a little bit of me.

{at 21 months...}

i snapped some of Evan's "official" 21 month pics today, while we were at a local little park with new friends...

the park was so beyond fabulous >>> it had tons of vintage-y photo op settings, and an old barn, an old house with a front porch, lots of spanish moss, and was right on the river here in jax...  very old florida style.  which i loved.  :)

((this was at the barn)) >> i had to convince ev to go "tap" on the barn wall in order to get him to stand near it... ;)

and so, at 21 months, evan...

...is such a little sponge.  he tries to repeat tons of words that we say.  and does a near-perfect imitation (usually from the backseat of the car!) of my frustrated "uggggggggggggggh" and also the inflection of my voice when i'm chatting with my sister(s).  it's adorable.

...thinks bubbles and elmo are the coolest.  or "elmooooooooooooooooooooo" as he says.

...tests me daily.  sometimes answers my "do you want a time-out" (for doing fill-in-the-blank-here) with an emphatic "HABOOM".  ok?!

...is still set on the chicken anytizer / grilled cheese menu.  altho eric did sneak in some fish sticks last week.  go dadda!

...loves to points out both baseball bats and balloons in books.  and is also totally interested in any book that involves a "knock-knock".

...leads us by the hand to get us to where he "thinks" we should be.

...gently throws toby's toys to play with him.  also says "ooooooo-le" meaning "poodle" >> he has caught on to toby's dual name system where we frequently interchange "toby" with "poodle"

...has reluctanly agreed to wear crocs on occasion.  they are sometimes so much easier for momma to get on him than sneakers.  :)

...is really into riding his PBK rocking horse this month.  he loves that thing.  i, on the other hand, have always just loved the way it looked in his room... ;)

...is sometimes so my "mini-me" that it's scary.  the boy loves croutons like i do.  he doesnt eat anything with much variety, but lets me FEED HIM croutons from my salad.  adorable.

...thinks airplanes are genius.  we will be walking, or out, or even in the house >> hear a plane, and BAM >> evan is off to track it down in the sky and watch it for as long as humanly possible.

...can be persuaded to do things with the very possibility of seeing birds.  ie getting into a shopping cart to go into a store to run an errand.  thank you birds.  :)

...& is so very close to 2.  stop it already.

that's all i've got for today...  plus a few more random pics from the park.  enjoy.  :)

 

:)

{wednesday}

i finally uncovered my desk and scrapped last night...

i found these pics while i was looking through digi files for something else, and they made me smile.

toby the camera-hog.  :)

this week has been a little bit crazy.

evan has tested every.single.square.inch. of my patience capacity, and we've had to get up and leave two different outtings - lunch yesterday and gymboree class today...

& we've been going nonstop...  i try to fit SO.MUCH into every single day bc i also have to also find time to fit in scrap-craft-work and silly things like laundry (ha.  eric was going on 2 weeks without clean stuff as of a few days ago), & i think we might just ignore the errands that need to get done this afternoon and lounge around the house...?!

***

PS - does anyone own an elna sewing machine?  i'm looking at new machines right now, and would love, LOVE suggestions - elna or otherwise...

:)

{make.me.over}

*(7th consecutive day blogging... this could be an all-time record for me?!)*

notice anything new?  or everything!  ;)

& let me just say that i am totally loving my blog makeover - which was designed by the super-talented & very fabulous mandi johnson...

i found mandi through elizabeth kartchner's blog - and after i saw the blog redo that she did for her, i knew that i desperately needed her help!  She was amazing to work with, totally "got" the look i was after, and i'm so glad that the very OLD blog content and theme has been completely redone!  even i was getting tired of looking at the same old design ;)

my sister kristi took the new bio shot - which i'm also using for twitter.  twitter completely intriques me.  and i love that my twitter-tweets are now linked to the sidebar here...

