Good Meow-ing To You!

My little Cinder Ella is such a cutie.  She has always been a little cuddle bug and I finally put the camera on my nightstand so I could document it.  I say, "Cinder Ella, time to go night night."  She then typically proceeds to follow me upstairs and wait for me to brush my teeth and such.  Then she jumps up on the bed and curls up next to me.

 Just as she was starting to settle in the ribbon I have attached to the ceiling fan caught her eye (first time ever) and she had to get up and swat at it a few times before settling down.  She was not being cooperative at bed time for a photo (gave me her butt instead of her face... her face is usually looking at me).

And this is what I almost always wake up to find.  A happy, content kitty that stretches and chirps at me before nudging my face with hers and purring as if to say, "get up and feed me."  Happy Friday!

Movies

Over the weekend Luke and I went to go see the new Star Trek Movie (his choice but now he owes me a movie of my choice...hello Monster University).  The theater from the outside is looking like the place is closed since they are renovation/remodeling the inside.  So amazing inside!  They are still doing a ton of work in the lobby but the changes they have made to the theater viewing rooms AMAZING!  We were wow-ed by the changes.  Don't worry, I took these during the pre-preview commercials.

 Yep, each person gets a leather recliner with 2 cup holders.  The recliners are electric so you can recline a little or a lot.  No ones head was in your way because of the wide aisles between.  I know they are not able to have as many people in each theater but I think they will get more people to consider coming to see a movie with seats like this.  After the previews the curtains parted and revealed a larger screen.

Of course Luke had nachos with cheese (I really cannot think of a time we've gone to the movie and he hasn't gotten nachos).  He reclined for the photo but during the movie sat like a chair since his leg is still bothering him.

Yard Work Weekend

So I started off by mowing the lawn on Friday evening so that I could enjoy the weekend and not have to worry about the lawn.  I had other yard work in mind to do as well.  My neighbor refers to me as the lawn bandit because of how I dress to mow the lawn.  The smell of fresh cut grass really bothers me and makes me wheezy and my eyes scratchy feeling.  The other weekend when it was cold I wore a sweatshirt, but the glasses, hat and bandana over a mask are must have items for me to function... as well as a shower immediately after with the clothes in the washer.

 Friday night we had a little fire on our patio.  It was our first fire of the year and a perfect evening for it.  Cinder Ella even sat in the door and watched us as we cooked marshmallows.

Saturday morning I got up and went for a run before tackling my project for the weekend... making a mini patio for our fire pit since it is rusting a little and I don't want it "staining" our nice patio.  Luke and I decided to place it near the small step area we have so that we can sit on the patio and have our fire and if we have other people over we can semi-circle in the lawn with our chairs.

 I dug up all the grass for where the patio stones would need to go.  Cinder Ella sat in the slider and watched me during most of this, while meowing and begging to come outside.  I take a break from the work and take her for a walk, where she eats a bunch of grass.  I call it a day.  On Sunday I finish my fire pit patio project.  I have to dig up some areas a little more and fill in dirt in other spots to level it as best I can.  I realize that I will likely have to pull it up in  a few spots as it settles some and re-level it by the end of summer so that it is "set" for the rest of time (hopefully).  Getting the patio stones from over near the hose I am startled for a second by this:

 Yup, that is a big, fat toad wedged in between two stones and there was one on top of him.  He is alive and I get him to hop out so that I can move him to somewhere else.

 Here is my finished project.  If that wasn't enough outside time I also sprayed the "kill everything" weed killer stuff along the edges of our gardens to that I don't have to pull up the stray strands of grass throughout the summer.  I also spray around our generator so that the weeds don't start growing there.

Yup, that is Cinder's in the slider watching me again.  She just has to be as close to me as possible at all times if she can.  I am currently battling the dandelions that have decided to crop up in the yard by digging them up (on my 3rd bag removed this season).  Any ideas on how to get rid of them welcome.

Happy Birthday Papa Bear!

Happy Birthday Papa Bear!
The best fire builder at the Bay... the whole family comes over just to hang out until late.

