We’re Homeowners!!

For those of you that don’t know, we have been renting my husbands grandparents house for the last 3 1/2 years.

But today, it’s officially OURS!

I feel more motivated now than ever to work on DIY projects!
My husband is just going to love me 😀

We were set on closing by the 31st, and then found out less than two weeks before that, AND during the holiday’s that the fascia had to be painted in order to close on the house.
Luckily, our neighbor does this kind of work and was able to get it done in time.
 I picked Behr’s Asphalt Gray and am so in LOVE with how it turned out!

 

The before is a horrible picture, but I forgot to take one and this is from when we moved in. It was previously like a hunter green, paint was chipping and even some of the wood rotting.

 

My first project as official homeowners, is the front door!
I’ll be sharing that when I’m finished 🙂

    Cassie

Prayers For Gwennie

We have been incredibly blessed that, even with having Cystic Fibrosis, Gwen hasn’t been hospitalized one time in her entire life.  Sadly, that is coming to an end. After this Tuesday, Sept. 29th, we will no longer be able to say that 😦

Gwen is being hospitalized after battling a never ending fight against a cough she has had for about 3 months now. They’re going to do a biopsy of her esophagus to figure out if she has an issue with acid reflux, and are going down into her lungs to find out if there is something growing in there that hasn’t been showing up on her sputum cultures.

Please pray for us, she is really just scared right now of the unknown because she’s never stayed in a hospital before, and having another kid at home is going to make this very hard for me!

    Cassie

Last Day Of School!

Today is such a bittersweet day for me.

I’m really excited for summer, but my babies need to STOP GROWING!

But most of all, I’m super nervous because we have decided we’re going to homeschool this next school year!

So pray for me, PLEASE!

Here’s a picture of my sweet girls we took on our way out this morning ❤

A couple days ago, I went to Pinterest to find a few little activities to do this summer.
After I compiled a little list

• Swimming at night with glowsticks
• Painting with bubble wrap around your feet
• S’mores!
• Water gun fights
• Water balloon baseball
• Bubbles of course!
• Making t-shirts with sand paper and crayons
• Gummy worm and Sprite popsicles

I then ran out to Target, grabbed a blue bin and the things I need for these actives plus a new pair of sandals for each kid, jump ropes, some extra chalk cause we’re running out and ribbon dance streamers. (I also bought them a new board game and a roll of paper for the painting that I forgot to put in the bin!)
Then I made a banner with permanent markers and a roll of paper and hung with streamers and balloons in the doorway!
This was waiting for them at the front door after school! 😀

 

Nothing makes me more happy than making these two little people happy!

Hope every one of you has an amazing summer this year!

    Cassie

Princess Belle Party – Cambria’s 9th Birthday

Cambria is OBSESSED with Belle, her favorite Disney princess.
I browsed Pinterest for inspo and away I went on DIY projects.

I decided to hire a girl who does characters, she did all the activities so my part was easy peasy!

My loot from Hobby Lobby for a few of my projects.

 

My mom got me these white mugs from the 99 cent store and I used permanent markers to draw Chip on them to give away as party favors which they filled with goodies from the table before they left. These came out surprisingly adorable!

I bought the milk bottles from HERE and just hot glued the roses on them

 

Cory Made her invitation and the picture that went on the table for me.

(The morning of her party, Cory watched Beauty and the Beast with the girls, and then informed me that ‘mansion’ is supposed to say ‘castle’… That’s what I get for just copying something on Pinterest)

 

For the table I made candy coated oreos from THIS MOLD, and also caramel filled candy coated pretzels, and then a co-worker of my moms made us the cake!

 

For the balloons, I blew them up with helium, spread some Mod Podge where I wanted the confetti and pushed handfuls of confetti on them over a big bowl.

 

Before the party started, Aunt Leslie stopped by to give Cambria a present.

She got a 2 person tent (for indoors only) and they both got kites 🙂

When Princess Belle pulled up, the girls were way too excited to wait and ran out to meet her at the car! Haha!
Unfortunately, buy the time I had realized they were all out there, it was too late to take a picture. So cute though!

Princess Belle first read everyone a story

Then she crowned Cambria a princess and face painted all the little girls’ faces.

Anyone could have guessed that she’d get a unicorn!

And then she got a cat (because deciding between the two is just too hard) on her arm.

