Beauty In The Sky

Last Friday night, Arabella and I were playing ball in the backyard after Max went to sleep - girl time as Arabella calls it. We both noticed how beautiful the sky was and in her pure innocence, she said to me: "We sure do have beautiful sunsets here don't we Mom?" I just melted and she is absolutely right - the pictures just don't do it justice.

Before & After Projects

Lately, I have been on a roll completing little projects that I have been wanting to do. The biggest one was completing valances for the kitchen windows. I decided to do a simple valance as I couldn't find any in the pattern that I was looking for. I finally found the fabric at Hobby Lobby and got to work. It was a easy, but took me a few days as I kept getting interrupted. I love them! Now all we need is a new kitchen table and chairs for the space and it will be perfect.

I also did some simple refinishing on a few pieces of furniture that needed refreshing.

I picked up this Ikea bookcase for free and painted it blue for Max's room - it is perfect!

This was a chair that was at my grandmother's house when I was growing up. Somehow I ended up with it and it is one of those things that I can't part with. I decided to paint it blue to match the bookcase in Max's room. It is perfect and I think my grandma would approve.

This old end table was in my living room growing up. I have 2 and they are so solid...but in desperate need of refinishing. They are probably about 40 years old and again, just a good piece of furniture that I can't part with. The second one is a night stand in our guest room right now and because this one came out great, I will be refinishing that one soon!

My Maxton

My baby boy is growing so quickly. He seems to change a tiny bit every day and his personality is shining through. He is such a happy little guy and I am so lucky to be able to spend my days with him. He is on the move and is an explorer...getting into everything (which is a total change from how Arabella was at the same age). For a while now, he would fight you when you would put him into his infant car seat so we decided that it was time to get him a convertable car seat. I installed it last week and he LOVES it!

Last week he crawled into the pantry. I have to make sure to keep the doors closed now as I caught him in the potatoes, onions and garlic. He was just gumming them to death trying to get his teeth to pop through!

He loved supervising from his car while Arabella and I played ball in the back yard. He looks so serious!

And this morning, I caught him trying to raid the refridgerator! 

Cleaning Out

Since we don't have a basement anymore and we don't ever use the attic for storage (besides, it gets too hot up there), we are a bit limited on storage space. I have working hard at organizing, cleaning out, donating, consigning and selling things we are not using anymore. One item that is a bit hard for me to part with was the baby bassinet. It is sentimental to me. We used it with Arabella, she spent many hours sleeping away in it and she used it for much longer than she should have because she was so tiny. It was a lifesaver - partly because it was enclosed a bit more than the crib or pack-n-play so she felt cozy in it and when Jay traveled, I like to have her close to me. When she out grew it, we packed it up and moved it Montreal with us. Last November, I unpacked it and got it ready for Max's arrival. He used it, but not nearly as much as Arabella. When I originally purchased it at Target, it was on clearance for less than $60 so I think we got our money's worth out of it. I tired selling it in our garage sale, but it didn't find a new home. And since then it was hanging out waiting for a kids consignment sale that I am doing, however, I wanted (reluctantly) to try and sell it before then as it was just taking up too much space. So I checked with a local consignment store to see if they were interested in selling it for me...and they were. Part of me was thrilled that I could sell it, the other part was sad as a chapter was closing. Jay will be so very happy to see that it is gone when he gets home from Arizona. So before I sold it for $25, Arabella gave Max one more spin (it had wheels) around the first floor in it. They laughed and giggled and that made my heart smile.

Cooling Off

It is still HOT, HOT, HOT here...and we aren't used to it. We had a few cool mornings last week and over the weekend, but as soon as the sun comes up, it heats up. After school one day last week, I needed to try and keep Arabella and Max occupied after school with a low key activity. Arabella always has energy to burn from being cooped up in school all day while Max is starting to hit his limit because he won't take an afternoon nap. And I was tired, it was just the beginning of Jay's 19 day travel and I'm trying to reduce the stress level while he is away. Our pool is still open, but to get packed up and there can be a bit tricky, so when the temperature hit this:

We did this:

Wordless Wednesday

*I know this is a Wordless Wednesday post and I should let the picture speak for itself.  However, I need to make clear that I DID NOT take this photo.  Sadly, it is uncredited and has been posted around Facebook.  I thought it fitting to post this today, the 12th Anniversary of 9/11, as the photo is dated the day before the terrorist attack happened.   Chilling to think that the very next day, this peace and beauty, would be destroyed. 

Only A Matter Of Time

I knew it was only a matter of time to go from this:

To this:

I just didn't think it would be in a 24 hour time span....and on most occasions, I have the gate at the stairs closed. However, yesterday when we returned home from tumbling class, I put Max down and then when to get groceries out of the car and when I returned, I heard Arabella saying "Maxton Denison Ripp, what are you doing???" and up on the stairs is where I found him. I am telling you, this kids is going to give me a heart attack and more gray hair than I already have!