:)

{friday}

oohlala.  i made it blogging monday - friday and even added in last sunday too... :)

this was kind of fun...

today i'm linking up a layout that i did for the American Crafts blog - here is a peek:

it was part of a "4 product challenge" - the same 4 AC products given to 8 different designers and the result - 8 fabulously different layouts.  i love seeing how everyone uses the same product differently...  you can see them all HERE.  You can't really read the journaling, but it is just a bunch of evan's "words" now and their translations...  Which i'm sure i'll enjoy reading again when he's older.

Completely unrelated, but also fascinating me this week - the new shutterfly app for your iphone.  Has anyone else downloaded this!?  i love it.  i honestly never NEVER thought that i would use a camera phone as much as i do since getting my iphone.  it's just so convenient bc i obviously always have it with me, and the pics arent all that bad...  i have over 500 pics stored in my phone that i've taken with it, and i've started uploading favorites to shutterfly (via the app!) directly from my phone, and am going to order a bunch - totally NOT worry about the fact that they are straight-out-of-my-phone (and not post processed or touched up!), and then put them in their own "iphone pics" album...

here is a recent fave via my iphone...

:)

{the guest bathroom}

aka my little design dilemma.

here is the prob:  the bathroom is on the interior of the house - thus no windows with natural light, only a skylight that more or less reminds me of ugly flourescent lighting in like a school.  also part of the prob = the beige big tiles & the darker brown tiles with rustic medallion prints stamped on them, inlaid between the larger floor tiles.  they are ok.  but def not what i would choose if given the choice.  (im more of a fan of those fabulous-ly shiny and glossy tiny glass colored tiles)  & i feel like the color of the bathroom has to "go" with the feel of the tile.  here are pics as it is now (btw i'm not married to any of the decor items - we just hung those prints up in there bc they were in our guest bathroom in the last house):

 

 

i ventured out to benjamin moore with evan today, and basically grabbed a bunch of chips at random - as many as i could select before evan had almost pulled every brochure off the counter and i knew it was time to leave.  :)  i also picked up a sample tub of something that looked interesting & was in the blue/green family with hints of gray.  And then it looked horrible when i painted it on the wall.  so that's out.  please feel free to offer any color suggestions ;)  please... :)

and im so glad that the answers were enjoyed.  that was fun.  here are a few more:

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?

i love love LOVED Paris.  i think if we had endless time, endless money, and evan had an endless amount of patience, that i'd love to spend a month or longer traveling through France.  and taking and endless amount of photos :)  i've also bizarrely enough always wanted to see Seattle.  Or maybe hawaii?!

ditto on some pics of the new house:) also, what kinds of toys does evan like to play with? how do you keep him entertained during the day?

Right now, Evan loves little people, the big chunky legos, all of his push and ride-on toys (fire engine, dump truck, shopping cart, lawn mower), balls, cars, and playing puzzles at his little table.  I like playing haba blocks.  they are so pretty.  occasionally evan indulges me and will play them with me ;).  entertainment during the day - our days are broken into morning and then afternoon after naptime.  mornings are usually spent with various playgroups or in gymboree class or running an errand.  afternoons are for staying at home, playing at the park in our little community, or running and errand - aka shopping ;).  he is SO good about going out and doing things with me as long as there is juice and a snack involved. and he LOVES the car.  so i'm lucky about that.

Did you make Evan's Eater basket? Loved it!

nope.  got it from pottery barn kids last year!

My question: Is there anything you miss about living in MN?

Where do i start?!  in no particular order, i miss:  my friends, our house, the change of seasons, monterrey mexican restaurant, how NICE everyone is, how DOWN TO EARTH AND REAL everyone is (i sometimes feel like i'm struggling to maintain some semblance of this quality that i loved so VERY much about the midwest), Archivers, Caribou Coffee's drive through window!, cheese curds (i wonder how many WW points those were??), my hair colorist and cutter, um yeah i could go on.  and on.  but i still love it here too.  it's hard to feel torn between places.  i have come to realize that it's just one of the many by-products of moving.

I'd love to know what fonts you used on "Evan's first Easeter egg hunt" and also about the rounded corners too!

fonts...  the cursive is amelie and the block is (im pretty sure) Bodoni XT.