Gwennie wanted to be Hello Kitty 🙂

 

After face painting Belle played games and danced with the girls.

Cambria just loved her! This picture makes every penny I spent so worth it!

She sang Happy Birthday to Cambria and then autographed pictures that she brought for all the girls.

She sang Happy Birthday to Cambria and then autographed pictures that she brought for all the girls.

I’m not even gonna lie, I was pretty stoked to take a picture with Belle too 😉

And then she left 😥 and we had cake and opened presents.

The girls spent that night camping in the living room in their new tent,

and decided this was ‘the best present EVER’

    Cassie

Linked Up!

Bloom Designs
Five Little Chefs
All Things With Purpose
A Creative Princess
It Happens In A Blink
Artsy Fartsy Mama
Made From Pinterest
Simply Gloria
Natasha In Oz

My Computer Is Back!! (Teacher Appreciation Gifts)

And I’ve got some cute teacher gifts to share! 🙂

Teacher appreciation week snuck up on me this year. Just this afternoon I decided to browse Pinterest real quick for some ideas, found these  Thank you goodie bags, and then ran to Target after getting the girls from school.

Considering I was pressed for time, was lugging two elementary schoolers and a baby around Target (talk about wanting to rip my hair out!), and am super busy with a million other things going on this week,

I think they turned out pretty darn cute 🙂

These are for the lunch ladies.

These are for their coach, music teacher, art teacher and nurses

And these are for their teachers, same as above, just attached to a clipboard 🙂

Here are the links to the tags I printed for these.

Thank You For Helping Me Grow Tags

Blue Dots Thank You Tags

Thank You For All You Do Tags

^That last one printed small for me,

I didn’t care cause they worked for what I wanted anyway.

Thanks for looking!

    Cassie

Yearly Clothing Purge

I am one of those people that holds on to EVERYTHING.

Since we’ve moved into this house, I have slowly been teaching myself to just let things go.

I can’t stand clutter… It doesn’t make any sense! haha

Anyway, you can imagine then that my closet is usually crammed with a whole bunch of clothing items I don’t even ever wear… Because someday I’ll find something to go with it!

Last year in January, I came across an idea that I thought might work for me, and it did!

I hang all of the hangers in my closet backwards.

I do this with Cory’s clothes too 😉

At the end of the year, whatever is still hanging on backward hangers gets donated!

I was already purging the stuff still left that way right before Christmas, I was so ready to see it go!

Now if I could just figure out how to purge the things in my drawers….

    Cassie

December Has Been A Crazy, Crazy Month….

Though not for the reasons that you’re probably thinking!

Honestly, I hardly stress about the holiday’s, unless I’m doing crazy DIY projects for gifts 😉

 

While in the past we have gone all out on Christmas gifts for the girls, this year we decided we wanted to change things. Christmas isn’t about the presents in this house, and I want to teach that to my children.

They’re getting two gifts from us, some items in their stockings, and a couple things from “Santa”.

Anyway, I’ve been so busy because beginning this month I started watching my nephew five days a week, then the second week I started watching a friends baby (6 weeks old when I started!! <3)

alternating between two and three days a week,

Cory’s birthday was on the 16th and I’ve been browsing the web for homeschooling info like crazy  because I want to homeschool the

girls this next school year!

 

My parents are moving out, we added Elf on the Shelf into all this crazy last week, Gwen has been on Cayston for her psuedomonas for 27 days now, so Mon-Thur I’ve been going to her school so she can take it (only one day left and we get a break! woohoo!).

She also had a well-check appointment on Monday just so we could get a referral to see her specialty care doctor on Tuesday!

(A little not about that: Her PFT’s went up from her last appointment! I was so happy to see that! I can’t wait to get the results back from her sputum culture.)

So yeah, I’m looking forward to the school break starting Monday and just being able to spend some time with my girls and rearranging the house since I’ll have two extra rooms!

    Cassie

Renovation Of The Girls’ Bedroom – Before & Afters

I didn’t want to post this yet cause I still had a few more details to add, but it looks like it will still be a little while before its 100% complete.

They are getting new bedding and some organization items for headbands and necklaces for Christmas, and I still need to make a valence for the window 🙂

Here is what their room looked like before!

(I took these pictures after I had already started pulling stuff out, so excuse the mess!)

