Shannon's Baby Shower

This afternoon I had my sister's baby shower! She is due November 3rd... or any day now!! Here she is posing with her super cute cake. One thing about my sister is she is always dressed so cute! Her hair is just perfect! Her makeup is on and looking good! She always has her little girl looking cute too!


Here is Shan and Elly (Shan's daughter). Our Aunt Gayle is the queen of Halloween and getting spooky masks! She brought Elly this spooky mask and Elly wore it... a lot! I remember when we were little Aunt Gayle would drive over to our house wearing a spooky mask!! I think she would put the mask on a mile from the house and then drive the rest of the way wearing a Halloween mask! We would all giggle and yell "Mom, Gayle's here!!"
The girl behind the mask... Like Mother - Like Daughter. I don't know about y'all but I think they look a lot alike! Elly is pretty excited to be a big sister! Except she wants a baby brother!! No ifs ands or buts about it! Baby brother! The word is... if she ends up with a baby sister she is going to stay with Grandma!
My Mom and I made this fun sign! I thought it looked so cute!
During the shower we played a few games! I have to tell you about this one game because it was so funny! We were all laughing so hard to the point of tears! Okay, maybe not all of us... just the ones who weren't playing. My cousin Shawna and I picked about 8 people out of the guests, gave them a paper bag, and told them to pick a partner and go to the front of the room. The person with the bag needed to put the bag over their head! There would be no talking between you and your partner! The person with the bag over their head would have to remove an item from their body and hand it to their partner! The object of the game is that they can remove the bag... but no one thinks of it!! Shawna and I are giggling so hard and keep telling them to remove an item... we had people out of their jewelry, socks, shoes... We eventually had to stop and tell them that they could of removed their bag!! My Grandma was one of them with a bag over head and she says "I was about ready to take my teeth out and hand them to my partner!" You'll have to try it the next time you have a get together. It happened to me at my friend's baby shower. Except I was the person with a bag over my head!!

After Shan's shower we went out the hunting shack where the guys were. Shannon wanted a picture of all us... so here we are! Man... can you see each of our personalities in this picture or what?!

Shannon I'm so excited to meet your little one!! Oh and since you don't have a girl name yet... Lynn is a good one. Heck you could even go with Lyndsie!! Make sure you call me when you are going to the hospital... oh wait... call me after the baby is here!! You call Shawna when you are going to the hospital!! She is your coach!! I would just be on the floor in a panic asking you over and over... are you okay? Shannon, are you okay?! Is the baby here yet?!

Yard Work, Phase 1

We had a really pretty day here on Saturday... so Jesse thought it would be a great day to get some things done around the yard. He was going to mow up the leaves and I was to rip up these 'flowers' from the left side of our house! You see... there is a side walk in that mess of 'flowers' and every time you would walk on it one of those 'flowers' would reach out and grab your ankle!! Which grosses me out!

I started in on what seems like a simply enough project! WRONG! I didn't know where to start! I started back along the house and in the middle. I was at it for a good hour and you couldn't even tell I was in there! I was so discouraged that I went in the house to do laundry instead! Yeah! Laundry! Jesse came in for lunch and when we went back outside he helped me! He would dig every thing up and I would shake all the dirt off and throw the yuck in a pile! It took us so long to do the flower bed up against the house that we dreaded this little one here in front of the side walk!! So... what does a Man do... he hops on his riding lawn mower and takes care of business!!

I was all for this mowing of the flower bed!! I was not looking forward to more digging!! Plus it didn't even look like flowers! I was giggling so hard when he was on the lawn mower! Dust and flower pieces flying every where! I wonder if any of the neighbors saw us! And much to our surprise there was a big 'ol tree stump in the middle of this that we had to dig up... or chop up with Jesse's ax!

And after....

Ahh! Looks so much better! I can walk on the side walk without being tackled by the 'flowers'!! In the spring I will plant something in there - but for now it is wonderful!

Later that night as we our comfy cozy on the couch with our sore aching muscles... Jesse says to me "I see why you were a little discouraged by those flower beds today! They were a bigger problem then I thought!" I think he thought I was wimp and wanted to laundry instead!! Ha!

Kitchen Mini-Makeover

I know some of you have been waiting so patiently for me post pictures of my mini-makeover on my kitchen. The time has finally come for me to reveal it to you.... drum roll....

Just for kicks and grins lets take a look back at what it looked like before we moved in. When our dear sweet elderly friend was still living here. I think it will help you with the 'makeover' factor.

Now lets take a look at it with our stuff in it and see what we think.

I think "yuck!" Too much wood and too dark! Where is the color!?! What is with those light fixtures! Gross! There are holes in my wall!!

I find a color palate that I love! I do mean love! I couldn't get it out of my head! Here it is:

I took the above pictures of the kitchen and uploaded them into my photoshop and started messing around and "painting" my walls and cupboards with the colors from the above picture. It looked pretty good on computer so lets do this for real and go get the paint! Jesse was going to be gone one weekend with his buddies on a camping/ jeep ride weekend so I was free to paint! Here is how it turned out...

My Mom had a great idea to put red marbles in the margarita glasses! Every time I go to the store though I forget to look for them. So imagine (some day) red in the glasses!

~Oh~ and we will have very sleek hardware on the cupboards if we ever get around to do that! I should say... when ever I can motivate my handsome husband to do that for me!

A modern light fixture!!!! Ahhh! Starting to feel hip and sleek and sassy!!

Good bye holes!! A custom painting to cover it up!

Another light fixture with a fan!! Jesse did hang both of these by himself!! I supervised a little. When he would turn electricity on or off I would have to yell when it was off and yell when it was on. When he was turning it on I would have to yell if I saw any sparks or heard anything. I had an important job!! ; ) Can I tell you about hanging that ceiling fan though... um... it was a little tricky and troublesome for the poor guy. He got it all wired up and ready and turns the electricity back on and comes up and flips the switch... POP! and nothing. Hmmm... runs back down and turns the electricity back off! Not sure what he wired wrong but it all turned out okay and we didn't do any damage! Whew! A quick phone call to brother Jerry and we were all squared away and back up and running!

There you have it. Our first make over! I call this mini because eventually we want to rip a wall out and put an island in and get new flooring! I'm a tile girl at heart so we have been looking at all the tile options out there and there are so many. Do we go with original tile and do it ourselves? Do we put the heated tile in? Do we put fake tile in, but it looks and feels oh-so real? For now, this mini makeover will satisfy me for a year or two or three.

Update on our deck staining... we bought some more stain and tried it again on Saturday. We were successful!!! No rain until today and we still have a stained deck! Score!

We have a mega leaf problem though! Wow! This Saturday when we were outside staining the deck we had to battle the leaves. We would sweep the deck... stain... sweep again... stain some more... sweep AGAIN... stain... sweep AGAIN. The leaves kept falling and then they would fall where we had stained... but I think we are safe. I haven't seen any leaf imprints.

After getting the deck all stained Jesse thought he would try to get these leaves under control a bit in our yard. He got out the lawn mower and was doing his thing. Well the neighbor saw him out there working hard and decided that he should be relaxing and brought him over a cold one!! Well good thing he did because when I looked outside today I could not believe my eyes! I couldn't even see the green grass - it was covered with leaves! Now if I was kid I would be having a field day with that. Heck... I may now and I am an adult!! We didn't have leaves growing up - they blew away because we lived out in the country on the prairie where the wind blows constantly!

Here are some pictures I took of the back yard tonight. It was too dark for a flash and not light enough to take it without the flash. But you get the jist of what I am talking about with all those leaves!