:)

{answers...}

...to a few Q's.

:)

I've always wondered what your college major was? Do you plan on having more children soon? How did you teach yourself how to sew?

Accounting.  Don't ask.  Big mistake.  In college I interned with major firms and decided acct was NOT for me, but i still have the degree.  I should have done something like architecture.  Or design.  I think anything would have had more of a creative edge than accounting.  ha.  IMO 18 is WAYYYYY too young to go to college and immediately decide on a career path.  There needs to somehow be more life experience and self-discovery involved in the process. 

I would love, LOVE more children if we are so blessed.  "Soon" is relative.  I'd like more soon, but not tomorrow, you know?! 

And sewing - yes i would say that i am 95% self taught.  I have an antique machine that was my grandma's (and someone else's before her), that my mom showed me how to work, and then I bought my current machine to sew on scrapbook pages, which i pretty much figured out by trial and error, and then once I started working with Fiskars, I took on more in-depth sewing and craft projects and learned a lot from the internet and a couple of good books.  I've also taken 2 classes - one on quilt binding (i just couldnt get it on my own) and another class back in MN where we made the cutest little purse.

Where do you get your cool fabrics from and do you look for the deals? ;)

YES!  i love deals!!! :)  i buy fabric online a lot - quilthome is a great site.  I also love little vendors on etsy - i recently purchased a bunch of fat quarters HERE - i've found that etsy vendors are great to work with for smaller yardage quantities.  I also have a fun local shop in Jax - olde green cupboard.

1-What did you do for a living before Evan was born?
2-What does your DH do?
3-How long have you had your sweetie, Toby?

1-When we lived in Orlando after college, I first worked at SeaWorld in their accounting dept, and then worked at a health care consulting company.  When we lived in Philly while eric was in business school i worked as an executive assistant at a real estate investment firm.  When we moved to MN i was lucky enough to have a steadily increasing amount of freelance crafting and scrapbooking work, which allowed me to be at home while i was pregnant.  2-Eric works for Medtronic, in finance and business development.  I just asked eric "what eric does" and he said "eric does spreadsheets".  you've gotta love that ;)  3-Toby the poodle was our 1 year wedding anniversary gift to ourselves - he has been with us since Orlando - and we brought him home in May of 2002.  :)

Hi Susan..how are you doing those rounded corners on your photos you've been posting?

ROUNDED CORNERS!!!  its a rounded rectangle clipping mask - i love the look of rounded corners and my sister showed me this while she was visiting - this is what i do, and keep in mind that i am using Photoshop 7.0 - i resize to what i want to post on my blog at (which is small) - then i make a duplicate layer of the photo - then in between the bottom original layer and duplicate layer i make a "new layer" - i turn off the eyeball thing next to the original bottom photo layer by clicking on the eyeball - i then go to the "new layer" and use the rounded rectangle tool with a corner radius set to about 30 pixels and draw a rounded rectangle with the edges touching the edges of my document - then i go to the top duplicate layer and hit "control + g" --> and a clipping mask cuts off the outside part of the rounded rectangle making my image have rounded corners.  (hope that makes sense?!)

How about a little tour of your new house? I love to see how other people decorate and am in need of some major inspiration! We moved here a year ago and I still haven't decided on wall colors!

hahahahahaha.  I JUST told eric that i wanted to paint the guest bathroom this weekend, which is great, but there is no way that i will be able to decide on a wall color by this weekend.  maybe i should post pics of it and take a poll tomorrow?!  I will however, do a few pics this weekend and post them next week of little spots around the house that look halfway decent and ok!  I just ordered THIS MIRROR from Ballard (my new love) and am waiting (not so patiently) on it to come in, so that we can hang it over the mantle.