 Who knows where the fish are and what they want to "eat" depending on weather and time of year.  He is happy to take off our fish and gave up many relaxing weekends while Jen and I were growing up to take off a gazillion pan fish from the break wall.

 And he is always up for an adventure.  I always have fun going for bike rides with my Papa Bear.  He is always going on "private roads" and saying the people here are all too busy at work to enjoy this view so I am going to.  Perhaps we can take another ride to the cottage Papa Bear...

Happy Birthday to my Amazing Papa Bear who is the punny-ist guy I know.  He's always making us laugh and reminds us to look at the small details that many other people just walk right past.  Love you Papa Bear and hope you have a Wonderful day!

Happy Mother's Day!

(Oscar Mayer Wiener song)

My Mommy has a first name...it's M-o-m-m-y.

My Mommy has a second name... it's M-o-m-m-a.

I love to hug her everyday and if you ask me why I'll say

cause mommies have a special way with hugs and kisses everyday!

Happy Mother's Day to my perfectly Goofy Momma!  You are amazing and I am lucky I get to call you Mom.  You continually brighten everyone's day with your thoughtfulness and "let's go have fun" attitude.  Who knew that you could wander Target for almost 2 hours and it could feel like 20 minutes. Road trips where we just go wherever with no real plan in mind and all those early weekend mornings where you cheer for me as I race before the sun is even coming up.  

I love you very much.  I think I might be smiling...cause I was thinking and I had this thought...  Enjoy your last mother's day since next year you are going to be a Grandma to Jen's Mikey!  

Success... it all came together for the shower!

I am excited to say that everything came together for Jen's baby shower and I think that it looked fantastic.  We had some wonderful food thanks to our wonderful Aunties that helped me to make the shower such a success.  The day started with me hauling all of the shower goodies out of my hallway (it looked like my hall belonged on Hoarders) and onto the driveway to load into the truck around 8:15am.

All loaded up and we head to the lodge, that we are not allowed to enter until 9am.  I sit at a picnic table outside with the goods while mom goes back to my house to load up a few more things and grab some stuff from my fridge for the ice chest.

 The first thing we did was turn on the oven and then set up the tables.  I had the layout of everything in my mind and had sketched it out several times so that it would all go smoothly.  Once the tables were set up mom went to work getting chairs set up so that I could start decorating with my "vision."

I had made nautical decorations and brought painter's tape to hang stuff on the wall so I wouldn't damage them.  The hardest part was getting the Ahoy it's a Boy sail to stand up and look decent.  The inspiration photo I saw on pinterest was leaning against a wall.  Here is what we ended up with the guests seeing when they entered the lodge for Jen's baby shower:

And of course the other side of the boat was the water with a net to catch all the loot:

 All of the food had punny names.  We had life savers (donuts), bait (gummy worms), catch of the day (sweedish fish), sinkers (meatballs), eggs-hull-ent casserole (eggs), pier-ogies (perogies), channel markers (cupcakes), mini-subs, marshland dish (French toast casserole), knot-yer-moor-ma's potatoes... so fun and a big thanks to my Papa Bear for helping me with quite a few of those names.

 Everyone enjoyed the yummy food and drinks before Jen's little Michael was given a boatload of gifts.

The first gift was the horse.  The horse was something that my Grandma Pearl's father had made for her as a girl.  My sister and I both used the clothes horse growing up as well as Kendall and Sydney.  I had it covered in a sheet and revealed it to the guests first before Jen got to see it.  The ooh's and ahh's of them seeing it and Jen not having yet was great.  Here is Jen's face when she finally got to check it out:

 Awww.  She really loved it Grandma Pearl.  A thank you to Jen's husband Bob for finding out the color white of the nursery so we could go to the store and attempt to match it.  Jen's college roommate Natalie came in from Buffalo and of course they had to have a silly photo.  Natalie is getting married in August, which works out perfect since Jen plans to visit with little Mikey in August.

 As a thank you to our friends and family that attended the shower and gave so generously to her sonny boy we had salt water taffy for them to take home with them.

