CAN YOU BELIEVE IT??? THE MOJO IS STILL FLOWIN'.

*******************************************************

on a side note, i need to see a boo-koo amount of love to my gal mary ann.

mary ann is one of the most generous, caring, and loving friend a girl could ever have.
on a regular {yes, i said regular} basis, she sends goodies my way just because. because she rawks!!!

today, bella-boo got a wonderful goodie from her and her beautiful daughter cierra.



look at how happy bella is. mary ann, she walked around pretending that cierra (or sarah as she was

calling her b/c she can't pronounce cierra) that cierra was in the room and talking to her. she can't

wait to watch her movies.

big hugs and kisses to you girl.
love ya tons.

you're mississippi queen.

yeeehaaawww!!!

HAPPY 2007!!!

me and greta. we had a game night with a buncha couples. we gobbled on homemade chili, snacks galore, beer and had a blast playing mad gab and ballderdash. can i get a whoo-haa for the ladies? we kicked the guys' ass at mad gab :)



hope everyone is enjoying the first three days of 2007. i know i am. i'm enjoying the idea of being organized, the idea of having my shit together. isn't that was january is all about....out with the old, in with the new?

tomorrow, i'll post my list of goals and things i wanna accomplish for 2007.

but first, i wanna show some of the scrappy things i did over the weekend. i don't know what came over me, but on the 30th, me and mom got home about 1030 from running last minute errands and have a girl's dinner at the cracker barrell (yum...blt!)
and decided to scrap a page. before i knew it, it was 2:30 in the morning. now i didn't wanna go to bed, but i decided that i better b/c i didn't wanna sleep until 11:00 a.m. again (which i ended up doing). but when i did get up, the mojo was still there and i got to scrapping.

so far the mojo hasn't left (keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't) and i hope to get some more scrapping done. underneath each picture is the journaling on the lo.



while in maggie valley, north carolina with a group of gal pals
in october 2004, we came across a place to ride a mechanical bull.
now being a HUGE fan of "urban cowboy", i knew this was something
i had to try. can you say hooked? if i could have one of these
in my backyard i would. :yee-haw:



true love



oh how i love cherry season. i eat these beauties
by the handful. these shiny gems were bought by tom.
just because. because he knows how much i {heart} cherries. yum.



one night, mom let me know that she was kicking mike and i outta the
house so she could take care of christmas stuff with the kiddos. no need
to tell us twice. so we decided to use the $50 gc (the major got me for
my birthday) to the outback. we stuffed our face with yummy food, hit
walmart for some christmas shopping, and then headed to the movies to
see "the holiday". great movie. i heart date night.



st. patrick's day 2006



"g" is for goofy



a day at the park



one day, for whatever reason, mikey threw his arms in front of him and asked
for a cup of water. since the way he did it made us all crack up, bella made
a mental note of it. since that day on, bella has been doing the same little
number. as she throws her arms in front of herself, she shouts "a cuppa water".



i'm normally a coffee kinda gal, but when i spotted this beauty at centuries
antique galley in d'iberville, my heart skipped a beat. isn't it stunning? the most
perfect shade of robin's egg blue. and why is it the tea tastes so unbelievably good
outta it? i keep my little blue teacup at work. when i begin to feel a lil stressed, i turn to little blue and i feel so much better. the color of the cup, the feel of the cup...tea-rrific.



"FABULOUS!!" my word of choice. i didn't realize how often i used the word
until it was pointed out to me. once i sat back and thought about how often
i used it, i was thrilled to learn i had my own signature word.

CHRISTMAS 2006!!!!!

well, christmas if finally over {deep sigh of relief}.
i so wanted to post these christmas pictures a lot sooner, but i have spent the past week lounging around pretty much doing

NOTHING!!! which you would think that i would be relieved about that, but i'm not really. there was so much i wanted to get

done. i did however get ALOT of scrappin' done {can you say 10 lo's...whooo-haaa! those will be in a later post}.

so anyway, back to christmas. it was a lovely day and i must say that santa spoiled us all.

especially me!

here's a rundown of some of the goodies that i got:

*tickets to see billy joel in new orleans in march!!!!! (mike)
*$100 gc to the lss (mike)
*talladega nights on dvd (mikey)
*the coolest lil book on the history of monopoly (mom)
*a christmas story tshirt (mom)
*a betty crocker breast cancer cookbook (mike)
*these amazing measuring cups (bella)
*walmart gc (mom)

and a ton of other goodies.