you (and the whole fam) are always dressed so cute. what are the top five places you like to shop for clothes and accessories? :)

oh, that is SO sweet.  I am very very loyal to banana and the whole gap family of stores.  I love banana for me (and eric) and baby gap for evan.  And i do ALOT of online shopping.  it's just so convenient.  Current top 5 places to shop for me would be... (1) banana (i find so much that fits me there) - (2) anthropologie (i can't afford to go crazy there, but i have loved the store since we lived in Philly - also, the stores have the BEST SMELL!) - (3) smaller boutiques (we have a nice variety around PVB, and they are great for denim and more unique items and sales) - (4) gap + old navy - (5) hmmmm, probably jcrew (kelly p. has made me a fan!)

ok that is it for tonite.  i am tired of typing!!!  thank you for asking questions - this was fun.  maybe i'll do some more tomorrow AND post a poll on the bathroom color...  ;)

{tuesday}

i totally have nothing to blog today.

was a boring day of multiple target shops and a trip to old navy's stuff and save sale.  (>> i stuffed way too much, & i prob need to return some of it?!)

but i said i would blog mon-fri so here it is.  ;)

ask me a question and i'll try to answer some tomorrow...

we'll do a little q & a.

& that will cover wednesday's post too.

awesome :)

ps - here is a pic from yesterday.

& no, my son is not picking his nose.  (altho that would be funny to me at least!)

this is just his comical response to my favorite question of "where's your ear?"

:)

{somedays...}

...i get the distinctly haunting impression that his little face is changing right before my eyes...

every few months i have a day like this - know what i mean?!

then i go searching back through photos for something for a project and realize just HOW much he has changed.

(this - from march '08 - made me LAUGH today):

...funny.

random monday things going through my brain: i need to check out and most likely join the Y here in PVB.  psyched that i have now lost 11.8 lbs through weight watchers since mid-january (it really worked for me when nothing else would for the last of that baby weight).  wanting to scrap some for me since i'm semi-caught up on work projects.  annoyed that we seem to never have time for the home projects that we want to work on.  intrigued by twitter.  i now tweet as of sometime last week.  really happy to be working on another quilt, but wondering what i'm going to use for the binding on it and knowing that i need to trek out to our quilting shop here in jax to figure that out.  and trying to remember to buy t.paper tomorrow.  nice collection of randomness, right?!

and yes, toby had a haircut last week...  he's now tiny little poodle again.  :)

{from the weekend}

we returned to the land of orange and blue on saturday...

for a little bit of orange & blue football ;) (= the gators spring practice game)...

& it was evan's first "game"...

...& i kinda think he loved it.

i'm not going to lie - the toys + sippy + goldfish that we brought + airplane flying banners around the stadium def helped hold his interest tho... ;)

this is one of my faves from the day - i used a vintage action on it - and i wish we had a "sporty" room in the house, bc if we did i'd put it somewhere big on the wall...  maybe i will just blow it up and bring it out for gator game days in the fall?!

So that is what we did on saturday...

and then we spent today playing catch-up.  multiple scrap-work projects completed for me.  four loads of laundry.  some grocery shopping for evan and eric.  yada yada.

& because he gets left out of the blog so much now, here is a toby pic >> at one point in the afternoon i walked out of my office and found toby walking around in the windowsill...  i think he has decided that he is a cat?!

which cracks me up.  :)

and that was our weekend.

anyone want to bet if i can blog monday thru friday this week?!  --  i'm going to try :)

{keepin' it real}

its been a crazy.hectic.week.

lots of scrap work.  see some recently posted projects HERE (queen & co) and HERE (fiskars crafts site) and HERE (a sketch site)...

some house organizing.

too much left over easter candy consumed.

a lamp found at homegoods for $29.99 that is perfect for the guest room i'm almost done transforming.  (yay!)

and... apparently a batch of beer brewing under the sink in evan's bathroom.  right next to the bin of bath toys.

eric just informed me so that i would know that it was there.  its his little creative pursuit - and i just found it a tad bit funny that mr beer was chilling next to my little pony.

but that is our life now i guess?!

(photo via my ever-handy-dandy little iphone...)

:)