BIRTHDAY FUN

So for my birthday on Monday I've been getting money and gift cards in the mail for a little while! I bought mostly clothes (since my 4-months-after-baby body is "interesting" to say the least), but I also just HAD to have these fun wall accessories:

I ordered them from Chiasso.com (they were the cheapest there, and actually in stock, unlike a few other places that sell them), and they came in record time! This huge blank wall in our dining room was just driving me crazy, because it's not actually blank - that hideous vent was an eyesore! These flowers are magnetic, so they stick to the vent (and to the little tacks in the wall) and can be moved all around however I want! I'm still not sure of the arragement (I have 7 left that I could add...), but don't they make my wall look more fun?! Any tips on a different/better arrangement? I really love how they pop out from my green walls :-)

This and that...

~June 4th was our 4th wedding anniversary! We celebrated by getting a babysitter (first time for Arianna) and went out to dinner for Indian food (our favorite!). We got ice cream on our way home, and got home in time to put Marissa to bed. We weren't gone very long, since Arianna has only taken a bottle once, and even that didn't go so well. But it was all we needed. It was so weird to eat out alone! It was fun though, and we finished the evening with a chick-flick - Bride Wars.

~The other night after dinner, we hit a few garage sales - I scored a $2 breadmachine, $2 inflatable pool, and $.25 string of pearls!

Funny story of the week:

The other day I was trying to pick up our living room, and I was getting very frustrated at the clutter, especially the webcam, external speakers, and external hard drive we have on hand for the laptop we use in the living room most of the time. I thought that maybe if I had a nice looking box or basket, we could store those things in it, and it wouldn't look so messy all the time. I realized I didn't have anything that would work, so I tucked away the idea in my head, and that was that. So that night, as I was nursing Arianna before bed, I was on the Home Depot website looking around randomly. It was then that I fell in love. I stumbled on something called a "Small Romance Deco Tote" and knew I needed to have it. It was only $4.99, so the next day, I decided I would see if my local store had it, but according to the website they didn't. According to the website, it was an "online only" item. So I added to my checkout cart, only to see that shipping was $6.50! There was no way I was going to pay that much shipping for a $4.99 item! So I decided to call around to all the local stores and see if any of them had it in stock. There were none in our area, but supposedly there were two near where Dan works (about an 45-60 minutes away). So first I begged Dan to go get me one. No dice, since he would still have to drive 25 minutes to that store, then 75+ minutes home. Then I called that store, and asked if they could transfer it to a closer store. They could do that, so I planned to have Dan pick it up at a store near his work. But as I was talking to the customer service lady, Denise, she went in search of the item in her store. She found two of them, on CLEARANCE, for $2! When I got pretty excited at that, she volunteered to personally meet Dan closer to his work to deliver them to him. THEN she said she didn't even want him to pay her for them! When he met her, he tried to pay her, but she wouldn't let him! So we got TWO of these gorgeous storage boxes (not sure why they called them "totes"?) for $0, when I was about to spend $11.50 for just one! I'm in love (with the boxes, not the lady. Lol.) She was just the nicest lady, and she was so happy that she was able to do this for me.

Tuesday, 11:55pm
(The scene: I am just coming to bed after nursing Arianna. Dan has been asleep since 10:30. I like to try to make his sleep-talking conversations last as long as possible for a higher likelihood of hilarity.)
Dan: "THAT is a gigantic planet!"
Me: "What?"
Dan: "The reason is they have to fit certain requirements to get in. Like they have to be a certain way if they want to get in."
Me: "Get in where?"
Dan: "Like First Baptist (our church), or any church. For example, rich people could never get in."
Me: "Rich people can't go to church?"
Dan: "Nope. They could never get in, or go t oclasses for free."
Me: "That's how you really feel?"
Dan: "You just don't get it, do you?"
Stacy: "No."


Wednesday, 12:30pm
(The scene: Marissa is (still) eating lunch at the table. I am nursing Arianna on the couch.)
Marissa:"Mommy, when was I a baby?"
Me: "A long time ago."
Marissa: "When I was in your belly?"
Me: "Yeah."
Marissa: "What's in your belly now?"
Me: "Um, nothing."
Marissa: "Why?"
Me: "Because there's no babies in my belly."

Marissa: "Well, Mommy, God can send you another baby in your belly!"
Me: "Really?"
Marissa: (Holding her hand to her ear like a phone - she does this a lot to call Daddy, or Timmy, or Jeremy, or Grandma, etc.) "Hello, God? Can you please send mommy another baby in her belly? Ok, you will? Thanks! I just called God!"

(We were NOT talking about anything remotely related to that! I don't know where she comes up with these things!)

~I dusted, scrubbed, re-organized, and vacuumed the whole living area the other day. It had been a while since I did a thorough job of it, and it felt good. I'm not really a picky person when it comes to most areas of cleaning (especially dusting). I also put up two new things on my walls the other day! A while ago I bought some scrapbooking paper that I just loved, even though I don't scrapbook. I had grand plans to buy some blank canvases and somehow put it on there to make art pieces. Well, I hadn't gotten out to getting any canvases yet, and we had some scrap wood in our garage so...I measured and asked Dan to cut me some 9" squares. I sanded the crap out of them, then I used Modge Podge to glue the paper on, trimmed the edges, and put them up on the wall! I also spray painted a shelf we've had for a while (used to have it up in our apartment, but never found a good spot for it here). It used to just be a wooden color, but I painted it black so now it goes with the rest of our shelves. I don't have anything great to put on it yet, but I found some stuff that will have to do for now. Here is the finished wall (excuse the constant mess):

I love how they look against my green walls. Eventually, when we buy some furniture, and stop having so many toys up here (ha, who am I kidding...), I'd like to put a chair/ottoman in the corner under the new shelf (instead of all those toys!). I had to put something flat on the other side since the basement door opens out there.

(The middle one is black with tiny white polka-dots.)

(Dollar store mugs that match my curtains - had to have them!)

~On May 31st we dedicated the girls at church. It was really neat, and they even gave us certificates and little white Bibles for each of them. We went downstairs right at the end of the service to take them out of their classes for the dedication. We sat down in the sanctuary while they were finishing singing the last song, and Marissa yelled loudly (over the music) "I wanna dance!" Lol. So Dan let her stand in front of him, but there wasn't really enough room in between the pews. Then the second we started walking up to the front for the actual dedication/prayer, Arianna started crying. I was trying to hold her so she (and I) looked nice, but she didn't really appreciate that! Then once we were standing at the front, Arianna still crying, Marissa decided that she wanted to spin/dance around in the empty space at the front! She wouldn't stop, since she loves spinning in her fancy "princess" dresses (every dress is a "princess dress"). We just let her, since she would probably have made a bigger scene if we tried to get her to stop. Lol. I was glad we did it, but I wish we didn't have to make such a spectacle of ourselves!

~We went to a church picnic on Memorial Day and I let Marissa play in a volleyball court full of sand. I'm pretty proud of myself. Lol. I do NOT handle dirty very well! She had a blast though, and she came home and went straight to the tub!