okay, enough of the ramblin'. here are some pictures:



the tree after santa's visit


mikey coming down seeing the tree for the first time.


bella seeing the tree.


the kiddos in a mad fury to open up their presents.



mike and his packer santa hat.



me and my lss gc.



me and my billy joel tickets. disregard the fact that i look like complete utter shit.


this year mikey got to go shopping at school and buy presents for his family members on his own. he has had the presents

under the tree for about three weeks and practically every day he asked if he could give them to us. we must be doing

something right b/c he wasn't even interested in opening up any of his things christmas morning, he just wanted to give us

ours. and i must say that mikey is quite the excellent shopper. everything he got was absolutely perfect for each one of

us.


mom got a playing card bracelet (i'm a lil jealous...she better hold on to that thing tight or it might come up "missing".

are ya reading mom?)



b.c. got a soccer dish for his desk. i think it holds post it notes in it.



bella got a beautiful ring that she has been carrying around with her since christmas. i think she loves the black "velvet"

box as much as the ring.



mike got a magnetic dart set.



and i got the best present ever. a mom necklace with "diamonds". i love, love, love it.
damn i love that kid.



santa brought the kiddos bikes.


after most of the wrapping paper was cleaned up, mike and mom cooked breakfast. we had pancakes and bacon. yummo!











i hope that everyone had an amazing holiday week and that you are all resting well. 2007 is right around the corner and i

must say that my list of resolutions continues to grow. i'll post that tomorrow.

i'm hoping that i can get more computer time to keep this thing more updated. but its hard to get on the computer here at

mom's when you have two grown men and one lil guy constantly feeling the need to be on it to play one of those stupid ass

computer games. and i made the mistake of buying mike more.

oh well!

OUTTA TOWN RIGHT NOW!!!

oh how i was hoping that i woulda had time to post something more exciting than this this weekend, but now that i am not home, this post will have to do.

currently i am in jackson, mississippi for an access class that i am taking for work. i'm excited about the class but i hope that it is not too advanced for me. tomorrow mike's boss is driving up and he'll be attending the class with me.

i've been documenting my adventure and will share when i get home on wednesday.

yesterday, my mom kicked me and mike outta the house when he got done working his 12-hour a day part-job. we went to the outback to use a gift card that the major had given me for my bday (in february...this is how often me and mike get to go out on our own ;) we ate *way* to much and it was *oh* so good. after that, we headed to walmart to do some last minute christmas shopping and then headed to movies. we saw the holiday and must i say that it was a beautiful movie. damn did it say so much. the movie was great and definately one that i will be purchasing when it comes out on dvd.

well i guess i'll end this here. i'll be back on tuesday night and i plan on posting some more by the end of the week and before christmas. i hope everyone has gotten all of their christmas shopping done and can enjoy the week.

big hugs :)

THE CHRISTMAS CARDS ARE DONE (FINALLY!!)

you know what ya get when you get one cool chick that has a sinus infection and doesn't go to work?

a cool chick that has time to {finally} start and finish her christmas cards. i *so* wanted to get these done and in the mail sooner, but i spent sunday on the couch all day and didn't get a chance to work on them until last night. i can barely breathe, but hey! the cards are done.


front of card


inside of card


back of card

not only am i sick, but i was up most of the night with my bug-a-boo mikey who isn't feeling well either. if this darn weather would stop going from the high in the 70's one week to the high in the 50's (with a low of teens!!) the next week and then back, maybe we would be feeling better.

oh, speaking of christmas cards, i'd love to be able to send my fellow bloggers a special christmas card this year. i mean after all, you guys are like family right? hell, some of you probably know me better than my family does ;) so if you want to get a lil christmas mail love from me, send me your mailing addy to emma81399 at aol dot com no later than thursday evening.

okay, back to work...errr...i mean stuffing those envelopes :)

THE SHOP HAS BEEN UPDATED!!!

well, on top of getting a wee lil bit of christmas shopping done, thrifting, getting the picture ready for my christmas cards (yes, i know i am very late on this) and spending sunday on the couch feeling like crap, i managed to get some goodies listed on etsy!

so if you have a lil more christmas shopping to do or ya just wanna check it out, stop on by.



i'd like to add a few more things this week, but with a growing to-do list, we'll see how that goes.

hope everyone had a great weekend :)

RIBBON OVERLOAD!!!

well, actually you can never have too much ribbon/trim right?

the other day while i was reading up on aja i noticed she posted about this beautiful ribbon that she had ordered from this wonderful site.

