porch

i had posted about redoing the front porch. here's a before of the porch.

here's the paint job number #1

and wednesday night while kaylee was gone, this is the type of stuff i can accomplish without any distractions.

and i love it much better. it blends in with the house and doesn't demand attention or stick out like a sore thumb. friday we had someone come over and look at the house. this is what the realtor told our realtor. its his favorite house that he has seen so far. he took pictures for his wife. after hearing that, i was almost in tears. i couldn't have been happier. it gave me some hope that this could finally happen. hopefully they will come back for a second look real soon. {if you click on the picture it will enlarge it. and of course booah had to be in the picture}

quality time

wednesday afternoon, as i sat reading a book {the frog prince by jane porter} in the sun, by the window, i stopped and listened. silence. ahhh much needed silence. much appreciated silence. ham was at drivers ed and kaylee had just left with nana aka mike's ma to spend the night in laporte. after picking up ham from drivers ed we headed to mishawaka to do some clothes shopping. went into hollister and ham found these shorts, a pair of blue jeans and a couple of t-shirts while i got this blouse even though i shouldn't have and some lotion and body spray.
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and if i would have known that this sweater was at abercrombie, i would have gotten it too. i might have to make a trip back to the mall for it. {i love cardigan sweaters!}

went into pac sun and find nothing and that was the end of our shopping spree. {yep, ham only likes 2 stores}we did hit cinnabon for some cinnamon rolls for breakfast since there is nothing here to eat and we did grab dinner at chik f let or whatever its called. we need a chik f let around these parts of the woods. its yummy. even though i knew this before, ham really is a chronic complainer. he complains about everything and i did want to push him out of the car once or twice on the way there . but i also knew that he was kidding around. it was great being able to spend a little one on one time with him. he's really funny and smart and handsome. not sure if i've posted this before but with his hair the way it is now- he looks like his dad and the other night when he came downstairs to talk to me about something, he sounded just like him too. fortunately for me we haven't seen or heard from him in 9 years. unfortunately for ham.

fortune telling

at 1:15pm today someone will walk into this house and buy it. for a great price for them and at a decent price for us. amen.

if i wasn't so freakin lazy, i would find a before picture of our front porch. instead i will explain that it was white with "red bricks" painted on it and it looked nice when i first moved in and it still looked nice till a few years ago when we had to have our retaining wall fixed, i mean rebuilt. we had the guy also fix some of the front porch and he did an awful job- cosmetically. i mean, the concrete wasn't smoothed down so it would stick out like a sore thumb and since he didn't know how to make it look like "red bricks" the patchwork stuck out like a sore thumb too. going on the advice of my female parental and husband, i went and painted it grey. i thought light grey would look better than dark grey so this is what i did sunday evening.

i like that its all one color but i don't like the color. i should of gone with my gut instinct. i can see the outcome in my head and this is exactly what i thought the grey would look like though not as blue. it demands too much attention and i want it to blend with the house. i think black would look cool but i'm going to go with white. why not just keep it since we want to move? because i still live here and have to look at it everyday.

my kitchen swap partner got her goodies the other day and left me the best comment. she loved my goodies and would of given me 10 hearts out of 5 if she could. she said this was her best swap ever! i aim to please. this is what i sent out to her. she loves red + gingham. the apron is a plain kitchen aid apron- very heavy. i took out the strings and added red gingham ribbon. got her some baking tools that she requested, since shes a baker and cooker i figured she probably already had a lot of cooking utensils, and i made her recipe cards that was stamped with "from the kitchen of TINA", and i covered a photo album with red gingham fabric and stickered recipes on there. i just hope they stay on. i also added some spices that i didn't think a lot of people used on a daily basis, still bummed about the savory salts that i posted about before.

and this is what i sent out for the first name swap. she has the prettiest name and nickname. i hope she likes what i sent her. i had a lot of ideas but had to take in consideration the weight issue since i was shipping it over seas to france. ooo lala theres a small tote bag with her name on it, i wish now that i had stitched her name instead of doing an iron on, a scrapbook with embellishments so she can document her vacation. she loves the sea + ocean so i picked this out because of the colors and if she never had scrapbooked this is so simple that she will be able too. i also made her a bracelet with her name on it.


again, i think i will take a short break from swapping. they get to be expensive plus i have one for september. she lives in singapore and this will give me some time to find the goodies with no other pressures.

monday night dinner

i think i might have mentioned this before but almost every week my parentals host monday night dinner for me and my 2 brothers and sister + all our families. that's eight adults and nine grandchildren though ham misses a lot. he usually retreats to the computer so he feels if he's on the computer there, he might as well be at home. dinners are random: cheeseburgers, chicken, homemade pizza etc... whatever my female parental feels like making that day. after dinner we all went outside since most of the kids wanted to go swimming. they had a balloon fight first. that's jake getting soaked by one in the first picture. kaylee had to borrow a swimsuit from one of her cousins because i didn't plan on staying long so i didn't bring hers. {mike's out of town this week} the blonde girls in the other pictures are my oldest brothers girls. and the one boy is my other brother's boy. his other son had football practice. and the last row of pictures is granny being pushed in by the grandkids. they definitely got a kick out of it. most of the time, monday night dinners are not this much fun. its usually dull and sometimes boring. it will all depend on someones mood. last night everyone must of been in a great mood. i got a chance to make fun of my dad a little and we took a jog down memory lane.

it turned out to be a great weekend. overstayed at the birthday party but that was to be expected. the birthday boy was displaying some unwanted attitude so he got shipped off to grandma's for the night. i took some great pics of booah on saturday. he's such a great model.

this one of him yawning is probably my favorite one of him though the one of him sleeping is awfully cute. the one of him yawning i might have to get as a large canvas for the new house someday.

and here's sweet devil child loving on her daddy. hopefully her attitude isn't a sign of whats to come 'cuz if it is- please have mercy on my soul. mike is leaving for iowa city today so kaylee will be "bootcamp mama"

last night i had to use the santa claus card. yep, its only august and i had to use. i told her i would email santa if she continued to be bad. it worked. and then she tells me she's just kidding around. ha! boy is she a smart little cookie.

sunday was spent again at lowes. mike had to fix the wood posts holding up the flower bed after he had taken out an overgrown bush. he hated that bush. i loved it. it was perfectly circled...does that make sense? it does look like we have more space so i guess its not so bad. went to jcpenneys and got our fire pit that we've been eyeing and the 4 chairs that comes with it. it was all on clearance for 70% off. i will have to post a picture of it later. then sunday evening, i painted our front porch. ran out of paint with just a little left to go. i checked it this morning and not sure of the color. its suppose to be light grey but it looks almost light blue instead.

today i have an ortho appointment and the rest of day will be spent cleaning. fun fun.

birthday parties and ham at 1 months

today we have yet another birthday party to attend. this makes number 9 since june. and that means we have shelled out close to $200 bucks. i figure we spend close to 20 bucks per kid x 8 and $50 bucks for mike's 17 year old brother nick. yikes! and most are my niece's and nephews. my brothers and sister better be done with all this reproducing is all i have to say. ha! just kidding. really. this time. only because i think they are all done. hee hee

anyway, i decided to get up and start doing those wedding pictures that i took a few weeks back and get them sent off to shutterfly or someplace like that so the couple can print them themselves. not going to do too much with them, just crop mostly. so i must go to work. i will leave you with this picture of me and ham when he was 1 months exactly. {please excuse my whiteness and bushy eyebrows. my female parental wasn't very good at teaching me to be girly}

isn't he the sweetest thing? so while the rest of you were in college for the 3rd year this is what i was doing. hard to believe that was 15 almost 16 years ago.