Another Birthday

Tomorrow is Jose's birthday and I am planning a special dinner for us as a family to celebrate his 29th birthday with some of his favorite things. After the crazy vacation we had in RI, it will be nice to just have a quiet dinner and really spend time with the love of my life. I will take pics and keep you all posted. It is just a little something but I don't want to ruin the surprise.

Also, the kids are going back to school on Wednesday so I am going to do a little back to school dinner tonight. I don't want to share either night so I decided to do it tonight even though it is early. Again, I will take pics and share here. I hope that I don't just leave them on the camera like I have been doing. :o)

Heading to RI tomorrow night !

I don't know how much I will be blogging for the next week or so. We are heading out tomorrow night to RI. I finally get to see my amazing daughter. Not just her though, we have so many people that we are excited about seeing. I am hoping to come back relaxed and with a clear head because God only knows how much I need it !

That's it...short and sweet for once !

50th Wedding Anniversary???? Hardly !

I was on FB this weekend for the first time in a long time. I noticed that my brother-in-law in Portugal had updated his profile pic so I decided to take a look since we all know that I love pics. I was stopped short by the title of one of the very few albums he has on there. It was my mother's 50th Wedding Anniversary Party !?!? Just goes to show you that my family is crazier than I thought and I clearly seem to be the only sane one in the family...how scary is that !

The pictures were great to see. Everyone was there and my mother clearly looked happier than she has been in....God only knows how long. Pictures of them with the kids and grandkids and both sides of the family. Pictures of their cake and cards and flowers. She does look really really happy. That is truly all I have ever wanted for my mother. Proving once again that the decision to leave here was the best one all the way around.

Some of you have already gotten what's with the title of this blog and others of you that don't know me well, will understand now. You see, my mother is NOT married. My mother is divorced or at least that what she has told me all these years and that is what she files as and legally puts on papers. Of course there is a possibility that she has lied to me all these years and that they were never divorced. It would not be the first lie that I have stumbled on this way. The bigger point for me though is not whether or not she is married since at this point, it makes no difference in my life. My problem with that party is that they are celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversay. For over 30 years, they lived in seperate countries, led different lives and dated other people. Let's say that they are back together now, which would be great for her. How can you really justify having a 50th Anniversay Party knowing that you weren't together for more than half of that time. And the funniest thing of all this is that there is a picture of the card that my aunt got for them and she wrote in "Congrats, you made it to your 50th Anniversay". Well damn, anyone can make it to their 50th if they don't have to live together, be together or even be in the same country. That makes it real easy.

I am not sure where my biggest frustration in this whole thing comes in. Maybe seeing my whole family together, without me, hit a cord. I honestly don't think that is it because I truly want this for her but emotions come up in ways we don't expect sometimes. Maybe it's all the lies. Maybe it's the fakeness of it all. Maybe it's that I knew nothing about it at all and found it on FB. Or maybe it's that very few couples actually make it to their 50th Anniversary. It is truly something to be celebrated and not something to be mocked.

Clearly I have an issue with that celebration. Clearly I have issues with my mother and how she handles things. Does anyone else out there think that this is totally insane though ?!?! I would really like to get some feedback about this.

Brownie Pops and Swap 'Til You Drop

Stay tuned because these are two things that I am looking to get my hands into next.

Brownie Pops. I know, I know...cakeball pops are all the craze right now and I do plan on trying those out too but they seem a bit messy and time consuming for me. Not that I will not give it a shot but this weekend is not the time. I am going to play with brownie pops. Simpler and I have so many ideas already. :o) I will have pics on Monday of my trial and error from this weekend. Hope they come out as good as I plan but if not then it will be back to the drawing board.

Swap 'Til You Drop. I saw this on another blog that I read...here is the link to be exact: http://celebrationsathome.blogspot.com/ . I knew that it was the thing for me to try with my girls from the meetup group. I feel so silly calling them that because they are so much more than that. We are all great friends outside of the group. It has truly become a circle of friends that I never could have imagined. So I am planning to include this in my meetup plans for the near future. I think that everyone is going to love it and it's yet another excuse for us girls to get together. I will post more on this as I wrap my head around how I want this to come across.

Chat soon and I hope that everyone has a great weekend if I don't get a chance to get back on here this weekend.

Living Room Progress

Finally is the living room. The thought process behind the living room is the love of my life. As you may or may not know, the Carolina Panthers have always been his favorite and we have collected some stuff along the way. Having downsized, I had to find a way to fit that in somewhere in the house and I wasn't quite ready to give up our bedroom...especially since I have already had to give up some space in the bedroom for our HUGE weight bench that we decided to buy before we knew we were moving. We both use the weight bench so we couldn't get rid of it but it's just an eyesore in the bedroom. Not the most romantic thing to look at. But this isn't about our bedroom (that will be another day), this is about our living room.
I decided to incorporate the Panther's stuff into our living room as tastefully as possible. It wasn't easy either. It took me forever to find a fabric with those colors that I felt was classy and fun but didn't make the room look like a game room. So when I found it, I knew it right away. The fabric ties all the colors together. There is a tall tower thingie that I have in a corner that has the helmet and some momentos regarding the Panthers and there are also two pics framed out on the right side of the fireplace. I think that it is coming along quite nicely and doesn't seem like it is a Carolina Panthers room at all. See for yourself.

Here are my before and afters of the living room...my work in progress:
stage 1: before we moved in

stage 2: after we moved in and after some work

stage 3: finally have my curtains and color inspiration for the room


This is our front door with our Carolina doormat, but I don't think that you can see it in the pic.

This is me trying to give you a better idea of the layout of the room

And last but not least, here is the pic that was in the dining room pics too. The fabric that is placed over both the couches is not intended to stay like that. I am actually going to make long pillows to keep on each of the couches to add color. Since I am not ready to make the pillows yet, I decided to just place the fabric over the couches to add color anyways.

That is all the pics that I have for now. I do have my bedroom to still share with you all but the pics are in my digital camera and I can't find the cord to download them...I know, I am a mess...lol. That is why the quality of these pics isn't that great, they were taken with my lovely cell camera. Better than nothing. Feel free to leave comments.

Dining Room Progress

I am super excited about the dining room. It was the last room to really come together and I am chosing to keep it quite neutral because that is where I plan on doing all of my entertaining. With my entertaining comes color and themes and whatnot so I didn't want things clashing. I decided to just put up white sheers and just keep the small white crocheted runner on the table for now. I will end up doing more with this room but I am just so happy to have it decluttered, clean and fully ready to entertain.

Here are the before and after pics:
stage 1: before we moved in

stage 2: after we moved in with all the clutter


stage 3: ready for entertaining


and although this is of the dining room, it is also a sneak peek into the living room which is coming up next

Kitchen Progress

So I finally put up my curtain rods and curtains this weekend. This house has been a work in progress but I am so loving it. So I might have to do this in different posts because I don't know how to post more than five pics at a time. If I figure it out along the way then I might be able to do it all in one post...we shall see.

So here is the before pics of my kitchen window:
stage 1: before we moved in

stage 2: after some work was done but still no curtains

stage 3: finally got curtains up

Now let me remind you that I do NOT sew. There is no hem on these curtains at all, which you might be able to see. I do plan on going back and either put a hem on them or trim out the ends with ribbon. Not sure yet which why it's not done. I wanted something up in the meantime so I wrapped the fabric around the rod and this is what I got. My goal is to make cafe curtains with that fabric...I think. I am so undecided at this time. Hope you like how my kitchen is coming along.