Cookies for the Neighbors

June 23, 2014June 23, 2014 / Winnie / Leave a comment

Just a few things about my neighborhood…..it’s the best. We live on a quiet street, with amazing people and I feel comfortable letting the girls have the run of the neighborhood. Jules has been wanting to do something for our neighbors for awhile…..so last week I got organized and we made cookies. I found an Oatmeal Cookie recipe that I wanted to try, The Pioneer Woman’s Brown Sugar Oatmeal Cookies. They turned out great.

We wrote a note for each neighbor and the whole family signed them.

I have a plethora of metal tins…..so Jules and I picked a few out and used those to package our cookies and notes.

Final step was for Jules and Jane to deliver to each of our neighbors. The girls were beyond excited to have some to give our great neighbors.

Friday Wrap Up

June 20, 2014 / Winnie / Leave a comment

This week has been a full one – quite a few little things going on (besides the removal of the microwave). We removed the microwave instead of putting in my new front door….so I have to wait another week until that happens.

Here are a few highlights:

We had a Buck in velvet and his girlfriend wander through the neighborhood.

I found some bedding to use in Jane’s room…..on sale!! If you remember – since Jules moved to her own room – Janey has been living with mis-matched everything. Click here for the before. I painted the ceiling and have been on the look out for some new bedding. FOUND IT! I am now playing around with the art and the throw on the bed.

I am officially calling it on the driveway….well as official as anything is around here. It is awesome now….but I may have to do some tweaks after living with it for a bit 🙂

Dave put in a small retaining wall by the house to help with the drainage….he only had a few more bricks to put in when I snapped this pic…..but the hail made us pause.

That black drains leads to a perforated black hose that leads all the water away from the house….score. Dave has since added in the remaining bricks and I filled it in with additional gravel.

….you can barely made out Jules being Vanna….but you get the drift. Done.

Well – prep time for the weekend is commencing. We are working on the boat and taking it out for a day trip to make sure all is good. See you on the flip side, peeps!

Teacher appreciation gift

June 10, 2014 / Winnie / Leave a comment

Teacher Appreciation – End of Year gift for a male teacher……who knew it would stretch my brain. Jules has had female teachers in the past and all of my Go-To gift ideas are all geared towards girls…..so I had to get creative. Our Christmas gift to Mr B was very light on imagination, so I was determined to do it right since Jules had a blast in Mr B’s classroom this year.

When you google male teacher appreciation gift, you get a lot of ideas…..but none of them quite what I was looking for. In my search I came across a printed picture of a tree with printed fingerprints as the leaves and the teachers name at the bottom. Soooooo riffing off of that I merged that idea with a family tree.

To start my tree – I started with straight up black acrylic paint.

And to fill in the names on the branches, leaves and school year – I used .3mm fine point marker pens.

Kinda girlie but still better than some of my other ideas. I did something creative and by throwing in some guy stuff like a gift card to iTunes, Amazon, anything BBQ related……Mr B gets something useful and I get to use some creativity. Win, Win!!