Happy Birthday Dear You!

My dear sweet friend Lori is having a birthday on the 31st. We celebrated with the birthday club last night. I was the hostess for the evening. The porch is almost complete. The landscaping will come next. Hope it is all finished in two weeks. This has been the longest project in recorded history...it has to be! :(


Anyway...here are some pictures of our evening together for our very special friend.

I must warn you though....there was an awful lot of this type of laughter going on last night....by everyone there. My husband was inside and he asked me after everyone had left what on earth were we laughing so hard at. And my reply was quite simple....."everything!" And if you knew my sweet friend, she laughs like this a lot. Head back....and full of joy.

No birthday is complete without a Happy Birthday banner and balloons. Right?

A cozy little spot to sip coffee and have fellowship with special people......

See my beautiful screen door? I have waited since the beginning of July to see that sweet door. Can you see the twinkle lights I hung up for lighting? They were pretty bright last night. And cute to boot. :)

Some decorations from the evening. Last of the summer flowers. Cozmos.....pretty pretty pretty...

More of God's handiwork. :)

My little mohair bear that came out for the party. After all...she is sporting her party hat.

Simon was the only "boy" that was invited to our little party. He was more interested in the bugs that were taunting him on the screens than us.

My sister, the paper-holic, made this darling little scrapbook for Lori. You can check out the inside on her blog. I want one sissy! Please and thank you! :)

Fun wrapping for the birthday girl.

I looked outside at one point in the evening and saw this. I have a feeling that I will be seeing a lot more of these in the weeks to come while enjoying my outdoor space.

It appears that fall came to Illinois and our little party. It actually just got down right cold! So, instead of going inside the house, I got out all my blankies I have made and snuggled up my friends and sissy nice and snug like little bugs in rugs. It was lovely.

More of the "bugs."

No birthday is complete without a candle to make a wish and blow out on your birthday. And, it appears by the look on her sweet face, she is thinking about how much she is going to enjoy that raspberry cheesecake she is getting ready to indulge in.

Happy Birthday dear friend! I hope your next year on this earth is fantastic!!

The Bestest Movie!!!

I have been wanting to see this movie since it came out. But, being that my life seems to be out of control right now, I have not had the time. I REALLY wanted to see it on the big screen instead of my living room..with their buttery popcorn....so, I phoned a friend and asked her if she wanted to come with me and we went. We loved it!! I laughed and cried and laughed and cried a lot during this movie. Aren't those the best kinds? :)

I had a nice day today with my buddy. Tomorrow is her birthday party I am hosting here at my house. I already had the menu planned and ingredients bought or I would of made a recipe from Julia Child's cookbook in honor of her and our time together at the movie. I do want to make her Boeuf à la Bourguignonne recipe. It looks sooo yummy. To bad I can not pronounce it. :)

Back to School!

Well, it is official. School in our little town has begun. Tomorrow is their first full day. They went until 10:30 this morning. My friend Lori's mom called today a "tease" for us mamas. :) Lori and I did enjoy a nice hot (I burned my tongue and it is still numb) cup of coffee and some fun time shopping at our little Amish community close by while they were in school. I do love love love her company and friendship! :)

I wanted to show you my daughters composition notebook that we made prettier last night. She did not like the plain black ones and we were pressed for time to find something else. So, I told her I had some paper at home that we could cut out some squares and make it pretty that way. I did not think she would go for that since she is...how shall I put this....high maintenance. Ahem. But she did. We put clear packing tape over it to keep the paper from riping off as she uses it. It did turn out rather cute.

And here they are....ta da!!!

I wanted to show you a picture of them with their new book bags we picked up in Chicago last weekend. It blows my mind that I have an 8th grade student and a 6th grade student. OH MY LAND!! Time goes by quickly just like everyone told me it would...except I never believed them.

Chicago Fun

We took the kids to Chicago this weekend for their last hurrah before school began again. We planned the trip up there because of this. We are HUGE Harry Potter fans around here. A friend of mine told me about it and we knew it was something we just had to do. IT WAS FANTASTIC!!! If you or someone you know loves Harry, Ron and Herminie.....go see it. You won't be disappointed! :)


This was our first stop along the way up to Chicago. Can you tell where we are? We stopped for lunch and got some candy......because it was the girls trip..... sweets were a must!

A nice frosty mug of Root Beer with a smiley face my daughter drew on it.

Daddy and daughter.....

Mama and daughter.......

Two cuties rocking on the porch.

We could not take pictures in the exhibit. We were soooo bummed! This was the only prop we could take a photo of. The flying car. Had to of been before the Whomping Willow got hold of her. Hee hee....

Smile girls....Harry sat in that car!!!!!

Big banner in the museum for the event.

