Weekend recap

Well, it's official, I'm the mom of a two year old. How on earth did two years fly by SO FAST?

The "weekend" kicked off Thursday night with me writing Valentine's from Henry, individually wrapping small playdough pots into heart covered cellophane bags, and attaching the aforementioned Valentine's to the bags with curling ribbon (because I didn't want to use the red wire twist ties on gifts for toddlers). He received a whole bag full of Valentine's Day cards and candy. TONS of candy. Mind you his room at school has kids possibly as young as 15 months and it goes up to age three. Some of the crap that parents chose to send made me stabby. *Sigh* let the school years begin. On a nice note, my parents arrived Friday afternoon and were able to see Henry's school during our early afternoon pick-up. Of course it was Valentine's chaos, but it was still cool for them to see where Henry spends his weekdays.

Saturday was the big birthday. In the morning the guys took Henry to McDonald's playland (I was bummed that Prescott Playtime was closed for the holiday) to burn off some steam. While they were out, Mom and I took care of last minute odds & ends and balloons! Henry woke from his nap, thrilled find six regular balloons and one "NUMBER TWO!". We quickly realized that other gifts were probably unnecessary ;-) But we pressed on and Henry opened a staggering amount of loot from both sets of grandparents and his aunts, uncles and cousins.

Award for the noisiest gift: Parents My First Remote Control Car. Despite my attempts to hide it, he kept asking for it. For the record, I will remember this Aunt A & Uncle W!!!

As expected, Henry hopped directly on his Wheely Cow and took off. He immediately began pushing it, riding it and referring to it as his Wheely Cow. As long as your kiddo is sturdy on his/her feet, I'd highly recommend the Wheely ride-ons.

After the gift madness, we all sat down for delicious cake from Sweet Mandy B's - white frosting, white cake with blueberry filling since blueberries are H's favorite! And, to pay homage to Henry's favorite monkey, Curious George, the party did have a monkey theme. I did manage to avoid most of the tacky character "stuff", but gave in a little here and there. My best buy of the party though, where these awesome Monkey hats from Michaels! I'll spare their dignity here, but I have lovely photos of everyone wearing these puppies.
Now that my sis and her fam are in China, we had the cool opportunity to wish my nephew N a happy birthday since it was Feb. 14 here and already Feb. 15 there, he and Henry shared a birthday for a bit. So we all donned our monkey hats, Skyped away and sang Happy Birthday!

One last note for Henry's birthday weekend, between Christmas and now his birthday, the number of noisy, plastic, flashy things has increased. Rapidly. My orderly and anal nature forced me to buy furniture to hide some of this. Mom & I hit IKEA on Sunday and now our living room has this lovely number behind the couch, perfect for hiding the "stuff" I'd rather not look at when H is not around (bonus glimpse of the Wheely Cow in the corner)!!!

Mooooo!!!

I'm very excited, as this Wheely Cow is out for delivery with UPS today. It is gonna take a lot of will power to keep it from Henry until Feb 14!!! (even bigger bonus - I bought it "free" with amazon.com gc's we get as credit card rewards)!!

Professional gift buyer

Along with a myriad of other crafty things (jewelry designer, interior decorator, cute shop owner, etc, etc), I want to be one. Really, I enjoy a challenge and love when I feel like I've come up with the perfect gift for someone.

For example, I so should have taken a picture, but I did the cutest gift for my MIL this year. She loves to bake and bring goodies to people. So, I bought her the most adorable custom made stamp from esty seller sweet paperie. It has a whisk in the middle and reads, "made with love by Xxx". I was torn between putting her name on the stamp vs Grandma, but went with her name so she could use it for people other than Henry! Then I bought several colorful ink pads, tags, cute ribbons, some tiny brown paper bags and lots of cellophane baking bags for breads, cookies, platters of treats. Then I founds some graphics of chocolate chip banana bread, chocolate chip cookies (two of MIL's favorite things to bake) and created a few small bags stuffed to look like her own creations, complete with a label from her new stamp. I really hope she loves it!

Anyone need last minute gift advice? Leave me a note and I'll see if I can help!

A rare moment for being crafty...

Not that it took tons of time, but I had a few moments to be crafty this weekend...all this is for our front porch, but it was super cold last night so it's all on our dining room table for now...

Making Me Smile

A long time friend of mine, L, over at Kiss On My List, was ever so sweet and gave me:

L is just getting started with the whole blogging craziness, has a fabulous sense of style, an adorable family, a hot boyfriend (can I say that L!?), and is an all around wonderful person. I'm honored that she would give me this lovely award! I've never been tagged for an award, but I'm gonna do my best to live up to it!