All of the pictures start from the door and go to the left in a full circle 🙂

I hated having a dresser in the closet and we and still barely had room in the dressers even though there’s two! (My girls wear uniforms to school and on top of that they have a very large wardrobe…

Not spoiled at all ;p)

I painted the walls, all the furniture (kill me), changed the knobs on the dressers and painted and hung a few things on the walls.

These floating shelves are from Target. Love them, and they were super easy to hang!

In this dresser the girls both have their own ‘junk drawer’, the little middle drawer houses undies, and then the rest (Cambria’s on the left, Gwen’s on the right) are school uniform bottoms in the top, pants, jeans and shorts in the next and all of their skirts in the bottom.

These are the knobs I chose for the dressers!

So cute! I found them on Amazon 🙂

I had plans to paint and hang that chandelier there on the floor, but decided they really need the fan in there. Instead I’d like to get a cute, girly lamp to put on the dresser.

This dresser has all of Cambria’s bathing suites, gymnastic wear and tights that only fit her, in the top drawer. The second one has Gwen’s bathing suits (she has lots cause she’s in swim lessons)

and her tights that only fit her, and the bottom drawer is all their leggings,

shorts for under school dresses and under shirts.

That kitty picture in the corner is now hanging on the wall 😉

And my favorite part!

I had this shelf sitting somewhere else in the house not being used, and my amazing dad installed it with an extra rail exactly how I wanted it 🙂

Cambria’s clothes are on the left, Gwen’s on the right, tops hang on the top rails

and dresses on the bottom rails.

Those bins are holding (from top left to right, not counting the owls cause those were just temporary), hair items, T-shirts, Cambria’s PJ’s, Gwen’s PJ’s, Cambria’s socks and Gwen’s socks.

We’ve been using this system for a while now and its working PERFECT!

 I got this mirror at Target and hung it so that they can see their full body from across the room 🙂

I love it so much and can’t wait for it to be completed!

I’ll post another update when it’s done 🙂

Thanks for looking!

    Cassie

Our Trip To Sea World – November 2013

A little late posting this, but I didn’t get anything done over the weekend while the girls were gone because I was suffering from a migraine almost the entire time.

Luckily, I felt pretty okay my the time my bridal shower started 🙂

I really didn’t take a whole lot of photos while we were at Sea World.

We left kinda late to head over there because we didn’t know they closed so early, so we didn’t get to see everything, but the girls had a great time!

My dad’s company has their ‘company picnic’ every year at Sea World, so we got tickets and so did my sister and her fiancé.

However, my dad ended up hurting his foot and so my parents weren’t able to go

We got to see part of the beluga whale show, the sea lion show, the girls rode the shamu roller coaster, we saw the aquarium, had dinner (which was supplied by my dad’s company) and then saw the killer whale show.

For that one we sat in the splash zone!

It was a LITTLE chilly out and the entire time the girls wanted to sit in the splash zones, but I was too worried about Gwen getting sick.

We knew we were leaving right after this one, so I gave in 🙂

Best part is…. when you go to check in for dinner they give you free tickets to the park!

We will definitely leave a lot earlier next time!

P.S. I’m pretty sure my camera is broke from getting wet 😦

Enjoy!

Heading in!

The girls watching the sea lion show

The Shamu roller coaster

Shamu came to visit during dinner 🙂

All wet!

    Cassie

Quick Little Update

Cory is currently at school with the girls for ‘Breakfast with Dad’ ❤

…………………………………………………………………….

Anyway, I haven’t been online much because I had to make a 12 hour drive to go pick up my nephew and had him for a week, we took the girls to Sea World (I’ll probably make a post about that this weekend), and things have just been a little hectic over here!

I finally have both of my wedding registries finished (my bridal shower is this Sunday! Yikes!), my house is looking really great and the girls go to their dad’s house this weekend for the first time in a few months. While I miss them dearly when they are gone, I am quite excited for a stress free/kid free weekend 🙂

My goals for this weekend are to work on getting pictures transferred to my external hard drive, clean my bedroom (it needs it DESPERATELY), make lots of graham cracker houses and find a little bit of time to just relax 🙂

Enjoy a few random photos from this last week-ish 🙂 <– My computer tried to autocorrect that to weakfish

    Cassie