so being the junkie that i am, i hopped on over to les bon ribbon and was in complete heaven searching the beautiful selection she has. we're talking vintage folks...lots and lots of vintage {swoon}.

seriously folks, if you are a ribbon junkie like me, you can't beat this site. prices are great and i got my stuff in about two days.

here's my booty and this was showing much restraint ;)

OH I FORGOT.....

i better post this now before time gets the best of me and i forget to post (think back to minneapolis trip and the halloween party ;)

i participated in the fabulous ornament swap and these are the ornaments i made.



thank goodness i had a ton of vintage cream buttons to make all eight. the lighting is bad, but i am so happy with the way that these turned out.

here is how i wrapped em up.



so they are all in the mail ready to arrive at their new destinations.

whats funny is, it seems that great minds think alike....check this out.
stephanie had the same thought :)

THE BENEFIT OF HELPING YOUR MOM ORGANIZE THE GARAGE A LIL BIT!!!!

today the halloween decorations finally needed to make its way to the right shelves in the garage (note: no, we didn't leave halloween decorations up until the first weekend of december, they were just in totes in the wrong spot in the garage. and lemme tell ya, there is not a lick of extra space in the garage, so they needed to but put away).

then of course the christmas decoration totes came down. so while digging through a few totes, my mom found a few goodies that she knew i would like.


a vintage tablecloth that belonged to my grandma, some iron on transfer kits from when she used to use artex paints, and a cookbook that belonged to my great-grandmother (who purchased it from the ladies rotary club in anderson township, ohio).

mom, also thought that i needed this.





lmao...its a book that my grandma gave my mom when it was time to discuss the "birds and the bees".

maybe i'll put it away in a safe place for when its time for me and bella-boo to have the talk.

then on a side note, this was my morning coffee this a.m.



no, this picture is not altered in anyway. its just the way the sun was shining on the steam. looks delish doesn't it?

hope ya'll are having a happy and warm weekend :)

smooches

LOVE THEM LOOOONG HOLIDAY WEEKENDS!

well, my holiday weekend is just a lil more than halfway over and we've already done soooo much.

first, i received my handmade thanksgiving goodies for the thanksgiving swap. rachel had me and sent me the cutest lil salt and pepper shakers. thanks rachel :)



on to thanksgiving. thanksgiving is soooo lo-key around here which i must admit is nice. its very laid back. there is not a time that dinner has to be on the table, and afterwards consists of laying around and waiting for the night to end (not in a bad way of course). we ate tons (and let me stress the word tons) of yummy food and were quite exhausted after we ate.


the thanksgiving card i made last year decorating the table.


my plate.


me & mike doing our usual pose.


me and my favorite lil man "bug"


bella-boo eating a pickle refusing to look up at me.


and then there was friday. how i couldn't wait for friday. me and greta spent the entire day on the couch watching the first three discs of veronica mars season 2. we have waited months and months to be able to catch up and i wish that we had the other two discs so we could have kept on viewing.

why is it when you do nothing but sit on the couch and veg out watching tv all damn day that it makes you so stinkin' exhausted?

anyway, me and g failed our duties and didn't get a shot of the two of laying around like zombies all day.

today, i picked up my rental car (hmmmmm....i did mention that the day of the craft fair that my car broke down right? well it looks like they are going to need to replace the engine and they still haven't made that determination yet. so god only knows when i'll get my car back). so i picked up the rental car and me and the kiddos did some christmas shopping. do you know how hard it is to pick up christmas presents for your kiddos while they are right there with you? i had mikey on so many lil scavenger hunts for things i didn't need it was down right ridiculous. but that didn't matter b/c he has no idea that snuck things in the cart for him....lol.

after the shopping, i stopped home, let everyone potty, grabbed the camera and then headed for burger king. we went thru the drive thru and then headed down to the park. i played with my camera (mistake b/c some of my pics were over exposed) but had fun shooting the kids. mikey had fun with the camera too. i was a brave ol soul and let him take some shots too!











so now the kiddos are taking a nap and we're waiting for mike to get done with his part time job so we can go to cracker barrell and get dinner. boy do i love that place. i used to hate it as a kid. whenever we were doing the infamous parent swap at a hotel on the side of the interstate, we always stopped at the cracker barrell. i think i hated it b/c the one's in georgia and tennessee had well water and i hated that.

but now i love it. i love to shop there too...which is prolly one of my secret motives for going ;)

hope everyone had a wonderful thanksgiving and are having a wonderful long weekend.

*smooches*