've never it seen it snow as hard as it snowed for as long as it snowed. It was constant snow fall from 6 a.m. til at least 2:30 p.m. Then at 4:30, the sun was back out. I thought it was raining again ,but quickly realized that it was the snow melting! Only in Alabama can you have a tornado, sunny weather, and snow all in a 24 hour period. Whatever!

The above pictures are my proof that it really did snow in Auburn today! There were lots of snowmen! KitKat was touching her head and pouting because she had just realized that her hat was missing. And what a hat it was! When she layered all of her clothing this morning and put on her hat, she asked, "Do I look pinkalicious?" (Help.)

Thanking God today for being a God of surprises! What a wild weekend!