Greenville, South Carolina

Here are some pics from my recent trip to Greenville, SC. I was on business but DH & DS tagged along (so did Chloe).


Their is a waterfall and park right on Main St. in the heart of Greenville. Reedy Falls Park. We had fun in the evenings sight seeing and exploring the Falls.

I love Kevin and Amanda

I was able to customize my blog with their great tutorials! I just love the new look!

Thinking of Having Kids? Do this 11 step program first!

This was posted on triadmommies and its just too funny not to share.

Lesson 1

1. Go to the grocery store.

2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.

3. Go home.

4. Pick up the paper.

5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their...

1. Methods of discipline.

2. Lack of patience.

3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.

4. Allowing their children to run wild.

5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior. Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.




Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel...

1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)

2. At 10P M, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.

3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.

4. Set the alarm for 3AM.

5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.

6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.

7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.

8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.

9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive) Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.




Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? To find out...

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.

2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.

3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.

4. Then rub them on the clean walls.

5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.

6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?




Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.

2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.

1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.

2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.

3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.

4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

1. Go to the local grocery store.

2. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat.

3. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight.

4. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.

2. Make a small hole in the side.

3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.

4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.

5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.

6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air. You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

1. Learn the 20 names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon.

2. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you're thinking What's 'Noggin'?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10

1. Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying 'mommy' repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each 'mommy'; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required).

2. Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.



Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the 'mommy' tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

What is a German Baby

Well it is sort of like an egg souffle and it is so delicious.

I discovered them on allrecipes.com and love having these on the weekends.

Here is a link to the recipe...http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/German-Baby/Detail.aspx

INGREDIENTS (Nutrition)
3 eggs
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup butter
2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar


DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Place butter in a 10 inch cast iron skillet and heat the skillet in oven.

2. Beat eggs at high speed with an electric mixer. (I just throw everything in my vita-mix blender and pour it in the pan) Slowly add the milk and flour.

3. Pour batter into hot skillet. Return skillet to oven and bake for 20 minutes. It will rise like a souffle, then fall when taken out of oven. Lightly dust with powdered sugar and serve.

It tastes great with syrup.

Blue Kitchen

I have been wanting to paint my kitchen cabinets since we moved in. I am thinking of doing it at the end of August between dips in the pool (if the pump is fixed by then).

Right now my Kitchen is 2 shades of blue and tan. The cabinets are light blue and off white with the oak laminate showing through. The backsplash is the grey which looks loke white with purple undertones. Ugh!

This kitchen is in desperate need of a cheap makeover.

Here are some pics of it now. Excuse the disaster we are getting ready for major family changes and cleaning has basically become non existent.




Here are the inspiration kitchens... I welcome advice and opinions...if I missed crediting your picture I apologize and please let me know. These have been saved in a file for months.

Things you may not know about me...

I have totally copied this idea from Chris at Just Beachy, but it is just such a great idea!

1. I pick Coke over Pepsi
2. It has been too long since I’ve had a bubble bath.
3. I love shopping at the mall, but miss miss miss shopping at the skinny girl stores.
4. I love to bake
5. My favorite cake is Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting.
6. My favorite cupcake is chocolate with chocolate frosting.
7. I love burger king and taco bell, and HATE Mcdonalds.
8. We love German Babies on Sunday mornings.
9. I cut out articles from magazines
10. I love platform shoes and wedges.
11. I love bootcut and flare pants.
12. I love jeans and capri’s and wear them every day
13. I have three sock drawers (white socks, work socks & stockings, and fun socks)
14. I love being married and being a mom.
15. I hate when people are mean to my child.
16. I never dye my hair AT ALL and will die when it turns grey.
17. Some day I want to have my own business
18. My favorite color is pink and robins egg blue.
19. I would never ride in a hot air balloon and helicopters make me nauseas
20. I always wanted to be an interior designer.
21. I am very afraid of elephants and wasps.
22. If I had the money I would finally take a honeymoon.
23. I watch the HILLS, Desperate Housewives, and Big Love
24. I love PINK {the singer}
25. I have always wanted a beach house on the water.
26. I miss my best friend.
27. I want to vacation in Hawaii one day.
28. I want to have two more kids, but time is catching up to me on that.
29. Blogging is fun and a great stress release.
30. The most life altering experience I have had would be the birth of my child.

This pool is a thorn in my side......

This pool has gone from perfectly blue & beautiful when we moved in to many different colors of the rainbow.

Here's it's journey over the course of a year...

Move in 7/3/08



To this lovely shade of moss green in March with the added bonus of the cover falling in...



To almost blue with a bunch of leaves on the bottom...



And finally blue with no leaves on the bottom, but the pump broke so it will turn green again. Aghh!

Master Bedroom After

It's been done for about a week now and I love it. I still need to stain the nightstand to match the dressers, put up some art, get a lamp, mount the tv, and get some blinds.

In the future I may even stain all the pieces darker I don't like the stain with these walls and comforter.







I want to either make a padded headboard or get an iron sleighbed.



Here's the girls enjoying the new room.

Master Bedroom Makeover

The board and batten was hard to do. I have never done anything like this before.

I bought drywall nails which were the wrong kind and the boards were able to be pulled right off the wall, so we glued them to the wall with liquid nails. We taped them in place with painters tape while they dried.



Chloe even helped!



Apparently my floors aren't level, we put the vertical battens on the wall first and when we went to put the horizontal board their was as much as a 1/2 in. gap in places between the vertical and horizontal boards. The painting was no fun. I did two coats of kilz primer and two coats of semi gloss. I would recommend priming before putting on wall and priming wall first too. I felt like I was kneeling for three days straight.






It certainly did not come out perfect, but I love it. This house used to be owned by smokers and now you can see how yellow the doors are next to the freshly painted white. They will need to be painted too.