Characteristics for the Smile Award:
1. Must display a cheerful attitude (I try, but I sorted laughed at this one!)
2. Must love one another
3. Must make mistakes (Story of my life!)
4. Must learn from others (certainly!)
5. Must be a positive contributor to blog world (I don't have many readers, but I try!)
6. Must love life.
7. Must love kids (check! one little buddy of my own, plus two nephews & a third on the way)

These are the rules for The Smile Award:
1. The recipient must link back the the award’s creator
2. You must post these rules if you receive the award
3. You must chose 5 people to receive the award after receiving it yourself
4. You must fit the characteristics of the recipient of the award
5. You must post the characteristics of a recipient.
6. You must create a post sharing your win with others.
7. You must thank your giver.

Here comes the tough part - tagging others! I don't "know" that many bloggers, but I'm gonna do my best:

Third Coast Preppy - It almost feels like cheating to tag the lovely TCP, because I've known her IRL for years! And yes bloggers, she is as fabulous in real life as she is in her very witty blog. Though I'm not very preppy myself, I have a great appreciation as Mrs. TCP always looks adorably pulled together, is deliciously snarky, and just an all around fun friend.

Lag Liv - I don't know if she will respond to said award, as I really don't know her, but I have to say, I always look forward to her blogs. She is well spoken, smart and for me, I love the way she can articulate the fact that it's ok to want to work and be a good mom. She used to live in good ol' ChiTown and her son isn't too far behind Henry in age, so it's really fun for me to read about her son's adventures.

Not Quite Vintage - I stumbled upon Colleen's blog and I have no clue how, but I'm so glad I did! She is crafter supreme! I am so envious of her amazing skills and impeccable taste. I can't only hope to create some of the fabulous things she has over the years.

Purple Cat On A Bike - My friend J is amazing! She's probably gonna want to smack me for tagging her in this post, because she doesn't blog much, but she is incredibly funny and needs to step up her blogging ;-)

And with that, I have passed on the torch, sorry for only tagging 4 peeps, but I don't know enough to do more!

Perfect Weekend

This weekend was perfect. Seriously - perfect. I don't think I've thought that about a weekend in a *very* long time! It was the perfect mix of home improvements, fun and relaxing. A recap:

Friday night was actually a whole lotta nothing. Was in bed by 10:00 p.m. But I was completely wiped out, so that was a good thing.

Saturday morning Henry and I walked to the Farmer's Market and bought delicious corn on the cob and squash. And of course we made the required stop at Starbucks. :-) Once we got home, my lovely husband was awake, so I turned little Henry over to him and started prepping a wall of our kitchen for painting. While little man napped I painted a coat in the kitchen and Z hung a shelf above our TV (has been on our to-do list for a while, so I was ecstatic!). I do plan to put cute things on the shelves to cover up the weird, mid-wall outlets.Once the shelf went up, Z grilled us some chicken and corn for lunch. Enjoyed our lunch on the back patio in the gorgeous weather. Post nap time, we snatched up H and away we went. Made a quick family trip to Lowe's and then headed to the Taste of Lincoln Ave. Henry road a pony! After the festival, we played at Oz Park for a while and then headed out to dinner at a local restaurant with a gorgeous back patio. Henry was a perfect gentleman all through dinner - smiling, laughing, eating his noodles.

Just as we were stepping in the door at home, we caught my friend R chatting to the answering machine. She has been crazy busy, so I was very happy to catch her call. By the time I finished my call, Z had Henry bathed and in bed! Then we finished our shelf installation and watched a super cute flick, Definitely, Maybe. Gave me a tiny crush on Ryan Reynolds. Can't believe I got Z to watch it with me, but it was so adorable!

Sunday was my morning "off", so I slept in. And, I cashed in a fabulous Mother's Day gift from 2007, a trip to Spa Space where I enjoyed a pineapple papaya body scrub, an Indian head rub, a full body massage and a facial. Perfect end to a perfect weekend!

I hope everyone reading had a weekend as perfect as mine!

What debauchery really looks like?

Certainly not the lovely stock photo of pontoon boats tied together in my previous post. THIS is what it really looks like:

We counted 23 boats at one point! The cooler in the photo? Panty Dropper juice (in case you can't read the lovely label). A scary concoction brewed up by the two husbands complete with the plastic figure who dances, farts and lifts her dress at the push of a button.

Of course I can't post all the frighteningly obnoxious photos of us - to protect the drunk innocent.

And yes, I'm addicted to the mosaic maker.

Where pontoon boats go to die

Where will we be spending the 4th you ask? Yes, the place where pontoon boats go to die, a.k.a., the lake behind my best friend's house. I'll leave out locale details so y'all won't crash the rockin' party, but basically, every year for the 4th we truck south to my best friends digs. This will be our 3rd year in attendance.