Having some chocolate chip mint ice cream at the little ice cream parlor. Yum!

She totally did not want me to take her picture eating her cone...nor did she want to share with me either...but she did. I just love chocolate ice cream.

After the museum, we headed to down town Chicago. We were on Lakeshore Drive and drove past Lake Michigan. We saw all the pretty sail boats in the water. How lovely......

We stopped (probably for the last time...Boo Hoo!!!) at the American Girl Store. We have spent a lot of money in this store over the years on babies and clothes and books and games and movies and craft things. My baby is growing up and she won't want anything from here for much longer. Makes me sad and glad at the same time.

While walking back to our hotel, we heard this fellow playing his sax for us. So, we stopped and listened to him play. Not bad! He was playing the theme from The Flintstones. How funny!!

The skyline from our hotel window. Don't see this view from where we are from...that is for sure.

Since it was a kids weekend, we listened to the Disney Channel the entire time. After awhile, I found myself singing along. That Miley can sing!! :)

And lastly, I leave you with our silly family. I took this picture cruising down the highway on our way home. You can not see the back of the vehicle full of bags from Aeropostale and Disney and Justice and Target. Clothes for the girls for back to school which begins on Wednesday. We had a nice time together but there really is no place like home, is there? ;)

Too much?

This is our backyard shed we built a couple years ago. I always thought the little windows needed curtains. So, this past week I made some out of white cotton fabric I had in my little stash. I bought the curtain rods and put them up. I was feeling really proud of myself. My husband saw them and I think the look he gave me was..."you've got to be kidding me...this is my space where I keep my lawn mower and tools and lawn fertilizer and my manly stuff and you fo-foed it up with curtains?!?!?!" I wonder if I have been taking this sewing roll I have been on a bit to far? Nah!!!!!!! :)




And I also wanted to show off my pumpkin vines. This is the first time I have ever grown pumpkins and I thought they would be fun for the kids and I. I chose Cinderella pumpkins. If the blossoms are any indication of how many actual pumpkins we will get....looks like my girls and I will have to ding dong dash all the neighbors and leave them little pumpkins on their porches this fall like we do with May Day baskets in May! :)

They are growing up over the fence into the neighbors yard!

And around the corner of the shed. Aggressive little boogers. :)

Church Camp

My youngest daughter just spent the last few days at church camp. She had a fantastic time she said! She took her friend Peyton with her this year. They have been waiting to go to camp together for a couple years. This year they finally made it!

This is the girls bunks. After we got their beds made up, they decided they wanted the bunk beds pushed together so they were sleeping together. I am sure giggling and talking happened a lot while trying to sleep. :) But, isn't that what camp is for when you are with your BFF?

This is the pool at camp. It is a lovely pool. My eldest daughter got baptised in this pool last year. The spiral slide is something that the kids from our church paid for several years ago. The kids were encouraged to bring their change to VBS each night. The money that they raised that week at VBS bought that slide! How cool is that?

And, here are the campers themselves. Taylor, Peyton and Mariah. Mine is on the left in pink and her BFF is in the middle. The cutie in purple is another good friend of my daughters who also became a friend of Peyton's as well. Isn't it great to meet new friends? :)

The girls yacked and yacked for about 20 minutes on the way home....then their motors ran down and it was very quiet in the back seat.

My hope is that she learned a little bit more about Jesus than she already knew. I hope that her heart grew for Him. I hope she heard how much He loved her this week. I hope she is closer to making a decision for Him in her life.

Progress is slooooooooooow!

Well....lets just say we are still working on the porch. It has taken a lot longer than we anticipated. And lets also say that someone in this house is nearing the end of her rope. Just saying. Here is where we are as to date. We have been painting and painting and painting. The summer finally decided to show up here in Illinois yesterday. It had to be close to 100 degrees with the heat index and we were outside the whole day painting. Painting 46 tongue and groove boards for the ceiling. TWO COATS!!! I don't want to hold a paintbrush again for a looooooooong time. And, FYI...don't ever ever ever hold a staple gun the wrong direction and squeeze the trigger. You could very very easily put a staple in your palm and not know what happened. Just saying......

Sophie's Throne

This is our baby Sophie. She is an old old doggie. She can not really see well anymore...nor can she hear well either. At times, I think she is totally deaf and blind! She had a doggie bed that had seen better days...so I threw it away. I thought our old girl needed a posh bed...soft and big for her to sleep on...since that is what she does most of her days. And, since I am on a sewing roll (yeah for me!) I made her a Posh Pooch bed. It is pink of course! :) It took her a few days to find it but now she climbs up on it very easily. When I am looking for the old gal....I can usually find her...snuggled into her new bed....probably dreaming of those nasty squirrels that keep pestering her. :)