Thanks for Sailebrating with Jen!  I am so glad that it all came together and we had the most perfect weather while she was in town so she could do everything that she wanted... Mikey went on his first fishing trip the next day.

More Shower Prep info...

So here is the last of the shower making prep and info I have for you.  Of course Cinder helped with what she could.  To make the centerpieces for the table I painted paint stir sticks.  I rolled 5 diapers and put them in a small pot to help keep the shape.  I placed the paint stick in the center and then tied the bundle together with some string.  After, I attached a yellow pennant flag to the top.  They came out cute and will look great on the tables.

 The centerpieces are in the green tub.  All the stuff for the shower is hanging out in our living room.

 The week of the shower I went over to my mom's to help with the surprise clothes horse.  The horse was made by my Grandma Pearl's father when she was a kid and my sister and I used it growing up along with Sydney and Kendall (our cousin's).  Ginga is very excited to give it to Jen for use with Michael.  Of course it needed some fresh paint (thanks Bob for telling us the right color white so it will match at your house and Papa Bear for painting it).

 We needed to replace the red mane and tail.  Mom and I picked out this pretty green yarn since we know Jen is going with splashes of green as an accent color.

 To make the mane I wrapped the yarn around a box and then we looped it over the ears and I braided it.  This was tricky, but it doesn't have any "lose ends" the way we did this.  See what a hi-tech operation we had happening here.

 Here is the new tail rubber banded together and just needing a little hot glue to hold it in the tail place.  And I have always just used the piece of yarn on the outside.  My momma had me pull the yarn from the inside piece and here is what happens when you do that (plus it doesn't tangle).  So cool and we used a lot of yarn for the mane and tail.

Of course my mom had to go and hang some baby clothes on the horse and put a bucket cap on it.  We later accessorized it with a bow tie that had lime green sailboats on it.

Baby Shower Crafts...2

More craftastic awesomeness for Jen's shower while I wait to borrow my mom's camera card to show you how everything finally came together.  Going along with the nautical theme I decided to make pier pillars that you see boats tied to at the docks.  I started out with some fun noodles (thank you Papa Bear), string, tape, scissors and brown paper bag wrapping paper.

I wrapped one of the noodles in the paper and taped it shut.  I then cut one of the noodles using a knife (it cut super easy).  I then wrapped the two pieces and taped the paper.  After the pieces were wrapped I  wound the yarn around them.  I suppose that a twine or rope would be better, but I used what I had around the house since they aren't going to be saved after the shower (well, the noodles will be saved and used on the boat).

Here are the finished pier pillars.  I suggest you wrap the yarn on the individual noodles first and then wrap them together last for it to look best and to make your life easier.

Baby Shower Crafts

While Luke was zonked out with his back hurting I  took the time to make more decorations for Jen's baby shower.  Thankfully the stores had salt water taffy for shower favors.  I created these "address" labels for the favor bags.

 Each label had to be individually made by "insert picture, insert text box..."  Might just be that I have a computer that is almost 10 years old  and can't update the software on it.  Next, I made decorations for the cupcakes and to hang up on the wall.

I had the idea to make wall art for Jen using the nautical alphabet to make canvas of Michael's initials.  In the meantime Jen had already created her own wall art so fail.  I still wanted to incorporate the nautical them into her shower though so I made flag print outs and added the letter over top.

 Here is one of the nautical alphabet flags coming out of the printer.  I then cut it out and used contact paper to "laminate" it.  Love how it came out to spell Michael.

The last craft project I worked on over the Easter weekend was decorations for the cupcakes.  I printed out anchors and nautical flag "M."  I also printed red and blue chevron print for the backs.  Cut/punch the shapes and double sided tape them to the extra wide toothpick forks I picked up since they reminded me of oars.

 Cinder Ella kept trying to help with the contact paper and that was not cool with me.  She liked how the paper sounded (crunchy) while peeling it off the back.  So I took a scrap and attached it to the sliding glass door for her with the contact paper (no sticky tape residue on the window either...did I just find a way to make my own window clings???)

 mmm, tasty contact paper wrapper.  Don't judge, it kept her occupied a long time.