Our Family of Four: January 2010

Friday, January 29, 2010

Teatime for Tiffany

Tiff's birthday was a few weeks ago and I decided to have all the girls over to celebrate with tea and brunch. Actually, it was hot chocolate, fresh juice, and water, but I still consider it a tea party. Look at the table!

I picked up a bunch of mismatched china at Goodwill (with the cute tablecloth) for $20.

Even though Tiff is really pregnant and uncomfortable right now, we all enjoyed dining on good food with beautiful dishware in the comforts of home!

Happy Birthday Tiff! Here's to hoping you feel much "relief" real soon!

The look of the day

Never before has a bathing suit/boot combo been so cute!

She wore it all day.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

I'm taking a photography class right now to try to figure out how to work my new camera. Dave bought me the SLR that I have been wanting for Christmas and now I just have to figure out all the bells and whistles on it. I really like the class, but trying to learn all the tricks to photography is like learning a new language.

This was our first assignment. We had to take a portrait in natural light without using the flash and with a shallow depth of field. Who better to photograph than one of our cute munchkins.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Watch out Kobe!

We have ourselves one hell of a little basketball player!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Laundry Room Re-do

I have told you guys lately about my current obsession with projects around the house. I can't stop planning all the different things that I want to do to each room. I can't afford to do all of it right now, but some of it is affordable and just takes a little time. So, with the new year, Dave and I have agreed that I can do one room a month as long as it stays within budget. I decided to start with the laundry room since I hate doing laundry and thought that if I liked going into the room more, I might not hate the chore so much.

I started by painting the ceiling white. I then mixed some leftover paint that I had from other rooms and created the most beautiful greenish/gray color that totally perked up the room by itself. I then hung some new shelves (yes, I did it myself) that cost me a whopping $20 at Home Depot.

I then hung roman shades from the ceiling for some creative camouflaging of the shelves. Total cost of the shades were $30 from HD.

The last thing I did was have a piece of plywood cut to make a counter top for the room. That cost me $14 and I already had the paint to use on it.

Here is the before:

And here is the after:

Pretty cute, huh? I love how it turned out! It actually does make me want to go in there and do laundry (for now)! And it only cost me $64 total.

What do you think?

December in review

December went by way too fast for us. We were so busy with Christmas parties, shopping, Dave's building, and daily life with the kids that I felt like I never had any time to just sit back and enjoy the season, let alone blog about the goings on around here. Here are some pictures of Christmas Eve and Day. Sorry, but it's all you get for right now. Maybe next year I'll be more on top of things!?

Attempting to get a family picture

Gift exchange at Mom and Dad's

Some of my goodies

The kids got spoiled, of course.

One of Dave's big gifts was that I got him into run next year's New York City Marathon. I thought it would be fun to wrap a pair of his old shoes and then a New York City guide book and try to get him to figure it out himself. After opening up the guide though, he still didn't get it. After spelling it out for him, he was really excited! Let the training begin.

My family draws names for the siblings and Dave and I had Ben and Sierra this year. Here, they had just opened up a box with movies, candy, popcorn, and hot chocolate in it. We told them we had one more gift that went along with the "movie night" theme. This was Ben's reaction to getting the...