Bridge Street

We enjoyed an afternoon at Bridgestreet Shopping Center in Huntsville.

Carson tried his best to get those coins out of the fountain. The little redneck...

Curtis and Jennifer Going were visiting for the Church Expansion Department, and we really enjoyed spending some time with them. I lost count of how many books the boys begged her to read to them. Kids really do know who their friends are!

One of my favorite shops at Bridgestreet is the "Chocolate Crocodile".

Truffles as far as the eye can see.
I got a healthy snack in there. A strawberry. Dipped in DARK chocolate. It's good for you.

I have a pretty hip little shopping buddy, dontcha think?

Meet "Spike".

Remember him? The kid with the shaggy head of hair?

He got a new do today. Hello, Summer time!

He thinks he's stylin.

I told him he was cute, and he said, "No, Mommy. I'm not cute. I'm cool."

Ok. I'm HOOKED.

There's a new love in my life.

It came in this morning's mail.

Oooohhh Baby. Come to Mama.

I ebayed my old hard to use, pain in the neck Minolta Dimage A2, and bought this Canon Rebel with the bazooka zoom. This thing is a DREAM. Awesome shots with 0 effort. I'd only messed around with it for a few minutes when I knew I was in love.

It can do this:

(good thing I'd gotten some of my flowers planted.)



And this...

Oh look, there's a bug.

There's no stopping me now. Everything around me has become a photo subject.

The boys are no exception. They can't escape my constantly clicking shutter finger.

You know these are unedited when you can see a string of spit in my boy's mouth.

Jackson was a good sport.

For a while...

Come on, Mom. Enough already. I'm getting tired.

I can't TAKE it anymore!

Awww, look, he's catching the bug! Maybe he'll love the art of photography like his Mother!

Or not.

Carson was willing. Dirty muffin face and all.

But he's not very long suffering.

Just ONE more, and thassall.

So glad he let me have one more shot.

Now I must pry this glorious piece of equipment from my hands, and go wash my children's faces and give them both a haircut. We've got PHOTOS to take!

Easter Sunday in Pictures

We had a beautiful day to celebrate Easter Sunday, and our Risen Savior! We were blessed to have new friends join us for services, some for the very first time. We enjoyed a lovely service, communion, and a FEAST after church. You know what they say about Southern cookin'. My uncle says it ought to at least be a misdemeanor :)

Thanks, Bro. Mike for letting me steal your pictures. My camera decided to die on me, and wouldn't you know, the extra batteries that I brought along wouldn't work either.

I managed to get this ONE picture of the boys before the camera conked out. It's pretty pathetic, but I guess it's better than nothing!

The boys gave us an entertaining special number. Let's just say we have a new rule. Next Easter there will be NO Easter candy distributed or consumed before church time. None. Zilch. Zero. Period. The higher the level of candy, the higher the level of entertainment...

The kids all enjoyed an Easter egg hunt after dinner.

While the other kids were playing, I found Carson behind this old shed with a plastic knife he'd stolen from the buffet line.

"Hi, Mommy. I'm diggin for treasure! "

So much for those Easter clothes.

FOF Daisy Door Pocket

I saw this great idea for a door pocket HERE at "Between Naps On the Porch", which , by the way, is a beautiful blog. When I saw it, I thought to myself, hmmm, that's really a neat idea. My front door SOOO needs one of those. Then it hit me. I HAVE one of those pockets in the bottom of the closet. It was a pathetic Christmas decoration. Needs help, huh?

I really planned to paint the pocket white, but decided against it. If I leave it brown, I can use it for other seasons, too. But wouldn't the white look so nice and summery? Anyway, a handful of daisies later...
And my front door looks quite cheerful.
Oh, I almost forgot! The DOOR. I have 2 finished objects to contribute to Chari's FOF - I painted my front door red.
Because I have always had a thing for red doors.

The Bunkhouse

The Bunkhouse is now complete and the lil cowpokes have moved in.

These cute little wagon wheel headboards were salvaged from my Mom's attic. Then like all things that enter my house, they got a good dose of paint.

The room originally looked like this...

And then, as a playroom, it looked like this...

But a lot of shuffling, reorganizing, cleaning out, and generally a whole lot of chaos has taken place since then. Let's take a tour, shall we?

This little sign hangs on the bunkhouse door...

My favorite part of whole room. The corral. Also known as an old headboard full of stick horses.

Here, I'll introduce you. First is Big Brown, next is Silver, and on the end is Black.

My boys are so original and creative when it comes to naming animals. On their beds you'll find "Bear" and "Monkey". So very original.

The great thing about doing a cowboy themed room, is that I used the boy's toys as decorations. Not a whole lot of dough was spent here.

I really splurged on the dresser scarf. I spent a whole dollar on a piece of burlap remnant.

But the very best part of it? The cowpokes are thrilled with it.

And Carson is most proud to have graduated to a real sized bed.

Now that this is all done, I can concentrate on more important things...like Easter.

Easter? Is this Sunday? Oh Dear, these guys don't have a thing to wear. Not that they'll care. I'm sure they're more happy to have their cowboy room all done than new Easter duds.

It's TOILE y'all!

If you know me, you know that I. LOVE. TOILE. It's a weakness...

Anyway, The Pretty Organized Palace is having a toile party, so I thought I'd join in.

Here's some cheery toile in our master bath...

Some country toile in the kitchen...


Even some toile love in the scrappin desk...
(transferware counts as toile, right?)

And what better day to show you what I have in mind for these old dining room chairs. Here's one before toile. It just screams 70's. If these chairs could talk, they'd probably say something like "groovy".

I'm making slipcovers for some of them...

But most of them will look more like this...

Toile to the rescue once again! I love how it dresses up these chairs, and the white paint is so much more bright and happy. I can't wait to get them all finished and around the dining room table. If you want to see more of the toile filled kitchen, click here.

Happy Toile Tuesday to you all!!