Why the abundance of sad pontoon boats you ask? Well, they live in this cute (though slightly WT - sorry C!) community on a lake. The lake does not allow gas powered motors, both for noise and pollution's sake. Makes sense right? What you'd never guess is that this has prompted people to purchase the largest pontoon boats they can find and operate them with trolling motors (little car battery op motors like fishing boats use for those of you missing that WT gene I was raised with).

So each year, just after lunch on the 4th, everyone tools out in their boats, ties them together and creates one giant party barge. And these people get really into it. There are kegs, a huge BBQ grill, annual t-shirts are printed and this year the Floatilla as it is called, will correspond with the band, yes you heard right, live band on my best friends doc/landing. Keep in mind all of this is happening outside of a village of 1500. No, not a town, you heard me right, a village.

Sweet right!?!?!?! The even sweeter part? Though I love him dearly, Henry will not be in attendance. My in-laws have graciously offered to come to our house and stay with him. I can pretty much guarantee, we will not behave ourselves this weekend!

Swiped

While browsing blogs, I came across BS of the Day (whom I don't know, but thanks for the fun reading!) and loved the post from Friday, June 13. I swiped it cause it is super cool.
Check this out:

Answer each of these questions and type your answer into Flickr Search. Pick an image from the first page only.

Then copy and paste the URL for each picture into fd's Mosaic Maker.

The questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One word to describe you?
12. Your flickr name (I subbed my blogger name since I don't have a flickr account)

My answers:
1. Kim 2. Ice Cream. 3. Red Bud 4. blue 5. Rhett Miller 6. Raspberry Stoli 7. Free shopping spree 8. All of the desserts 9. Rich (to never worry about $$ again!) 10. My family 11. tired (first thing that came to mind!) 12. heaven in a paper cup

My results:
Cool huh? Three things that came to mind as I worked on this:

1) Someone shares my feelings on Starbucks. When I searched Heaven In A Paper cup, that Starbucks cup was the first image that came up!
2) I cheated in one place. There was no good photo of my dreamy Rhett Miller on the first flickr page. I refused to put a photo that did not capture some of his dreaminess into my mosaic, so I looked through a few pages (and drooled)
3) This took a really friggin long time, it's almost 10 p.m., my lovely child will be up at the crack of ass in the morning and my husband is out of town. So why the hell am I doing this?!

SOLD! to the higest bidder!

Yep! Condo is under contract - yippee!!! Now we can relax a bit, stop picking up so much (it was even too much for crazy/organized/anal retentive me) and start thinking about packing & moving.

The Police Reunion Tour stops at Wrigley Field

Z & I scrounged up last second babysitters (props to Z's coworkers C&C!) and hit the street to drum up Police tickets. Well, we didn't find tickets, but we really hadn't started to look when we ran into Z's coworker S. She was headed for the rooftop of Sports Corner & had one extra ticket! A quick talk with the doorman, and probably a bit too much cash later, we were up on the rooftop! I'm not a huge Police fan, but it really was a great concert. All their old favorites, a beautiful night and a great view into Wrigley. I tried to take a couple photos with my camera phone, but they all sucked. Here's a shot I found on-line that was our exact vantage point - pre-concert - not too shabby!

Happy 5th of July!

So it's a day late, but Happy 5th of July! We had a great weekend. Spent time downstate at the Floatilla and then took Monday & Tuesday off work to just relax. Z did more work than he should have, but all in all it was good. Yesterday we finally met little Nolan (my friend Rachel's baby who was born preemie at 30 weeks) and had a little cookout. Now I'm trying to "work" for two days before the weekend. Yeah...right...

Good Friends

We had a really great weekend. Friday night Uncle Will & Aunt Amanda came over and watched our man H. Z & I went out together for the first time since he was born! We attended a wedding for one of his co-workers. The wedding was outside, downtown in the Rose Garden in Grant Park. Beautiful ceremony with perfect weather! Then the reception was at the Swisshotel. Really nice and good food - even if we only made it to about 10:30 p.m. We were so tired we thought we might pass out at our table!

Saturday morning, H decided to sleep late - until 7:30! Of course he chose this day, when we needed to get up and get moving to do so. We hopped on the road around 8 a.m. and headed downstate. At high noon, we, along with a bunch of other family & friends, surprised my bestest friend, C with a congratulatory party since she just finished her masters degree. She was genuinely surprised! It was so much fun! It was so great to see them all and H to meet her "aunt" ;-)

C & I love that our husbands actually like each other. And really sincerely enjoy hanging out, which isn't always the case with good friend's spouses. Obviously the men are having no trouble since they took off for several hours to the local winery and returned sufficiently drunk!