ATL through Instagram Pics

We decided to tag along with Kyle earlier this week on his business trip to ATL.  We love seeing old friends, and this time got to meet a new member of our family too!

Kyle picked us up before lunchtime on Monday to head down there, but I had to snap a picture of us girls getting ready :)  Emery LOVES being just like her momma with curlers in :)

We got into Atlanta just in time to miss traffic, and stopped by a nearby park to let Em stretch her legs before we visited her cousins!

That's right I said COUSINS!  Bayly was just born two weeks ago (congratulations Rach & Mike!), and we were so excited to finally meet her.  Look at those cheeks!

I had a blast holding her the whole time while Emery played with Gunney and Grammy.  Fun family time together!

Tuesday morning, Emery and I headed over to Jeneane's new house to catch up for a little bit.  Jeneane and Curtis just bought a fixer-upper house too, so we both know exactly what the other one is going through!  It's exhausting but so fun and will be worth it in the end. Loved seeing you!

After going back to the hotel for nap time, Emery and I had a blast playing in the courtyard, having a picnic and relaxing before meeting more friends for dinner!

Tuesday night, we met Lacey, Jen, David and Max for dinner at Mellow Mushroom in Brookhaven.  Loved catching up with these girls and their families, thank y'all again for meeting so last minute!

Three girls with babies!

Em and Max! (Almost 2 years old and almost 1 year old!)

 David and Ky:

Jen, Max, Em and I:

 
Lacey, Em and I. The whole way home Em kept saying "Yacey...Yacey" haha, think our whole family loves her :)

Emery and I headed back Wednesday morning, trying to avoid some of the crazy storms and tornadoes passing through while Kyle stayed an extra day and took the jet home.  Time always goes by too quickly, and we hope to see more friends next time!

I can't say enough how much I love being a stay at home mom so Em and I can choose to tag along with Kyle when he travels.  Blessed!

Stainless vs. White -- an even race!

The look of our kitchen is definitely changing for the better!  Bye bye orange walls, pot rack, florescent light, white rusty microwave/oven combo, and black fridge (that was never there because they took it!).

Here's how it's looking now:

We bought the stainless microwave/oven combo off Craigslist and man it has it been a lot of work to completely fix it, but all in all we saved ourselves around $1500 and now it works perfectly!  We also tried to go the Craigslist route for the refrigerator but ended up selling the one that we had originally bought as there was a rattle that we couldn't stand.  We opted to spend our saved money from the oven on a new fridge, and are absolutely loving it!

It's coming together, we'll have more updates next week!

Book Wreath for our Mantle!

I can actually say I've used SO many of my pins from Pinterest in the last month (can you believe we've been in our house a month now?).  From tips on cleaning, to painting and decor... I am learning a ton.  Since we've decided to not put our tv over our fireplace (just too high), I had been looking at ways to decorate our mantle.  I eventually would love some kind of circular mirror, but for now I was looking for anything circular to break up all the hard lines of the mantle all while being inexpensive... and that's when I saw the book wreath tutorial!  I made it last weekend and there isn't another solution that's easier or cheaper.  Total cost was $1!

Although I loved the tutorial that I followed, I wanted to use a book that had meaning to us, rather than just a romance novel off the shelf of the dollar store.  I read purpose driven life a couple years ago, still had the book laying around and thought it would be the perfect centerpiece for our family room.

I painted the edges black to help it look a little more antiqued:

Love how there are images in this book too to help break up the words:

And instead of going to the dollar store to buy a small wreath, I asked Kyle to pick up some tubing from Home Depot.  I have no idea what this stuff is called but it's hollow on the inside and super flexible.  A long tube of it is $1, so you can actually make 2 wreaths out of this if you want to.  So cut it the length that you want, and duct tape the ends together to make a circle. 

Get out your hot glue gun and go to town!

And voila!

I chose to roll my paper in an "S" shape almost, and love the way it came out:

Here's how our mantle is looking right now... candles that don't match, a framed pic of Emery that's too small for that space... BUT I love the wreath!  I actually had extra pages left, so I might go back and make another layer on the bottom to make it even larger.

 

If you decide to make one, link back with your creation!  I would love to see it!

Thanks again, Pinterest!

