SUMMER!! (finally!)

We are ultra-blessed with amazing neighbors who are like surrogate grandparents to our girls and good friends to us. They have a pool that is a dream come true on a summer day. (Judy won't swim in cold water so she keeps it between 87 and 92 degrees!!) Last summer Ashley was still a little too young and vulnerable to go swimming (then again, did we ever really even have a summer!!??). So last week we took Ashley over for her first swim!! She wasn't too sure about it and much preferred sitting atop the floating chaise lounge instead of being in the water! Katelynn did awesome and it's fun to mark the passing of each year with how deep she can go and still touch!

Braids!!

I've never been very good at "doing hair". But when Katelynn asked for ponytail braids (I give her two pony tails then do a basic braid) I thought I might try doing a french braid. For my first time I think they came out pretty well!! Granted, I had a beautiful canvas to work with! :) We have issues with her bangs always dropping in her face and all but have to force her to wear a clip to keep them back. With her hair growing out, I'm looking forward to her wearing her hair like this to school in the fall and not looking like a ragga-muffin when she comes home! :)

Just a quick trip to the store

Over the weekend we bought $100 of gift cards at Albertson's during their Gift Card promo (buy $100 of GC's and get a $20 Albertson's GC!). We were planning on spending money at Home Depot and knew we'd be eating out at some point in the near future anyway, so it was a no brainer. We got our $100 in gift cards and came away with $20 to spend at Albertson's.
Then this morning I needed to go get milk and thought I'd check the blogs before I headed out. Saw that a catalina was printing sooner than expected so I scored a double catalina promo, with coupons and my $20 gift card - making for a super cheap trip!!
8 boxes of cereal, 6 boxes of granola bars, 4 boxes of fruit snacks, 2 bags of chex mix all triggered the free milk (should have been 5 but only got 4, redeeming 2 this trip), a $3 cat off my next trip, 20 box tops, then I bought the extras on the right (found out Ashley loves fried fish and Albertson's has all their single portions for $1 each).

So, $21 for all that AND 2 more free milks and $3 off my next trip! Essentially $.61 for each item in the photo. (doesn't count the 2 additional free milks and $3 off my next trip) 

This would have cost me $120 if I paid full price!!

Before & After

I've always loved before and after photos of things. I have a bunch that I need to get posted but the latest to our collection is our entertainment center. It was given to me when my grandma passed away a few years ago. It was beautiful, had lots of storage, yet, it was massive!! Our neighbors had a very similar one that they "modified" a couple of years ago and we had considered doing the same thing. It was hard to think we'd be taking apart something that was in such nice condition. I knew my grandparents had paid a lot of money for it and it's hard to find furniture these days that are made to this kind of quality. But as we were moving furniture around this weekend we started talking about it....again. We couldn't make more than $50 or so (at best!) on Craigslist if we tried to sell it. Even if we did sell it, we'd still need to come up with considerably more to buy an entertainment center that we could use as well as this one. But if we cut it down to size (like our neighbors had done to theirs) we'd be losing the quality of the piece and how we saw it, the "value" of the item would be lost. BUT, it would serve our purpose and it would be what we needed. So after weighing all our options, we decided to do it. Ultimately, it hadn't cost us anything, it would still be useful to us when we were done, and it wasn't going to cost us a thing to convert it.

As the photos show, it came our beautifully!!! I love being married to a Handy Man!! Once we put it back in our living room we were SOOO happy we did it. And of course started asking ourselves, "why didn't we do this sooner!?" And if you're familiar with our living room before, you can tell the amazing difference it makes!!
(Granted the "before" photo is the photo I took before we redid the living room back in March, but it gives you an idea of how different that wall looks with the entertainment center cut down. LOVE IT!!)