Fun at the library

This post is probably common sense to so many parents, but Kyle and I had no clue how awesome libraries were--especially when you have a little one to entertain!  The library near our Marietta house was scary and I think that's why we thought all libraries were horrible.  As soon as we moved up here, I researched free story times and the 2 libraries near our house popped up.  They are both awesome (Cornelius & Huntersville) and offer different things.  Mr. George in the Cornelius library is amazing with kids, and has officially earned Emery's trust (see below where she went up to the front of the class-- WITHOUT ME-- to get her hand stamped).

 

The Huntersville branch rotates teachers, and to be honest they don't even come close to Mr. George but Emery still has a great time doing crafts, catching bubbles and singing.  Last week the teacher was trying to teach the kids to "BRINK, BRINK" (she was trying to say blink) and every kid was looking around like what is this lady saying?  I was dying laughing.

I think what's surprised me most about libraries is the limit of items you can have checked out at one time.  90! Rreally who could keep track of that many items? Especially when you have 3 weeks to return them all! (AND they have cds there too that you can rent, for kids and adults.  I've rented Coldplay, Joshua Radin, Christmas Music, etc).  

Since we go to the library every week, we trade out new books every time we visit and I can really see a difference in Emery's vocabulary based on the new books she is reading.  My sister gave us an awesome book stand, and we keep that downstairs just for our library books!

And lastly here is a recent video of Em saying the words from one of her favorite books right now called "Baby Shoes".  The words that we are saying are: "Baby Says -- Uh Oh, Mommy Says -- Oh No, But those shoes just Go, Go, Go!"  I just love this age, so cute!

Quick trip to Boone

A couple weeks ago, Emery and I made a quick trip to Boone to visit Gigi, Grandma and Grandpa while Kyle was busy with work events 2 night in a row.  Emery had a blast spending one on one time with everyone and so did I!  So thankful for family!

We sent them this video before we left to head up there to see them.  Em loves her little backpack to carry her toys!

New kitchen faucet

One of the things we first found after moving in was that our kitchen sink was leaking (minus the fact that our laundry faucet was leaking into the guest bathroom downstairs... but that's a whole other story).  It dripped constantly and underneath the cabinet the water had ruined the laminate in the bottom.  So out with old, rusty, dirty, white faucet that Kyle lovingly called "the white beast":

And in with the new, oil rubbed bronze faucet:

Don't look too closely at our back splash at the moment.  We have high hopes for new counter tops, painted cabinets, and an actual back splash in the future!

Then underneath the sink Kyle laid down some Vinyl Tile (sticky tile that will be SO much easier to clean underneath) and save us if we ever have a leak again!

It's the small victories around here folks!

Wordless Wednesday: Before & After - Blinds

See ya, yellow brittle blinds!

Pantry Love!

While we are on the subject of organizing... I thought I would share a project that I did one day during Emery's nap time.  It is very unlike me to make sporadic decisions, especially without consulting Kyle first... but this day I was feeling spunky so I went for it. 

See our pantry?  It really needed some love (and some food!).

The first step was taking out all the shelving:

The walls were all scuffed up and the shelves were sooooo dirty:

And I started painting!  I already had a brush & roller with comfort gray paint on them from a project the night before (do y'all know the trick of saving brushes with paint on them by wrapping them in saran wrap & putting them in the fridge?  It seriously works!) which helped cut set up time in half!  Pucky wanted to help some too.

After putting the shelves back in, I bought cheap black bins from Ikea to organize our food in and then added labels for easy access.  Let me just tell you how nice it is to have a bin to throw all of Emery's snacks into!

And a close up of the labels:

Love it!  Can y'all tell I'm excited to have my craft closet back for easy access?  I set this up the other night too!

No better way to start off the new year and new house than by being organized!

Emery's 1st year book!

Is it really possible that our daughter turns 2 years old in less than 2 months?  It's about time that I finally put all of her 1st year monthly updates into a book!  Luckily a coupon code deadline for a free 8x8 book pushed me to get it done before Christmas or who knows how long I would have waited.  I'm so happy with how it came out, and love that we have all of her updates in one place, just like I did with my pregnancy.  I took each update that I posted on the blog, pasted it in the book with some pictures and voila we now have a 1st year book!

Front cover:

Some inside pages with a picture collage always on the left and monthly update on the right:

Back:

Now before you go thinking I'm the most organized person on the planet I have a few things to say.  1) Have you met my sister? haha 2) I'm basically an entire year late doing this thing... better late than never and 3) Em's baby book has not been updated since she was 3 months old... maybe I'll update that by next Christmas :)  Happy Monday!